#both tested neg for covid but i hate other stuff too

[pussymasterdooku]

ohhhhh i hate being sick

[theodorecanaryhood]

Enough to make you explode with love

Jason Todd x Female reader

The youngest of your siblings was a ride as you always looked after their children, you didn’t mind though. You loved your Niece’s and Nephew’s so much.

Around the time you began dating Jason he was shocked to see there was always a child in your apartment.

‘Oliver, let your little Sister play with that too’ you spoke softly to the 9 year old.

Jason began to get soft for them and enjoyed having them around, the weekends they were there he’d always make an effort to take them out places.

You were at Wayne Manor with your siblings there and their Children.

Jason was talking to your eldest Brother about some ‘manly’ stuff, probably football or motorbikes. You weren’t paying attention.

Jason stood talking as your youngest Niece walked over and the arms up, wanting Jason to pick her up.

He did, without paying much notice to his natural instinct he lifted her up and spun her round. Your Brother winked at you as you smiled.

You’d lost track of the years you’d spent together but Jason was so stuck into your family, everyone loved him as much as you. Jason was even being addressed as your siblings’ Brother in Law.

You couldn’t put your finger on it but it had been over a week, you felt rough. Nauseous and tired. Maybe the heat was affecting you more than you realised.

Jason knocked gently on the bathroom door as you vomited again, for the countless time this morning.

‘You ok doll?’ Jason asked as he rubbed your back, you sat up as the sweat dripped down your face, Jason smiled softly as he kissed your head.

‘This heat is killing me, the humidity is just making me feel ill all the time’ you replied, leaning your head into Jason’s chest.

‘Well it has been over a month now, you might need to go to the Doctor’

Then it hit you like a ton of bricks, over a month you’d been like this. And you were late, really late. You went wide eyed, Jason spotted this as he looked puzzled.

‘What?’ He asked, you stood up as you walked in a circle.

‘Uhm, I might need to take a test’

‘A covid test?’ Jason asked innocently, as you shook your head.

‘A pregnancy test’

Jason looked pale all of a sudden as he realised what might be making you ill, and that he might have to have some more thoughts about your future together.

‘Y/n, I’ve been thinking while you were in the bathroom, I love you, and I want to spend the rest of my life with you’ Jason began, rambling while you came out of the bathroom.

‘Will you marry me?’ Jason asked you as he got on one knee, holding both your hands.

‘Jason’

‘It doesn’t matter if the test is negative, it doesn’t change my mind. I’m still gonna stay with you forever’

‘Yes. Of course I will’ you smiled, Jason stood up and hugged you, giving you a kiss.

Just then in each other’s arms your timer on your phone went off, you pulled away from Jason as you walked back to the bathroom.

Jason sat on the arm of the couch waiting for you to come out, thinking about every scenario he could.

He’d be bad dad, he’d get too stressed and leave, his kid would grow up to hate him.

He couldn’t think anything good about himself as a Dad, mostly cause he’s never been given a chance to get that far.

‘Babe’

…till now

You walked out of the bathroom holding both tests, both positive. You gave them to Jason.

His face lit up like Vegas as he saw the two lines, kissing you deeply as he rested up a little. You holding him in your arms so tight.

‘You’re gonna be an amazing Father, our child is gonna be crazy in love with you’ you whispered to him, almost like you read his thoughts from a few seconds ago.

Jason smiled as a tear fell down his face making you lean up and kiss him, Jason kissing you back.

‘I love you y/n’ Jason smiled, leaning his forehead onto yours.

‘I love you too’ you pecked his lips, kissing his neck and resting you head on his chest.

The two of you stood like this for a while as Jason felt a wave of relief, relief that were choosing to stay with him, that you trusted him enough with your child. His child.

‘Now time to tell everyone’ you said, Jason smiled softly as he bent down and kissed your stomach.

[c-is-for-circinate]

Thinking today about viruses, allergies, oppression, and anti culture.

(under a cut because WHOOOPS this got long)

Racism is a virus. Homophobia, transphobia, sexism, antisemitism, ableism, etc etc etc, they are all viruses--a topic that many of us have learned a great deal about in the past year. They are ideas, yes, not literal physical diseases, but the analogy holds up. They are infectious, and often spread from person to person without anyone involved realizing they have it. They can sit latent for years, never showing up because the carrier never finds themselves in a situation where the issue comes up, only to flare up and take over when you least expect it. And they mutate, just like the flu, just like the common cold; they put on a new jacket every year and slide in undetected yet again, slip past our internal sensors and bury themselves in our brains until we go in and deal with them as best as we can.

One more thing we've learned about viruses this year is how we can fight them. The viruses of oppression are a little different because they tend to hurt the people around their carriers even more than the people they've infected (although let's talk about internalized anything-ism sometime), but in a lot of ways the attack is the same. You treat the symptoms even when you don't know how to cure the disease: we invest in respirators, antiviral treatments, hospitals; we create and sponsor programs to help those who've been hurt by various oppressions, we uplift our neighbors, we try to keep people safe from violences both big and small. You work to stop the spread: we wear our goddamn masks, we stay home when we can; we train ourselves not to say racist shit that might foster a culture of hate, we stop that guy in our office from making rape jokes, we make slurs unacceptable. You pay attention to your immune system: we seek medical attention when we experience symptoms, we get COVID tests, we talk to our doctors before the symptoms get deadly; we protest and we pay attention to the people who do, we take them seriously when they tell us that something is wrong.

You vaccinate. We train ourselves and our immune systems to recognize the thing that infects us, the thing that we fear. We try to teach our children about history, bit by little bit, on fragments of dead violence the same way we train our bodies on dead virus shells, so that someday they'll recognize the live disease when they see it. We learn about slavery and Jim Crow and the Holocaust. We tell kids bedtime stories about why hitting and bullying is bad, before we ever start teaching them the specific shapes that violence so often takes. As we get older, as we get stronger, we learn about the living stuff, all the new forms that same old virus has mutated into; we educate ourselves, we listen, we read. Just like vaccines, of course, there are anti-vaxxers and denialists shouting about how racism and sexism are already dead and they don't need any propoganda besides Fox News. Hell, just like anti-maskers, there are plenty of people screaming about how political correctness is ruining the world and they demand their right to spread their virus to anyone they can. Often these are the same people.

But we try. And make no mistake, we all of us are already infected, and just like a real virus, once you've caught it once it probably won't ever go away again--but we can prepare, and we can try to lessen the severity of our cases, and we can support our immune systems of activists and protesters and our own internal sense of this is wrong, and we can work, bit by bit, if not towards eradication (not yet, not in this world, but maybe someday in another), then at least towards control.

And then there's allergies.

An allergy is what happens when a human body's own immune system freaks out over an enemy that wasn't particularly harmful in the first place. All our immune defenses--those precious immune defenses, which work so hard to protect us against all those viral, deadly ideas--go screaming into high gear. All of that fear and fury and attack power gets brought to bear all at once, against a bit of pollen or bee venom or cat dander or peanuts, and your body is left itchy and runny-nosed and gasping--sometimes literally--as it tries to keep up. Allergies are miserable. Sometimes they're life-threatening. And the biggest danger isn't the foreign agent that triggers the allergic reaction; it's the immune system trying to fight it in the first place.

Which, yes, brings us to anti culture--but not JUST anti culture. It's a good example, a little internet-centric microcosm of the same force that drives progressives to tear bloody shreds out of moderate liberal politicians. Hell, it's the same force that enables both TERFs and the Capitol rioters. It's a combination of an immune system that points in the wrong direction, flagging the wrong thing as bad, terrifying, danger, NO, and a freaked-out response that can manifest as anything from mildly irritating to absolutely deadly.

To be clear, I am not by any means equating the scale or even the source of these things, any more than hayfever is the same as anaphylactic shock. Likewise, the sources are different. Sometimes, a disease can infect an immune system and point it in the wrong direction. (Terror of the other is the absolute cornerstone of white nationalism, and when that terror gets triggered by a harmless environmental condition like, god forbid, other people asking for rights, the allergy response can be deadly.) Other times, it's the other way around. Our internal immune systems, so well trained to protect ourselves and those around us from the insidious viral ravages of prejudice and oppression, start seeing traces of it everywhere.

And they freak out. And we suffer for it.

We talk a lot of well-deserved shit about TERFs, but it's useful to remember how much their nastiness feels to them like activism. Their immune system, trained and primed and sensitized over years of exposure to misogyny and sexism, catches the tiniest whiff of something that might seem at some point to have possibly been taken for male, and freaks out, because why is that trying to get into our system. Never mind that they're wrong. An immune system that flips out over penicillin is wrong, too. It's still trying to help, and it's still doing more harm than good trying it.

So bringing this back around to anti culture, which was absolutely where I started thinking about all of this this morning: anti culture, the terror of porn and the attempt by antis to protect themselves an other people from sexual content, is an immune response. It is a trained immune response, in people who have been taught and re-taught again and again that rape culture is a dangerous insidious virus that should be fought at all costs. And, right, there's more than a bit of 'the sexism virus infected this immune system and reprogrammed it to fight itself' involved here, but look, we are all of us infected with all of the viruses at least a little bit everywhere. If we tried to direct our immune systems to rip every last shred of -ism out of every last bit of us, we'd rip ourselves apart. Which is exactly the problem.

Porn, in and of itself, is natural. As natural as environmental pollen, and living near dogs and cats, and eating wheat or nuts or citrus fruit. It's even healthy, for a whole host of reasons that belong in another essay. And citric acid and nut-based proteins and whole grains are nutritious, and pets are physically and psychologically helpful, and being exposed to lots of different environmental substances as a child can actually help train your immune system in the first place. Porn can help us figure out what we like. It can help us figure out what we don't like. And while the processes that create it are sometimes unethical and awful, we don't condemn all dogs because puppy mills and dogfighting rings exist, even if we do have dog allergies.

What we see in anti culture is often a good-faith attempt on the part of antis to attack and subdue an environmental trigger that they read as dangerous. It's a panic attack over something that is by nature harmless or mildly harmful, blown out of proportion by the very instincts that are supposed to keep us safe. It's the response of an immune system that's been taught over years and years, by everyone from parents to school systems to the activists they look up to, that negative stimulus is to be feared, avoided, and fought. Of COURSE they're going to freak out.

And of course, early exposure to controlled amounts of allergens can help prevent later allergies from developing. Of course when kids are raised with abstinence-only education, sheltered from the very concept of sex, they're going to grow up allergic to it. (Of course they're going to try to protect other kids from the same, like worried mothers who refuse to let peanuts or wheat products or dirt near their precious babies, whose kids grow up with a whole suite of allergic triggers because their bodies never learned what was okay in the first place.) And no, that doesn't mean we hand pornography to ten-year-olds any more than we should give raw honey to an infant--but of course if our culture refuses to introduce kids to the fact that sex and desire and the inside of their own brain can be messy and silly and kinky and downright weird, we're going to have a higher rate of allergic reaction to the entire concept in adults.

I wish I had a better answer for what to do with understanding that this is what's going through so many people's brains. The best I have is a prescription for allergy-sufferers, who probably haven't read this far through this wordspew of an essay in the first place--but we all get a little hayfever once in a while, and we all sometimes run into content that makes us angry. So some thoughts on how to deal with metaphorical allergic reactions, inspired by the ways we deal with literal ones?

First: we recognize that what is happening is an allergy. The thing we're reacting to might be gross, or irritating, or even unpleasant, but the danger is not and never has been the thing itself. Whether it's triggering a response because of its similarity to an actively dangerous pathogen, or our immune system just doesn't like it, our aversion to one kind of story or another universally says more about us than about it. Luckily, we have a lot more control over our social responses than our biological ones!!! If vocal activism is our sociocultural immune system firing itself up to fight an infection that may or may not exist, then we get to tell our metaphorical white blood cells to stand down. We get to decide.

Second: we get some space. The funny thing about allergies is, while early exposure to allergens can help prevent them, re-exposing yourself to dangerous allergens after you've already developed a reaction to them can make them worse. Anaphylaxis is always more likely after someone's experienced it the first time. Repeated exposure to triggers, whether biological or psychological, can make the effects worse. So stop exposing yourself.

If something makes your throat itch every time you eat it, stop eating it. If something makes you mad every time you read it, stop reading it. Obviously this can be easier said than done in a world that's a lot worse about warning labels on stories than ingredients labels on foods, but that's why fic tags exist. And: sometimes, the croissant is delicious enough that we decide we're willing to suffer through the way the almonds make us feel, just this once. Sometimes the ship or the characterization or, hell, those other kinks that we really like are tasty enough that we'll put up with the trope we hate. We're allowed to do that. But we do it knowing there will be consequences, and we don't blame the baker when they hit.

We also don't have to blame ourselves. It sucks to be allergic to shellfish when all your friends are raving about the new seafood place. But that's not our fault any more than it's theirs.

Third: sometimes, if we need one, we go to the doctor. Or a therapist. Yes, really.

Not because there's anything really wrong with an aversion or even mild breakouts of hives, annoyance, and bitching in your friends' DMs--but it sure isn't pleasant, and sometimes your doctor might have a better solution than 'avoid it and take a Benadryl' that makes you feel a little better in the long run. And sometimes, it's not a mild breakout. Sometimes it's the kind of story that lingers with you for days, makes your skin crawl; sometimes your throat swells up and it gets hard to breathe. Sometimes we get angry enough about something we've read that we can't stand down our immune system, don't want to stop ourselves from writing that angry comment, that tumblr post, that abuse report to the mods for something that didn't actually break any rules. And that's dangerous, because when our immune response can flare out of control like that, we don't always know where and when it will happen next, and the risk of what we'll do if it happens gets way, way higher.

Sometimes it really is worth getting a second opinion. Sometimes you need somebody to tell you, "actually, it is not normal to get tingly and sweaty every time you eat potatoes." There are ways to train your brain and leash your white blood cells that I sure as heck am not expert enough to address. There are, it turns out, ways to feel better. There are ways to mitigate the damage your own well-meaning defense mechanisms might do to yourself or other people along the way.

And: we can take a deep breath when someone with an allergy to something we've baked, something we've written, something we like, is lashing out trying to protect themselves and everyone around them from something they've registered as a threat. Of course they're wrong. Yes, we told them there were tree nuts in the brownies ahead of time; yes, they chose to eat them anyway. But it can be worth reminding them and ourselves that there's a difference between "this thing is toxic" and "this harmless thing has driven my own system into a defensive response that sure makes it feel like I've been poisoned." And it can be worth reminding ourselves as well as them that sometimes, that difference can be really hard to spot.

[angstysebfan]

PR Stunt Gone Wrong - Chapter 24

Pairing: Sebastian Stan x Reader

Summary: You are a fellow actress in the MCU, Bucky’s love interest. You met Seb during the CA: WS and you guys hit it off. Chemistry on and off the set, but never dated until after Infinity War. During filming of FATWS, the pandemic caused everything to shut down. Seb offered you to spend quarantine with him, but somewhere along the lines, things go wrong and Seb makes a PR decision.

A/N: I was going to to this in a Bucky story, but then I decided to keep it Seb. With everything going on with Seb over the last several months, I came up with this story in my head. Obviously a lot of this is made up, but it is using what we know Seb has been doing over the last several months.

Seb wakes up in his Tulum hotel room and looks over to see Ale sound asleep next to him. After wrapping up filming in Prague, his agent told him that he was to go to Mexico with Ale for a few weeks to vacation. They were to keep a low profile until the perfect moment.

They have been there for almost 2 weeks, and he has barely said a word to her. Ever since that day on set where she attacked you, he didn’t want to deal with Ale. He couldn’t wait until everything was done and over with. After that conversation with you on the phone, all he wanted was to go back to New York and hopefully see you. He knows that the chances of him winning you back are slim, but god if he wont at least try.

He feels Ale stir and quickly gets up and heads to the bathroom. He hated that he had to share a room with her, it’s bad enough what he has to do today. He remembers when his agent called and told him what the plan was.

“You have to do this Seb. It’s been too long with you guys out of the spot light.” his agent said. “Does the fact that I don’t like her mean anything to you guys? I mean I know she is paying you, but I’m over this. I’ll pay the damn fine, but end the contract,” Seb says annoyed. “Sebastian, we have a lot of things lined up for you with some A list directors and actors. That’s what you want, right? And remember what happens if you don’t do what we say,” he agent warned.

“Leave Y/N out of this. It’s bad enough you made me break her heart, but you are still holding her career over my head if I don’t do what you say?” Seb yells. “We are doing what is best your you and Ale. She wants to make it, and this is how it will happen. You agreed to the terms. ALL the terms,” his agent stresses.

Seb rolls his eyes, “Well I’m not sleeping with her anymore, so if you want to hurt me because of that, then go right on ahead. Just leave Y/N out of this,” Seb says. “I’ll do this last thing, but then that’s it. I’m done!” Seb yells before hanging up.

Seb changes into his bathing suit and heads out to the beach to write. He started writing every day since arriving to Mexico. Mostly letters to you, telling you how sorry he is, again. He laughs at himself knowing how much you don’t want to hear it again. So he writes it in letters, like a journal. Ale eventually makes her way out to him and sits by his side.

“There is a person over my right shoulder with a camera. Make it look like you actually want to be with me,” she says. Seb rolls his eyes at the statement, “And when do the other guys show up?” he asks putting his hand on her leg. “In an hour or so. You will make it look like you love me. You will hold me and kiss me,” she says as she scratches the back of his neck. After a few minutes he separates himself to continue writing his daily letter to you.

--

You wake up with Chase’s arms wrapped around you, and can’t help but snuggle into him. It was your last day in LA, as you decided it was finally time to head back to New York and get some separation from everything and everyone. You feel lips on your forehead causing a lazy smile. You look up into beautiful blue eyes, “Morning handsome,” you say. He smiles, “Morning beautiful. Are you sure you have to leave?” he asks.

Your smile slips slightly, as a part of you does want to stay here, but you know if you are going to make a real decision about Chase, you needed to think freely. “Yes, but who knows... maybe I will be back sooner than you think,” you say giving him a peck on the lips. He chuckles, “I hope so. I know this was only supposed to be physical, but I think we both know the feelings are real here,” he says.

“I know. This is what I was afraid of. I don’t want to hurt you,” you say looking down. “Hey,” he says bringing your eyes to his, “I will support whatever decision you make. I will be happy just being your friend, if that is what you truly want. I meant it when I said that you need to think,” he says. You crash your lips passionately into his. After several minutes you both pull away panting. “I should get going if I’m going to catch my flight,” you say.

--

You are sitting at the airport, waiting to board your flight when you decide to check out social media. There in all his glory is Seb kissing that bitch. The anger you feel is so real that if you could, you would reach into the picture and pull her off of him from her hair and enjoy you scream. You are pulled from your thoughts when Seb’s lawyer called you.

“Hello Y/N, how are you dear?” the kind man asks. “I’m doing ok, how is everything over there?” you ask. “I’m working hard to get this done for you. I really feel like we have a good case and no one would deny you what you are due.” he says. “Well that’s good to hear. I appreciate your hard work,” you say.

“Oh it’s nothing dear. Any friend of Sebastian’s is a friend of mine,” he says, which you roll your eyes to. “I was calling to see if you will be available to come into the office for a sworn statement sometime next week?” he asks. “Oh, well I am actually on my way back to New York now. So as long as my COVID tests are negative, which they should be since I was inside the whole time, then yes, I can do that,” you say.

“Oh good! Well let me know if there are any issues. Sebastian will also be coming in, so we can get both of your statements done at once. Call me in a few days, ok?” he asks. “Yea, sure. No problem,” you say before bidding him goodbye and hanging up. Of course Seb will have to be there at the same time. Maybe you can move your appointment to another time? Or just get it over with and then get your separation. 

You just can’t wait until this whole thing is done. CAA and Ale don’t know who they messed with.

--

Chapter 23 / Chapter 25

I had to! Lol! I had to use the Mexico pictures and talk about it. I had to! Feedback is appreciated.

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[anogete]

Watch me vomit up my thoughts

It’s been a while, hasn’t it?  I’m sorry I’ve disappeared on everyone.  It’s been... a year.  I think that probably goes for everyone, not just me.  If you’re interested in a personal life update, then read on.  If you’re looking for an update on my writing then I regret to inform you that I haven’t written a single thing this year.  Maybe next year, though.  There is always next year, right?  I think I saw a blurb that we’re getting Sam and Bucky back in March.  And Loki shortly after.  Maybe that will be my inspiration.

I’m fortunate enough to have a job that lets me comfortably work from home.  I’m also fortunate enough to own a home.  And my last blessing is that I don’t have kids, so I didn’t have to figure out the nightmare of childcare and home schooling like some of you.  My library on the second floor of the house has been my office since mid-March.  I’ve been transitioning into the Associate Financial Advisor roll this year and that has been going well.  I’m supporting the clients I’ve worked with as an assistant for the past nine years, so it’s been easy-going.  I’m able to order my groceries for pick up to avoid going in the stores and I live in an neighborhood where it is easy to get delivery from restaurants.  I’m incredibly lucky to have all these things going for me and I am thankful every damn day.

I fell into a bit of a funk this spring and early summer, but managed to pull myself out of it in August.  I started planning my meals, walking 2-5 miles every day, and exercising on the Peloton bike I bought a year ago.  I also started reading again and zipped through almost 50 books between June and now.  By November, I was feeling strong and healthy.  I felt like I had found a balance between work and activity and self-care.  I was still coming to terms with my grandma passing in March of last year and with Ferguson (my sweet doggo) passing in September of last year.  But I was trying and things were getting better.  I felt like I had my feet underneath me.

Lemme stop you here if you don’t want to read about death and some general medical stuff.  Because that’s mostly what you’re getting from here on out.

On November 21st, my mom texted me at 5:30am.  I got it right away because I usually wake up around that time, alarm or not.  She said she had dropped my dad off at the hospital because he was having difficulty breathing.  Apparently, he’d been feeling bad for a week, but insisted to everyone that it was just his sinuses draining.  I called her and began questioning her like I was cross-examining a star witness.  I was able to piece together a really fucking shitty story.

My dad always went to a friend’s house on Friday evenings to have a couple beers and hang out.  We’d all warned him since March that he needed to stop, but he insisted it was fine.  He bought into a lot of the cavalier attitude that the Trump fans have over this virus. Plus, he was 64-years-old and didn’t take any medication so he probably thought it was no big deal.  He spent a few hours at his friend’s house on November 6th.  Unbeknownst to anyone at the time, he received a call from that friend on November 11th that the friend and the friend’s wife had tested positive for COVID.  He didn’t share this info with my mother, my brothers, or my uncle, all of whom had been near him.  By November 15th, he was coughing but insisted it was drainage when my mom suggested he take something for it and go to the doctor.  By November 18th, he was worse and admitted to my mom that his friend had tested positive but that he hadn’t seen him for almost two weeks so his problems were just sinus-related and not COVID.  My mom hates confrontation, so she accepted this and didn’t tell anyone, including me and my brothers.  By November 19th, he had a fever and was having trouble breathing along with a persistent cough.  He finally agreed to take some cold medicine, but refused to call his doctor’s office despite my mom asking him many, many times.  At 4:30am on November 21st, he woke my mom and asked her to take him to the hospital because he couldn’t breathe well.  She dropped him off and returned home to text me since they wouldn’t allow her in the building.  She also texted my brothers, who admitted that they felt like they’d had a cold for several days.  I live 4 hours away and haven’t traveled since March, so I hadn’t seen any of them.

A nurse called my mom a couple hours after she dropped my dad off to tell her that he was positive for COVID and pneumonia and they were admitting him to put him on a bipap.  From what I understand, that’s the oxygen mask that pushes air into your lungs.  Later that day, the health department called my mom and told her to quarantine for two weeks.  My mom cooperated and gave them my brothers’ phone number (they live together), my uncle’s phone number, and the name and number of the person we suspected my dad was infected by (his friend).  My brothers opted to get tested and were positive.  They quarantined for two weeks and had mild to moderate symptoms (brief fever, very tired, cough, drainage).  My mom had virtually no symptoms with the exception of some drainage that she took Mucinex for.  She didn’t get tested, but she lived and slept in the same bed with my dad for a week while he was symptomatic.  If my brothers got it from 30 minutes in the same room as him, surely she got it as well.  My uncle and his son got tested, but they were negative.

My dad was cooperative with the doctor and nurses at first, but as the first day wore on he became irritated.  He’d been without his chewing tobacco (yes, I know: eww) for several hours and was going through nicotine withdrawal, but wouldn’t admit that to the nurses or doctor.  The next day he was put in ICU, still on the bipap, and even more unruly and rude to the staff taking care of him.  They called my mom to ask her to talk to him and convince him to cooperate.  They said if he couldn’t recover on the bipap and required a ventilator then “things would be very bad.”  My mom tried to talk to him by text and he just continued to insist that he was well enough to come home.

I used to be close to my dad when I was a kid, but we’d grown apart over my adulthood.  Over the past 20 years, my dad morphed into someone different.  Everyone around him, especially my grandmother, told me they saw this happen the same as I did.  The result was that my dad became someone I didn’t like and didn’t want to spend time with.  He also didn’t seem to know how to talk to me anymore.  To be fair, I didn’t give him much help in that regard.  I texted him to see how he was doing and the conversation quickly devolved into him complaining about the care and insisting he was well enough to come home.  I tried to reason with him and appeal to his love for my mom by saying that my fear was him coming home and giving her the virus.  He told me that he’d decided he was no longer contagious and this was just a bunch of bullshit.  This conversation via text continued through Monday and Tuesday (November 23rd and 24th), but it took a turn for the delusional.  The doctor can only assume that the virus and the lack of oxygen had resulted in hallucinations and delusions.  My dad told my mother and I that he was in an office building owned by a man named Mr. Pritt.  He said he was the only patient and that this man was having his workers experiment on him and that they would eventually kill him.  He demanded that we come get him immediately so he could recover at home.  When we told him he’d die if he came home because he was too sick, he insisted he wasn’t sick at all and became very angry with us.  He accused both my mom and I of conspiring to kill him because we wouldn’t help him.  One day he told me that I’d confirmed what he’d known all along.  I asked him what that was and he said, “That I always loved you more than you loved me.”  This really hurt because even though I knew he was loopy, I also knew that he’d probably actually had that though before.

He began refusing treatment on those days and wouldn’t accept the steroids they were trying to give him and raised hell when they tried to take him for a chest x-ray.  He also told them he didn’t want to be placed on a ventilator even though he had agreed to one when he was admitted.  He was texting all of his friends and telling them he needed a ride home.  He attempted to get up and leave the hospital twice, falling in the floor both times because he was so weak from lack of oxygen once he took the mask off.  He also told my mom and I that he was secretly removing the mask when the nurses couldn’t see to prove to them that he wasn’t sick.  He was taking and sending blurry pictures to us of the room as “evidence.”  He told my mom to forward the pictures to “the feds.”  The pictures were of his hospital bed, the whiteboard with his nurses’ and doctor’s names on it, his IVs, etc.  By the morning of Wednesday, the 25th, I was getting some off-the-wall texts from him.  He was begging us to come check him out of the hospital at that point and we were trying to play along and tell him we were getting everything in order for him to come home soon.  Eventually, he told me that he wasn’t getting out of there alive and that he loved me.  I told him I loved him too and begged him to do whatever the doctor said because the doctor wanted to help him get better.

A few minutes later, the nurse called my mom and asked if she’d been on the phone with my dad.  My mom said she and I hadn’t spoken to him by any way other than text since he arrived at the hospital.  The nurse said he had been on the phone with a woman, trying to convince her to come get him.  The nurse made him put the call on speaker so she could tell the woman that he wasn’t well enough to leave.  Because she was concerned that her message didn’t get through before my dad hung up, she called my mom to make sure he hadn’t convinced my mom to check him out against medical advice.  My mom assured her that we had no intention of breaking him out of the hospital, but she didn’t know who the woman was.  It wasn’t her or me.  We called a long-time former co-worker of my dad’s that I’ve known since I was a kid and she said she hadn’t talked to him.  We called his best friend and asked if he’d called and spoken to the man’s wife.  Not her either.  More on this later.  I’m sure you know where it’s going.

We were stumped, but didn’t have time to deal with it because the nurse practitioner called and told my mom that my dad was delusional and could no longer make his own decisions.  They said he had no chance of survival if they didn’t put him on a ventilator immediately.  My mom called me.  I told her to agree to it.  The nurse called her back and gave the phone to my dad.  He had agreed to the ventilator as well and wanted to tell my mom that he loved her and me and my brothers and his dog.  His speech was slurred and muffled from the bipap mask, but she at least heard that.  They intubated him right after the call.  He was on a paralytic for a week.  When they backed off on the paralytic, they had to increase his oxygen.  A week later, the nurse tried to kindly tell us that he wasn’t getting better and his chances of survival were low.  She suggested we start to talk about turning off the ventilator and letting him go.  We did talk about that, which was very upsetting for everyone, but the doctor said he’d been on the ventilator for two weeks and we’d give him one more week to see what happens.  By this point, he no longer had pneumonia. But the damage COVID did to his lungs couldn’t be repaired.

The ventilator was on full blast (highest pressure, highest oxygen) just to keep him somewhat stable.  The days were ticking by and he still wasn’t making progress.  Any step forward was followed by a bigger step back. My mom would call and get the update from the nurse most days, but I did call myself a few days.  When I’d call and talk to the nurse, I’d get a grim picture that my mom didn’t seem to get or understand. I talked to her on December 12th and asked her if she was trying to protect my brothers and I or if she really thought he was going to get better.  She admitted that she’d had a feeling for days that he wasn’t going to get better.  We decided to just wait for the doctor to call.  The nurse called my mom on Monday, December 14th and told her that my dad’s blood pressure was all over the place and they were struggling to keep him stable, that the ventilator was turned up to the highest settings and it was barely enough to keep him going.  My mom texted me and told me she asked them to call me.  The doctor called me within about 20 minutes and basically told me that my dad wasn’t going to make it.  They’d had him on a ventilator for 19 days and within a couple days his throat tissue would likely become necrotic from the pressure of the cuff keeping the tube in place.  They could only continue the ventilator if they could put in a trach and he wasn’t stable enough for that.  In addition, he needed more support than the ventilator could provide.  I was told he was either going to go into cardiac arrest while on the ventilator and die or they’d be forced to take him off the ventilator because of the damage to his throat.  The most damning thing he told me was that he’d removed the sedation but my dad didn’t wake.  He wasn’t responsive, wouldn’t squeeze their hands, wouldn’t flinch when they tested his reflexes, nothing.

I was told we could come sit with him and say goodbye when the ventilator was removed.  I asked when and the doctor said soon.  I live 4 hours from my parents, so I told him I’d leave right away and have my mom call to make arrangements for me to come to the hospital.  I called my mom and told her all this and asked her to let the hospital know.  I packed a bag and rushed out the door.  On my way out of town, the doctor called me back and asked if I was on my way.  My mom had told them that we’d come by the next morning and he was worried my dad wouldn’t make it through the night.  So, I had to have a shitty conversation with my mom about how we couldn’t schedule my dad’s death for 7am on Tuesday, that it needed to happen at 8pm on Monday.  I do not recommend these types of calls.

I got into town around 7pm and picked my mom up because she’d decided she wanted to come with me.  My brothers said they couldn’t handle it and decided to stay at my mom’s house.  My mom and I were taken to the COVID floor, given gowns, and gloves, told he was COVID positive so we’d need to continue to wear our cloth masks (no medical mask, is that safe?!), and escorted to his room in the ICU.  Guys, he looked so fucking tired and so sad.  It was heartbreaking.  The nurse said their ICU was full and most of the patients were in the same shape as my dad.  We talked to him for a few minutes, held his hand and all that shit.  He didn’t respond in any way, so I don’t know if he was even there.  We stepped out of the room while they removed the tube and gave him some medicine.  When we went back in, his breaths were labored and it looked like he was gasping for air. My mom almost lost it because she wasn’t expecting that.  I told her she could go wait in the hall and I’d stay with him until he passed.  The nurse was kind enough to give him a little more medicine to make it less dramatic, but it was still difficult watching him breathe in that way.  My mom sat so she couldn’t see his head to make things easier on herself.  We sat there with him for about 40 minutes before he passed away at 8:32pm on Monday, the 14th.

I stayed with my mom last week and helped her arrange a private graveside service and the burial.  She wanted to do a funeral and I thought that was the worst idea, so we agreed on doing a celebration of life next year when things are a little better (hopefully).  To my knowledge, I haven’t had the virus.  I operated under the assumption that my mom and brothers had it and were immune for now and wouldn’t transmit it.  So, I was able to be with them without mask, but I did wear a mask when anyone else was around.  I can’t say the same for the fucking funeral director and the locksmith’s employee who opened my dad’s safe for us, though.  I live in a bigger city and mask wearing is pretty wide-spread here, but I saw so many people in my hometown (a more rural area) who didn’t bother with them.

Anyway, while all these graveside preparations are going on my mom goes through the bag of personal items from my dad that the hospital gave us.  She tossed his clothes in the washer and placed his two rings into a bag to give to the funeral home so he could be buried in them.  She also pulled out his wallet and his cell phone.  His wallet has a picture that was obviously cut from an old driver’s license of a woman named Deb.  Apparently, this woman lives in Florida and had attended junior high school with my dad.  About two years ago, my parents took a trip to Florida and visited with her for several days.  She even friended my mom on Facebook.  So, the old driver’s license picture of her was very weird.  What was even more disturbing?  His wallet also contained a plastic bag of hair that very obviously is not my mom’s.  And there was a piece of paper with three phone numbers on it.  His phone was locked with a PIN and was set to wipe itself after 20 incorrect tries.  I did tried to break into it, but wasn’t successful.  My mom admitted that she suspected he’d been talking to someone on his phone for years, but she never directly confronted him about it.  She’d just make comments about him always texting on his phone and being secretive.  Two Christmases ago he bought her a ring at a store that she has an online login to.  This particular store posts the receipts for all purchases linked to the customer’s account to the website.  She saw that my dad had purchased two pieces of jewelry even though she only received one.  My dad has never in his life bought me a Christmas present without my mom assisting, so she knew it wasn’t for me.  She still didn’t confront him, though.  She just told him that she could see the itemized receipts online.

I sympathized with my mom because I’ve experienced the infidelity of a partner in a relationship and if I were her then I’d want to know.  But I also told her that I don’t know digging into it will make things any better and may not even give her the truth.  He’s gone and there is nothing that can be done about that or anything else.  While I was running errands for her the day before the graveside service, she messaged Deb in Florida and asked if she wanted her picture back.  She also called the three phone numbers in his wallet.  One went to Deb.  The other two were the cell phone and work phone of my dad’s best friend’s wife, Anne.  The same friend and wife who likely gave the virus to my dad.  My mom told me when I got back that she’d done this and admitted she’d always felt like my dad was talking to Anne and might have an inappropriate relationship with her.  I suspect my mom is right.  Gut instinct is usually accurate.  She said she didn’t think anything physical was going on with Deb, but she did think my dad was carrying on a flirtatious relationship with her via text.  In both cases, he tried to hide it.  And if you hide it, then you know it’s wrong.  That night Deb messaged my mom back and said she had heard about what happened to my dad and was very sorry.  She said that my dad was always clear that he was married and nothing went on that was inappropriate, but that he gave her someone to talk to when her husband was sick and dying five years earlier and they’d always kept in contact.  Again, I don’t think my mom can count on anyone to give her the full story without spin or deceit.  A couple days ago, she texted me a picture of a receipt from my dad’s truck.  It was from last Christmas from a department store.  It had two pieces of jewelry on it.  She looked them both up using the UPCs listed and found the necklace he gave her last year and a ring she doesn’t recognize.  We don’t know if he was giving this jewelry to Deb in Florida or Anne, his friend’s wife.  Or someone else we don’t even know about.  And we’re probably never going to know.  Do I want to call Deb and Anne and tell them I want to full story?  Fuck yeah.  Do I think it will fix anything?  Fuck no.

TL;DR?  I finally found some balance in my life late this summer.  This balance was destroyed when my dad got COVID and died after three weeks in the hospital.  And when you’ve already got a not-so-great relationship with your dad, you get all kinds of feels when he dies in a traumatic way and then you find out he’s been screwing around on your mom.  I also have lots of anger toward him for knowingly exposing my other family members to the virus simply because he didn’t want to own up to getting it after doing something we’d all told him to stop doing.

Health-wise?  I think I’m okay.  It’s been almost ten days since I was with him in the hospital and seven days since his graveside service.  I haven’t had any symptoms yet and I think most people show symptoms by now.  Regardless, I’ve been at home since I returned last Thursday evening and I intend to stay home until January 2nd.  My boyfriend is also home and will be here until January 2nd as well.  Just to be safe.  My brothers are mostly recovered, but both still have a bit of a cough.  My mom never had much in the way of symptoms and seems fine.  My dad was 64 and overweight.  We found out once he was admitted to the hospital that his regular doctor had told him he was a diabetic and my dad insisted on “treating” that with cinnamon instead of actual medicine.  Other than those things, he didn’t have any health concerns.  Be careful, ya’ll.

[literaila]

oh, three? that's pretty young. he can talk? sorry, i don't know how babies work. that's sad. maybe try not taking their candy next time. it is?? wow. that sounds like a really cool name. either ash or asher works.

so do i. of course they aren't. you believe in magic too, huh? they don't exist. i'm sure of it. if we don't anything about other galaxies, how do you know they're real? uh huh.

question. do you prefer mr or ms? or mx? i need to know which one so i can mock you. :)

even strangers. once i saw this really cool person at hot topic with a pretty dress (i think?) or something. i still remember them. never had a stranger compliment me. do i? i always try to act like i have the biggest dick in town. don't think it's working very well.

maybe not. but you're still a good person.

no darling, i'm skilled. it's a talent. i lie about everything for no reason. i don't know why. i'm used to it, though. i think i'm very fake, i have about 30 different personalities

you're a hopeless romantic. no denying it, love. at least you're self aware. give me one movie that's good and sappy. i've never heard of one.

you should give me yours too, y'know. only fair, right? only joking. most are.. weird. i don't know. i swear what i listen to are better than my playlists. you should listen to 'lover is a day' by cuco. it's really good. if you haven't already.

i don't have much coffee. i've never gotten into it. don't go insane with the caffeine, v. have you ever drank monster? do you have a favorite flavor?

thank you. i haven't heard that in a while. seriously, verity. means a lot. i'm glad! do you go in person, or what? i've never really known how therapy works n stuff.

school isn't too bad for me. the only negative bit was a practice quiz. i filled in half of the questions, and got all but 2 wrong. it's okay. i guess. on monday we'll take the same quiz, but i don't wanna get it wrong. it's easy too! i'll study, i just suck at memorizing stuff. continents and oceans, match them and blah blah. probably 4th grade stuff but i'm still bad at it. even if i do bad on monday, it wouldn't make me dumb. right?

sorry for responding late. i went to sleep at like 11 pm yesterday, i was tired. got good rest?

ahh, okay. yes, that makes sense. enjoy the weekend!! hope you feel better now? relax, love. take it easy and do whatever you enjoy the most. right now, i hope you're feeling refreshed and nice. new day, new start. agh, sorry. i don't know what to say. but today will be different, good, hopefully.

(i said hope a lot, huh?)

did you? it's not long at all, but you finished it in a day? i'm glad you liked it! it also has a nice cover. i think my english teacher has another book from mitch albom, so i'll ask about it once i finish twilight. also. i'll read more of it today!

— 🐢

most kids start actually talking from anywhere from 9ish months to 2 years. but, obviously, they can make noise before that. i started talking pretty early as i’m told. he talks extremely well. pfft. i give him candy, if anything. i just don’t see him enough.

it is pretty cool, annoying in school though. ash or asher, got it.

not magic. i wish. honestly, humans can’t be the only living things in the universe. think of how many species are just on earth.

any and all. though i don’t prefer the mocking (yes i do).

technically i’m a stranger, and i think you’re amazing. so there. it’s working very well, i assure you.

have you ever told me a lie? i won’t be offended if you have. you’re not fake if you know that you lie, and if you think you are? clearly, you’re very real.

um, 2005 pride and prejudice. crimson peak. 50 first dates. literally dr strange. the loki series?? they’re all sappy, they’re all good. do you have a favorite movie btw? we’ve discussed shows, but not movies.

i don’t actually use spotify a lot. but maybe i’ll make a playlist and then give you it. it’ll be embarrassingly sappy, i assure you. i like your playlists! i listened to some of them while i finished cleaning last night.

ahahaha i am a caffeine monster. literally. i got absolutely insane with caffeine and then i crash. so i don’t have it too much, don’t want to become addicted and all that. but coffee is the love of my life, anyway. umm i’ve tried a tangy one? i think that’s a flavor? usually i just drink the ones my friend leaves behind. what’s your favorite flavor, maybe i’ll try it.

i used to go fully in person but then covid happened and we switched to online for a while. i go most times now, but sometimes online if my schedule is difficult. if you’ve ever seen therapy in a movie, it’s pretty similar. honestly just more down to earth, less dramatic. at least, for me.

quizzes are literal hell. i hate them, i hate tests. and i’m really bad at taking both. geography sucks, i don’t know anything about it. just that. well. there are seven continents (right?) of course it wouldn’t make you look dumb. you’re very smart.

glad you went to bed then. i slept strangely, and woke up early. i’ll probably sleep more tonight.

went to the store today. bought another blanket (i had four on my bed) and then i have an eye appointment soon. so, better. i do best when i’m busy. which is why i clean so much.

i read really fast. too fast. yes they seem like a really good writer. i’ll look for some more in the library. enjoy twilight!

-v

[sherlollysecretsanta]

Here's to 2021 being a better one for us all. And that's my Sherlolly Secret Santa Mod Gift ask: A Sherlolly fic featuring them having a better year together.

I posted part 1 a few days ago and finished it tonight, so here it is for the blog!

An Eventful Year Or Two - 2020 was a hard year, but 2021 is much, much better.

READ CHAPTER 1

2020   

It helped that Sherlock, Molly, John and Rosie had all quarantined together. Sherlock and John were used to spending extended amounts of time together, and the addition of Molly and Rosie to the mix had made things more interesting. Not necesarilly easier; tell any toddler they couldn’t go outside and there would be fussing, but they at least had three adults to help manage.

As scary and uncertain as 2020 had been, things seemed to improve towards the middle of the year. The first thing they did was move out of Baker Street en masse to Molly’s home for Christmas, with Mrs. Hudson’s blessings. Rosie already had her own room, Sherlock and Molly shared the master bedroom and John took over the guest bedroom. The addition of a backyard play center helped Rosie alleviate some of her boredom and energy, and the playhouse John and Sherlock insisted on building from scratch looked a little odd, but Rosie adored spending time in there with the newest member of their makeshift family, a dog named Blackbeard.

It wasn’t going to last forever, they all knew that; John and Rosie deserved a home of their own and Sherlock and Molly’s budding relationship meant they needed some privacy. John was considered a frontline worker, as was Molly, and there were scares the necessitated covid testing for them all. Rosie didn’t like having things poked up her nose and it broke the adult’s hearts when she needed to be put through it, but in the end John found a nice home for him and Rosie that didn’t have the memories of Mary attached and they moved out in April.

After one scare too many Molly took a sabattical from Barts to do some of the other work she’d been putting off, the research papers and things she wanted to do. She’d seen too many people die of the illness to not be affected by it, and Sherlock held her as she cried and never argued when she spent hours railing against idiots who didn’t wear their masks and went to the pubs like everything was normal. It wasn’t normal, he knew that, and he wore his masks without comment and always made sure there was hand sanitizer around.

As it wore on and on, Sherlock felt an itch to do something. His consulting business of private clients had tapered off, and when Rosie had been there Lestrade had been loathe to call him in to consult on the scene. Video conferencing with the inspector and Donovan helped, as did the cases he could solve without leaving Molly’s home, but he wanted to do more. John had the suggestion he do cases by video conference. Easy stuff, but interacting with clients again helped.

And then the year slowly wound down to a close, with this new normal of keeping distance, wearing masks and the like. When the vaccine became available, Molly and John were among the first to receive shots. Mycroft made sure Sherlock got his first shot as well, just in case he needed his brother to do something out in the field. Sherlock said it proved Mycroft had a heart after all.

Christmas morning was spent with just him and Molly, and he didn’t mind that very much, though she missed her family and John and Rosie. He hated to admit it, but he missed all of his found family as well. It had been a long year, but it could only get better.

John and Rosie had both tested negative and been careful and they came over for Christmas supper. Rosie had grown so much in the eight months she’d mostly been at her own home, and she was proud to show off. The backyard playset was in use once again, and John broached the idea of Molly and Sherlock watching her sometimes; he had live-in help now, but Rosie missed her Aunt Molly and Uncle Sherlock so much.

Over dinner they enjoyed a glass of wine and really caught up over things. Plans started to be made with careful visits in the future. Sherlock broached leaving his home to handle some of the cases he had. Molly was thinking about going back to Barts in a teaching capacity more than handling the morgue. And John was happy to share his own good fortune, that he was dating the nanny and they were doing well, and maybe he’d introduce them in person in the next week.

That evening, after the food had been put away and John and Rosie had gone home, Sherlock and Molly laid in bed, Molly’s head on Sherlock’s chest. “It’s been an eventful year,” he said.

“It has.”

“I think next year will be better,” he replied. “At least, I have hope it will be.”

“Me too,” Molly said, lifting her head up to look at him. “But if we’re together, we can get through anything, I think.”

“I think so too.” She leaned in and kissed him softly, and when they were done she put her head on his chest again. “Molly?”

“Yes?” she asked, lifting her head up again.

“I love you.”

She smiled at him and said “I love you too” in response before he reached for her for another kiss and more. Yes, as long as they were together, they could get through anything, it seemed. They’d gotten through 2020...2021 opened up a whole new avenue of things, all with the veneer of hope splashed over it. They’d make it through, together.

READ CHAPTER 2

[therealniclion]

How I Found happiness this year?

Good Evning/Day/Morning Lion Familyyy, I hope everyone is safe and doing great..So Today I was thinking of sharing with you something so precious and special that I was looking for a long time, but never found until 2020! Even tho this year have been a lil bit of a rock to me, but trust me when I say “This year I had less downs than all the past years”.

My whole life I was looking for happiness in so many places and people, like for example... friendships and relationships. I tried to work so hard to fit in the wrong box with the wrong people, I never had the chance to reality check or reflect on myself I was so worried and stressed about my dreams, goals, and plans I used to overthink a lot about what my life would look like five years from now.

But the question is... how do we really find happiness? Friendships? Relationships? Money? Luxury? The society? Hmmm... That’s a very tricky question to ask for most individuals, specially for the old me who used to be so lost and insecure lol. I don’t have a boyfriend, I don’t own luxury but let me tell about all this happiness, now that’s some HAP lol!

It all started from March when I decided to X out anything and anyone that does not serves me both mentally and friendly! And tbh I don’t even know how the spiritual world approached me, but I believe that things happens for a reason. The Covid-19 pandemic have been both a blessing and a curse for us in general. Let’s start with the bad thing first then the best and positive can come after.

Why a curse?

So June was the month where I decided to make my comeback to the music industry with my first single in two years Vendetta, but one week before that I got a phone call from my mother telling me she got tested positive for corona, that was the hardest and the only worst downs I had in my life I thought it was over and that everything I was working on was pointless because I do it all for my mama, and the next generations to come!! I didn’t even wanted to release Vendetta because everything was dark for me and I was so hurt and heartbroken. I couldn’t stop the song release because it was already sent to the streaming platforms that time, so I told myself it’s already done so I’m just gonna release the song and keep on praying for my mom 3 weeks later... she called me, and told me that she got her health back and everything went okay that’s when I knew being positive and strong for her was the right thing for me to do, and I started to be happy again.

Why a blessing?

Ever since I started meditating i started to seek more knowledge, and wisdom thru documentaries and books. I don’t know how I became so wise and intelligent within a short period of time like... gurl how? I found out that meditation by itself will lead you to so many places and things in life for example. Why is there’s so much hate, war, and poverty in this world? How are we really connected to the nature, universe, other humans, and even animals? (As above so below, as within so without, as the soul so the universe), how can we find our happiness? The biggest thing I have learned was from my favorite spiritual documentary ever Inner Worlds, Outter Worlds. There’s some quotes that says “Everything that happens in this world is not social, political, or economical. It’s lack of consciousness, awareness, enlightenment, and self education” and “We create more problems by overthinking” sheet them quotes hit me hard like a motherfucker, like brooo why you gotta do home gurl like that? I also got inspired by one of the greatest people that have existed in this world... he is the one and only Lord Siddharata Gautama aka “The Buddha”. He was that prince that had it all from Diamonds, Golds, women, money absolutely everything the outer world could imagine having, but he left it all behind to experience Samsara “Suffering, Struggling, or being dead before dying” he starved himself, and did a lot of sad stuff to himself, he tried to educate himself from other gurus but nothing worked until... he meditated under a tree while eating a grain of rice for seven days that was when he finally experienced Nirvana “Enlightenment or heaven” it’s just so inspirational how he left everything and became something beyond his father’s status HE BECAME A GOD! That story by itself shows you that if you leave something so great you will achieve something greater.

After meditating and watching spiritual documentaries I realized that I’m not even a human being, none of us are humans if we only knew our true selves this world would’ve been a much better place. We are literally divinity taking a spiritual form everything we seek is already within us, so I stopped worrying about my future, past, what people think of me, and started to appreciate the little things I have in my life, from house, food in my table, knowing my family in Africa is eating and living good, to me still being alive. I started living in the moment and rather accepting what I can’t change but work on it instead of complain all the time and do nothing about it.

I made sure that every negative part of me is being cleared out, I focused on being optimistic and positive about my dreams and goals (Baby we talkin’ about the Law Of Attraction In here ya feel meee?) life is like a echo what you put out there comes right to you, think positive and positive will happen to you. So when I started letting go of my worries and achieving my goals fast, everything I wanted started chasing me instead of me chasing it let’s take my music for example I used to force the rap flow in me but now it comes to me naturally why? Because I let go of overthinking and forcing it nothing comes by force I had to learn that I gotta enjoy every moment about my music journey and that’s how it hits different.

When it comes to the haters... well this year was just filled with love and great feedbacks, but I programmed my mind very well if I see a hater I’ll just Ignore em because the same five minutes I debate to prove that I’m great on, are the same five minutes I could’ve been doing something productive on. I don’t prove anybody anything now I just let my music and influence speak by itself. Shock em like I’m Jefferson Pierce baby.

In the end happiness for me does not come from friendships, MEN, or fake flexing my happiness comes from me appreciating the smallest things in life I’m still alive, my loved ones “Including you Lion Family” are still alive too, we eating food, we drinking water, we sleeping good, we laughing about everything and nothing, I don’t stress or overthink our goals and dreams will be spoken into reality one day, but first we must suffer and struggle so when we’re having, doing, and being it all one day we already know how to be humble and be relatable to others and keep on that good, and positive energy with everything and everyone because everything and everyone is nothing but us we are connected. Happiness starts with you and not thru other things or people! Change, happiness, love, just everything start with nothing and nobody but you!

-Who looks outside dreams, who looks inside awakes!

-Until next time Family.

~With all love

~Your soul sister, Nic Lion

[datingintampafails]

Chapter 22: Jaden*

“Better Together” Jack Johnson

I matched with Jaden*, and based on his main picture, a professionally taken headshot, I got the feeling this guy was out of my league for sure. I matched with him one time, my opening message being about his eye color, with some adjective I cannot remember, but the 24 hour window expired before he responded. A couple days later I saw him profile again, matching for a second time, my opener this attempt was simply “hello again.” He answered with “Let’s hang out.” I ask him about his intentions and he says no clue, asking me about mine. After explaining myself, he says he is “in the EXACT same boat.”

After that, I tried to get him to fill out the dating application. He refused, despite me telling him essentially I’d be asking the same questions anyway. He said he would rather learn about each other in person, which is fair. Since this is more or less the same time as Allen*, I tell him the same thing regarding waiting to get tested before I go out and meet anyone. He says “that’s nice of you.” I suggest instead a virtual drink and he just replies that he hates these times. I agree but acknowledge that at least I’m trying and once I’m negative we can get drinks in person. He asks when I took the test and I admit that I haven’t taken it yet and am getting it the following day. “At least you’re honest” he tells me. I tell him I don’t see the point of lying, which he says is a “good trait.” I make a joke about him being a realtor and that his job is not lying but putting positive spins on things and he finds that really funny for some reason.

I request that since he wouldn’t take my dating application, if I can at least ask him the most important question. He says “Yes” then “I do not like anal.” I sent him a full line of “haha”s. “Oh wait that wasn't the question sorry haha” was what he said next. Funny. “That’s a very important answer too… I’m glad” I tell him. Then I asked the actual important question, regarding children, and at first he said “I want kids, couple, not for at least 5 years or so.” I give him a “womp womp” essentially saying, wrong answer. I explain myself and then he says “Lol that'll probably be my path. [Kids are] too pricy and I want to travel and build my career.” The question with this 180 remains, is that how he really feels or is he trying to appease me? Either way it seems one of the answers was a lie or at least less truth.

After this, I send him five messages, two related to what he said, one saying I like his vibes and want to go out once my test is back, a follow up after he doesn’t reply a day later saying “if you’d like to of course,” and then “officially no rona” two days after the previous message when I got no responses. I figured this dude was bored, but he hadn’t unmatched me yet so I figured I’d still sort of try. He finally responds to that last message with a “yesssssssssss.” He tries to make plans for that afternoon but I tell him I’m working. I ask him about Saturday night, he says he has no plans so far and I say “You do now” with a wink emoji. We plan the night, settling on me cooking dinner and having some drinks at my place. I thank him for motivation/a reason to clean my house. The reason that I chose night, is I actually have a date scheduled as well with another guy for lunch.

He asks me about weed, if I smoke, getting Peter* flashbacks here. In my blurb about my feelings on weed, I specifically tell him “I prefer not on one on one time that someone be high.” He simply says “I dont act like a little stoner but I get it” I ask follow up questions which lead me to finding out he habitually, daily, smokes marijuana. I ask him about how that works during the COVID pandemic, he says that the price has gone up but otherwise it’s the same. I then inquire about what he’s up to that night. No response.

Then it’s past midnight and officially Saturday, the day we are supposed to meet up. I ask “Sooooo gameplan?” No response. I don’t want to keep messaging and messaging, so I just see if he will come back out of the woodwork. The guy that I was supposed to have lunch with messages me around that time saying unfortunately he cannot make lunch anymore, so that’s cancelled. I don’t see the point in telling Jaden* that my afternoon has freed up or anything like that.

When the day comes, my friend invites me to the beach and I say I’ll come since my daydate was cancelled and “I’m pretty sure that I’m being stood up for my nighttime date as well so I don’t care.” As we drive up to the beach, I see that lady and her two kids from when Ethan* and I was at the beach. I’m sure it's them. I’m weak in my vulnerability so I actually break down and text him, telling him that I spotted them. I do not expect a response. My friend and I had a good time at the beach, but got rained out so our four hour trip turned into only two. It was really hot outside though so we were okay with it being cut short. Still no word at all from Jaden*.

Now when it is 6:30pm, I feel that officially I have been stood up. By this point, I'd already cooked dinner and had finished it, so even if he did magically appear I would tell him too bad. I message him to redeem myself, “Well if you actually wanna meet up let me know. I’m pretty busy so my time is valuable” I also add a stone faced emoji, because I’m sick of this shit, frankly. An hour after that, he messages me “hey!!” I for some reason don’t get the notification, and when I check my phone about 40 minutes later, I just reply “lol hi.” An hour and a half after my response, he gives me his number and asks me to text him. Here’s some screenshots.

My phone rings and it’s him. “Are you in an SUV?” I am and I jump as a figure appears to my left, it is him. The lightning storm going on has transgressed into a full on rain. We quickly hug hello as he escorts me to the door and the safety of no rain.

Once inside, I am greeted by his lab, a really nice pupper that I give lots of pats to. I’m then introduced to his friend. Jaden* offers me a drink, I let him make me a drink with some local rum. It is made way too strong, and I add some of my sparkling juice to the mixture to try and soften it up. It marginally works, but I just slowly sip on it.

Both Jaden* and his friend are outgoing and friendly, we talk about random stuff, shoot the shit. Honestly, thus far I am getting along better with the friend, not in a romantic way, but just a regular way. Jaden* is a little too talkative, occasionally interrupting, and loud. I cannot tell if he is drunk, high, or whatever, but he just seems a little off. Since I have no baseline of what he is like sober, it’s hard to tell. Jaden* brags about me, essentially saying that I was so nice and awesome and was going to make him dinner, which I make a point of adding “oh don’t worry I still made it, I just ate it myself” to be cheeky. He continues talking about miscellaneous other stuff, mostly things I cannot connect to at all, as it relates to other mutual friends the other two have.

He stops at one point and says “oh! You said I have some explaining to do so here you are” and he goes on to say that he went to watch the Barcelona soccer game with friends, and upon them winning, continued the celebration with drinking all day, he repeats a few times, “it’s not a good excuse, but it’s an honest one.” I shrug and say “I mean that’s okay.” He goes on to tell another similar story about when he was in college and skipped hockey practice, again like “it’s not a good excuse but it’s an honest one.”

Then another friend comes by, it’s a female. She is nice and seems to be long time friends with them both. They (meaning the two friends of Jaden*) are discussing plans to go to another bar or something in a little, but they end up sticking around for another hour and a half. Jaden* mentions he’s hungry (munchies??) and upon looking in his fridge, there’s nothing to eat except literally lunch meat. He eats the lunch meat, offers me some, which I decline, and actually goes back a second time to eat the rest of it after 5 minutes. He complains he’s still hungry so I say I’ll look up food options for him. He orders food (McDonald’s) and offers me to get whatever I want, I’m barely hungry so I opt for some small fries and a small frozen coke.

Jaden* has prepared some weed and puts it in a vaporizer, him and the male friend partake, both myself and the other woman decline. He now brings out a guitar and tries to play the beginning of a song, making us all guess what it is. He plays so sloppily and in combination with the guitar being out of tune, I have no clue. He repeats the set of notes like five times before revealing it’s the beginning of “that one Jack Johnson song.” Upon later googling, it was “Better Together.” He asks everyone if anyone knows anything on guitar, I sheepishly go “oh I used to play as a kid, I know like one song.” I take the guitar and play the one song I know by heart on guitar in fast succession, Beethoven’s Fur Elise. They’re all just staring at me blankly, confused that this quiet chill chick just whipped out legitimate guitar skills out of nowhere. I also continue to just strum on the guitar while everyone talks, just to have something to do. Jaden* takes the guitar back to try and tune it with some app on his phone. He complains about how the app doesn’t really work to tune it and that it is still out of tune. The guitar gets put away.

Jaden* now is complaining about how he “ordered his food an hour ago and it’s still not here;” it has been fifteen minutes. His friend believes him; “it has not been an hour” I say so as to not sympathize with him. He is again bragging about me, and talking about how nice I am and that he liked that when we were talking on Bumble. The flattery is something I’m immune to but I thank him. Next he goes into a long winded story about when he partied with Justin Bieber back when he was dating Selena Gomez, “he could have had any girl he wanted at that party” he attested, “but he didn’t and he even went upstairs to talk to her on the phone. Biebs is loyal.” Also don’t really care about Biebs so I was not impressed by this anecdote. We did randomly bond over liking old Adam Sandler movies, specifically my favorite, Little Nicky, and agreed we’d watch that tonight. Randomly his dog jumped up on the couch next to me and I noticed that the dog had a boner, which was awkward and I pushed him away so I wouldn’t get humped.

The friends finally left a little before 1 am, I told Jaden* that I wanted to get going by 2 since I had stuff to do the next day and needed to get back to my dog. He says that’s fine and then gets mad about his food still not being there after at this point long enough to bitch. Now that he’s a little closer to me, I can smell his breath and it is horrid. It smells just like butt. I assume from a mix of the smoke and alcohol he had been drinking all day.

He calls McDonald's and gets in an argument with the lady. It’s really weird and off putting. On the phone he is saying how he’s worked at restaurants and know how the system works with delivery services, and the fact that they’re “still working on it” means such and such. They claim it’s already been picked up despite the app saying it hasn’t. He says he is just going to order from somewhere else. I’m arguing with him that nowhere he orders food from is going to get there quicker at this point and to just wait. Finally the UberEats updates and it will be there in 10 minutes which calms him down. He remembers he has a cookie and goes to eat it. I do find it pro status that he microwaves the cookie for a little bit. He asks me if I want some, I say sure, but then he tries to spoon feed a piece to me. I go with it; the cookie is actually pretty good. He offers me another piece, again spoon feeding it to me. A little weirdly intimate.

We go back to the couch to finally start Little Nicky. I’ve seen this movie countless times at this point so it’s not super important that I pay attention. He briefly rubs my shoulder and it feels good, I try to convince him to give me a full shoulder rub, and offer one to him as well. He gets his, I successfully break out a knot in his shoulder. When it's presumably now my turn, I get that same shoulder rubbed for maybe one minute, then he stops. Disappointing. He attempts to kiss me quite a few times, and I unenthusiastically peck/kiss back, but again, his breath is rancid so I’m not trying to get too close to that.

The food finally arrives. There’s no straws so I tried to open the top of my coke and it accidentally splattered on the (brown) couch. I run to the kitchen to get paper towels and come back to clean it. I apologize and he says it’s ok.

He’s eating his food, and is of course to my dismay chewing with his mouth open/smacking his lips, so if it wasn’t already a no go, it now officially was. I stay with my promise to just hang a little longer though. He snarfs down his food, I eat some fries and eat my frozen coke with a spoon. He’s done eating and we go back to spooning to watch the movie. He keeps lighting kind of humping me, which is just super weird, and I ignore that it’s happening. He seems to be completely flaccid which makes it even stranger.

After maybe 15 minutes, I notice that he’s no longer really laughing at the movie or doing anything, I peer back and realize this dude is sleeping. Great. I just lay there and continue to watch the movie. Honestly, I almost drift off to sleep a few times too; it’s late and I’m bored/tired. I check my watch and it’s now 1:58am. I start to get up and say “ok it’s almost 2, I gotta get going.” He awakens and grumbles at me.

He becomes legitimately angry at me for actually following through with what I said I was gonna do. “What the hell I thought we were gonna hang?” I tell him that like I came over but told him we weren’t hooking up so that shouldn’t have been an expectation. “I see, leaving at exactly 2, wow.” I’m just gathering my things and not saying a word. He mumbles at me and I cannot make out half the words he says, but says something like “I don’t think I’m the guy you’re looking for.” I respond, “I can’t really understand you right now, but yeah that’s okay.” It is clear to me this guy is not compatible with me whatsoever.

I’m still trying to be more or less not a total bitch, so I give him a peck on the forehead goodbye. I was holding my open frozen coke, so unfortunately in leaning over I again still had a little of the drink on the sofa. Whereas last time he was calm about it, now he is pissed. “AND YOU JUST KEEP SPILLING SHIT ON MY COUCH! GET IT TOGETHER!” He is being a jerk and I am no longer standing by and being friendly, “I’m gonna fucking clean it up again chill out, damn. You don’t have to be such a fucking asshole” He repeats yelling at me about his couch, that is the same color as the beverage so besides it looking wet, it will not stain. “Whatever” I say. I double check I have all my things, as the last thing I would want to do is have to come back here to get a belonging of mine. He is staring at me as I do this like “hurry up and leave. ”As I have my things and I’m about to head out the door, he randomly becomes nice again, “alright catch you later” “probably not,” I respond as I close the door behind me.

I shake my head to myself as I leave and at least the rain has stopped. I actually even feel tears sort of welling in my eyes. I am tired of having such terrible experiences, getting slack from guys I barely even know, having to put on a smile, some make-up, and put myself out there, just to be treated like shit. I drive home without incident, I think about blocking his number, but I figure that can wait until tomorrow. I get home a little before 2:30am, greet my dog, let her sniff me since I smell like another dog at this point, before changing into my pajamas again.

Later that morning, I get a text from Jaden*:

I have no reason to continue the conversation after that. I figured I would be honest because, why not. If I can at least try and teach him a lesson for the next woman, then my suffering will not be for nothing. Another night I won’t forget, similar to Peter*, but at least he did have a clean apartment before I came along.

[mollydollyjournals]

My period started today so I'm extra huge. But I also binged. So I feel especially terrible. I really wanted to drink. For my mood and to not be so aware of my body. I didn't, because I know that in the end I'll feel worse...that'd be even more bloating and I don't think I can deal with that. This is difficult enough as it is. I definitely kept wanting to drink. Eventually I think I didn't because it just got late in the day. I do still have one single serve bottle - I could just have that to feel a little better. But idk if there's much point. It won't actually make me happy. I'd want to drink a proper amount. Which I can't and won't now.

I guess that's about the only good thing about today. That I managed to avoid drinking. I got my covid test result back negative as well. Other than that I've been really tired and kind of nauseous. Hb was really noisy a few hours before I was due to get up so that didn't help. I did a little bit of housework and got so exhausted I had to stop halfway and lie down. I'm going to have to try to finish it tomorrow, which still won't be easy because I'm sure my period is part of why I feel so terrible right now.

Hb noticed the newer marks on my arm earlier. I thought he had already, they've been there for maybe 2 weeks now. Idk my sense of time isn't great. He kind of just went back to looking at his phone right afterwards. I don't really know what to make of it.

Lockdown is changing on Monday and I can legally see bf. Just in time for my birthday, and his. I'm scared. I don't remember how to be around people, and I feel so disgusting in my body. I want to see him, but I don't want him to see me. I feel like I need more time. I won't want to see him on my period because I'll just be in pain and tired and bloated and want to stay in bed, so I'm going to see if we can make it a week later. But it's not like that's enough time to fix everything. Even if I eat well this week, I usually can't exercise on my period due to fatigue and nausea, so I can't expect anything to change.

I guess I just have to hope that I feel differently when the bloat goes away. It'll be at its worst now. I'm lying on my back and I feel like my belly is a dome above me. It's just I know it's not all bloat and water retention. My face is huge, my thighs are high and disgusting, that stuff will only change a little by next week. Idk.

I decided to get back into DDR. Over the years I've tried to do other things - I tried running for a while (as expected, I'm extremely bad at it and barely burn any calories or enjoy it or anything, so I stopped), I have an exercise bike (I used to love spin class and I like getting on the bike and listening to music, but I do also get kind of bored sometimes and my butt always really hurts afterwards even though there's a lot of cushioning both on the bike seat and on me), and thus past year I did some YouTube workouts (I always find these are either too difficult or don't burn enough). I've just never found anything as good as DDR for easily adjustable and personalisable HIIT with a potentially really high calorie burn. I used to be able to do the really fast ones and burn loads, but it's been a long time of bad health since then. So I'll have to start from scratch. I figured I'll try doing the easy songs I used to do when I first started. Thing with DDR is it has workout mode so you can easily set a calorie goal - back then I used to set that goal and then just get to it no matter how long it took, rather than doing like an hour of something that could vary in intensity.

There just isn't a good space in my current house for it all though. I've loved here for a few years and never played DDR properly here because of it. So I had to buy some things and rearrange some things to try to get a good enough space. I have 2 mats and I have no idea where they are. I have a bad feeling they'll have got crushed in storage somewhere. So I bought a new one. But the tracking info says they sent it via Hermes and I hate Hermes so it's not here yet and might not be for a while. They don't exactly make PS2 dancemats anymore so there isn't a whole lot of choice - I'd like it if this one could arrive in good time and not be broken or anything...

Anyway. That's kind of my hope for my weight. It was my best tool in the past, I just kind of stopped. A couple of years after I got into DDR was when I had to run my house and visit hospital and I was too young to drive or anything so I walked a lot. I got all my cardio from that. After that I'm not sure. But it's probably about time I started again. It's been long enough now that I don't feel so bad about the fact that I can't do what I used to either. I'll just have to work my way back up again.

My journal is coming together, I've cooked a little bit to test recipes, I have lists of things to do each day of the week, I have a new skincare routine that's making my skin way better than it was, and I'm going to start DDR again to hopefully lose weight...the irritating thing is I'm only just now well set up to be in quarantine. If there was more lockdown time now, I'd know exactly how to spend all my time because I have everything written out. If hb just left to go stay with his parents or something idk I'd just hide away and work on all this stuff. I feel a little threatened by lockdown lifting. I want to go out and stuff but I know that I'm not very good at sticking to things at home when I have a lot of other stuff to do. If I have a routine and something throws me off, often that's that and I have to start from scratch getting back into that routine. Sometimes I try to get around that by doing everything but then I get burned out. I don't have the same energy as most people.

So I'm a little worried. In theory, as long as I don't drink myself sick, I should be able to have a routine where I wake up and do my chores first, then get going to anything else that's going on. When I made my weekly schedule, I did try to make it somewhat flexible and easy to catch up with. But that's in theory...in practice things are often different. In theory, I always think I'm going to do some exercise on my period, but in practice I'm completely exhausted and everything makes me feel sick and I'm even craving sweet junk foods when I normally don't even crave sweet stuff at all.

I don't know. I'm just so sick of seeing 156 on the scales. I was 156.6 again today. I definitely should be glad it's not higher. It feels higher. And it's just before my period so that could be including some water weight. But I feel way bigger now than I did earlier, so maybe I still have water weight to gain. I could be any weight by the end of the week. I really hate having periods. Nothing has ever stopped them for me. The only thing that came close was the pill, but I can't take that anymore due to the stroke risk. Every month I think maybe I do want a hysterectomy. Just there are so many side effects from that as well. I just hate having had this whole reproductive system in the first place. If I have to have a uterus and all then why can't I have regular 4 day periods that aren't ridiculously heavy and painful and don't give me fucking anemia for a week and actually stop when I take certain hormonal treatments.

I really feel like there's a melon in my belly right now. It's so uncomfortable. Nobody else understands this stuff - I know a lot of women are conditioned to feel self conscious and all because diet culture, but it's really something else when you have an ED. For me it seems to be more relating to my self image and view of weight than actual food. More WD than ED. I wish I had neither or both. If I'm going to hate my body, why can't I be someone who actually does starve and lose weight. Instead I just binge, restrict, eat normally, binge, go through all the cycles, lose nothing, but still hate myself.

Idk. I want to queue some posts but I also don't know if I can look at it while I feel like this. I can't not be aware of my belly right now. I feel 6 months pregnant. I wish it would just fucking go away. It's been almost 2 decades of this.

[arunawayplace]

Diary post 13 Feb 2021

Well a lot has changed since I last posted here. And it looks like I was still “dreaming” back then.

COVID happened, and changed our lives. I’ve been working from home for almost a year now, only going into office once in August to clear my locker. I’ve been pretty lucky in that it’s been not too bad at all. I’m only starting to feel more bored around now which has been one year in.

My department became a stand alone company now, so that’s been pretty exciting - joining a company from the start but yet being established. I do miss the small talk, the little jokes, the cookies, the lunches... 

I’m now qualified, biggest shock of my life when I got my results in December 2020 during the hotel quarantine. I couldn’t believe it. I took 3 papers in that sitting, and one of them was just “a shot”. And I passed that paper on the pass mark. It’s been wild. So in total it took 3 years to qualify - meanwhile my colleagues who chose to take the other qualification just because they could get over with it faster are still not done because the other qualification’s exams keep getting postponed. But I’m so glad I stuck with mine and still managed to progress with it... and finish it!

It’s as if God’s giving me more time to focus on other stuff like Ergon, which has really changed my life, maybe learn mandarin, maybe have more time at work to make an impact...

I stayed with kj for 5 months straight from Mar 20 - Aug 20. I learned so much about staying with him. And we both grew. And I became much more certain about the next step. And I became a lot more... ready, for that next step.

I went back to see family in December. It was wild as well. My visa became an issue and I wasn’t sure if I could even leave the country. But it came miraculously even though it didn’t for some of my other friends who applied earlier than me. And it came right in time even though I had to push out my flight for a week. But it was amazing because then I got a refund from the first flight, re-booked with a much more secure airline, benefitted from a 14 to 10 day quarantine reduction and got refunds, and came back here when the public transport had become more empty because lockdown had been in place for a week, but also not too late because if any later, they would’ve imposed a negative COVID test rule to get into this country, and apparently it was pretty chaotic in immigration as they tried to understand each and every COVID test from different countries. In the end God protected us all the way and everything was soo smooth. I even got to stay with kj together in the same hotel room during quarantine, which made it even a fond memory. Waking up at 5am because of jetlag together and then doing Caroline’s exercises like crazy. Finishing it while the sky was still dark and showering even before our breakfast at 7.30am. Feeling groggy until lunch came because of jetlag. Walking 5k steps a day in the room. Watching Sherlock, listening to Evermore. Choosing our menu for the next day. Playing chess. Time went really quickly.

This year there’s also likely another big change. We’re planning to go back home. I’ve already got a job interview back with one company.

It was always in our minds, and now it’s falling into place from a rent perspective. Xj has to leave in November. So I will leave the country as well as I really don’t want to look for another flat here, I just hate flat hunting etc. And in general I think it’s been long enough. Kj’s flat lease also ends around that time. So yeah... that seems to be happening.

Also not directly related to me but cs got engaged! It’s just another sort of smack in the face that we’re pretty old already, and it’s around that time to think of the next step. I guess qualifying will also give me time to think about that.

In thinking of all that and also having stayed with kj for awhile now, I’ve been ‘dreaming’ less. Also I met him in Dec and yeah, it’s just.... cementing the fact that nothing could ever happen and we’re just on completely different journeys of life, and we have completely different views. I can be a friend but I can’t be a saviour (credits to cs).

[365-money-diary]

Days 1-7

DAY ONE [JAN 1 2021]

8:00 AM - I’m back! It’s been a few years since I’ve done this and I thought it would be cool to try again. There are a lot of differences with COVID in my life – I mostly don’t leave the house and we [K and I - same boyfriend] are waiting for the vaccine before integrating back. 

10:00 AM - Grab a handful of chex mix, make a chemex, and zone out on the couch for a bit. It’s been a really slow week all around, but good. I’ve gotten a lot of cleaning stuff done and I’m hoping to wrap up my to-do list this weekend.

11:45 AM - Clean the kitchen and shoot black bean burgers for my recipe blog. I started this sometime in 2018 but really picked things up in 2019 and even more so with being home in 2020. I have a goal to turn this into a lucrative side gig by the time I have kids which won’t be for a few more years. 

2:30 PM - Burgs turn out great and photograph well too. K and I eat them with a side of chips and salsa and a seltzer.

4:30 PM - K, KP (dog), and I take a 1-mile walk. I do a Pure Barre livestream after. I’m doing the platinum challenge this year (15 classes x 12 months), so my first class of 180 is done! Hah. Decide I want to buy some stickers for the chart I made to track my classes so I buy a pack on Amazon. $7.44

6:30 PM - Make cauliflower rice for dinner with tofu. Put Mamafuku crunchy chili sauce on it that friends gifted us for Christamas. 

10:30 - Get a nasty text from my mom about refinancing my house. I want to put K on the title, but it turns out I will get taxed a gift since we are not married (yet!). Kind of annoying, but K and I decide to just wait until that happens. Also my parents suck with anything non-traditional and it is becoming a huge problem in our relationship.

DAY ONE TOTAL: $7.44

DAY TWO

9:30 AM - Make a chemex. Feeling a little off from last night and the way my mom seems to think she can step all over me. Watch Youtube [Dessert Person] and start to edit photos from yesterday.

12:00 PM - Make soyrizo tofu (for me) / egg (for K) scramble tacos for brunch. 

1:00 PM - Can’t decide on which color background is better for these burgers and after polling my friends one of them suggests and A/B test. The nerd in me is so down and I build the campaign in Facebook. Open a seltzer. $10

3:30 PM - Ride the Peloton for 10 minutes (Trying to integrate this more into my workouts - I love it, but I love barre more!) and then do a barre stream. I email the studio about the new warmup since I seem to have hurt my lower back from yesterday’s workout. 

5:00 PM - K is tired of finding my hair literally everywhere so we decide it’s time to cut it - I haven’t had a cut since December 2019. He chops off a good 6-8 inches. It looks ok! 

6:30 PM - Heat up leftover lasagna rolls and air fry some green beans for dinner. Eat a piece of peppermint bark while everything heats.

9:30 AM - Make a chemex. Feeling a little off from last night and the way my mom seems to think she can step all over me. Watch Youtube [Dessert Person] and start to edit photos from yesterday.

12:00 PM - Make soyrizo tofu (for me) / egg (for K) scramble tacos for brunch. 

1:00 PM - Can’t decide on which color background is better for these burgers and after polling my friends one of them suggests and A/B test. The nerd in me is so down and I build the campaign in Facebook. Open a seltzer. $10

3:30 PM - Ride the Peloton for 10 minutes (Trying to integrate this more into my workouts - I love it, but I love barre more!) and then do a barre stream. I email the studio about the new warmup since I seem to have hurt my lower back from yesterday’s workout. 

5:00 PM - K is tired of finding my hair literally everywhere so we decide it’s time to cut it - I haven’t had a cut since December 2019. He chops off a good 6-8 inches. It looks ok! 

6:30 PM - Heat up leftover lasagna rolls and air fry some green beans for dinner. Eat a piece of peppermint bark while everything heats.

8:00 PM - Pour myself a glass of rosé and rummage for snacks - eat a small handful of chex mix and some gf pretzel sticks. 

9:00 PM - Looks like yellow is winning the A/B test by about 2%! I build out the rest of the assets for the post so it’s ready to go first thing tomorrow.

DAY TWO TOTAL: $10

DAY THREE

9:30 AM - Chemex and a handful of chex mix. Turn on Raptors / Pelicans game from yesterday. Wrap up my black bean burger post and get it up into the interspace.

1:00 PM - Wow that took 100 years. I’m really trying to amp up my posting signal, and what normally takes 30 minutes took an hour. Blah. Need to get away from screens.

2:00 PM - Eat leftover black bean burgs for lunch with chips & salsa with a Polar seltzer. Set chairs up in the backyard. NY Friend is in town and he and Q are stopping by. Q paid me back the last of the ~$2k he owed me sometime last summer. We’ve remained very close and I don’t feel like our friendship has been affected by this transaction in a negative way!

5:15 PM - NYF & Q head out. Jump on a zoom with K’s family for a bit and then hop over to another one with some of my girlfriends. Pour a glass of rosé. 

8:00 PM - Watch the last two minutes of the Suns game (they lost). Need to eat. Heat up a Big Sur Breakfast Burrito for dinner with tortilla chips and truffle hot sauce. Check analytics on black bean burg it’s doing REALLY well. Yay!

9:30 PM - Make brine for ham seitan and check my fantasy teams (I’m in two NBA leagues). Both are on track to win this week!

DAY THREE TOTAL: $0

DAY FOUR

7:00 AM - Pure Barre weekly charge. $15

8:30 AM - Cue that They Might Be Giants Song, I Don’t Want to Go to Work. Pull on a pair of fitted sweats with an Everlane tee. Make a chemex and seitan ham dough. Open my computer and discover that Slack is down. Do some misc reddit things before returning to emails.

9:30 AM - KP barfs on the carpet. Gross. K helps me clean it up. Wash hands and toss seitan ham in the oven.

10:00 AM - Eat siggi’s plant-based yogurt for breakfast. This is by far the best vegan yogurt out there. 10/10 - vanilla is the best.

11:45 AM - My seitan exploded. Damn. It’ll still taste good but I hate when that happens! Eat a piece of rye toast.

12:45 PM - Eat a leftover lasagna rollup for lunch along with the last of the chex mix. Open a Polar seltzer.

4:30 PM - Here’s the part where you stop reading already because of generational wealth - Dad calls and says there was enough money in the family trust this year for every grandchild to get $5k and that he transferred the money into my account. This was a total surprise - we thought last year was supposed to be it. Always eternally grateful for all of the gifts my grandparents have given me over the years and 2021 is no exception. Check my account and see my stimulus also hit today. What a day to be alive. 

5:30 PM - Do a Pure Barre live stream, take a birdbath, and get ready for the grocery order. We order Instacart every 2.5 weeks and it’s always a production to wash and put everything away. In this order, we get frozen burritos, tofu, tortilla chips, riced broccoli, real cheese, vegan cheese, frozen corn, plant-based yogurt, cloves, low carb tortillas, bread, onions, scallions, bell peppers sauerkraut, pickles, relish, vegan butter, sprouts, bananas, basil, green beans, vegetable bouillon, chickpeas, oranges, romaine, grapes, clementines, black beans, vegan mayo, broccoli, potatoes, carrots, tomatoes, thyme, rosemary, cauliflower, garlic, lemon, celery, cucumbers, limes, jalapenos, apples, horseradish, leeks, cilantro, marinara sauce, dark chocolate, frozen peas, olives, BBQ sauce, salsa, pepperoncinis, mustard, lasagna noodles, & lemon juice. $324.11

8:15 PM - Finish up seitan ham and roast potatoes to go with veggie sandwiches. We eat these at the start of every grocery run and they have Dave’s Killer Bread, Vegenaise, vegan cheese, seitan ham, cucumber, onions, red bell pepper, sprouts, romaine, and red wine vinegar. So delicious. Pour a rosé after dinner.

DAY FOUR TOTAL: $339.11

DAY FIVE

8:15 AM - Lay in bed thinking about the generosity of my grandparents. Decide to put $3k of the money into my investment account, $1k into HYSA, and put the last $1k off to the side for wardrobe improvements – I lost some weight last year and NONE of my clothes fit. I have 4 dresses that are work-appropriate and the rest - I gifted to friends and others in need. For the most part, I’m waiting until COVID winds down and I have to be in public again before buying much just in case my size changes again. 

9:00 AM - Chemex, banana and a clementine for breakfast. KP seems to be feeling better today. 

12:30 PM - Make K and I salads for lunch with romaine, cucumber, bell pepper, tomato, chickpeas, red onion, and cashew ranch. Open a Polar seltzer.

2:00 PM - Yard guy texts me and says he never got December’s payment. He says it’s totally chill but it’s absolutely not because he did a crap ton of work on our side yard. Pay him plus an extra $20 immediately and schedule something for the weekend so he can get the rest of the leaves out front. $180

3:00 PM - Last night I found the DDR subreddit and honestly couldn’t be more happy. I LOVED the game and still have my gear from middle school. I drop in the shed to find my mat and dust it off to use for later. Also eat a handful of gf pretzels. Venmo my old coworker for a joint bday present for another old coworker. $25.30

4:00 PM - Work is finally slow so I change into my exercise clothes early and do pure barre livestream. I make it through the entire workout uninterrupted and try DDR for the first time in a hot minute.

5:45 PM - That was SO fun. I played for 30 minutes. Did mostly songs on standard but had way better stamina than other times I’ve tried to pick it back up again when I’ve been extremely out of shape and couldn’t really keep up + light songs are boring so this was just a treat.

7:30 PM - Make leftover bean, rice and cheeze burritos for dinner with chips and homemade chile de arbol salsa. Drink a glass of wine after.

DAY FIVE TOTAL: $205.30

DAY SIX

8:50 AM - I slept through my alarm? Or turned it off. Weird. My butt is so sore today from yesterday’s workout. Make a chemex. Eat a banana.

10:00 AM - Have a call with a mortgage loan officer and give him the official green light to proceed with refinancing my house. Interest rates are so good right now. Shortening my loan by 4 years and mortgage will only go up by $20! Give the guy my card number to pay for the appraisal and credit check. Goodbye stimulus. $658.66

12:30 PM - K turns on the news to watch the Trumpers protest. I make a salad for myself for lunch and toss one for him in the fridge. Attend virtual therapy. Got some good things to think about and am energized after. Therapist doesn’t take insurance so this is OOP. $90

2:15 PM - Tune into the news. What a giant cluster. I don’t have much to add to the conversation. I’m disgusted but not surprised. Eat 2 clementines and a handful of gf pretzels.

5:30 PM - Do a barre livestream. Start to catch myself feeling a little wonky halfway through and make a nuun. Perk up after 5 minutes and finish strong.

7:00 PM - Make veggie sandwiches for dinner with miso butter broccoli. Watch the news for a while, finish a book about abusive partners (I grew up with a lot of abuse and still deal with it from family members who suck), pour a glass of rosé and eat a couple chocolate squares and a few sweedish fish.

12:30 AM - Fall asleep on the couch. At some point I wake up and sleepily eat a few mini pretzels on my way to the bedroom.

DAY SIX TOTAL - $748.66

DAY SEVEN 

8:50 AM - Sleep in again but this time on purpose. Make a chemex and eat a banana and two clementines for breakfast. Make an effort to drink water too.

10:00 AM - My back has been feeling really bumpy lately and I think I need to get that layer of bacteria off since my regular cleanser isn’t cutting it. Buy a bar of zinc soap from Amazon. $14.04

1:30 PM - Eat K’s salad from yesterday so it doesn’t go bad with a Polar seltzer. 

4:00 PM - Work has been wild today. Lots of calls. Good progress, but not so much for a major report I have due soon. Hopefully I’ll be able to finalize it tomorrow so it’s off my desk. Eat some grapes. 

5:30 PM - Ride the Peloton for 10 minutes and do a barre live stream. 

7:00 PM - Rinse off, do the dishes, roast potatoes in the oven, make the last of the black bean burgers for dinner. Spend the rest of the evening working on the header and footer templates for this project, reading Remain in Love, and watching NBA.

DAY SEVEN TOTAL: $14.04

[pisati]

I hate feeling so annoyed by it but my head receptionist has been treating me like the girls in high school did and I can’t quite put a finger on what that means but it’s just. ugh

we got a new girl who does tech and reception back in like January or something and of course when someone is new everyone’s a little wary but welcoming. I wasn’t sure how I felt about her but I didn’t work directly with her enough, and then COVID hit and she ended up on the other team with Alexa. and I’d see Alexa tagging her in things on facebook but when you’re stuck with the same people 12 hours a day you do end up closer to them. whatever, you know?

but since we’ve been back together it feels like the girls on the other team are acting cliquey. at least, Alexa, the tech/receptionist girl, and another newer tech (though she’s honestly really nice and is cool with everyone). I get it, you all were on the same team for months. you got close. but even when we have staff meetings they’ll sit together and talk amongst themselves and won’t include the rest of us, so we’re just awkwardly sitting around while they talk and make their little inside jokes. we weren’t NOT good together as a team on our side, but we didn’t get like that.

Alexa has known I’ve been doing crafting since well before this all started. she knew I’d been tossing around the idea of an etsy shop. I finally made one. I’ve been sewing and crocheting and starting resin and I sewed a TON of masks for the clinic. she’s seen things I’ve posted on facebook and instagram. she’ll say stuff like “oh that’s cool” when I’ve told her about the things I’ve made. which, cool, I don’t need everyone to be enthusiastically supportive. we’re not close friends, I don’t expect her to do anything.

but the tech/reception girl recently started learning how to make resin things and she’s now making custom pet tags; which, cool! that’s awesome! but I’ve seen Alexa share her posts twice now to her own instagram. like “hey go support my coworker and her cute pet tags!”

I just made a facebook page for my shop too and maybe she just hasn’t been on facebook, which, okay, whatever. I literally just made the page so maybe it’s too soon to be bitter about it. but she’s liked the other girl’s facebook page.

and it just stings, you know? I don’t know what I did that she’s suddenly changed in how she sees me. she used to tag me in story posts when we’d share hot chocolate, she called me her work bestie once, we relate on the chronic illness struggles, and I was like, oh, cool, a work friend! that’s always nice to have. but now she rarely talks to me unless there’s something wrong and it feels like she just acts different towards me. it’s so hard to describe. it’s just like fucking high school, and my lab in college. people (women especially for some reason) get all toned-down around me. they aren’t unkind, but they can be somewhat brisk. I can read it on their faces— it’s like they don’t want to be talking to me and are patiently waiting for me to say what I need to say. it makes me so nervous. it’s like they’re just tolerating my presence. they’re being polite because they have to, but I can tell they don’t want me around. Alexa will talk down to me sometimes too and that’s annoying. but there’s something just straight up different about how she treats me now and I’m not a fan.

and the tech/receptionist girl.. I honestly don’t like her much. I gave her a chance. I try to be understanding with new people because I know that I don’t know them. but she literally always seems annoyed. at everyone and everything. all the time. she mumbles and sometimes when I go into treatment to get the techs’ attention for an appointment that’s just arrived, I’ll hear her say something and I can’t tell if she’s acknowledging the appointment or in her own space. she’s gotten annoyed with me and told me to put the check in clipboard on the shelf we put those on when I hesitate because I’m not sure if I got my message across. she couldn’t sound more disinterested when she answers the phone and talks to clients. and I’ve heard her on multiple occasions saying nasty things about clients based on what they look like. I get that some people are rude or weird or whatever but saying shit about them just based on their looks? fuck off with that. she was ranting to me a few weeks ago about how their team felt like they were cleaning up my team’s mistakes during split shifts and they were acting like we were so incompetent. a few times she mentioned split shifts and mentioned our team in a negative way. and I told her, “...well, we felt the same way about you guys”.

and everyone that was on her team adores her. they think her attitude is endearing. I get that things are frustrating and now you have a baby with your boyfriend at 23 and you’re making a tech salary which isn’t a lot and you have to commute from another state, but don’t make your annoyance everyone else’s problem. but she makes funny quips sometimes so they like her.

last night I was closing with the other head receptionist. it wasn’t terribly busy last night even though it was crazy in the morning, and we were feeling kind of bored. I was trying to stay on top of scans and emails all day and I finally caught up by close. she let me go home not long after because our last few appointments were still there and she took today off anyway. this morning I woke up to a text to the reception group asking if surgery paperwork got done. the receptionist I was working with was like “oh shit, sorry, and I even stayed late!” no response. I sent an “oh no I forgot too, I’m sorry”. and Alexa texted a whole paragraph like “Lou said it wasn’t busy last night and this morning has been crazy and there was a whole pile of scans this morning too”

you know what? you’re right. it wasn’t busy last night. we both should have remembered to check for drop off paperwork but we didn’t. that was my mistake before I left, and that was also Tricia’s mistake because she closed up shop and should have taken stock. but when I left there were no scans to be done. maybe two, but I had already clocked out and Tricia could have easily scanned and attached them. the techs bring up papers to scan after we close, it’s not like I’m just leaving them there intentionally for morning staff just to fuck everyone over with more stupid busy work. and I know for a FACT that the new girl told Alexa it wasn’t busy last night because she was there and she’s been taking every opportunity she can to say shit about us because of all these assumptions she’s made since we were on split teams. acting like we’re just partying it up and being lazy on purpose. she’s ranted to me about how she thinks Tricia stays late intentionally to get more hours because there’s nothing to do after close. I wouldn’t know if that’s true but it’s annoying as hell that she just makes shit up in her head and gets herself all worked up about it.

surgery paperwork is a morning thing too. nobody told us it hadn’t been done. yes, we should have checked, and that’s our mistake. but Alexa has dropped the ball in the morning and I’ve texted her after close like “did the paperwork get done?” and she’s been like “oh shit sorry no” and I fucking take care of it without complaining because that’s my job. I get it. people forget things. lord knows I do. there was one day the doctors got really annoyed at me because sending out negative fecal test results is a reception job and none of the result emails got sent. I wasn’t there that morning and labs are a morning thing, so I didn’t know why they hadn’t gotten sent. I looked into it, none of the fecal labs had downloaded to the computer system, so it looked like they hadn’t come in yet. but the doctors showed me the actual lab website, which had the results. that had in fact come in. Alexa should know to check that, she has the login information printed out and on the front desk and she’s also been a vet receptionist for 8 years and should know about the lab site, but it didn’t happen. so I had to stay late and go through all the fecal results that had come back and send out the emails. I didn’t even know that that had happened because, again, morning thing, not my job as a closer, but I took care of it anyway because my job IS to pick up where my coworkers drop the ball. I didn’t get annoyed (at least not THAT annoyed) and I didn’t point fingers or act like anyone was being lazy. because that’s my fucking job.

so I didn’t much appreciate this morning being made to feel like we were just being lazy and like we didn’t just genuinely forget to do the drop off paperwork. we know how stressful the head vet’s surgery days are (which, of course that would be today). she always has 3-5 procedures and today there were 4 and two drop offs for ultrasounds. we didn’t just not do the paperwork to spite the morning staff. I wouldn’t do that to anyone intentionally. but they sure are fucking acting like it.

the head vet told me something back in April when she and Tricia pulled me in for that meeting that really stuck with me: assume best intentions. assume competence. she told me that the other reception team had gotten really annoyed with us one thursday when they came in after we’d had our last day and there was a whole pile of faxes that needed to be sent, and they were mad that we just left it for them. we hadn’t. the doctors just didn’t put those up there until after we left. and that changed my attitude considerably. I had been getting annoyed at the other team for doing similar things. but I tried to remind myself that they were probably doing their best too and everyone drops the ball sometimes. the head vet brought that up at our last staff meeting too and I wish those two had thought about it more. they just prefer to point fingers I guess.

I’m just annoyed. I hate feeling like this. I hate feeling shunned by people when I don’t even know what I did. literally all the girls in high school acted like that towards me. they wouldn’t give me the time of day if they didn’t have to. I don’t know what Alexa has in her head about me now but I’m sure whatever it is is wrong. and I’m sick of thinking about it. I shouldn’t even give her the real estate in my brain. I should focus on the people that do like me instead of searching for reasons why others don’t. I don’t know what she likes so much about that new girl but I don’t really care either. they can go off and be cliquey and I’ll just keep actually trying to be nice and understanding towards everyone.

it’s funny too because I have a feeling Alexa is annoyed about me posting about my fatigue on instagram stories, thinking I don’t have it as bad as she does because she has MS. I didn’t lose sight in one eye temporarily and I don’t have brain lesions and I don’t have a ton of meds I have to be on and I don’t get the MS hug or painsomnia or whatever else, so obviously I shouldn’t complain. but she complains all the fucking time. half her instagram stories are her complaining about being in pain and not being able to sleep, you know, the same thing I also have issues with. 50% of what she posts is MS related and the other 50% is about how much she misses california. maybe I just don’t have it as bad in her eyes because my illness isn’t my entire personality. I try not to complain about it and I try to push myself to my own detriment because I have a job and that job entails being a functioning cog in a whole machine.

I don’t know. I think I’m going to take a week off next month with my PTO. just catch up with myself. I haven’t had an actual break since I started this fucking job. I’ve been lucky with a few 3 day weekends but that’s it. we get one day off for holidays. the actual holiday. I’m a little nervous to ask for a whole week but fuck it. I’ve been at the clinic for 14 months now and haven’t asked for any time off for anything that wasn’t medical-related. I deserve a fucking week.

[racingtoaredlight]

RTARL’s 2020 NFL Season Week 5 Extravapalooza

My 13-year-old nephew was visiting this weekend, and he decided he wanted to become an NFL fan. In his short time on Earth, he’s lived in England, Montana, Georgia, Guam, and Connecticut, so he doesn’t really have strong regional ties anywhere. My brother and I are New Englanders, and since they now live in Connecticut, the Patriots seemed like a logical choice. But, he wasn’t feeling it. He has a fascination with New York City, so I helpfully told him that NYC has TWO teams he could choose from. He was excited, and settled on the Jets. Years from now, when he’s bigger and stronger than me, he will stuff me in a garbage can for setting him down the path of New York Jets fandom, and I will totally deserve it.

BONUS LINK THAT I FOUND INTERESTING: Scoring is way up in the NFL so far in 2020, and this post on 538 tries to figure out both why that is, and which teams benefit the most from this high-scoring and aggressive environment.

My picks are in BOLD, and the lines come to us courtesy of our friends at Vegas Insider. I use the “VI Consensus” line, which is the line that occurs most frequently across Vegas Insider’s list of sportsbooks. Your sportsbook of choice may offer a different number, and if you’d like my opinion on said number A) you are insane, and B) leave a comment below and I’ll try to answer at some point before things kickoff today. 

EARLY GAMES

Philadelphia Eagles at Pittsburgh Steelers (-7)

I saw a Smart Football Knower on Twitter saying that the Steelers defensive line leads the NFL in “pass rush win rate,” and that Carson Wentz has been the worst QB in the league when under pressure. That seems less than ideal for Philly, and it’s good enough for me to lay the points here.

Carolina Panthers at Atlanta Falcons (-2)

The Packers’ ruthless stomping of the Falcons this past Monday probably choked out any hope and crushed whatever will Atlanta had, and they’re doomed to spend the rest of the season listlessly playing out the string and losing to less-talented squads like Carolina....IS JUST WHAT ATLANTA WANTS YOU TO THINK! I’m not falling for it and neither should you.

Las Vegas Raiders at Kansas City Chiefs (-11.5)

Kill them, Patrick. Make them regret they were ever born. It’s crazy that as good as the Chiefs have been, it still feels like they haven’t played at their full planet-destroying potential for a whole game yet. Doing so this week against the hated Raiders would make me a happy man, all because the Raiders have had the audacity to ruin my picks more than any other team over the last couple of seasons. Well, it sure SEEMS like they have, anyway. I suppose I could actually go back and check to see if the numbers bear this out, but that seems like far more work than I’m willing to put in. It’s way easier just to hate them in blissful ignorance.

Jacksonville Jaguars at Houston Texans (-5.5)

I’m happy for Texans fans finally being rid of Bill O’Brien, but this team still has issues and I’m gonna need to see drastically improved performance on the field before I raise them above “Trash” in my personal power rankings. Also:

Arizona Cardinals (-7) at New York Jets

The Jets had their own coronavirus scare yesterday when one of their players popped a positive test result. Fortunately, or maybe unfortunately, it turned out to be a false positive, so game on. Allow me to be the 1,000th person to make the joke that Adam Gase purposely tried to infect his team in order to get this game postponed, so that he may live to coach another week.

Los Angeles Rams (-7) at Washington Football Team

It’s COMPLETELY insane that Alex Smith is the #2 QB for Washington in this game. He has drop foot! His leg is made of paper mache!  Alex Smith entering the game to the deafening silence of a fanless stadium and immediately having his leg destroyed again would be the most Washington Football Team thing imaginable. 

Cincinnati Bengals at Baltimore Ravens (-12.5)

Cincinnati’s 8-time Pro Bowl defensive tackle Geno Atkins will be making his season debut in this one, and that should be enough for the Bengals defense to contain Ravens QB Lamar Jackson. Hahahaha, just kidding. This pick is based purely on my potentially misguided faith in super cool new kid Joe Burrow and his ability to put up enough points in garbage time to hit an infuriating backdoor cover. 

LATE GAMES

Miami Dolphins at San Francisco 49ers (-8)

San Francisco is 2-2, they’ve had an absurdly easy schedule so far, and they’ve also been decimated by injuries. Tough to get a read on these fellas. I’m inclined to believe they’ll round into form and make a nice playoff run, but it might take a bit for them to get into rhythm as they reintegrate their returning players. I think the Dolphins are plenty frisky enough to make this a legit scrap.

Indianapolis Colts (PK) at Cleveland Browns

Is it just me or is Indy Phillip Rivers infinitely less charming than San Diego Phillip? I don’t even know why I feel this way, he’s the same loudmouthed redass as before, but the Colt version just seems so bland. Maybe it’s the missing lightning bolts on the helmet/uniform. Those really do add pizazz to everything. Like everyone else, I very much enjoyed the Browns deploying multiple gadget plays in their thrashing of Dallas, but I’m not sure it’s a good sign that they felt the need to bust out so many of them against a truly ghastly Cowboy defense. Baker Mayfield still wasn’t all that great in that game (19-30, 165 yds and 2 TDs), so it’s tough for me to say the Cleveland offense has actually turned any sort of corner, especially with the loss of Nick Chubb.

New York Giants at Dallas Cowboys (-8.5)

I assumed this game was gonna be on FOX and I was excited at the prospect of Uber-Crotchety Troy Aikman making an appearance as he finally loses it completely and shits all over a poor Cowboys performance and the NFC East as a whole, but it turns out this is getting the CBS Romo/Nantz treatment. So, now I think we’re gonna get a hefty dose of Gigglin’ Tony as Dak throws for another 450 in a blowout win. Is this sound reasoning for making picks? Absolutely not.

SNF: Minnesota Vikings at Seattle Seahawks (-7)

Once again, the Seahawks find themselves in the game with the highest over/under for the week (56). Giddy up! Vikings QB Kurt Cousins finally showed faint signs of life last week in a win over Houston, and a meeting with Seattle’s worst-in-the-league secondary should fully unleash the dragon. Among a fantastic-looking rookie class of WRs, Minnesota’s Justin Jefferson is quietly emerging as the best of the bunch. GEAUX TIGUHS!

MNF (Early): Denver Broncos at New England Patriots (-8)

As of now, the Broncos and Pats are scheduled to kick off at 5:00 PM on Monday night, but this could obviously be derailed by another positive COVID-19 test result from New England (or Denver, I guess). There’s also a question as to whether or not Cam Newton will be allowed to start at QB for the Patriots. Since Cam’s infection has been asymptomatic, he’s allowed to resume playing either A) ten days after his initial positive test or B) five days after his initial test, but with two consecutive negative tests 24-hours apart. Cam tested positive on Oct. 2, and the game is set for Oct. 12. 

This game is off the board at sportsbooks right now, but Vegas Insider pulled that Pats -8 from somewhere, so fuck it I’ll take a crack at it. I’m picking the Broncos to cover based on my assumption that Cam will NOT play, because believe it or not emotionless cyborg Bill Belichick has been one of the more progressive coaches at any level of football in terms of taking COVID-19 seriously. Low bar to clear, but still. 

UPDATE: This game has now been postponed as another Patriot has tested positive for COVID-19.

MNF (Late): Los Angeles Chargers at New Orleans Saints (-8)

The Saints appear to be getting healthier, with WR Michael Thomas, TE Jared Cook, CB Marshon Lattimore, offensive linemen Andrus Peat and Ryan Ramczyk, defensive linemen Marcus Davenport and Trey Hendrickson, and safety Malcolm Jenkins all returning to practice, albeit in limited fashion. But, the Justin Herbert-led Chargers have lost their three games by a combined 15 points, and they’ve looked extremely feisty each week, including decent stretches where they were in control against both the mighty Chiefs and championship-contender Buccaneers. Eight points is too many, in my opinion. Have I mentioned that I love Justin Herbert? What a dreamboat.

Tuesday: Buffalo Bills (-6.5) at Tennessee Titans

Much like the Patriots/Broncos game, this game isn’t being offered at sportsbooks as of right now. But, in my relentless commitment to consequence-free handicapping with no discernible benefit to me personally, I’m gonna pick it using the Vegas Insider line provided. 

It’s a real shame the coronavirus has turned this game into such a redheaded stepchild, because it’s a seriously tasty matchup. The Bills are on track to welcome excellent CB Tre’Davious White back, which is great news for a defense that’s been much shittier than expected so far. Tennessee’s best WR A.J. Brown is still listed as Questionable with a knee injury after missing the Titans’ last game (Week 3), and on top of that WRs Corey Davis and Adam Humphries are question marks due to testing positive for COVID-19. Not great! But, the Titans do still have Derrick Henry and a great offensive line, and as I mentioned before the Bills D has been butt so far this season. I think the Titans will still be able to move the ball effectively and eat up clock even with their potentially depleted pass-catching corps. Dare I say we’re in for some SMASH-MOUTH FOOTBALL?! Somewhere, John Madden just used a marker to telestrate a Halfback Dive on the nearest wall. BOOM!

Now for some stupid jokes! Hey, how ‘bout this Titans team holding outlaw practices and keeping their in-house plague going? More like TENNESSEE TYPHOIDS, amiright? If this game is canceled due to another positive test by Tennessee, you can always get your football fix by watching the classic film Remdesivir the Titans!

*thanks to Gov. Mike Huckabeav for helping me with that last paragraph

UPDATE: Another member of the Titans organization has tested positive, and their facilities have been closed down once again. This game seems perilously close to being postponed/canceled. Son of a bitch.

Last Week’s Record: 4-7-2

Season Record: 30-25-4

[blogofori]

This has been bugging me and stressing me out on and off since March, so I’m going to vent here.

So, there was this point in mid-March where my mom and dad got really fucking sick for two weeks. It took them several months to recover all the way. I’m like 50/50 on whether or not it was COVID. There were like, four separate sources that they could have gotten sick from that each have different chances of having been COVID. 

I’ll  list them from least to most likely to have been COVID. The first possible source was me, getting it from school maybe. This happened during a week-long break from school, but for a couple days I was sick with mild exhaustion and a runny nose. Since there were none of the classic COVID symptoms and runny nose is one of the few things that COVID doesn’t really cause, I’m going to assume that was a cold and if I had COVID, it was asymptomatic (I was 17 at the time, I am currently 18, and my only pre-existing condition is asthma, so that’s not an unreasonable assessment). The next possible cause of the disease was my mom. She works for marketing in Boeing, specifically in dealing with foreign airlines, so her and lot of the people she works with have to travel internationally a lot for work. That said, I don’t recall hearing anything about any of her coworkers getting sick around the same time she did. All of that said, both of these instances have some credibility by virtue of us living around Seattle, which got hit by COVID a little bit before the rest of America did because we have a high Asian population, so more people were going to an from China before COVID made it big world-wide. We also had an outbreak in a retirement home that was probably about a 20 minute drive from where I live, so COVID was definitely around where I live for at least a few weeks before lock-down orders started. The third candidate was my aunt, who was visiting from San Diego shortly before my parents got sick. Mom said she said she was feeling a bit sick before visiting. Considering I don’t know anything about the symptoms, she’s over 50 and obese, and it didn’t sound like she got super sick, it’s a huge not enough information, never will get enough information to guess. Then there’s my sister, who almost definitely had COVID. She has half public half private school. The private school was run by this jackass guy, who decided to ignore the CDC’s guidelines at the time to not travel to China for nonessential stuff. A bit later, there was an outbreak of people getting sick at her school and one of the teachers tested positive. While my sister did not get tested, she did get sick and was definitely exposed. That said, it’s still possible that she got COVID and didn’t spread it to anyone in the family because my family fucking hates each other. Like, the average amount of time per day I was spending within even 10ft of any given family member was around 30 seconds, and my sister’s even more cut off from everyone than I am. To the point where I didn’t find out that she was even sick in March until she told me about it in July. Given all of that, my sister’s in middle school and my parents had to drive her around a lot, so there’s still a very good chance they got sick from her. I’m also not 100% sure on the timeline of when she got sick vs when mom and dad got sick, but it was probably within two weeks of each other considering all of this happened in the same month. There’s also the point that mom and dad both tested negative for the “did you have corona” test, but those tests aren’t very consistent and they got tested in July, so it’s possible that they got two false negatives (my sister and I did not get the test).

The reason this is bothering me so much, other than my desire to just know, is that there was an unusually high amount of placing being gone to during the time period that people were sick. First of all, when I was first getting my cold symptoms, it was right at the start of a one week break for school. Normally that would mean I’d spend the entire week hanging out on my computer in this one isolated corner of the house, but not this week. This week my aunt and cousin were visiting for a few days. I largely didn’t do all of the outdoors stuff my dad was trying to force on me because I don’t like that stuff, I don’t like being around him, and I didn’t want to potentially worsen the cold and get more annoying symptoms. But there was one day where he spent fifteen minutes arguing with me and got me to go to the zoo with him and my aunt. It wasn’t a particularly popular zoo, but it did get people from places like New York, California, and so on. Anyways, that’s the amount of out that I was while symptomatic with cold. My parents didn’t start getting sick until after my aunt returned home. She said she did not get sick afterwards when I asked her about it. My mom decided to keep her distance from me when she realized she was sick. This might have been because of COVID news, it also might have been a reaction to January where everyone but me got sick except me because I told them I was quarantining. Either way, I didn’t get any symptoms of anything besides the cold. My dad also got symptoms. During the weekend, he asked me about my symptoms. I told him I had lighter symptoms than he had and they got worse when he made me go to the zoo. So he took that as validation that it was ok to teach children skiing, and to take my mom with him. Mom said she spent the entire time in the lodge laying down, probably coughing like crazy, and trying to keep people away from her. Afterwards, dad drove to Spokane, a town that’s about a day’s drive away. Dad still claims that he did nothing wrong, but at the time, I was mad at him because for making his “flu” worse for himself and mom, but the entire thing gets so much worse if he actually had COVID. Side note: I did bring up that I was upset with him for worsening his flu and that he shouldn’t have done that, mostly because I brought it up with my Therapist, who looked legitimately shocked and mildly horrified when I mentioned that to her because going skiing while sick with anything is a terrible idea. Anyways when I brought it up, dad claimed that he probably did have COVID but it’s ok because “children aren’t affected by it.” In July, I again brought up how that was a horrible thing to say, and he dismissed me by saying “it was a different time” and “I was already wearing a mask because I was skiing so it’s ok.” My mom got super sick after that and couldn’t really leave the couch or bed. That left me largely in charge of the food. I can’t cook. It’s something I probably should work on, but stuff like working with meat makes me anxious, and waiting for food to cook is boring and tedious. This is relevant because I decided to repeatedly bring food home while she was super sick. This was when the CDC was specifically telling people not to wear a mask, so I wasn’t wearing a mask. I was seeing the food people face to face. The only silver lining here was that people were beginning to worry about corona and I was showing up at the food places kinda late, so the places were eerily empty. Mom also had a work trip coming up where she was supposed to go to Ethiopia and Poland to meet with a bunch of people from a bunch of different countries. She went to the company doctor, but they didn’t test her or anything and just had her go even though she was pretty clearly sick with a cough and fever (it might have just been a cough by the time she went). So, Boeing did endanger the lives of several people they’re supposed to be working with. My dad got back home before she left, he doesn’t like to cook, so we were still eating out. We also ended up talking to a friend and trying to schedule a trip to Japan in July for the Olympics. He was still coughing. The friend was with his dad, who has a scarred lung and works in data science. That’s about when corona went on my radar as something to look out for. Meanwhile, during the week, my sister’s girl scout troop (I think?? It might have been something else) went on a field trip to Washington DC and into the White House. I’m still a tad disappointed that she didn’t infect the president then and there. Apparently one of the people who was supposed to go on the trip was too sick to go because of stomach issues or something. 

All of this is bugging me because I can’t shake off the feeling of guilt, anger, fear, confusion, and hurt from that week, even though it’s been over 6 months. If we had COVID, which is entirely possible, how many people got infected? At the time, my perceptions of COVID were more or less “oh, I guess it isn’t food poisoning” because that’s how little attention I was paying to it when this happened. I know a lot of what happened here wasn’t my fault for a variety for reasons and, by now, whatever I  did probably only have negligible affects on the pandemic even worst case scenario, but I can’t shake that feeling of guilt. I don’t understand why. I can’t shake the feeling of anger because no one has showed me much empathy or sympathy or such on the matter, the best I’ve gotten is people telling me to try and get over it. Which is on a scale between concern and defensiveness. Because of that, I can’t get over the anger I have towards my dad. Which is so exhausting that I can’t even be angry at the teacher who caused a COVID outbreak in his school or Boeing. The Boeing thing in particular probably should have been reported somewhere because what they did was horrible and objectionable, but now pretty much no one will know. I can’t get over the fear that someone died because of me or my family. The best I can do is remind myself that there is no proof that we even had COVID in the first place, but that uncertainty is also scary because I don’t know the consequences of my actions. Whether or not they were likely to have had serious negative repercussions or should just be taken as a warning. A warning that I haven’t been able to get my family to take. I can’t shake the confusion because I’ll never know for certain whether we even had COVID or just really bad luck with the flu. And I can’t get over the hurt because every time I’ve tried to even address it, I’ve just been told to shut up or get over it. 

The week or so after realizing that COVID is, in fact, a thing, my mind was racing in contradictory directions. It was painful just from the whiplash alone. The reactions from my teachers ranged from one teacher trying to circumvent the rules trying to protect from COVID to another teacher declaring it’s the apocalypse and demanding all students stay away from her (which was worsened by some students intentionally triggering her anxiety by breathing on her, which is fucked up for multiple reasons). There was also a lot of uncertainty around the school because the district’s policy regarding COVID was it wouldn’t shut things down unless someone tested positive except there weren’t any tests available. It was worsened by a story on the news regarding a neighboring district where someone did test positive, but they didn’t find out until right when they were enter their school’s building. That lack of available testing also meant that the case numbers counted were almost definitely an underestimate. My mom was on her work trip, which left me with my dad. He was beginning to claim that COVID couldn’t have been that big of a deal because people probably already got it in the masses and his and mom’s case “wasn’t that bad.” Remember, they were both basically bed ridden for at least a week, and it took them months to fully recover from the coughing. That’s bad. The amount of emotions I was feeling were overwhelming, one day I would switch between joking about “spreading the plague” and being terrified of doing exactly that, the next day I’d barely have the energy to feel anything. Then I found out that my therapist came down with a fever, and I lost contact with her (because I couldn’t figure out how to get the online stuff to work after the fact). My thoughts on my parents would fling between “I want to protect them at all costs” and “I hope they die” in under a day, and it would continue swinging back and forth like that for months before I lost the will to care anymore. 

The other day, I broke down in tears because I thought I might have a cold and it made me think of that week, or those few weeks. Turns out, I don’t have a cold, I just had a runny nose for three seconds. Every time I’ve tried to talk about it, I’ve been told to work it out or try to get over it, but I can’t do that on my own. All I can really do is try not to think about it until it comes crashing down again, but I know that’s impossible to maintain.

[ashtrayfloors]

Weird times. I mean, in general, weird times, but things have been even weirder & worse in my household for the past couple weeks.

Like, I had this really awful Sinus Thing, for a few days the week before last I was in so much pain from it that I could barely function. Even though I never had a fever or shortness of breath, and my exposure risk is relatively low, I thought it would be prudent to get a CoViD test. It was negative, thankfully, but I still didn’t have answers as to what was going on with me. I started feeling mostly better last weekend, but I had a telehealth visit with my doctor on Monday and he thinks it was something called allergic rhinitis. It’s basically where your allergies are so bad that you experience the symptoms of a sinus infection without the actual infection.

Also that week we found out my partner’s mom was in the hospital, because she hadn’t been eating or drinking water, had a UTI, and all this other stuff, and it turns out she has a large tumor in her midsection. They can’t operate because she’s too frail, so they’re just getting her back home and getting her in-home hospice care to try and make her final weeks as comfortable as possible. It seems like she’s been in decline for a long time. I know she’s been depressed since leaving her house in California where she’d lived her entire adult life, and after she moved to Texas (which is where P.’s three other brothers live) she was lying to her family, saying she was feeling okay and taking care of herself when she really wasn’t. And then her family couldn’t even visit her for a while because of the pandemic, so she declined even further and got even more depressed. She’s 94, so it’s not tragic, but it is still sad. P. left Tuesday morning to go see her one last time. And I hate this. I hate that he had to travel alone because of the pandemic, I hate that I can’t see her again (she’s the only member of my partner’s family I’ve ever felt a connection with; the rest of them are nice to me but are so deeply Republican that I can’t even relax around them). I hate that he had to travel during a pandemic. I know that he’s taking as many precautions as he can, and he’s going to get tested when he gets home, but it’s all just very scary and awful.

Last Saturday our power went out due to an equipment failure in our area. I almost had a nervous breakdown, because I didn’t know how long it would be out and I was afraid our food would go bad and the last thing we needed on top of everything else was to have to rebuy weeks worth of food. Fortunately, the power was only off for two hours, and we didn’t open the fridge or freezers during that time, so all our food was fine.

I’ve seen an uptick in transphobia lately, both online and IRL. Online it’s just been all this shit from TERFs & their “allies,” the Trans Exclusionary Homosexual Males (aka TEHMs), and then over the weekend I was walking around my neighborhood and two randos in a passing car slowed down and started shouting about/to me. They called me It and said It’s so ugly, it hurts my eyes. I didn’t even think I looked particularly nonbinary that day, but I guess some people still clock me as queer/GNC and hate me for it. Honestly, I can deal with the hatred of a couple random dudes much better than I can deal with the stuff I’ve been reading online. Cuz it’s reminding me of other times in my life when I’ve experienced transphobia directly or indirectly, from people who I never expected it from, other people in the LGBQ+ community. And I just...I’m tired. I’m sad. My gender doesn’t feel at odds with my body, most days. (I still experience dysphoria, but not as often as I did when I was younger). But it hurts when I’m reminded that so many people will never see or accept me for who I really am.

Speaking of gender–I cut my ‘hawk off on Tuesday, so I now have hella short hair with the fringe of bangs and “sideburns,” pseudo-Chelsea fringe style. And in the days since, I’ve found myself wearing more makeup, dresses or at least “feminine” tops, big earrings, etc. I realized this has been my m.o. for years–I present increasingly more femme the shorter my hair gets. Not every day or anything, I just feel more comfortable presenting femme when I have hella short hair.

Other things:

D. is depressed. He says he’s just bored but I can tell by the way he’s acting that he’s depressed. This pandemic/quarantine/change in routine has been hard on all kids, but I think it’s been extra hard on kids like D. He’s autistic, and therefore has an even harder time dealing with changes in routine, for one. For two, he has a hard time communicating what he’s feeling, so he just mopes around and hides in his bed. I don’t know what to do. Earlier on in the quarantine, he was more responsive to my attempts to draw him out with fun projects, etc. Now he doesn’t even want to do the things he used to enjoy, half the time. I’m thinking about getting him an inexpensive digital camera, and trying to get him into photography. That might get him engaged with the world and his surroundings, make him see that there’s still interesting stuff to be found, even in his own neighborhood and backyard.

C. isn’t depressed. He’s too little to really remember the before-time. He knows that things are different, and sometimes does get frustrated because we can’t go to the library or the zoo, and he can’t go to the grocery store with Daddy, but he’s never been to school or summer camp or anything like that, so staying at home with Mom all day seems normal. Also, he’s little enough that a walk around the block is like an epic adventure, for him. He hugs trees and collects rocks and sticks and gets really excited whenever he sees a dog or a bunny or a squirrel or a bird. Sadly, C.’s enthusiasm doesn’t seem to help D., and in fact seems to annoy him sometimes. The happier and more excited C. is, the grumpier D. gets. I just keep hugging D. and telling him I love him, and that I know things are weird and hard right now, but that there’s still a lot we can do and enjoy.

(As a note: I wrote the above paragraphs a few days ago, and D. has been doing better in the days since, of which I’m glad.)

On Monday, we had to take a couple long drives to and from the Subaru dealership to get P.’s car serviced before he left for Texas. We got to drive on the freeway, even; it was the first time I’d been on the freeway and the longest drive I’d taken since the pandemic started. It did me good. I like driving, it calms me, and just seeing some different scenery was good. And while we waited for P. to drop the car off and tell them what needed to be done, the kids and I wandered around out next to the dealership, in the vacant lots and scrubby fields. C. said: “Wow! I love it here! It’s so beautiful!” And I thought: “He thinks a vacant lot and a scrubby field is beautiful? Yeah, he’s my kid for sure.”

The early part of last week, I ate too much greasy, junky food, and my digestive system rebelled. Since then, I’ve been trying to eat a lot of salads and whole grains to make up for it.

I’m menstruating, have been crampy and weepy for the past several days. I cried over an episode of Poetry in America about Elizabeth Bishop’s “One Art.” I’ve been reading a lot about prisons and prison abolition, and crying about that. I want to get seriously involved in prison abolition. It’s something I’ve always theoretically believed in, but now feels like the time when I have to do something about it.

I’m trying not to catastrophize about everything that could happen to P. while he’s gone. It’s hard. My brain automatically goes to the worst case scenario in any given situation. So every time I go there, I try and take a deep breath, and remind myself that the worst case scenario is no more realistic or likely to occur than any other scenario, and that P. is safe. But I’m also trying to be gentle with myself, just in general. This is something I have been learning throughout this pandemic/quarantine. Some days I’m very productive and get tons of press work and writing and other stuff done, but other days I’m too anxious and sad. I have long had a tendency to be hard on myself for not doing as much as I think I should do on any given day (spoiler alert: nothing I do is ever enough), and what happens then is I end up getting so stressed out and angry with myself that I then snap at my kids, and then I feel awful. I don’t want to take my frustration with myself out on them. So I’m actively trying to be gentle with them and myself. On days when I feel too anxious and sad to do much of anything, I just do what absolutely has to get done, and then I spend the rest of the day playing with the kiddos, reading a book, watching a movie, stuff like that.

The writing workshop I’m in is fantastic. I’m a bit behind because of everything that’s come up the past couple weeks, but it’s a pretty laid-back (virtual) environment, and in general I’m experimenting with new things and gaining new inspirations, so it’s a win.

And Wisconsin Death Trip is getting closer and closer to its release date. I’m having just as many feelings about putting this one out into the world as I did about The Loneliest Show On Earth. Both of them contain things I have been trying to say for years and years.

Several nights ago, I had a sad dream. Well, no. The dream was sweet. It was sad when I woke up and realized it was a dream. In it, I saw an ex-lover of mine, and we made out a bunch. I miss him, I miss making out, but that wasn’t really the saddest part. What was sad was that in a different part of the dream, I was sitting with him and some other friends on a stoop in Milwaukee, and we were all eating ice cream, and other friends kept walking by and running up to hug us. To just be able to sit close to friends, to hug friends. I miss that more than almost anything about the before-times. I want it back.

We’ve been taking lots of neighborhood walks, the kids and I. That’s one of the only ways we can get out of the house this horrible spring/summer. And I’m still so, so glad we moved to this neighborhood two years ago. That neighbor I heard blasting the Ramones the other week, I’ve since heard him playing Johnny Cash. He’s got a big beard, looks kind of grizzled but is super nice. He’s got a rescue pitbull, in his backyard he has a veggie garden and raises ducks, and he restores old trucks. The other neighbor I heard blasting Aretha Franklin, I’ve since heard him playing Charles Mingus. He’s an older black gentleman, and I often wave to him when I see him out in his front yard tending to his flowers. I think I’ve mentioned before, but we live in one of the most diverse neighborhoods in our town, which for a heavily segregated part of the country is  meaningful. And the other day I noticed that about 1/3 of the houses in the neighborhood have either Black Lives Matter signs, pride flags, or one of those “In This House, We Believe...” signs in their front yards. (And I’m sure there are others, like us, who would like to put a sign like that in their yard, but are renters and therefore can’t). It’s just nice. After years living in major cities, suddenly moving not just back to a smaller town but to suburban/white-bread/conservative neighborhoods was weird, and I’m glad I live where I do now.

Some things I’ve noticed about having P. gone: I have the A/C on less and the windows open more. I have the TV on less. I drink less alcohol. (Not saying he drives me to drink, not at all; but he enjoys booze as much as I do, so when we’re drinking together we tend to unconsciously match each other drink-for-drink.) I drink more coffee, because there’s no one to share the pot with. I miss the coffee being ready when I wake up. It’s weird to have him gone. Throughout our nearly eleven years of living together, I have been the one that has done most of the traveling (whether alone, or with the kid(s)), so it’s not the being away from him that’s weird so much as being the one left at home. I miss him. But it’s good to miss him. Because in any of my previous long-term, cohabiting relationships, if they were away, or I was...I usually just felt this overwhelming sense of dread about them returning home or me returning home. That’s how I know that, despite any issues we have, I still want to be with P. When I’m away, as much as I might enjoy my travels, I’m excited to return home; and when he’s away, I can’t wait for him to return.