#but certainly it doesnt hold enough of my attention for me to seek it out on my own

[randomositycat]

Trying to space out how much of the novels I'm reading bc I can get through 1 in a day, but more so two days bc I read some during lunch break, then while avoiding work at home, then in bed, and then finishing it at lunch or at home

Bookie keeps saying I gotta find something else but there is little else :(

[oriigirii]

The Brothers reacting to an MC who likes to collect... rocks?

It was certainly a strange hobby to behold, but there were more than meets the eye within these rocks! If you crack them open they often hold such a wonderful design, and on the rare occasion they can probably even hide a geode or two, regardless, you were very passionate for these things and it just so happens that it catches some of the brother’s attention.

(A/N: Ill be doing 2 at the time for now UwU  

Warnings: none! 

Reader: Gender Neutral!)

~ 눈_눈 Lucifer ~

* Lucifer always kept an eye on you ever since you got to Devildom

* Cuz of this, he was probably the first to notice your... strange addiction

* He saw how you always seem to stop on your tracks to pick up a shiny smooth stone lying on the side of the gates infront of the HoL while he walked home with you.

* Or how you’d snatch a few from the gardens on an early Sunday morning when you think that everyone was still asleep

* Since it was harmless enough, he never really bothered to call you out on it 

* Lowkey does find it cute how something so small can already make you so happy, such an easy-to-please cutie you are

* It wasn’t a problem till he was told that you seem to be arriving late more often for your classes 

* At first he thought that maybe you were simply caught up in some mess from his brothers again 

* Maybe perhaps Belphie snuck you off to sleep again than go to class 

* But no, when he’d confronted you he was pretty surprised, and at the same time, confused at your answer.

* “There were these cool looking red geodes I accidentally found on the back, b-but I mustve dropped them at some point when Mammon and I were rushing to class...so I’ve been trying to look for more of them for my collection... Sorry...”

*To be fair you did look pretty apologetic for it and really didnt mean to botch up your schedule, but still.

* He lets you go pretty easily, with a small lecture, but thats about it. 

* Although you never did stop looking for that geode, you even pulled Beel to help with promise of a homemade cake to try and cover as much ground, but nothing.

* You came home that day a little defeated

* but much to your surprise when you reached your room, a small box was waiting outside your door and inside was none other than the beautiful red geode youve been so desperate to look for. And... well, you didnt have to guess who was kind enough to give it to you.

* The next day, you do go over to thank him properly for the help, and explain that you had been extremely captivated with that specfic geode because of how it reminds you of the first born’s eyes.

* This boi is highkey stunned but tryna make it lowkey though (pride 100)

 * Definitely amused and flattered. 

* From now on, he does continue to give you geodes to add to your collection, and would even accompany you on your little endeavors if his work load isnt too unbearing. Away from the eyes of his brothers of course.

* Hed definitely want to seek the perfect geode too that reminds him of you in return that he can decorate on his desk while hes working. Even better, maybe have the geodes crafted to a perfect ring that you two can wear.

-------------

~ ᕙ(`▽´)ᕗ Mammon ~

* Not like youre complaining either

* Today was another weekend, and weekends mean you guys get to hang out!  

* Not like you two were ever seperated in the first place anyways, he’s like an octopus that just wont let go 

* Anyways, He casually enters your room, phone in hand as he scrolls through various articles featuring his modelling work, he was gonna show off as usual, afterall, this man LIVES for your praise.

* “Oi! (Y/N) Check this out! They ranked me number 1 on the most handsome model in Devildom! And I didn’t cheat the system this ti---”

* You had been busy in your cabinet when he walked in, so you didnt have time to warn him of your mess on your bed.

* Hence why, when he was starting to brag about his latest achievement, it was immediately cut off by a pained yelp.

* Mammon, too busy on his DDD, didnt notice the shiny geodes and stones you had left on your bed to arrange for your new dsplay case, and because of this, (his dumbass) plopped on the bed, landing right on the sharp edges of the beautiful rocks.

* It wasnt fun.

* You had rushed to help him as he started stroking his back from the sting, he was a demon so he was pretty sturdy, but cmon, landing on a buncha hard rocks was still not good.

* You did rush to go get him an ice pack for his poor back, and when you came back, he seemed to have been healed almost immediately as he stares at your collection with a big shine on his own eyes, they can rival the geodes at this point.

* “(Y/N)! Why didn’t you tell me you had these? Don’t yknow how much these would sell? Hell, I can even probably sell them for an even higher price!”

* The rolling of your eyes was very intense that Diavolo could feel it from his castle and you pushed that ice pack on his face to make him stop.

* You did make it very clear that if he ever decides to try and get any of these stones, you were gonna be snitching him to Beel for eating his pudding the other day (You wouldn’t though would you?)

* Still that does shut down his money making plans, but he does question you for it, why hoard these valuable items when you could make thousands of grimm for it? You even seem to have a talent for finding these too, it seems like a huge waste, and so you proceed to explain to him your love for these shiny geodes.

* First image in his head was you being a relative to a crow, or you being a crow in general, because if anything, thats what his little crows do, they pass him shiny stuff they find along the day, of course theyre not as extravagant as these geodes, but it doesnt negate the fact you definitely have crow energy, and hes so down for it. His love for you just grew tenfold.

* But who knew it can grow further? Because you eventually explain to him that the geodes you collected, or the simple stones you had, all were special because all of them hold a special memory. One of the smoother stones you had was the same stone you used to display your mom’s favorite rose garden, it even had your initials that you scrapped on when your were 5, another was a geode you found on your field trip at the human world and so on.

* Mammon definitely had his attention to you the entire time, this boy is smitten and he just loves hearing you talk about each one, he grows a small appreciation for them now and he can understand why you wouldn’t want to sell them away. But then he noticed you reach for a much cleaner, tear drop looking geode, it was a blue-yellow mix.

* You explain to him that this was your first geode found when you went here in Devildom, the first you also carved as it was more jagged than this when you found it, and of course, you chose to keep it cause it reminded you for your first man.

* Mammon was so moved,and he was just sitting there, red as a strawberry and mouth open like a fish out of water, but hes not the only one because you too were blushing like an idiot as you held the special rock.

* He does end up trying to act his typical ways, but he was nothing but a stuttering mess, and much to his embarassment, he was also tearing up.

* Please hug him, he needs it, he just cant help but feel so flattered that you dedicated a geode for him and he felt that pride and love swell to incredible levels, you definitely have him yearning for you even more.

* Next time you go out to seek more geodes here in Devildom, he might just come with you along with his army of crows, and even cuter, his crows would just hand you special rocks every now and then.

* This boy might just start his own collection now thanks to you, but most his geodes will just be dedicated to you

----------

A h h h hope you guys like it! I know its a weird premise, but I honestly do love gemstones and stuff lol, also yes i did indulge too much on Mammon, hush,but yeah, ill do more of the others soon!

(Art by me!)

[sulevinblade]

(Talesfromthefade) things you said when you were drunk, for the DWC?

OH MY GOD this was a little idea that got away from me in a big big way but I’m still pretty happy with it. For this and for “cafune - the act of running your fingers through the hair of someone you love,” from @contreparry! For @dadrunkwriting!!

Alistair/Leohta Aeducan, T for language, dumb suggestive jokes, and alcohol use, 4k+ words (awaaaay from me, I wish I had time to edit it but uh I spent the entire time writing it instead). 

On the cusp of the party’s visit to Orzammar, Alistair learns what kind of drunk Leohta can be, and shares a little lesson of his own. Light angst, serious fluff.

He finds her standing on the rocky beach, well away from the dim glow provided by the Spoiled Princess’s small windows. It takes a moment for Alistair’s eyes to adjust to the complete dark–the night watch Templar doused all the torches at the dock, as clear an indication as anything that no one else would cross Lake Calenhad tonight–but even if he’d had to follow her blind he could’ve found her by the sound.

Bloop.

Normally finding Leohta by sound means the clank or grind of armour, the grunts or barks of Leon, or even her rare laughter at something Zevran said (it was always Zevran making her laugh), but tonight the sound is completely unfamiliar. It’s still enough to guide him, though.

Bloop.

Last he’d seen her, she was swapping some of the coin they’d made selling things to the Templar quartermaster for three large bottles of deep pink liquid. It seemed a bit of a racket to Alistair, that they should collect the mages’ items as they cleared the Tower only to sell them to the Templars who would then in turn sell them back to the Mages, but surely if that wasn’t how the economy of the Circle usually worked, Wynne would’ve said something. That was Alistair’s hope, anyway, as he’d watched Leohta count the coins before they left, then again at the tavern’s bar. She’d tossed the bag back to him before collecting the bottles and heading outside, and he in turn had left it with Zevran.

Bloop.

“You have known our illustrious leader the longest among any of us. Has this always been a habit of hers?” Alistair squinted across the table, trying to determine Zevran’s game, but succeeded only in giving up his own. “You think I see this as a weakness I can exploit, but I would think even you would see that if I were going to do so, I would have done it by now and certainly would not draw attention to my plans by involving you.” His eyes only narrowed further–how does Zevran make talking down to him still seem so seductive?–but Alistair did sit back in his chair.

“I haven’t known her all that long, really, but I don’t think so. Why d'you ask?”

“My Antiva makes the finest wines in Thedas, so it is not uncommon to see those there who overindulge, but there are many types. Leohta, she is young and exploring her limits, yes, but she is also trying to drown things she does not want to feel. Her limits are low and the things she seeks to kill are very large. It is a dangerous combination.”

Alistair glanced again toward the door. Of course she hadn’t come back inside, that’d be too much to ask for, but what was he supposed to do?

“If it is too much for you, I will go after her, but she should not be alone.” Both of their chairs scraped back at the same time but Alistair was the first to stand, something that for some reason brought a sad smile to Zevran’s face. Alistair could only look at it for a moment before looking away.  "I know you do not think much of me, Alistair, and while that is entirely your loss, I do know that one thing we have in common is how much we care for her. Go see to her, my friend, before her sorrows are not all she drowns. It is probably for the best; I am not much of a swimmer myself.“

Bloop.

So now here he is, approaching carefully, pretending to be taking in the constellations while Leohta hurls rocks at the water like she’s trying to knock the waves down before they can reach the shore. The night is perfectly clear; Kinloch Hold is merely a dark space in the sky where the stars are missing, but everything else is black sky and white twinkles. He clears his throat in case she somehow hasn’t noticed since he doesn’t fancy getting one of those stones thrown at him, but she only pauses for a moment before bending to search the area around her feet for another suitable candidate. One bottle is already empty, stuffed mouth down among the pebbles and into the sand underneath them, and as Alistair finishes closing the distance Leohta gives up her search and instead tips to land on her backside, legs out in front of her and a second bottle in her hand. He knows they’re not small but her stature makes them seem even larger; it makes the sight of her lifting one to her lips almost comical but the effect is spoiled by how long it stays there. Maker’s breath, Zevran was right when he talked about drowning.

"You planning on coming up for air any time soon?”

There’s a pop as she breaks the vacuum she’s created, then a dry laugh. She still isn’t looking at him. It makes his chest hurt, how badly he wants her to turn her head. “Breathe through your nose and you can use your mouth for whatever you want.”

“You’re spending too much time with Zevran, saying things like that.” Sighing, Alistair drops down crosslegged at her side and extends a hand. “What are you even drinking? I’ve never seen anything that color in a tavern before.”

“One of the Templars told me about it. I guess–” there’s a pause and she bunches up her eyebrows, apparently trying to put the pieces back together, “I guess the mother started making it as a tribute to her daughter and now of course it’s all very sad but the owner still makes it as a specialty. Sweet mead made with roses.” She passes over the open bottle, not bothering to wipe the top, and the expression on her face, like she’s sharing a secret, distracts him so much he can’t be bothered either. She wasn’t kidding when she said it was sweet but the roses are strong too, floral and delicate. He passes the bottle back after just one mouthful.

“I’ve never had a mead like that before. It’s very… different.” Leohta seems to accept that answer, nodding before lifting the bottle to her lips again.

“There’s nothing like this in Orzammar. Not even in the palace. Not even to make it. No honey, no roses, and when there is if you said you wanted to make something like this with it, you’d be laughed out of the kitchen.” She holds the bottle in front of her contemplatively, swishing the contents back and forth gently and tilting her head in time with the motion. Alistair’d almost think it was a contented sort of gesture but then she sighs and drops her head back, hair falling over her shoulders as she lifts the bottle skyward. “Nothing like that, either. No stars, no sky. Some of the caverns are so high the ceilings are invisible, but you still know they’re up there.” Slowly, she lowers the bottle but keeps her gaze fixed upward.

“Do you miss that?” It’s not something he’s given a lot of thought to but it’s hard to imagine. Even within the walls of the Chantry there were windows. The sky was always there, or not-there maybe, when compared to a ceiling of stone. Trying to imagine life without it or everything it held–the sun, the moons, the clouds and stars and birds–was virtually impossible, but here was Leohta not just imagining the opposite but living it.

“Dunno. I still don’t understand all this. What keeps it up there?” Her hand waves up at the stars but only briefly; even sitting down she’s unsteady without both hands to support her. “With the stone, you know that even if you can’t see the ceiling, it’s still held there by the stone. Nothing floats, nothing rises or sets.” Watching her profile, he can see the way it hardens as her train of thought jumps the track. “Nothing changes.”

He shifts a little, the pebbles grinding softly underneath him as he leans to try to catch her eye. “You changed.”

This time when she looks over at him, it gives him a chill. The stone she’s been so contemplative about has found a home in her eyes, the set of her mouth. They seem cold and stiff and almost lifeless, soft evening blue turned to lapis lazuli. Still beautiful but hard. “I left, and not by choice. You wouldn’t know how much I’ve changed, Alistair. You have no idea what I was like before we met.”

“I suppose not, but I do know you’ve changed in the time I’ve known you.” He keeps his voice softer now, speaking carefully to avoid that stony shift becoming somehow permanent. He hasn’t seen her look like that since before Ostagar, and to lose all the little ways she’s softened since then would be the greatest waste. “Do you miss that? Or her, I guess. Do you miss who you were before?”

Her laugh is a single humorless sound that moves her entire body, shaking her shoulders and flexing her stomach. “What does that matter? She’s dead. Worse than dead.” There’s venom in her voice but Alistair doesn’t flinch since for once he’s certain it’s not directed at him. He watches as Leohta stands, a wobbly process that involves repeated planting of hands and feet before she can push herself vertical. There’s a powerful temptation to offer her help but the set of her jaw makes him stay his hand, even if whatever effect she might be going for is already ruined by her own unsteadiness. “Nobody mourned her, nobody misses her, but it doesn’t change the fact that she’s dead. Bhelen killed her as sure as he killed Trian. The prince is dead, the princess is dead. Princess Aeducan is dead.” Her voice is raising, getting louder and more raw the longer she speaks, until finally she’s yelling out at the water. “Princess Leohta Aeducan, second born and best beloved daughter of House Aeducan, is dead!” She punctuates the last word by throwing the empty bottle into the water but it’s a bad throw, short and shallow. The bottle makes only a small splash then floats, reflecting the moonlight as it bobs its way back toward the shore.

Alistair rises, brushing at the back of his breeches, and makes his way up to stand beside her. He’s well within punching range, possibly a dangerous gamble, but if the way she’s carrying herself is any indication, it wouldn’t hurt very much right now. Plus, if she punched him, at least it’d prove she was feeling something. “I’d mourn her but like you said, I never did get to meet her. I’ve met Warden Aeducan, though, and I think she’s pretty great. Accomplished a lot, too.”

She’s bent back down and is sorting through the stones at her feet, tucking some in the bend of her other arm. Standing back up is a careful process but she’s shaking her head the entire time. “They’re not gonna think so.” Her voice is normal again but her profile is still stony.

Bloop.

Was this was he was like heading into Redcliffe? Of course, he hadn’t gotten drunk on sickly sweet mead to deal with it, but he’d had his turn as the prodigal royal-but-not-really. The main difference was he never wanted it, but she spoke so little of her life before the Grey Wardens. Was the crown of Orzammar what she’d really wanted? Not that it really mattered now. “Seems to me they had their chance to appreciate you and they blew it.”

“Oh, no. That’s the thing. Up until the end, they loved Princess Aeducan. That was the whole problem. She was too well-loved. Luckily, I’m not.” Leohta stares out at the ripples from her last throw but the fight’s going out of her. It ought to be a comfort, less risk of being punched, but instead it just hurts more. He curls his hands into fists at his sides to keep from reaching out, swallows the words that’d tell her just how deeply loved she is and not only by him, as much as he might wish it were so.

“We could go back to Denerim without going to Orzammar.” Aaaaaaaalistair, what’re you doooooooing? He ignores the voice in the back of his head, prepared to make an argument for mounting their assault without the help of the dwarves, but Leohta shakes her head. She’s drunk and she’s still got better sense than you.

“Just because I don’t want to go back doesn’t mean we don’t have to. Being a Grey Warden isn’t supposed to be fun, hasn’t been so far, why start now?” She seems to consider the matter closed as she turns her attention back to the rocks she’s holding, sorting through them as though looking for a particular one. They start to slip away and clack into the pebbles below and with a frustrated sigh she picks one, letting the remainder drop. “This is supposed to be, though. How the fuck do you do this?” Another windup, another bloop.

“Wait. What are you trying to do?”

“Make it…” She shakes her head, the word apparently lost, and instead makes a bouncing motion with her hand.

“You’re trying to skip stones… by heaving them at the surface of the water with all your might?” And there’s the punch he was waiting for, exactly as painless as expected. It’s not even hard enough to stop him laughing.

“I saw you and Zevran do it in Redcliffe before we left and it seemed to calm you down so I thought I’d try. You made it look easy, but if you’re just gonna laugh then forg–”

Alistair intercepts her before she can start to walk away. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry. It’s just that I never would have guessed that’s what you were trying to do. I thought you were mad at the lake or something.” She’s looking up at him, wary, so he holds his hands up in innocence. “If you still want to try, I can show you.”

“No more laughing?”

“No more laughing. Warden’s honor.” When Leohta seems satisfied with his intentions, Alistair finally looks away from her, crouching down. “The first thing you need is the right kind of rock. It needs to be pretty flat and you want a triangle shape if you can find one, but flat will do for now.”

She’s crouching as well. “I thought it would be better with a round rock, like a ball.” She’s quiet, almost chastized, and Alistair has to duck his head and cough into his fist to hide the grin it conjures.

“No, that’ll break through the water and sink. A flat rock will bounce better. Something like these.” He shows her the three he’s found, all rounder still than he’d like but they should do the trick. She holds up a couple of her own and really, they’re no better, but they’re only for learning. “Yes, those will do. Now.” Alistair drops to his knees and crooks his fingers around one of the stones. “You have to hold it like this, because the important part is that you get it to spin. That’s what makes it skip.”

Leohta’s squinting at his hand, then she tries it out herself. Her hands are smaller so she can’t quite circle it the way he does, but Alistair hopes it’ll work out. “Like this?”

“Just like that. Now, the other trick is not to throw it up but to flick it. You want it to stay flat so you have to kind of–” He turns his arm out at the elbow and flicks the rock out onto the water. Four hops, not his best work but not bad.

When he looks back at Leohta, though, she’s entranced. She watches the ripples so long he has to clear his throat to get her attention back, but this time every trace of the stone is gone from her face. She looks eager, determined, but also a little embarrassed. Surprised to have been caught, probably, but it’s a charming expression nonetheless. She turns to face the water again, weighing the rock in her hand, then moves her arm and throws.

It splashes and sinks just like all her other attempts. Leohta curses softly and starts to turn away but Alistair catches her wrist.

“Hey, no way. You’re not giving up after one attempt. C'mon. We’ve got two more rocks, so two more tries, then I guess I can let you give up.” He starts to move before she can start to argue.

“It’s not giving up, Alistair, it’s accepting the inedible. Inedibibble. Ined… remind me to compliment the tavernkeeper tomorrow. His stuff is good.” Her voice gradually gets softer, a delayed reaction to where Alistair has taken up a position just behind her. It’s extremely convenient for him: she can’t see how his face is burning up from the presumptuousness of being so close to her, but it’s also the best position to show her how to move her arm. He wraps his hand around hers and lifts her arm into position.

“From here, you have to flick your hand out. Try to imagine the rock spinning out from the inside of your thumb and taking all that energy with it. The harder you can flick it, the more it’ll bounce and the more hops you’ll–all right, that’s it, you and Zevran are officially being separated because that’s not even dirty and now you’ve made it dirty. I hope you’re happy.” The woman in front of him is struggling to contain her laughter, he can tell, and as much as he wants to keep her focus on him, it’s hard to be genuinely upset. She doesn’t laugh nearly enough and especially not around him. The fact that whatever is so funny is lost on him is a far distant concern.

Alistair waits for her to compose herself then takes a moment to compose himself in turn when she settles back into a proper posture that puts her in contact with him from shoulder to hip. She’s nearly as tall as he is when he’s on his knees like this, a fact he’s thought about many times but never quite in this situation. Leohta gives herself a little shake, tossing her hair in his face as she does. He tries to blow it out of the way but there’s just too much. All right then, one thing at a time.

“Now. Just remember, angle your hand back and then flick. That word is ruined for me now, I think. You’ve ruined flicking.” In front of him Leohta snorts and Alistair make a private vow to forbid Zevran from using that word. He wants it to be their joke even if he doesn’t understand it. “Do you think you can manage?”

“To flick? I’ve done all right for the last few years anyway.” She giggles and clears her throat. “All right. Angle my hand back,” and her hand is moving inside of his so he loosens his grip, “then forward and flick!”

Alistair peers over her shoulder and sure enough. Blip, blip. One hop, but it’s one more than she’d managed before. He puts his hands on her shoulders and squeezes. “There you go! Well done, Warden Aeducan.” She lifts one hand to pat his but he can tell she’s still looking at the ripples.

After a moment, he releases her shoulders and, feeling a little bolder by the fact that she hasn’t elbowed him away yet, reaches forward to comb his fingers through her hair. It’s a practical gesture–even as he’s speaking, her hair is getting in his mouth–but hardly exclusively practical. Her hair is thick and her scalp surprisingly warm underneath it. In front of him she’s gone very still; he thinks she might even be holding her breath but then again, so is he. He focuses on his own hands until he’s gathered her hair at the back of her neck, but then the tension in it changes and oh.

Alistair looks up and she’s right there, her head turned to look at him. Maker’s breath but she’s close, her mouth gently open and her eyes searching his face. Her breath smells like honey and roses and his hand is still in her hair, it’d be so easy and it might be perfect but she’s been drinking and that’s not right. Or might it be OK, with her looking at him like that? The motion of her lips is so mesmerizing that it takes him a moment to realize she’s speaking to him.

“Alistair.” And like that, the moment is over, or at least set aside. “Would you do that again?”

“Of course.” She could ask him to fetch the moons from the sky right now and he’d say yes, but… “Wait, do what?” He didn’t do anything other than have a whole lot of thoughts in a very short span of time.

“Touch my hair. That was nice.” She’s leaning more of her weight against him now and it’s nice but also just starting to make him concerned. Still, he already said yes, so Alistair releases her hair from where he’s holding it and threads his fingers through it again, starting at her temple, mindful of and parallel to the little braid she’s so meticulous about. As he does it, her eyes drift closed but her face is relaxed. It’s not quite a smile but he’ll take it. “Again,” she murmurs as his hand comes to rest on the back of her neck.

Alistair laughs softly but he complies with her request, stroking his fingers through her hair again. And again, and once more, until she leans forward completely and drops her head onto his shoulder. Her breath is warm on his neck as he gives her one last stroke, then stops to reach out away from her. She grumbles softly in protest but he hushes her. “I’m just getting your other bottle. It’s bought and paid for, no sense leaving it here.”

“Why, where’re we going?”

“I don’t know yet about myself but you are doing to bed. Sleeping standing up is only good for horses and probably Sten, and sleeping on your knees is good for no one. Now, come on, up you get.” He hooks the hand holding the unopened bottle of rhodomel under Leohta’s knees, his other arm coming up behind her shoulders. She grumbles again as he starts to stand and he pauses before beginning to walk.

“You’re carrying me like a princess.” The humor in her voice warms him but now he feels a little more confident about deflecting it.

“I’m a Warden carrying another Warden like a Warden. No princesses here. Well, except for the tavern but I’m certainly not trying to pick that up. I could throw you over my shoulder if you wanted, but you have to promise not to throw up on my back.”

“No promises.” She slumps against his shoulder as he starts to walk. It’s only a few steps from the beach to the door but he takes his time. Who knows what Orzammar will do to her, or what she might do to Orzammar? The answer is liable to be complicated but this, for as unexpected as it is, feels strangely simple. She might not even remember it in the morning, but it’s not a feeling Alistair’s going to forget any time soon. “Alistair.”

“I don’t have a free hand to pet you, but if you can stay awake until we get inside, maybe I’ll give you scritches once I get you upstairs.” He’s trying to figure out how he’s going to open the door when she shakes her head and answers.

“Thank you for coming out tonight. I’m sorry I’m–”

“None of that now. You have nothing to be sorry for, and if anything I should say thank you for having me.” Alistair manages to hook the latch with his pinkie then wedge his foot into the gap, kicking the door open as he maneuvers her inside. “You may not have found it so, but I think being a Warden can be a little bit fun, if you’re with the right person. Or people,” he continues, scrambling to cover for himself while trying to ease the door’s closing with his foot. Once he’s got both feet back on the ground, he looks down at the woman in his arms. Fast asleep, looking as young as he’s ever seen her and more peaceful than she has possibly the entire time he’s known her. The inn’s main room is empty, the fire doused, and he’s almost loathe to speak again and interrupt the silence, but he does.

“Or person. Just the right person.”

[thelifetimechannel]

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[hearteyeslikeafooligan]

I rotated and adjusted the lighting on that quote from the bottom left, to find what article it was referring to, since it’s the cover page of a newspaper section.  

It reads:

Ta-Nehisi Coates: “It was as if I’d spent all my years jiggling the key in the wrong lock.”

The editor who put that quote on the cover page seems to have misquoted the article though, because the actual quote from the article is, “It was as if I had spent my years jiggling a key into the wrong lock.” 

Married with a young child, he possessed intellectual curiosity and the gift of a wordsmith. He produced an essay about Bill Cosby that caught attention and led to a relationship with the Atlantic magazine, where he is now a national correspondent. His ascent coincided with Obama’s and a new world of possibilities. “It was as if I had spent my years jiggling a key into the wrong lock. The lock was changed. The doors swung open, and we did not know how to act.”

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/oct/08/ta-nehisi-coates-our-story-is-a-tragedy-but-doesnt-depress-me-we-were-eight-years-in-power-interview

Below is a cut and paste of the article in case you can’t access that link.

Ta-Nehisi Coates The Observer

Ta-Nehisi Coates: the laureate of black lives Coates’s eloquent polemics on the black experience in America brought him fame and the admiration of Barack Obama. Here he talks about the rise of white supremacy – and why Trump was a logical conclusion

Ta-Nehisi Coates is short on sleep. He did five interviews yesterday to promote his new book, We Were Eight Years in Power: An American Tragedy. Today there was another at 7am, then surgery “to get a little thing removed” from his neck. As his tall frame appears in the doorway of an office at his New York publisher, a bandage is visible above the collar of his blue suit jacket.

Coates is friendly but fatigued and yawns several times during the course of our conversation. Some questions animate him and he digs deep with evident passion; others elicit a brief “I don’t know”. The interview doesn’t always flow. But even on an off-day, Coates, 42, is more compelling than almost any other public voice about the state we’re in. The New York Times described him as “the pre-eminent black public intellectual of his generation”. The novelist Toni Morrison compared him to James Baldwin. He emerged as the equivalent of poet laureate during Barack Obama’s presidency, chronicling the spirit of the age. If anything, the advent of Trump has pushed his stock higher. Coates admits it is “tremendously irritating” to be in constant demand by the media, as if he is sole spokesman for African American affairs.

But he does have much to say about Trump and the divided states of America. His book is a collection of eight essays he published during Obama’s eight years in office plus new material, including an epilogue entitled “The First White President”, in which he contends that Trump’s ability to tap the ancient well of racism was not incidental but fundamental to his election win. Many people have called Trump a racist or white supremacist, but Coates has the rare ability to express it in clear prose that combines historical scholarship with personal experience of being black in today’s America.

Halifu Osumare, director of African American and African Studies at the University of California, says: “Ta-Nehisi Coates has done his homework, including much self-reflection. He clearly knows his literary forerunners – [Richard] Wright, Baldwin and Morrison, yet he speaks as a 21st-century writer. He eloquently conflates the personal, political and the existential, while telling it like it is.”

Certainly, in contrast with other commentators, Coates has no qualms about stating that the White House is occupied by a white supremacist (a term he does not apply to other Republicans, such as George HW Bush or George W Bush). He lays out evidence that Trump, despite his upbringing in liberal New York, has a long history of racial discrimination. There was the 1973 federal lawsuit against him and his father for alleged bias against black people seeking to rent at Trump housing developments in New York. Trump took out ads in four daily newspapers calling for the reintroduction of the death penalty in 1989 after five African American and Latino teenagers were accused of assaulting and raping a white woman in Central Park. Even after the five were cleared by DNA evidence, he continued to insist: “They admitted they were guilty.”

He was once quoted as saying: “Black guys counting my money! I hate it. The only kind of people I want counting my money are short guys that wear yarmulkes every day.” More recently, Trump was a leading proponent of the “birther” movement, pushing the conspiracy theory that Obama was not born in the US and therefore an illegitimate president. While running for president, he said that a judge of Mexican heritage would be unfair to him in a court case because he was a “hater” and a “Mexican”. In one interview, Trump refused to condemn the Ku Klux Klan (he subsequently blamed a faulty earpiece).

In his epilogue, Coates writes: “To Trump, whiteness is neither notional nor symbolic, but the very core of his power. In this, Trump is not singular. But whereas his forebears carried whiteness like an ancestral talisman, Trump cracked the glowing amulet open, releasing its eldritch energies.”

Since then, there has been a white supremacist march in Charlottesville, Virginia, in which a civil rights protester was killed, prompting Trump’s comment that there were “very fine people on both sides”. Today, Coates adds the president’s visit to hurricane-hit Puerto Rico to Trump’s charge sheet: “Just yesterday, he goes to a part of the United States that’s been devastated by a natural disaster and throws toilet paper out to the crowd like they’re peasants or something. There are people in this country who will not be happy until Donald Trump is literally executing a lynching before they’ll use that term [white supremacist]. I’m not going to play around; let’s call things what they are.”

Last month Trump was at it again, condemning American football players who “take the knee” during the national anthem to make a statement against racial injustice. Throwing red meat to his base at a rally in Alabama, he called on team owners to fire them and to say: “Get that son of a bitch off the field right now.” The protest was started last year by Colin Kaepernick of San Francisco 49ers. Coates reflects: “Kaepernick’s protest has been very successful. I really appreciate the fact that he’s been giving away money to organisations; he pledged to give away a million dollars and he’s been doing it.”

But Trump used his familiar tactics to divert and distract, kicking up bitter divisions around the anthem, the military, how much sportsmen earn, the meaning of patriotism and, of course, himself. Amid the media storm, it was easy to forget what the original protest was about. “The police brutality element has been lost, but I think that is a danger that all protests face,” Coates says. “At some point, you’re always co-opted, successful protests especially. It happened in the civil rights movement. People forget that the 1963 march [on Washington] was for jobs: that somehow got lost, and it became this warm, fuzzy thing [now best known for Martin Luther King’s “I have a dream” speech].”

The notion that all these issues would be resolved by Obama was always fanciful. Even so, Coates was swept up in the euphoria with millions of others in 2008 when the US elected its first black president. Had the nation – whose founding fathers were slave owners, and where today African Americans are incarcerated at more than five times the rate of whites – truly changed? Coates admits he took his eye off the ball. The racial backlash was coming.

“The symbolic power of Barack Obama’s presidency – that whiteness was no longer strong enough to prevent peons taking up residence in the castle – assaulted the most deeply rooted notions of white supremacy and instilled fear in its adherents and beneficiaries,” he writes. “And it was that fear that gave the symbols Donald Trump deployed – the symbols of racism – enough potency to make him president, and thus put him in position to injure the world.”

Trump did not come out of nowhere; he was the logical conclusion of years of racial dog whistles from the Republican party, which has sought to suppress the black vote through spurious claims of cracking down on fraud. Coates recounts: “Throughout his eight years in office, Barack Obama endured a campaign of illegitimacy waged either by pluralities or majorities of the Republican party. Donald Trump rooted his candidacy in that campaign. It’s fairly obvious.

“His first real foray out again as a political candidate was into birthism [Trump began questioning Obama’s birthplace in TV interviews in 2011], and a lot of people dismissed birthism as just something cranks do and we don’t have to deal with. That was a huge mistake: it underrated the long tradition of denying black people their citizenship and basic rights. That was what this was piggybacking off of, so it’s not a mistake that he started there and then became president at all.”

Coates does not make the claim that all 63 million people who voted for Trump are white supremacists; but they were, he points out, willing to hand the government over to one. It was an astonishingly reckless act. Coates’s book is a wake-up call to white America, a holding to account. “So this question, is everyone who voted for Trump a racist? This misses the point. Did everyone in Nazi Germany believe all the stereotypes about Jews? Of course not. It’s beside the point.

“When France deported its Jews, did everyone in France believe all this stuff? No, but that’s beside the point. Looking the other way has consequences and you might not be a racist or a white supremacist or a bigot, but if you voted for Trump, you looked the other way, you said it’s fine to have that in the White House, and a substantial number of Americans felt that way. That’s a statement.”

Coates also takes issue with the media’s obsession with the white working class as a bloc that turned its back on Democrats and defected to Trump. His book challenges politicians and journalists who make earnest defences of Trump-voting communities as “good people” not motivated by bigotry. Countless articles and books such as Hillbilly Elegy by JD Vance, a memoir about growing up in the white underclass, have been studied as key to understanding the despair of small towns left behind by globalisation. Are they missing the point? Is class secondary to race?

“It’s not like most working-class people voted for Donald Trump; they did not,” Coates says. “Most white working-class people voted for Donald Trump and the through line that you find is whiteness, not class and not gender. It’s not like he only got men; he got a majority of white women too. So if you look at categories of white people you find Trump being dominant among them, in part because of the appeal he made, but also in part because the Republican party has effectively become in this country the party of white people.

“What’s happening is the white working class is being used as a kind of signpost tool… There is some effort not just to absolve white working people, but to absolve whiteness because here’s the deal: ‘Oh, it’s fine that white working-class people and white poor people voted for Donald Trump because over the past 30 years they’ve had unmet expectations. And it’s also fine that rich white people voted for Donald Trump because of tax cuts.’ Come on: everybody gets off the hook.”

And yet many senators, including Bernie Sanders, whom Coates supported in the Democratic primary, Al Franken and Elizabeth Warren have argued that a generation of economic stagnation is real, fuelling anger that led some voters to throw a grenade at the Washington establishment. Middle- and working-class parents are frustrated that their children will not have the same opportunities they did. Trump’s defeated opponent Hillary Clinton writes in her new memoir: “After studying the French Revolution, De Tocqueville wrote that revolts tend to start not in places where conditions are worst, but in places where expectations are most unmet.”

To that, Coates responds: “Those expectations are built on being white. People say that as though it’s indivisible from the idea of race. You want to talk about unmet expectations? Black folks have been dealing with that since we got here, so the notion that, ‘My child isn’t going to have it as good as me, so that therefore gives me the right to vote for someone who conducts diplomacy with a rogue nuclear state via Twitter’ – that don’t work. Bottom line is, a significant number of people in this country have tolerance for bigotry. No one, I don’t think, can act like they didn’t know. You know I think [Trump’s racist] comments were well reported and America just decided it was OK.”

When white voters make bad decisions, Coates argues, excuses are made; when black voters do it, they get the blame. Coates recalls how the election of Marion Barry as mayor of the District of Columbia [later to be caught on camera smoking crack cocaine] prompted articles suggesting people in the district should lose the right to vote. “So there’s all this kind of rope that’s given, all these excuses allowed when you’re white in this country. But if black people acted that civically irresponsibly, that rope would not be awarded.

“Like you take the opioid crisis and all of the compassion that’s doled out in the rhetoric? Where was that during the crack epidemic in the 1980s? I remember it well. I was in a city where that was going on. Where was all that compassion? Black people aren’t worthy of that. That’s a story that can be created for white people because they’re white, but we don’t get that sort of compassion.”

Democrats are said to be torn between an emphasis on economic justice that aims to win back Trump voters and an emphasis on racial justice that will energise its liberal base. Asked about the future direction of the party, Coates is hesitant: “I don’t know. I shouldn’t answer that.” But after a pause, he weighs in: “Here’s one thing. I don’t think they can get away from talking about race because of the way things are aligned. You’ve got to get to a state like South Carolina or Georgia: these states have large numbers of black and brown voters.”

Coates grew up in Baltimore, where Francis Scott Key wrote The Star Spangled Banner and the first residential racial segregation law in any US city was enacted. More recently, it was famous for David Simon’s crime drama The Wire. “I had very little interaction with white people as a kid,” Coates recalls. “I think about what my world looked like as a child, a place that felt fearful, violent, then I’d put on the TV and I’d see that that was not the country at least as it advertised itself. That struck me and I always wanted to know why, what was the difference, why was my house not like Family Ties? That motivated a great deal of my work from the time I was young.”

His father, Paul Coates, was a Vietnam war veteran, Black Panther and voracious collector of books about the history of black struggle. Paul Coates had seven children by four women and was an intellectually inspiring father who also administered beatings. Coates has described him with affection as “a practising fascist, mandating books and banning religion”. The religion ban worked – Coates is an atheist – and so did the books, eventually. In February 2007, Coates, then 31, had just lost his third job in seven years and was trying to stay off welfare. He writes: “I’d felt like a failure all my life – stumbling out of middle school, kicked out of high school, dropping out of college... ‘College dropout’ means something different when you’re black. College is often thought of as the line between the power to secure yourself and your family, and the power of someone else securing you in a prison or grave.”

Married with a young child, he possessed intellectual curiosity and the gift of a wordsmith. He produced an essay about Bill Cosby that caught attention and led to a relationship with the Atlantic magazine, where he is now a national correspondent. His ascent coincided with Obama’s and a new world of possibilities. “It was as if I had spent my years jiggling a key into the wrong lock. The lock was changed. The doors swung open, and we did not know how to act.”

Coates made a splash with a 2014 article for the Atlantic arguing that the US should pay African Americans reparations for slavery. Then, a year later, came Between the World and Me, a rumination on black life and white supremacy, addressed to his teenage son in a letter form that evoked Baldwin’s The Fire Next Time. It argued that the “destruction of black bodies” is not simply a recurring theme of American history but its central premise. It won the National Book Award in nonfiction, sold 1.5m copies around the world and has been translated into 19 languages.

As his star rose, Coates was invited to the White House. He got to spend time with Obama, whose fundamental optimism in America had convinced him that Trump could not win. He says: “He was tremendously intelligent, one of the smartest people I’d ever talked to, and he was smart in many ways. I met him a few times: one was with a bunch of journalists and he had the ability to address each journalist in their specific area in a very learned way. I thought he was brilliant.”

He reckons “in the main” Obama lived up to the impossibly high expectations of his presidency. “He had an incredible tightrope to walk and it’s difficult, man. You’re the first black president and you’ve got to represent a community, then speak to a larger country at the same time. If he was more radical he wouldn’t have been president. That’s what I’ve come around to: who he was was what the country wanted at that time. He can’t be me; not that he should want to be. But it’s a very different calling.”

Indeed, Coates sees himself as a writer – including of a comic-book series starring superhero the Black Panther – rather than an activist or potential politician. “That’s what I’m supposed to be doing because it’s what calls to me and it’s what I’m good at, what I excel at. I don’t really excel at this other stuff. I’m not a person who’s going to say whatever I have to say to get a coalition together, which is what you have to do in politics. I’m a writer.”

Towards the end of the interview, the questions become longer and Coates’s answers become shorter. He is probably relieved when it’s over, though he is too polite to say so.

Later he is busy tweeting links to articles about gun violence, nuclear war and earthquakes, jokingly chiding their authors for offering no hope. It is a charge with which he is all too familiar. “Our story is a tragedy,” he writes in We Were Eight Years in Power. “I know it sounds odd, but that belief does not depress me. It focuses me. After all, I am an atheist and thus do not believe anything, even a strongly held belief, is destiny... The worst really is possible. My aim is never to be caught, as the rappers say, acting like it can’t happen. And my ambition is to write both in defiance of tragedy and in blindness of its possibility, to keep screaming into the waves – just as my ancestors did.”

• We Were Eight Years in Power by Ta-Nehisi Coates is published by Hamish Hamilton (£16.99). To order a copy for £14.44 go to guardianbookshop.com or call 0330 333 6846. Free UK p&p over £10, online orders only. Phone orders min p&p of £1.99

[keepitcartesian]

How to Clean Your Home Like a Pro

As the days finally get brighter, and the evenings get longer, you'll start to notice just how dusty and unclean certain areas of your home can appear which you were blinded to in the dark winters months. And I understand, at first, it can seem other whelming to tackle your entire home alone, all in the matter of a couple of days.

I have collaborated many tips and tricks that will give you infromative infromation so that you know how to clean your home like a pro.

Top 10 Spring Cleaning Tips

Now I'm no pro, I'm just a woman with a certain set of skills, skills that can make this whole spring clean season a whole lot easier for you. Although I have watched my fair share of cleaning programmes so I'm equipped with all the professional cleaning tips from Kim and Aggie which they have handed down to their viewers through the years.

Just below are my top 10 spring cleaning tips which I have personally tried and had to share them with you today to make your life a whole lot easier because trust me, cleaning turned into a delight once I started using these specific ways to get over certain house maintenance problems

When to Start Spring Cleaning

Typically, the practice of spring cleaning can be done all year round since the phrase is now widely used as a means of thoroughly cleaning a house or home. Although, if you couldn't guess it used to mean, and technically still does, to clean one's home in the springtime.

But to answer 'when to start spring cleaning', it's up to you! If you have some time spare, perhaps on a bank holiday or if you've taken some time off work, there is no better time to crack on with some housework. Since cleaning out your entire home can be a chore, it's useful to make a start whenever you can to minimise tasks in the near future.

Cleaning is also a great way to get a new look in your home without too much effort since you're just making the best of what you already feature within your interior.

House Clean Routine - Make One!

For good results, you need a good plan, and with a good plan, you need to make sure it works for you, so no copying from the internet! Seriously, your house clean routine needs to be something that is personal to you and your goals, so that you are able to work towards it more efficiently and you are more likely too if its something you drafted up yourself.

Disorganized cleaning will give you a lot of missed spots. An effective cleaner will go from room to room, top to bottom ensuring they’ve tackled all those unreachable corners.

If you've got a smart device and would much rather keep your cleaning calendar on your device, then you should probably go download Clean My House from the App Store or Google Play store.

If you're still stuck, he's an idea of how I went about drafting up mine;

How to Organize House Cleaning Schedule

I wrote down all the task I had had to do, listed them in the order from most enjoyable to least enjoyable; now I know what you're thinking "how can there really be a different" but trust me there is.

Cleaning my glass table top was far more stressful than hovering the lounge area.

Once you've created this list, you're going to want to get all the annoying things out of the way, while you are at the start of your cleaning mission where you will most likely put up with the gruelling and boring tasks at hand than if you were to leave it till last.

Then go ahead and fit everything into a daily house cleaning schedule, I'd recommend putting the easy stuff at the end of the week, again since its the end of your time cleaning you want to putt the easiest stuff off so you are able to relax more.

At this point you should be ready to start cleaning…that is until you've read all of my other spring cleaning tips further down the page!

Use Vodka for Cleaning a Mattress

Now I know what you're immediately thinking, Kerry has gone crazy.

And yes, I understand vodka is for drinking but trust me on this one, don't knock it till you've tried it.

So yes, you really can use vodka for cleaning a mattress (if you have any leftover from that party on Saturday night) along with a dash of your favourite essential oil to give it that 'clean' smell we all seek for any piece of furnishing in our homes.

Heres how you clean up your mattress;

Use a damp cloth to remove any excess debris or liquids that are still within the affected area.

Fill an empty spray bottle with your Vodka, regardless of the quality, around about 2/3 to not overflow the bottle.

Add your favourite essential oil to give your mattress a refreshing smell. (Mint is my personal favourite)

Make sure to shake the bottle well to mix the two liquids together well; ensure the lid is tight or you'll be cleaning the vodka up too!

Spray the affected areas with your new favourite cleaning solution. Make sure not to the soak the area, spray with care.

Now leave it to dry completely, don't bother making the bed just yet, be sure to double check that the mattress is dry before you dress it back up in its usual fashion.

Other Household uses for Vodka

While we're on the topic of using vodka as a cleaning product, I thought It would be worth mentioning the many other household uses for vodka I have found that doesnt include drinking.

Cleaning Windows and Fixtures: Just like with your mattress, you are able to clean your windows and lighting fixtures with a vodka-soaked cloth, which will allow you to add extra sparkle and get a streak-free shine.

Soak your feet: If you're looking to get a natural clean on your feet, perhaps after a long walk with your kids, then soaking them when you're home will give you back a natural clean.

Remove sticky glue: Every bought something with a price sticker on it? well of course you have and I bet you've tried to scratch it off too, without it inevitability breaking up on you and leaving the goo behind. Scrubbing the leftover sticker with vodka will completely remove it from the surface.

These are just to name a few of the posobilitties with vodka, I have found plenty more household uses for vodka on List25.

Cleaning with Vodka vs Vinegar

If you're interested in cleaning your home the eco-friendly way, turning your home into a 'green-clean home' then you will have no doubt also heard that people their furniture with vinegar as well as vodka as we have just established just above.

But, what actually Is the difference between cleaning with vodka vs vinegar? If there is even one, to begin with.

After some research and many cleaning sessions of tested, I've found out the difference between both cleaning your home with vodka and vinegar is that, well there is none in terms of cleaning. Both work well as solutions when mixed with there respective formulas (essential oils for vodka and water for vinegar).

Although personally, Vodka has to take the crown when it comes to being the best household cleaning simply because the smell that the vinegar cleaner emits is something you don't want to be around just after cleaning making vodka a far more ideal option…if you're cleaning something it might as well smell nice too!

Use Proper Surface Cleaning Techniques

This is one hack you could try when cleaning any surface in your house. Don’t just wipe off that dirt haphazardly, as at the end you will waste time since you may fail to hit all the dirty spots while you are cleaning.

Instead, move in a consistent direction and it will be more appropriate if you wipe the surface from left to right or top to bottom than as appose to other surface cleaning techniques.

A dull looking surface makes the surfaces look less appealing and even if you just finished cleaning it, someone else may not notice the difference. To avoid using so much energy and end up disappointed, take hold of a cloth which has a microfiber material, then dampen one half of it.

Leave the other half completely dry and then use the dampened part to wipe off the dirt. Use the dry part to clear the wetness and you will have yourself a sparkling clean home with this technique.

Another trick is using olive oil to buffer your surfaces. Other than using olive oil to cook, get a piece of cloth and grab that pan, or pot or appliance than in a circular motion, rub it to get rid off any dirty spots. Allowing you to achieve a polished look once you finish smoothening out the surfaces.

Easiest Way to Clean an Oven

Many ovens go untouched for months without a proper clean, and when people do eventually use their elbow grease they never usually do a good enough job to make a difference.

For the lazy people who can't be bothered to clean their oven on their own will instead use the self-cleaning function many ovens seem to come with these days. You'll realize just how terrible this particular function is since the smell that it produces is revolting and totally not worth it.

However, the easiest way to clean an Oven and certainly the most effective is to use a mixture of household goods. Heres how the pro's do it;

Remove everything: Whether that's the oven racks or oven thermometer, make sure to set it aside before beginning.

Create the paste: Grab a small bowl and mix 1/2 a cup of baking soda with a few tablespoons of water. Keep adding each till the ratio is as stated, it should form together like a paste.

Apply some elbow grease: Spread the paste all over the inside of your oven, BUT make sure you do not apply any to the heating elements. The paste should turn brown once set in the oven and in some cases also goes chunky, which is perfectly fine. The general rule of thumb is to make sure every inch of the oven is cleared and you should pay attention to the greasiest of spots.

Go relax: Let it sit for about 12 hours so the mixture can do its work.

Apply some more elbow grease: Now, after 12hours, take a damp cloth - anything will do - and wipe away as much of the dried baking soda paste you possibly can, this is where the real effort comes into play but its worth it. Using something like a spatula to help scrape off the bits you can't quite get off yourself may be a good idea.

Clean up: Take some vinegar and put it into an old spray bottle, this will help you get rid of the baking soda residue as this mixture reacts and the baking soda because bubbled and foam like.

Rinse and repeat: Repeat the last step until all the residue has completely gone, and you should be left with a shiny and clean oven.

Best way to clean an oven door

Similar to what I explained on the easiest way to clean an oven, the best way to clean an oven door is to use the same paste you used for inside the oven; no doubt you have a leftover mixture. You want to apply it the inner door side, allover as much as you can.

Let it sit for about half an hour and then come back and wipe it down with a damp cloth to clear off all of the baking soda, again use some vinegar to make sure you are getting rid of all the residue.

Easiest way to clean oven racks

The easiest way I've found to do them is cleaning them in a bath, and I know what you're thinking, that must be unhygienic! Well cleaning the bath before and after cleansing your oven is something you're going to want to do if that puts your mind at ease.

Simply place your oven racks in the bathtub with enough water so that the racks are covered and then add your favourite dishwashing soap to the bath, around about 1/2 a cup full. And let it sit overnight.

After about 12hours, just like last time, you're going to want to scrub away any grease that still remains as well as grime and leftover baked bits…

...And you're done!

Use coffee grounds to eliminate odors from your fridge

If you're like me, you love coffee and sometimes, yo although you try your hardest you can't get through it all. But by utilizing what you have and with your leftover beans, use coffee grounds to eliminate odors from your fridge if you're looking for an easy, eco-friendly way to emit natural orders.

This is seriously effective since coffee is a smell you are already familiar with and it is a smell that is able to effortlessly cover up the overpowering odor the collection of food from your fridge lets off.

Wash Towels with Vinegar

Eventually, whether you like it or not, your towels will begin to have a mildew smell to them, this usually comes about because of a poor drying process as well as the general age of the towels as they collectively gain bacteria that sticks to them over time causing the horrible smell.

That's why, even when they don't smell, we recommend you wash towels with vinegar to get rid of that horrible smell.

How to Wash Towels with Vinegar

Don't worry, there are no endless amounts of supplies you need to get your towels back to their fresh smell, you can sit back and let your washer to do all the work.

Heres how to wash towels with vinegar; the professional way:

Simply wash your load on the hot cycle and add 1 cup of vinegar to the load. Do not bother to use detergent or anything else, just hot water and vinegar. And that's it, you're all done, your towels should be smelling fresh and clean as if they were bought yesterday.

Although in some cases, this is not the case, if that is you and you can still smell a faint but noticeable odor, then do the same thing again without the vinegar and this time add baking soda and then you will be able to smell the freshness of your towels.

Best Dusting Techniques

Dusting might seem simple but like any tasks there are set tools and techniques that are perfect for the job, making your whole life a whole lot easier and in addition making your home even more beautiful than it was before.

There are several of the best dusting techniques further down the page, I will let you what to use and how you should be using the specific duster to help you do a professional job.

Types of Dusting Brushes

Microfiber Cloth: Best for dusting and polishing dry or slightly damp surfaces - make sure never to drench your cloth in your particular solution to ensure that you don't leave solution behind. Use the correct one for the job, fluffy cloths are absorbent and do best to hold the dust while minimising the chance to scratch a surface. Flatweave Microfiber cloths are best for glass and other hard surfaces.

Extendable Microfiber Duster: Similar to that of its cloth counterpart, the extendable microfiber duster should be used for collecting dust and other dirty stains that are up high, in places where you wouldn't normally be able to reach. Since your dusting from above, you'll most likely have dust falling on the floor, be sure to hoover this up afterwards.

Lambswool Duster: Best used when dusting large surfaces or hard to get places such as lighting or behind radiators. Ideal too if you're looking for a duster to use on your surface, since its so gentle you won't risk marking or tearing the fabric.

Disposable Electrostatic Cloth: Perfect for polishing and cleaning dust prone tablets and TV or even computer screens. It picks up pet hair great too, which always handy if you're a cat lover like I am.

Homemade Carpet Freshener with Cinnamon

Using cinnamon to freshen up your carpet is a great and cheap way of getting that disgusting smell out of your living space and replacing it with a smell that is much more welcoming.

However don't be fooled, of course, we aren't going to go to our spice rack and sprinkle a little bit of cinnamon on our carpet, we have to mix up a solution first so the carpet can properly take in the fragrance and bring a delicious smell to our nose.

Place baking soda into a jar, any jar will do and puncture holes in the top of the jar lid, so it looks like a large salt or pepper shaker. Once you've done that, you can add a few drops of cinnamon to the concoction, the amount you want in there is up to you to experiment with it for a few weeks till you find an amount that is right for you and your home.

Once your mixture is ready, spread it about the house approximately one hour before vacuuming to ensure that you give the mixture enough time to do the trick.

Clean Windows with Vinegar and Newspaper

Wayback, we used to clean windows with our daily newspaper, then soon got lost in the times since more accessible window cleaning solutions were widely available as well as the tools needed to use them. However, if you're reminiscing of how you used to clean windows with vinegar and newspaper or you just prefer to do things on a budget, you are still able to clean your windows with a trusty newspaper with this particular solution.

What you need:

1 or more dirty windows

Newspaper (preferably already read)

Vinegar Window Spray

To create the vinegar solution you need to clean your windows, try a recipe of 2 cups of water, 1/4 cup of vinegar and 1/2 teaspoon of liquid soap. Mix that in well enough so that the ingredients are properly together and you have your window spray all ready to use.

Dip your newspaper into the jar/cup or whatever it is you have used to contain your solution in.

Use a circular motion to wipe all of the spots on the window off. Then once, all marks are off, switch your pattern to a vertical then horizontal stroke until the liquid has fully dried and spread across the surface area and you should be left with shiny and streak free windows.

If you still wish to clean your windows with newspaper, to be a greener home, but don't want to use your own vinegar window spray, Zoro has some great products that are an alternative to windex.

How to Clean Glass Windows Without Streaks

A common mistake my friends and I used to make was that we used to clean our windows when the sun was blazing hot because it makes sense right? What other time would you ever be outside cleaning your windows?

Well every window I touched when doing this at this time of day would streak and it used to drive me crazy that was unit after I found out how to clean glass windows without streaks thanks to a recommendation from another friend.

The thing is, blaring hot sun is great for drying things, but during the day when cleaning my windows it would dry out whatever solution I was using to fast therefore the windows would be streaked ridden.

Now, I always wash my windows when there are clouds in the sky, still, I have to pray it doesn't rain but at least they come out all shiny and clean once I've finished them without the assistance of the sun.

Wash Blinds in a Bathtub

Blinds are notoriously annoying in terms of being able to wash them;

You can't leave them hung up to clean because you're wont to be able to get all parts of the blinds due to how raised they are and sometimes scrubbing isn't enough on each blind.

And in addition, you can't take them down and clean them inside due to the amount of solution you may get everywhere and even if you take them outside they may even just get dirtier than before.

However, there is a more efficient way you can get them clean, you can wash blinds in a bathtub easily with a simple soap solution, I've given informative instruction of how to wash blinds in bathtub below

How to wash blinds in a bathtub

Simply lay your blinds flat in the tub that is a few inches deep with warm water., and add a mixture of some, you favourite dishwasher soap will do the trick, along with a little vinegar.

Let them soak for about an hour after this time rinse them off with some fresh water and hang them outside to give them a chance to dry, then put them back to wherever they were in the home.

How to Clean Your Home Like a Pro was originally published to keepitcartesian

[arsnovac12]

Blog Post 1

I go on runs from time to time when I’m back in Burbank, I enjoy keeping active, but it’s mostly an excuse to get out of the house. When I come home on holiday, I become confined to my parents house without any means of viable transportation. I have my drivers license, sure, but no car. My parents can’t afford to buy me one, and I can’t afford to get one myself. In fact, even if I could afford a car, I certainly couldn’t afford the insurance to go with it. Anyway, all this is to say I go on runs so I don’t feel too confined to my house.

That’s not very interesting, is it? Some things just tend to be that way. The life of a poor twenty-one year old white kid is never all that interesting in the first place. My life, my story, whatever it is, is not irregular. In fact, it’s one most people in America know very well, because it gets championed whenever one of us poor white kids gets rich and famous. Surprise, surprise, it happens pretty frequently.

So why write about it? I don’t know. Does it really matter if no one sees it in the first place? Maybe not. I guess I backed myself into a corner. If you’re reading this (if anyone is reading this) you’re probably expecting me to dive further in. Ultimately, you might say, there’s no point in agonizing over whether or not you’re going to talk about your life, because you already started writing a blog post about it, and it has to go somewhere. It does, doesn’t it? So why start with a lengthy preamble full of rhetorical questions? Besides being a clear literary crutch I’m struggling with, I think I feel indebted to having a conversation or dialogue about these things, as if to hide from some private guilt I have in telling any personal story. Writing has clearly become some sort of therapy to me, where I play both doctor and patient. The results are always inconclusive.

Anyway I should get back to the bullshit lede about running. Look, I like running, and it’s when my head is its most clear, so forgive me for using it as a starting point. Most of my ideas come to me when I run, so it was only fitting that it become the brief anecdote that starts a blog post that holds the kernel of what I’m going for. Which, now that I’m thinking about it, I didn’t really get to. Look at me, whining before I even finished my “insignificant thing is contorted into something profound” anecdote. Okay, I’ll finish the story:

I like to go on runs. I feel trapped at my house, and I like to get out. Anyway, whenever I run, I take the same path. It leads away from my house towards the park in the hills where people would take their prom photos back in high school. The path mostly runs parallel to the major streets and hits several large intersections on its way. In all, the run from the house to the park and back is about five miles. Yesterday, I reached the park and stopped for some water. This wasn’t irregular or anything, but I took my time and drank more that I usually would. Then, something compelled me to keep running. The hills in Burbank are filled with expensive homes, and near the top of the street, sort of tucked away, there’s a pretty large mansion that’s almost gothic in its design. Anyway, I guess it was my curiosity that drove me to keep going. To get a look at that mansion, and the others around it.

So, I kept running for another half mile or so to see this mansion. On the way up, the houses got larger and more impressive looking, and I was filled with a mounting sense of dread. Eventually I reached the cul-de-sac with the house on its end. Naturally the street, called Viewcrest if you can believe it, was the most decadent one yet. Their driveways were filled with expensive cars I don’t know the names of, carefully manicured lawns, and about ten security cameras lining every porch. I got closer to the end of the street where the imposing mansion was, but it was tucked away from the front and hardly visible. I didn’t get much closer than fifty or sixty feet. The drive way had a large black Hummer sitting in it; another, more psychological warning sign for someone like me to keep away.

I left pretty quickly after I got there. No one was out, but I couldn’t shake the feeling of being unwelcome. Before I turned the corner and left the street completely, I had the strange desire for someone to come out of their house and scold me for even coming there. In this fantasy, would I stand my ground, or run away as is fitting for my station? My brain firing it’s typically small amount of synapses couldn’t quite make it that far. Instead, I was caught up in the swell of what righteous injustice such a thing should muster.

This story isn’t very interesting, I know. Nothing really happens in it and there isn’t much imagery to it, but it caught me off guard as I thought about it again today. I had the idea to write about the experience soon after it happened while I was still running, but I, ever the proactive one, put it off. In sitting down with it today, I realize how full of shit I am.

Before I go on, I’ll give a little more context for my life. As mentioned briefly before, I’m a poor white kid. My parents are loving if occasionally abusive, or maybe abusive if occasionally loving. We live in my (deceased) grandmothers house and can’t afford any necessary repairs on it to make the place livable. My dad lost his job about a year and a half ago that was going to take him to retirement, now he works at target. My mother is a hoarder, not to the extreme you may have seen on television, but certainly well beyond what the general society might deem as healthy. She works just enough hours at the Disney Corporation’s day care so that they don’t have to give her full time benefits.

Two of my adult brothers still live at home, crowding the house further. They could, should they allot their funds correctly, afford to have their own place, but my parents discourage that sort of thing. Coming from lower middle class families, both of them have really only known economic uncertainty their whole lives. To have their children live lives separated from themselves means certain uncertainty. Plus, when you don’t have the kids at home, there’s no one left to accuse of being a burden.

I, more than any of my brothers, struggled against my parents to have a normal life. For a while I was pretty damaged; my parents fundamental conservatism really did a number on me. I was a hateful kid, saying cruel things to people that didn’t deserve it. When I got to high school, it took a little while, but I became a better person. Still prone to bouts of selfishness, I began to try a little harder for things. I quit running competitively in high school to join the theater, much to my parents chagrin, and also started dating. Naturally my parents tried putting a stop to both.

By the time I finished high school, I had cut ties with most everyone that knew me there. By its end, I had partially realized that I hadn’t progressed all that much as a person and was still rather selfish. My assumptions that people did not like me were eventually proven correct when I had finally done something that had made me worth disliking. I receded further into myself, even more aware of my deepest flaws.

Eventually I made it to college where I became more depressed than I had ever been before. Towards the end of the semester, my mom ordered me to call after weeks of ignoring her. During that phone call, I told her that I wanted to kill myself. Horrified, she said that they could afford to send me to therapy, I said no, it would be too much of a hassle and it would get to be too expensive. She was relieved and thus the matter was settled and never spoken of again.

So today, I sit in my crowded bedroom in my decaying house (yes, there are rats now) and try and write a story, a true story, about how running in the rich part of town made me sad. So often I am desperately seeking a new lede, some way to ease into the story of my life, so I come up with the flimsiest ones imaginable as opposed to just starting from the beginning. I’m no one I tell myself, so why bother in the first place? No one will read it anyway. But so often, I’m met with the same dull idea that I have a story worth telling. The cynic in me is so embarrassed to want to explain away my life that it has to invent a dialogue with no one to justify wanting to tell an over told story. The poet in me wants to make something beautiful out of my life, and will find any excuse to do so in the most meaningless of events. The realist is here with you trying to make sense of these two voices.

I am obsessed with artifice. Look anywhere in my life and you’ll see it. I’m a theater performance major. I sit at home alone and watch movies that very few people like to gage some sensationalist position on. I go running by major streets hoping that someone, anyone from my past will see me and say hello. I run to the park I took my prom pictures at for the hope that some ounce of high school happiness will be absorbed back into myself, so that I can pretend I didn’t lose all my friends from those years by being selfish. I run further into the hills because deep down I know it might lead to something worth writing about. Only to now finally realize there wasn’t much of a story there to begin with. There, or anywhere.

Self pitying is probably what most people would call this. I’ll probably call it that too. Maybe it’s a cry for help. Maybe. Or maybe it’s a desperate plea for attention from an empty audience, because the author thinks that’s most poetic of all.