#i traveled on thursday morning - super stressful - and came back on Sunday morning

[awaitingfall]

07.22.24

136.4

Crazy how it only took me 3 days to gain back the same amount of weight that took me 2 weeks to lose 😮‍💨 I really shouldn’t have smoked yesterday cuz I instantly got the munchies and started eating too late into the afternoon. I also ate almost an entire package of Tate’s cookies on our picnic we went on yesterday, AND my bf talked me into getting gelato on Saturday and we both ate too much of that 😭 I gotta be better on my period. I even told myself I’d regret all these choices when the day to finally weigh again came, but then I told myself “it’s the last day before I start my routine again, I deserve a treat” 🥲 I wish I had thought harder about the consequences.

So now my goal for this week is to get back to 133, and then if that goal is reached, my next goal will be 131 by the end of next week. AND THEN HOPEFULLY by the end of August/beginning of September I’ll be somewhere in the mid-120’s 🤞🏻

I had called out sick from work this past Thursday and the other girls ended up having to leave early anyways because there wasn’t enough work to do, I’m hoping there will be something for us to do today. OH! Speaking of work, I went to the mall on Friday with my mom to help her pick out a new pair of glasses and I mentioned to the girl that was helping us that I used to be the lab tech at the other glasses place in the mall and she offered me part-time work there cuz she ended up being the sales manager. I thought at first she was just saying that to be nice, but then she said it again as we were leaving. So that’s really cool I have a back up/side gig option if I feel like money is getting a little tight. I do miss working closer to home, but if I quit my current job that I really wanted to get back, then I’d only be working part-time and that definitely wouldn’t be enough money coming in. Maybe I can see about working part-time in the winter? Friday-Sunday, especially since I don’t do anything on the weekends in the winter time. I’ll just hustle a little to save up for a house and a trip to Japan (finally) 😌

My bf and I have been considering moving to Japan temporarily, especially with the way the US been actin’ up lately. He at least has some sort of an in, though, cuz the company he works for is a Sake brewery with their main headquarters in Japan, so he could tell them he’s interested in working for the main brewery and spending time there and they’d probably send him in a heartbeat. They like that shit. One of their requirements for the job was to be interested in Japan and Japanese culture. So they’d probably be so excited to hear that one of the American employees wants to experience life over there. Only thing is, idk if they’d also send me. I highly doubt it, so I’d have to come up with my own visa. I could get a student visa. I’ve been trying to learn Japanese since 2016 when I took elementary Japanese in college, but it’s been a struggle trying to self study since then. I know basics, but the speaking part is difficult for me because I have no one to practice with so I stutter and take way too long to think of the sentences before I try to speak. Just doesn’t flow naturally. So studying in Japan would be a great opportunity to get better. Only problem is I wouldn’t be bringing in any money 🥲 so idk. Plus we have our cat that we need to consider cuz I also don’t want to put her under so much stress traveling so far and long like that. Plus they have that animal quarantine and all her documents have to be sent over super far in advance. So yeah, it’s just a lot to take care of. It wouldn’t be as stressful if we didn’t have her, but our life wouldn’t be the same without her so I’m, grateful for my Chichi baby 🥹💕

(I can hear my bf playing one of those YouTube live Coffee shop jazz videos upstairs while he’s drinking his morning coffee lol he used to make fun of me for playing that as background noise in the morning, but he’s come to enjoy it now)

Okay! Today will be a great day! I already started on the right path by waking up at 5, then meditating, exercising, showering, and journaling. Now I’ve gotta feed my cat, feed myself, and get ready for a good day at work 😤

[alasy]

My mom literally got me crying

[loquaciousquark]

Talks Machina Highlights - Critical Role C2E63 (May 21, 2019)

Sorry it’s late, guys. @eponymous-rose has narrowly avoided being blown away by tornadoes and I’ve narrowly avoided drowning in equally dangerous paperwork, so here we are at the end of all things. Preroll is post-its of donors for Red Nose Day.

Tonight’s guests: Sam Riegel & Liam O’Brien.

Tonight’s announcements: We’re opened by Mark Hulmes instead of BWF. He dabs. No one blinks an eye. After the music open, we find out BWF’s neighbor’s kid stole his keys and then he lost his wallet. It hasn’t mattered, because he’s about to be Mr. Ashley Johnson & people just keep giving him what he needs. They’re still raising money for RedNoseDay. Thursday morning, the Colbert one-shot airs on the Critical Role Youtube. You can donate at critrole.com/rednoseday. Mark Hulmes joined Taliesin & BWF today for an episode available on the CR Twitch.

Episode 63: Intervention

CR Stats: Caleb cast his 700th spell, Gift of Alacrity, on Caduceus. Nott rolled her 40th natural 1 this episode to understand the local sewer system. This was Caduceus’s first HDYWTDT. Everyone mourns that someone stole the Golden Snitch from Matt’s bag.

It’s more stressful not knowing everyone’s motivations, both within the party and the game world. Sam talks about Yasha’s mysterious past and Beau’s dangerous ties to the Empire, especially given how much they understood in the first campaign about (at least) who the bad guys were. Sam feels like once they have a shred of information, he wants to jump on it ASAP and make big, bold decisions on them. He’s dealing with the discovery that this might be not as great an idea. He’s not experienced this kind of “trepidation, failure, uncertainty...I don’t like this game. I don’t like it at all!”

Caleb likes using the little bit of dunamantic magic as a taste of a drug--each little hit makes him want more and more and more.

Danimancy? Make a Carrcana check. Sigh, Sam.

Sam made two big mistakes in the last fight: he missed the gender of the dragonborn, so he thought that one of the other voices Matt was doing was actually the dragonborn giving orders (and therefore the one in charge, while the drow was the one taking orders). He also saw the dragonborn leaving and was worried that he was waiting on the party to give him (Nott) the go-ahead to kick things off. He recognizes he put Caleb in a terrible position both in a meta yes-and sense and in the Nott-Caleb team sense.

The world devolves into campaign slander and propaganda. Everyone’s in it, including BWF and Dani. #samforpresident

Caleb told the Brightqueen about his past because he feels like they’re on a very tight timeline, looking for very slight drips of information like gold. He thought it was worth the shot.

Sam desperately wants to know what the missing years in Yasha’s memory hold. BWF tells him to get what he can out of her while she’s here; her show’s been renewed for another season. He sounds genuinely bitter as he says it, but he notes at least it’s the last one. :(

They ask Mark Hulmes about what Charm does for people. He helpfully tells us it doesn’t say if they remember or not. Sam also points out Nott has blown up Caduceus before, so doing a few more points to Yasha is *wigglehands*.

Caleb did not mean to kill the horse on purpose. Sam tries to get him to confess that on camera, but instead Liam needles him about not cuddling Henry.

Cosplay of the Week: @andy_srivastava’s cosplay of Beau. Gorgeous!

Both Sam and Nott feel the fight’s outcome was his/her fault. He expects her to feel very guilty next week. Sam genuinely felt and still feels bad about it. He also prefers hashing out reactions the night things happen instead of having to wait a week for the next Thursday. He feels it’s more genuine.

Caleb is very worried about Jester’s mom and Astrid’s crew finding ways to use her mom as leverage. He’s also worried about the kid, but is glad Shakaste is going to get him. Liam also always imagined running into his old crew against the backdrop of the Empire, and is now very worried that if he runs into them soon he’ll have the added perception of being a traitor since they’re in the Dynasty.

Liam and Caleb both were surprised he was given hints of dunamancy so freely. He looks forward to learning more.

Liam totally understands how easy it is to miss things now. He’s constantly looking things up and reading in an attempt to understand his spells, and therefore missing parts of the battle. He greatly sympathizes with Marisha. Sam, on the other hand, is finding it hard to adapt to rogue life; he doesn’t like the necessary “out there, bold choice” nature of rogues in D&D and having the pressure of making big decisions very fast. He prefers Scanlan’s nature of sitting in the back, casting spells, and being more reactionary than instigatory. Liam always is afraid of picking the wrong spells, and finds it much harder than Vax. BWF: “Dagger dagger dagger...dagger dagger dagger dagger?” Liam: “I kept track of that fine, it’s everyone else that was wrong.”

Sam is shocked the D&D Beyond campaign bit has dragged on. BWF calls his rebuttal “bogusly weak,” and Sam looks genuinely aghast. It’s hilarious. “I don’t know how he got to you, Brian, but this feels like coming on Fox News! You’re a partisan hack! I won’t take it anymore, but I love attention, so I will stay.”

Nott is super interested in the dodeca’s ability to give people different bodies, but Caleb is still the clearest path to getting her body back. It’s complicated because the Dynasty souls are “chosen” and Nott’s not likely to be so.

Liam is very excited to see this magic system Matt has created in dunamancy. Did he create it in response to Liam or had he already thought about it? Sam tells us he’s always been thoughtful about fate and the subverting of it. Liam is so pumped because in campaign one, fate strings existed and were uncontrollable, but in campaign two we’ve “developed physicists, tinkering.”

In re: Essik, Nott’s just happy Caleb has found a friend. She wishes he’d bring him home more often.

Sam finally busses Henry’s cheek and affirms to us that he actually loves dogs. Everyone in his family is voting for a new dog except for his daughter, who wants a cat.

Liam doesn’t want everything to be cat-themed, but likes retouching a few spells here and there for flavor. He also wanted to differentiate it from Scanlan’s Bigby’s Hand. Sam thinks he should reskin more spells.

SPOILERS FOR C1 IN THIS QUESTION. Sam talks about rogue high-stakes moments as genuinely, surprisingly stressful. Liam says Vax was stressful but exhilarating, especially when it came to moments that conflated poor meta decisions vs roleplay decisions. He specifically mentions Raishan’s chase as a terrible in-game decision but one that was right for the character. He and Sam will always do what’s right for the character, even if it’s bad narratively in the moment. Sam says he got a lot of support from the group thread this past week, though. END SPOILERS FOR C1.

Fanart of the Week: a gorgeous Caduceus portrait by @larndraws.

Nott trusts Shakaste to get Luke traveling safely. Sam also drops a bombshell on the world by telling us Luc is spelled Luc. It’s just that no one’s ever asked. Heavens!

Caleb’s made an effort to tell people he cares for them, but he fears it at the same time. He’s afraid he’s going to be put in a position where he needs it too much. Brian asks if he believes he’s truly irredeemable: Liam says there’s a certain road where he could feel he atoned, and there’s a road that might lead to balance, but there’s never a brass ring that he could reach that could let him relax entirely. I don’t entirely understand the metaphor, but I get what he means.

Sam likes that the theme of this campaign seems to be “atonement and reconciliation” compared to the first campaign’s “finding family.” There’s a bit of that in this campaign too, but he likes how everyone has something in their past that they’re clinging to, and he’s interested to see who will be able to resolve it, who will be able to handle it, and who won’t be able to let it go.

Mark Hulmes come on to talk about the Stream of Descent, which happened last weekend. He’s the DM for High Rollers, which airs at 9am Pacific on Sundays.

BWF talks about how C1 had a lot of the Hero’s Journey in various forms, and C2 feels a lot like “what it means to be good.” He doesn’t feel they fit the “antihero” archetype very well.

Liam thinks that if Caleb were going to leave the campaign, he’d have done it already.

Part of Caleb’s generation was to create a character the world would shun, and seeing if he could find a way to find compassion for them. He mentions the poem written for the Boston marathon bomber a while ago. BWF talks about how it’s a really interesting character choice because it depends on the rest of the table being willing to stick around and seek out that redeemable quality in your character, even when you’re making decisions that are true to the character but bad for the table/the rest of the group. You can’t always expect that to work with every group you play with.

Mark talks about Calliana being the other end of the spectrum from Caleb, because she also has a history of having done very terrible things, but she was taken in by a family who helped her understand she’d been manipulated and it was not her fault. He’s desperate for his recently mentioned package to be picked up because she has some messages for Caleb in it. Now she tries to see the best in everyone she meets as a result of her history. He has a whole folder of fanart of Calliana on his wall. Awwww.

It’s still never gotten old for Liam or Sam either.

Mark endorses Sam for President. Good job, foreign fellow. Is it Thursday yet?

[swampgallows]

blizzcon recap, basically a big stream of consciousness text dump while i still remember things and i will make a refined post later i think

Thursday morning I went to bed around 3am, woke up at 630am, and then again at 730am to board my 840am train bound for anaheim. I had originally intended to drive myself to the con but decided against it, as I didn’t want to pay $60 for parking nor endure the stress of driving on the freeway solo for the first time. 

I took a lyft to my hotel and met up with sun​ (who gave me kandi!!!) and their husband aaron, then we went to claim our badges and make some store purchases.

after feverishly texting reglei we caught sight of each other in line, got tired of waiting, then made our way to disneyland. there we met up with zach and kept missing fitze by mere moments; finally caught fitze & friends at the river belle terrace (a place i have never been in before because despite my many years of being a passholder, there was never a reason or time for a sit-down restaurant experience at disney, so when i opened the door i IMMEDIATELY closed it thinking i was intruding on a private dinner event LMAO). we knocked out everything on the western side of the park (including a fry-filled splash mountain) and got some good pics. the ride on indy was one of the best i’ve had in years: no stalling, great speed, and tons of jerks that nearly threw me out of the jeep hell yeah. perce made it to disneyland in the evening and we got to enjoy space mountain, star tours, a second round of pirates, a VERY invigorated spin on the teacups, then left at closing. zach generously dropped us all off at our individual hotels before heading out himself.

around 2am i woke up convulsing with an anxiety attack and took half a med. i was scared i had woken up sun and aaron but they were coincidentally also awake. after some talking and goofing off with them we made the very informed decision to postmates some del taco to the hotel at 3am. my god was it worth it. i had selected the “fries and secret sauce” option, unaware that these ingredients were not sides, but components to be added to the inside of the burrito. wasn’t bad!

7am wake up for day 1 of the con. met for “breakfast” with perce and reg at the hilton starbucks, which said that they accepted rewards but then didn’t :| i sincerely dont even remember what we did first as everything in the con was so purely awesome and overwhelming. The opening ceremony brought tears to my eyes, of course, as it displayed “WELCOME HOME” on every stage. We mostly just traveled around the con, taking pics, learning the layout, and mentally digesting everything. We attended the VA panel in the early afternoon which was a GREAT decision (no spoilers if you haven’t watched the virtual ticket stream yet!!!) and then made our way to the main stage, where we parked for a good 5-6 hours for the WoW and HotS “What’s next?” panels, then the following WC3 reforged insight panel and, finally, the entire community night. i really want to make sure i grab clips of some of darin de paul’s mcing that night because the man was sawing at my heartstrings like a viola bow. i got very close to crying many times. have no fear put on another amazing performance—this time a wow track called “war mode”—and won the talent contest! we had the privilege of running into them after the performance to congratulate and get some pics w them. i also met up with hinz who i haven’t seen in forever and we got to talk about his brewing and the con! had blaze pizza for dinner then passed out.

breakfast at coco’s for day 2 of the con, this time with sun and aaron in tow. all i needed was hot cocoa and a slice of dark chocolate chip cheese pie. it was...so goddamn good. we started off the con with the warcraft sounds panel featuring the zone of drustvar and concluded with some great performances by david arkenstone and the tavern band. they performed the zandalari zocalo music and bloodsail, an old favorite! we puttered around the darkmoon faire until the build-a-panel featuring zone design in warcraft but couldn’t hear anything due to the acoustics of the stage, so i left to pick up my blink purchases with fitze. there i met a girl wearing kandi and traded with her; she gave me a rubber bracelet from a podcast she’d attended called ‘pwncast’ that reads ‘we bow to no one’ which is VERY garrosh. other than that we had a grand old time of waiting in a line we didnt have to wait in and then made our way back for the warcraft Q&A. the second i saw metzen i immediately screamed with awe and terror and then sobbed into my lap. perce and reg comforted me, and the rest of the panel was fairly uneventful. I think i was the one human being who shouted ‘woo!’ at the scott johnson’s mention of his interviews with metzen, lol. we were waiting for meggo to have a chance to ask her question but she didn’t get the opportunity :(

after the q&a we went over to the unofficial tumblr meetup organized by questifer which was a huge privilege and a lot of fun, and we even made some new friends. i spilled my spaghetti about garrosh to actual blizzard quest developers and im very embarrassed that i did. lmao. i really liked the casual atmosphere of just chilling on the floor though. fitze had to leave halfway through :( but the quest discussion went on for almost 2 full hours. it was really a humbling opportunity.

by that time, the closing ceremonies were underway. reg and i missed out on the hots finals so we just bummed around the overwatch arena for a bit just to see the thing and catch a few minutes of kristian nairn’s set. again, cool stuff, but nothing i can go nuts to lmao. it’s questing music to me. on our way out of the hots stage i ran into a dude wearing KIKWEARS and gave him kandi!! it was awesome lmao. we spent some ducats at the darkmoon faire, but the real prize was won as we were walking out and scored the literal actual absolute last three available boxes of lucio-ohs!!! mine had a hole punched in it so we ate a bit of it before returning to blaze pizza for dinner again. the cereal tastes like lucky charms to me! it’s very sweet, but good!

sunday morning perce, reg, and i secured a breakfast at dennys. when i went up to pay the check i saw the cashier was wearing a piece of kandi and i had the perfect piece for her, the “short stack” piece with the pancake eraser. she traded me the one piece she was wearing (!) which said ‘insomniac’ (obv haha). i made that kandi a while ago and it feels like it was fate for this moment to arrive. reg and perce and i all parted ways back to our individual hotels. i was just chilling in the lobby when i saw a woman wearing kandi, so i went over and introduced myself. she traded me a piece that said mermaid on it, due to my “mermaid hair” :> we started talking about phat pants and she said her daughters now wear the pairs she used to wear! and the kandi she chose was the “a book for ants” with the miniature bible on it, as she found it appropriate for her halloween “christian protest” where she blasted tchami and malla and had a totem that encouraged ‘sinners’ to dance with her, lol.

i excused myself for the restroom and she invited me to “come back and hang out!” so i did!! and when i returned the group was playing a fun card game called chameleon. and have no fear was playing with them!! daniella, one of the performers from the talent contest (they sang the song about vanilla wow), had also joined us. so i got to play the game with a few members of the group and made some new friends, leigh (who gave me kandi) and jaime/ace, who i talked to about old school raving and kandi for a bit. there was a point where everyone but ace went up to the room for their luggage so it was just the two of us sitting there talking, and a pair of guys came up to us holding some merch. “Do you guys want these? we bought too many loot crates.” i was stunned!! they handed me a shadow plush and a clip-on ganymede to ace.

when they all returned, they were trying to plan what to do next, and i told them i had to grab a lyft and start heading to the train station. leigh offered me a ride there!!! i really felt PLUR for the first time in ages, lmao. we all hugged each other and said our goodbyes.

arriving at the train station, i ran into other blizzcon people and we talked about wow the ENTIRE ride home. for the first leg of the journey it was a super full train and we all had to stand but it was okay. we were all enthusiastically talking about wow with zero awkward pauses or any points of contention. it was so amazing just thriving on each other’s hype. at one point another person on the train said “do you guys play this game or MAKE this game?” because we were talking about it in such detail LOL. we all traded battletags before i had to go. it felt really amazing to be able to just literally talk to strangers about something i love and have such an amazing conversation like that. it felt so awesome to just be connecting to people so deeply all the time. 

im going to try to preserve the memory of being able to connect to people like that, as i came home and felt isolated and disconnected from everything again. i want to keep riding the coattails of this positivity as long as i can so i’m not going to go into the details of that. a lot of us really felt we could come out of our shells; i kept stressing how “safe” blizzcon was; with all of the focus i’ve been making in therapy on vulnerability, connection, isolation, and the need to feel worthy of being loved, i want to keep these memories at the forefront while i try to forge a better future for myself.

i really hope i can go again next year!

[bloopbeepfuck]

forgot to update for a month but school just started last week. i am so stressed already fml but ima write in here instead of doing homework...so yeah end of last month he visited me and we got an airbnb in south sf because i wasn’t moved out yet. i took him to my favorite park in dolores and that’s basically our ‘first date.’ We drank beer and napped at the park then got b-rite ice cream. i can’t even remember anything since it’s a while ago but i drove down to santa barbara because irene’s brother had orientation and derrick asked if i wanted to drive down a few days earlier so he can pick me up in sb and spend thurs and fri with him then drive me back on saturday. so that’s what we did. 4.5 hrs was dreadful omg but the moment i see him standing there waiting for me makes it all ok again. i got out of my car and hugged him. even though it has only been two weeks since i last saw him, i was still so excited. it didn’t feel like forever though, i am actually pretty content with how much we see each other. we were basically in the car all day on thursday, and on friday when we woke up we were like hmm what should we do? and he went out the door and came back into his room with two disney passes which were his sisters and her sisters boyfriends. so we went to disney! i haven’t been in a year and a half. it was fun he told me he had passes with his ex before so he would go a lot but he hasn’t been in two years. it was super hot tho but i still had a lot of fun. on saturday he drove me back to sb and we picked irene up and hung out a little then he drove back. i spent the weekend in sb and it was pretty nice. drove back home on sunday and moved in to my new apartment on monday. then went to seattle from tuesday to friday with pearl. it was an amazinggggg trip honestly the best way to end my summer break even though i literally did not have a summer break because of classes. So yeah, school started last week but since it was just syllabus week and stuff there weren’t a lot of work so i went to vegas and i dont even know where to begin omg it was the most fun i had in a long time. a different kind of fun than seattle of course. I loved seattle because it was a lot of traveling here and there and we pretty much went to all the spots we wanted to go there. vegas was so fun because i was so lit the whole weekend it was even better than the first vegas trip in june. plus this time derrick and i were actually talking LOL (he didn’t talk to me last vegas trip at all even though he claims he already liked me during that trip) the first night i dont know why they were all tired and left ebc at like 1am and thao and i wanted to stay and wait til slander so we did and they went to get tacos and then back to the hotel. but literally just before we went in ebc i was so fucked up i yakked three times and they all thought i wasn’t going to get in but i did because andrea never dies!!!!!!! this is how i come back to life i usually yak and alcohol is out of my system, but i was stil super lit and so thao and i had so much fun just dancing and we were in the front for a while then somehow thao made eye contact with somebody in the backstage so we went backstage and i could literally touch slander lol omg. second day it was drais and zeds dead was LITTTTT. i didn’t drink as much but i was just in the water dancing with derrick the whole time basically. then that night we saw zedd but derrick and i were tired so we headed back a little earlier so yeah back to reality now i took the bus back home on monday and went to class this morning. have to wake up at around 7 on tues and thurs fml but its all good. going to nocturnal in two weeks so i can get e love w my bb<3

[ericvick]

Readers share what it's like to go house hunting in Mass.

Have you been to an open house lately? You’ve probably experienced the frenzy. Maybe you toured a home only to hear the real estate agent say an offer has already been made on the house, sign unseen. Perhaps the process is too frustrating, and you’ve decided to rent. 

We recently asked readers to share their stories of what it’s like to house hunt in Massachusetts. We received a wide range of stories from the “unbelievably lucky” to the “very bizarre.” Many readers were surprised at the state of the homes they toured — and the number of competitive offers they’ve made without success.

Below, we feature 10 responses from readers. 

Do you have your own unbelievable house hunting story? Share it with us here or e-mail [email protected]. 

‘We were unbelievably lucky’

“We are still in shock,” Kate in North Attleborough wrote. After the pandemic hit, Kate wanted more space than her one-bedroom in Boston. With her lease up in October, she started house hunting in May. “We started looking in anticipation of a difficult search. On our first day meeting our real estate agent, the 2nd house we looked at was being built and would be ready in October. Put an offer in and it was accepted,” she wrote. “That was it, one day of looking at homes and our first offer we put in was accepted. We waited a while to tell some of our friends because one was on their 10th offer and still no house. We were unbelievably lucky.” 

‘Wheel yourself around to the washer’

Don in Charlestown recalled a house he visited where the washing machine was located in a basement that was only 5 feet high. Then he noticed a number of chairs on wheels. “So to use the washer, let’s say (unless you were willing to stoop the entire time), you would sit in one of these chairs and wheel yourself around to the washer and wherever else you needed to go,” he wrote. “The house also had a stocked trout pond and the trout were obviously hungry. The broker would throw a handful of fish food into the pond and the water would erupt with starving trout. At any rate we did not buy this house and never learned why the basement was 3 feet short. We just hope the trout survived.”

‘No offers were made that day’

Brandon Moss of Boston was house hunting in the Bridgewater and Lakeville areas with more than a few unusual touring experiences. One of them included a floor-to-ceiling pile of beer cans and boxes inside an enclosed porch and “a bedroom set up in the basement adjacent to the boiler (without windows), which eerily reminded me of Sloth’s living quarters in ‘Goonies,’ ” he wrote. Moss continued on to another house “where renovations were half-complete. When asked the status, the occupant indicated that it was the ex’s fault (clearly the marriage broke up in the midst of renovations).” Moss added, “Suffice it to say that no offers were made that day.”

‘Very bizarre’

Jennifer in Natick was house hunting in Needham when she walked through a highly monitored home that may have been owned by a family that also ran a dry-cleaning business. “They had a family member sitting like a statue in each room that we entered to protect against theft, I guess. They didn’t speak but just freaked people out as they walked through the house and entered each room. They also had a complete dry-cleaning clothes rack system in their basement, just like a dry-cleaner, filled with clothes. It was very bizarre,” she wrote.  

‘Naked in bed during the inspection’

“Looking to buy a house we inspected one that was currently being rented. The two people who lived there were naked in bed during the inspection time,” Kelly in Brookline wrote. 

‘The attached garage which held our future soundproofed party pad was actually 7 feet over the property line’

Richard in Boston shared his house hunting experience in the southwest region of the city back in 2007. “[I] was looking at a bungalow that came with, of all things, a recording studio. We made an offer only to discover that the attached garage which held our future soundproofed party pad was actually 7 feet over the property line, on land owned by the town. There was no way any mortgage company would grant a loan for something like that even in those days. The seller suggested we could move in anyway and rent it until it got sorted out! Then they offered to convert the studio into a small office with the bonus of a window. Our realtor wisely advised against it and the last we heard was the seller had to demolish the offending section of the house before putting it back on the market. Yikes!”

‘There were 30 other offers like ours’

“I think the process as a whole is just crazy!” Gina wrote. She sold her condo in March with more than 100 people touring the space and selling in less than five days. “That was the easy part,” she wrote.

The Waltham resident went on to share what it’s like to be house hunting in the Worcester area since December. “Each week we see anywhere from 2 to 6 houses for about 15 mins because that is all that is allowed with our agent in towns from Bolton to Grafton,” she wrote. She noted that sometimes children aren’t allowed at showings, so she has to leave her 6-year-old daughter with family. 

“Then comes the Sunday scramble — we can only put one offer on one house. So we come up with the best offer that includes things we are willing to waive (heat system upgrade, bank appraisal, etc.) to be competitive. We look at comps in the neighborhood, well water tests and disclosures from the current owner. Then we furiously sign document after document to get our final offer in by Monday morning with a friendly letter to the sellers about our family,” Gina wrote. “Then we wait to hear that we didn’t actually get the house because there were 30 other offers like ours. Unfortunately we haven’t closed on our house yet so most sellers don’t want to take a chance that our sale will fall through. It is a stressful process but made even more stressful because we have to do it all over again each week.”

‘The open house was a literal frat party’

“We looked at a home directly on the water in Winthrop a few years ago that had dropped its price to 100K, well below what it was worth and the open house was a literal frat party,” Gabriella in Winthrop wrote. With so many people viewing the property, and all the stuff the owner had accumulated, it was hard to move around the house. “The living room wall was being held up by a beach chair and the bedroom windows were covered in black trash bags. People were going around peeling wallpaper off the walls to see the condition of the plaster and pulling up corners of rugs to see the floors. … We ended up buying a house a few streets over, but the owner still hasn’t sold despite many, many offers.” 

‘It’s truly a marathon not a sprint’

Paul and his wife in the South End have been going to open houses every weekend since October. The couple have been looking to buy in the suburbs “from Weston down to Hingham,” always submitting an offer at or above the asking price. According to Paul, when January hit, “things really heated up.”

“The first house we submitted an offer on was in Wayland for a house $729K. At the 1st showing (which was basically 10 minutes because there was a line of 30 people out the door on a Thursday) we submitted an offer for full asking price, no contingencies, close in 30 days. The realtor didn’t even get back with us! We only found out 3 days later that the house was under agreement and sold for $70K over asking. You would think this house was a funeral home because it looked like there was a wake line outside. … Lastly, my wife and I went to go see a home this past Wednesday in sleeeeepy Sherborn. When I say this house was in the woods, deep in the woods! At 12:45PM on a Wednesday in March, there were 25 cars on the street for a home that was asking $985,000. … Not disclosed to the average buyer looking at the pretty Zillow listing: The septic tank was 31 years old and hadn’t been pumped in 6 years! It was a beautiful home but we are staying away because of the underground details. Not to mention there’s a freight train that runs by the house at night and blows the horn. Little details that you pick up on when you do your research! 

It’s super disheartening out there but I think it’s truly a marathon not a sprint. Once people get vaccinated and people want to travel once again this summer, I am hoping the competition dwindles.”

‘Incredibly frustrating, I decided to rent’

“I’ve made five offers in the South Shore over the course of eight months. The last house I didn’t get I was told by the seller’s agent that I had the highest offer, (significantly over asking, no contingencies) but they picked buyers that are more ‘similar to their family situation’ because of the letter they wrote. I think that could be discrimination? Incredibly frustrating, I decided to rent,” Kelly in Canton wrote.

Subscribe to the Globe’s free real estate newsletter — our weekly digest on buying, selling, and design —at pages.email.bostonglobe.com/AddressSignUp. Follow us on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter @globehomes.

[thejosh1980]

Travel Update #19 - Quarantine Day 11

Originally Posted on Friday 18th September 2020

Well I woke up today early yet again…. I think I was awake before 3am, I definitely was out of bed by 3:30.

I feel pretty down again too…

I had a bit of a breakdown the other night. The stress, tiredness and missing a special someone from Germany got to me. I know I’m not Superman but (unfortunately) I expect myself to have super human strength in these trying times...

These moments of despair are happening more often than in the past. I just don’t realise how stressful it all is until it overwhelms me. I have to remind myself, to remind myself, that we did move (half way around the world) in a pandemic situation, with delayed flights, too many goodbyes (and so far not one hello) and quarantine go through.

It's been 6 months of constant worries... No wonder I'm loosin' it!!

I make sure that I have a lot to do here, I tend to deal with any of my issues by keeping busy. I don’t ignore them as much as I find time helps, and the best way for me to pass the time, is to keep busy. But usually one needs motivation to keep busy, and that is lacking… I have to really force myself to focus on things… To be honest my “to do” list is long, and I am overwhelmed by it…

I know, I am my worst enemy… I'm working on it...

The 4 walls do creep in on you. My world has gotten so small, I am starting to worry about the outside world! Will I be able to just go shopping without anxiety attack?? What is “normal” life like these days? Has it changed a lot since they locked me in here? Questions to be answered in the future…

I am thankful for the phone calls and messages I receive each day. So much love and support, it really goes a long way to putting a smile on my face. Thank you.

Now, to change the subject, lets go back a few days…

Tuesday both breakfast and dinner were late!!! Shock!! Horror! … It’s those little things that matter the most these days… Alexanne was howlin’ for her dinner! She was Hangry!!! Usually our delivery comes later rather than early, but if we expect it latest 19:30, then 19:31 is not good enough! At least it made us laugh… Honestly the meals have been very good and varied… A little “heavy” but I'm sure we'll loose the quarantine weight once we get out of here and can finally spend some time on the beach ;)

We got fresh sheets and towels!!!

I chose to have a bit of a lazy Wednesday… After receiving a bunch of phone calls (walking for hours in the bathroom as to not wake Alex), I took my first nap during the day since being in here… It felt like a bit of a Sunday. Relaxed… TV… some reading… But that was the night the anxiety and stress got the better of me… Maybe because I wasn’t tired enough to just fall asleep as soon as my head hit the pillow… My mind was racing… The day started good, but it didn’t end well…

It could have been the health check phone call or the daily police visit that messed me up… I mean, they call and you have to wake up… they knock and you have to wake up… Pretty unfair when you’re napping…!!! But in the end, they’re just doing their job… Ever since the “runner” the other week, the police come round to check your name off a list… Maybe it’s a government requirement… I do know the daily health phone calls by the nurses are a requirement, in an attempt to preempt any health issues… Yesterday I was offered sleeping tablets, but I can barely bring myself to take ibuprofen let alone sleeping pills…!!

Thursday, after the mess from the night before, I attacked the morning with focus and positivity. I peeled and ate a mandarin!! Shock!! Horror!!!

Like usual, I woke early, and I walked on the balcony most of the morning while listening to a live stream (Slapsteam). It was really cool to spend so much time outside. During the morning, I could see lots of folks down below leaving with their families or in taxi’s… I was a bit jealous, but we are over the hump… Not long to go now… Like usual, I took a few phone calls too…

Between the balcony, bathroom and the phone calls, I managed to walk 13 kilometres or 20,000 steps!!

The news that the Aussie caps would be lifted came in today. It’s a step in the right direction 4,000 to 6,000 per week, but it’s not enough… There’s still too little being done to support stranded Aussies and to get them home… So much in house fighting and State and Federal Government playing the blame game… It’s so hard to describe how this all feels, and unless you go through it, you really don’t know how you’d react or feel… But I can tell you, I’m very disappointed and saddened by my country turning it’s back on fellow Aussies…There’s still no long term plan… and COVID is going to be here for a long time…

I wrote to the local Labor Senator Penny Wong and Health Minister Stephan Wade in my attempt to get access to the park outside the hotel. 3/4 of the hotel rooms don’t have an opening window, and folks are suffering. Fresh air and direct sunlight are really important, especially in these times… I haven’t heard back…

Honestly the social media thing is wearing me down, and I am finding myself less and less online… Have you seen our stories on IG or FB?? I am posting less and less, because I just don’t want to log in and read another heartbreaking and disappointing story. Nor do I want to read comments from folks who’s opinion is very unsympathetic or understanding.

I did manage to focus enough on the Ukulele for an afternoon, figuring out a few songs I might be able to play if I go live on the weekend. I don’t feel very confident, it’s definitely not my strongest instrument… The other problem is the timing, to allow Europeans and Aussies to watch… My initial thoughts are Saturday morning German time/Saturday evening Aussie time… I’ll keep you posted…

We also got to vacuum the room on Thursday. I’ve never seen Alex so happy to have “Henry" in her hands! ;)

Qatar sent me a refund for the 30/09 flight we canceled (after boarding the Singapore flight)… At least that’s a little less financial worry we have…

Alright, so that brings us to this morning, 6:30am Friday morning… After my little cry this morning, I began writing, now the sun is starting to rise, and I hope that today will feel better than those last few down moments I’ve had recently…

Writing down my experiences here has been therapeutic for me… I usually write songs about what’s going on…. Story telling taking on a new form… Always good to try something new...

I appreciate your comments and messages… Thank you everyone…

Stay safe

Josh and @dauntlesscoffee

[memorylang]

Evacuation | #27 | February 2020

The night of Wednesday, Feb. 26, I received an email all Peace Corps Volunteers were evacuating Mongolia. I could hardly process it. 

I took notes and resolved I’d revisit these moments. Now, through these next tales, I take you through the horror, sadness and wonder of indefinitely leaving that nation I thought I’d call home 27 months. I was there just nine. 

Profoundly, when I first committed last June to starting this Peace Corps Mongolia blog, I expected to write 27 stories—one for every month I’d serve in Mongolia. Well, here's my 27th story.

Amid those frantic days nonetheless came a comforting thought—My path through murky woods lost fright when I remembered, follow light.

Tsagaan Sar's Ash Wednesday: The Endless Night

After reading our email command to leave Mongolia, I reaffirmed to my supervisor sitting beside me, I meant what I said, that I wanted to keep in touch and help, no matter where I am. She seemed OK. My supervisor dropped me off in front of my apartment building. I thanked her for inviting me to my last Tsagaan Sar Lunar New Year’s dinner. I hoped we’d see each other again. 

I escaped the cold, ascending my building’s inside stairwell. I got another call. This one came from my kind sitemate, concerned how I felt about our evacuation email. I just laughed hysterically. 

Laughing’s how I cope. I thought both, “This is really happening. Is this really happening?” 

I assured I’d help her. She and our sitemate who called me earlier were still stranded another province over. They couldn’t even see their homes again before leaving Mongolia. I promised I’d hand off the spare key she left me to her colleague and help any way I could. 

Here’s what’s crazy. My city’s under a day’s drive from the capital. Our email listed Peace Corps would drive out to collect Volunteers as early as the next day. So, I could have to leave my city in under 24 hours, ready or not. I got a carry-on and one checked bag. Donate the rest, or pack it for Peace Corps to ship. 

I kept climbing the staircase. Our sitemate who called me at dinner messaged me. I wrote back I read the email. I’d be in my apartment soon. They were right—This was a lot to process. I wasn’t sure I’d be ready to video call that night, for what they needed. But I’d help all the way. A checklist would help me. 

I was almost to my floor. I knew this evacuation would feel more real with every place I went, chat I had and person I saw. 

But—bizarrely—I felt prepared. 

I knew this stress. I had to pack like this before.

That Great Stress: The Endlessness

Finally at my floor, I got back to my apartment. 

I kept feeling how that morning three years ago, how I felt when I learned my mother was dead, prepared me for these very hours. 

When I got that call Mom was killed, Dad told me I needed to—during my uni’s finals week—cut my semester, pack everything, leave my community, board a plane the next day, and fly home. Then I knew, I’d fly straight for China after reuniting with Mother at her funeral. Sobbing at 19 in my dorm, thinking Mom ripped from me was disconcerting enough, I felt overwhelmed. 

To fly from my college town to home and then abroad, I needed to pack anything I thought I’d need for both home and my life on our Pacific’s other side. 

This time—comparable—felt different. 

I’m 22, leaving a country. But I committed this Lent, which began this very day, Ash Wednesday, to call on God's help for the strength He provides. 

When Mom died, I alerted my clubs and orgs I had to go. This time, I alerted community groups. But I didn’t want to juggle messages. So I revealed it first to a select few. Three years ago, I walked down the hill to my church and saw our pastor there. This time, I wrote first to those local American friends. 

I sought prayers. I let them know Peace Corps Mongolia was officially evacuating back to the U.S. For that reason, I’d be packing. My driver could arrive as early as the next evening to get me. But our managers would call each of us the next day with specifics.

To anyone I couldn't see before I left, I reaffirmed I felt so glad I could meet them. They touched my heart, strengthened my faith, and taught me why my favorite country during high school is truly among Earth’s most amazing.

I closed in stating this was a trying time for us all, but I'm so glad God let me celebrate my entire Tsagaan Sar in Mongolia. I invited people to tell others I'm leaving, and I’d learn later whether I can return. 

I know God has the power to make anything possible. Whatever His wish, may His will be done.

My community offered their prayers and hoped to see me again. I felt glad. 

I felt, even as this chapter of my service ends, more certainly than ever, my life with Mongolia has only begun.

Assessing My Situation: The Endless Night

After sending my dramatic messages to my community, I brewed tea. I gazed over my rooms. I had a long night before me. 

The month before, my friend from Peace Corps China shared with me his cohort’s traumatic evacuation back to the States. Now I get mine. He joined Peace Corps Mongolia, too. Now this. 

I considered calling my Catholic Peace Corps Volunteer friend. He’s a Health Volunteer, after all. 

Then that friend called me. 

My friend described his peace about our circumstances. He actually foresaw us getting evacuated, once our Peace Corps emergency phases to stay alert and restrict travel began. He studied pandemics in his past life and recognized COVID-19 would get graver before it gets better. Plus, when he emailed staff about wanting to take time abroad, they suggested he hold off till an announcement. So, when that announcement came, he didn’t feel so surprised. 

I appreciated my friend’s call. He reminded me I’m a good guy, too. I need to focus on my packing. Let the rest fall into place. God gave me strength and a calming friend in this one. We committed to keeping in touch. 

Packing the Endless Night

The rest of that Ash Wednesday night’s largely lost to my recollection. I brewed plenty more tea to get me through. I prayed for peace and fortitude and felt waves of gratitude at various hours. Beyond these, below are some few moments I recall. 

I felt glad knowing fellow Peace Corps Volunteers around our country stayed awake. I wasn’t alone. Whether stress or fellow early pick-up fears kicked in, we suffered together. 

Pleasantly, I realized, Wednesday was my final 'normal' day in Mongolia. And that day, I reaffirmed to locals not once but three times why I came to Mongolia, that I love Mongolia, and why I love Mongolia. I felt glad.

As I packed up a Thanksgiving gift, I noticed some of my students complimented feeling thankful I'm "loyal." At that time, I felt surprised they felt that way, considering they knew me only three months. Maybe they saw in me something I didn’t see so clearly. Maybe God had a point. 

Packing for Another: The Endless Night’s Day

Rumor had it I packed for another Peace Corps Volunteer, which was correct. This was for my sitemate stranded away. I missed them. 

Originally I feared having to pack their apartment Wednesday night, but a thought came to me to request coming in the morning, instead. 

My greatest fear was potential drunkards wandering around from Tsagaan Sar's final night. There was also a cop allegedly staring at my apartment building because two Mongolians who flew in Coronavirus-afflicted Korea live here. I didn’t want any situation when I’d need to explain in broken Mongolian why I wasn’t inside quarantining. 

I cared about them and I could relate to feeling concerned. But I needed to make sure my mind and body were secure, too, when I visit. 

Waiting till morning afforded me more time to get my things in order, so I'd feel calmer getting my sitemate’s things the next morning. Plus, I got sunlight to walk over, especially with new ice and snow. 

Serious Scavenger Hunt: The Endless Night’s Day

At 8 a.m. daybreak after my night of less than an hour’s rest, I walked down a few apartment buildings to my sitemate’s. 

When anyone seemed surprised I packed for another, I replied it's what sitemates are for. It’s what I could do, staying when others left. It's what we Volunteers do—help each other. 

I spent an hour on video call with my sitemate, on what felt a critical hunt. Despite stress, I felt somewhat honored, entrusted to find their belongings and secure them. I liked getting to remotely make their things work. 

After our call, I photographed rooms and progress. They gave me tips how to pack things well. I’d never worked with much of that stuff before... 

I stuffed a colossal hiking backpack, filled a camera bag, crammed a duffel and took care of important books and decorations. They said, leave the rest. Before my phone died, ending our communication, I made sure to grab Mongolian cultural things I figured they’d miss. (They felt relieved.) 

Also. While I made sense of the kitchen, they mentioned I could take whatever food. I figured this wouldn’t help me much, since I needed to get rid of my food, too. But I pocketed some granola/trail mix and clipped onto that super backpack frozen raspberry and strawberry bags. My sitemate’s bag straps and clips made lugging it all possible. I trekked back to my apartment. 

The moment I got in, I realized I must have dehydrated a little at my friend’s. Once I opened the raspberry bag, I ate its entire contents in one standing. I felt amazed. 

The rest of that Thursday morning, packing amid stress, I awaited Peace Corps’ call. At last, midday, a manager rung. I’d depart Sunday, March 1 at dawn. I felt shocked. 

Had time, I could tell people—felt relieved. 

Then I fell asleep. 

Packing Without Closure

I woke up Thursday afternoon. I packed through evening, rested, then began again Friday. 

With the packing, I didn’t have much time to focus on what was going on. But objects caught my eye such that they triggered realizations. 

It happened while I was taking my cork board off my entry wall. I was pulling out from last October my little lime-green Mongolian Teachers' Day card envelope, from below last January’s farewell card pilgrims gifted me at our Panamanian pilgrimage’s end. 

That's when I felt struck—I'm actually leaving, leaving Mongolia. 

I glanced to my phone and noticed community members messaged me how grateful they felt that I came and how they hope I can return. I noticed, beside the little card I pulled out rested my Peace Corps Mongolia pledge from Swear-In. 

How do six months in my city go so fast? God knows... 

I hope, my time away will only strengthen ties before the faithful day I return. Maybe I'll be maturer, wiser then, too. After all, I weathered my first Mongolian winter. I could take another. 

Having finished and returned Brian's memoir, “There’s a Sheep in My Bathtub,” the day before, I considered too my feelings of frustration that the world kept turning at its normal rate. Meanwhile, my fellow Peace Corps Volunteers and I in Mongolia suffered from packing to evacuate the communities we called home for months and years. But such was life. 

Seeing as well my letter, "Congratulations on your site placement...!" and traditional clothing I wore with my host family this summer, I felt something special. I wasn't just leaving the country where I lived and taught—I was leaving the country where I learned and grew, too. 

Friday for Farewells

By the time people offered packing help, as a big change, I actually felt more inclined to decline. 

That's different. Packing used to be among the activities I always sought help for. Especially when Mom passed away, college suitemates helped and even moved my things. This time, through that constant effort Thursday and Friday, I’d needed left only to distribute my food and pack my carry-on. I was nearly done. Zipping a duffel, I wondered if Dad felt this dutiful packing during his U.S. Army National Guard deployments overseas...

By Friday midday, I took to new tasks.

Around my apartment, I found gifts I meant to deliver. So, taking a pause, I quickly bundled these up, prepared simple notes and readied them to pass on. 

I wished especially I could have seen the children of the orphanage one last time before leaving. I hoped they had a great Lunar New Year's. 

With three ‘Thank You’ cards remaining that Peace Corps gave me during fall, I addressed them to my three local communities—my school, my church, and my support. I'd, providentially perhaps, three photos leftover from my arrival in Mongolia. I paired each with a ‘Thank You’ card. With one separate photo, I attached it as part of the gift I prepared for the orphanage's children and teachers.

Midday Friday, my supervisor returned. She’d drive me downtown for my deliveries. I’d under 48 hours remaining. Still, I yearned to see any Mongolian willing to say goodbye amid this COVID-19 terror. I couldn’t know whether I’d have another chance. 

My Peace Corps Mongolia evacuation stories continue.

You can read more from me here at DanielLang.me~

[sunshinykittens-blog]

Not Enough Alcohol in NYC...

Saturday, November 25 the wee hours of the morning. I think.

I would love to go to sleep right now, God knows I have been through enough chaos the past 72 hours to qualify for hazard pay, or at least PTSD treatment. The flights, the usual holiday family drama (not EVEN my family), an empty apartment, snotting all over some Tower residents, new digs…but I probably should start from the beginning…

Wednesday

When last we left our intrepid adventurer (that would be me), it was in an airport, JFK to be exact. I was waiting, along with Sunny and the 3 younger kids, for our flight out to Pasco (via Seattle) to spend the Thanksgiving weekend with her mom and oldest child. My kids weren’t going to be at my family gathering, so no sense in going home, especially since I’m spending an entire week home for Christmas. Besides, Sunny’s mom has been going through some health issues, and I haven’t seen her in forever. Sunny made all the flight arrangements, all I was supposed to do was pack my bag and be ready to go. So something I didn’t know about her before this day, seeing as I had never flown with her before: Sunny is paranoid about missing flights. I realize that this is one of the busiest days for traveling, and that means all the lines for everything would be extra long, but I am still not sure why we had to leave the apartment at 6 am for a 1:30 pm flight. Maybe she thought we’d get caught up in the parade traffic. But since The Man arranged for a car to take us to the airport (and pick us up upon our return Sunday afternoon), we didn’t have to worry about getting a cab or riding the subway (Sunny’s great idea). So yeah, I am grateful to The Man for the car. Amazingly, we checked bags and got through the security lines very quickly. We were through to the gate section of the airport by 10. Even though one of us was chosen for the random search (guess who that was). Luckily I didn’t have any contraband to speak of, so that was pretty smooth, except for them telling me I needed to get my driver’s license updated to my new address when I get back. Yet another thing for me to have to squeeze in before Christmas. Sunny suggested we grab some coffee and lunch while we waited for our plane. Over this meal is when she told me we had another 3 hours before we were scheduled to board. That’s when I made my last post. (BTW, the girl child is an extremely talented artist, I’ll have to post some of her work sometime soon. Oh, and Sunny did manage to catch the loose cannon. When last I saw, all the kids were still alive.)

I will say this, at least Sunny got us first class seats for our flights (yes, I said flights). It was nice, but we were kind of spread out a bit. Which is nothing compared to the connecting flight in Chicago, which was delayed over an hour for mechanical problems, and we got bumped to another plane, and everyone was pretty scattered then. For our final leg from Salt Lake, though, we were in one cluster of seats, thanks to the airline folks feeling bad for us having missed that connecting flight. After they saw how frazzled she was with the middle child, who kept wandering off. But we arrived safely at our destination airport only about 2 hours later than scheduled. Oh yes, and every time we hit an airport with wifi, Sunny would get a gazillion messages from the oldest child asking why we weren’t there. I felt bad for Sunny, so I admit I bought her a drink in Chicago and Salt Lake. And then I paid for a taxi van to drive us from the airport to her mom’s house so we wouldn’t have to wait for a shuttle.

Didn’t take long for the drama to start when we got there, though. There was only one bed in the house, and that belonged to Sunny’s Mom. The oldest hadn’t even put her bed together, so we were all sleeping on the floor. I haven’t done that in I don’t know how long. Mom started in on how worried she’d been and why were we late, and then blaming Sunny for not getting there any sooner (like we can just hijack the plane or something). But like I said before, Mom had recently had some health problems, so I just tried to overlook it and be there to support Sunny. She was going to need it. Then we all stayed up way too late (with far too little alcohol), and finally got to bed at some point after midnight. I whispered to Sunny as we were drifting off that had I known we were going to sleep on the floor, I’d have rented a car and got a hotel room. Or at least rented some rollaway beds.

Thursday, Thanksgiving

Well, this day started entirely too early for a regular day, much less a holiday, even with the extra time we got for being 3 hours later than home time. Mom had said she needed help cooking, and we were fine with that. But she needed to oversee everything and everyone, assuming we had never entered a kitchen before in our lives. By the way, who in their right mind puts an egg into their literal Stovetop Stuffing? Menu was pretty good, very standard: ham (instead of turkey, which was fine with me), stuffing, green bean casserole, sweet potato soufflé, rolls, and 2 kinds of pie with whipped cream. It was a store bought kind of meal; everything came out of a box, can, or bag, or was bought ready to serve like the ham. Except the pumpkin pie. The Airport Problem Child made that and did a really good job, if I do say so myself. Which I do. So as soon as everything was cooked, we had to eat – right that second! Dinner conversation included why in the world did Sunny move so far away, why didn’t she tell her mom and oldest before she moved, why didn’t she find a man and settle down, how her mom’s health was (not good and how much worse it was getting every second that Sunny wasn’t caving), how the kids liked school, Sunny works too much, maybe at least she could find a husband in New York, how were my kids doing, and when was she moving back to Washington. We tried deflecting most of that by saying we had good jobs that we liked, we were making really good money at them, and we were about to move into a secure building at the first of next month. After dinner (with an unhealthy side of stress and heartburn), everyone retired for a nap. Except for Sunny. She stayed up to clean. Of course I stayed up with her. And it took every bit of 2 hours to clean. After which, the tree came out.

Sunny is not a Christmas person, she really doesn’t like it at all. She feels it’s entirely over commercialized, which I agree with. Unlike her, I enjoy the holiday season with full gusto. My only complaint is with people who have conniption fits when people break out the Christmas songs before Thanksgiving. I also find these are the same ones who then start complaining that there isn’t enough time in the Christmas season to get everything done that they want to do – starting the day after Thanksgiving. Anyway, Sunny was going to be aggravated with the evening. So first, her mom put on some Christmas station with some really annoying, tacky Christmas music. And let me tell you, that is really saying something coming from me. I love all Christmas music. At least I thought so until that night. I mean nobody liked it. Not even Sunny’s mom! And then the tree, it’s a wonder Sunny hasn’t ground her teeth down to stumps. It’s kind of old, but we couldn’t get her mom to let us run out and buy a new one. And the lights…it’s a wonder they can’t see that thing from space. You know those sort of net-type lights, the kind you drape over the shrubs outside? 5 of them. Draped onto a 6 foot tree. Then we had to add another 15 strings of plain white lights. I tell you, I needed shades when we plugged in the tree. Then the ornaments, a mix of glass, plastic, and handmade kids ornaments, and then those irritating silvery plastic icicles, the kind that clog up the vacuum. Then, just when we were starting to get into the tacky music, Mom changed it to something equally obnoxious.

About an hour later, I was questioning my decision to be there for the whole weekend. Because that’s when the oldest started in on how unfair life was and how hard she has it there. I could tell she was angling to move with us. Allow me to say one thing about the eldest child: Super Social Justice Warrior Snowflake, she’s about as far from me on the spectrum politically, religiously, and socially as you can get. And before we had left New York, Sunny made me promise that I would not start a fight with her. In other words, I’m surprised that I didn’t bite my tongue off in the short time I was exposed to her awake. She went all over the place from one thing to another, but finally I’d had enough. In fact, I don’t even remember what it was she said, or even what I said, only that I finally blew up and smacked her with an opinion that should have given her a heart attack right then and there. But her face welled up and she stormed off to her room, slamming the door shut and sobbing loud enough to be heard in Seattle. I just looked at Sunny and said I needed to get some air. I grabbed my coat and headed out the door. I walked for a good while, too bad I don’t have a fitness tracker because I easily walked 10k steps. I finally got so cold I went back inside (no hot water for a shower, but I’ve come to not expect that), and crashed in the living room with the kids instead of in the eldest child’s room with Sunny. I slept very little, eventually getting up literally at the crack of dawn for another walk.

Friday

Overnight I had come to the conclusion that neither my blood pressure nor Sunny’s family could take me sticking around for the rest of the weekend. As soon as I walked out of the door, I was on my phone with the airlines looking for the first flight out. I agreed to be on standby; even an airport had to be better atmosphere. I called a taxi, and realized everything except for my carry on bag was still in the bedroom where Sunny, the artist, and eldest child were still asleep. I was not about to go in and risk waking the crew. Instead, I tiptoed over the boys and went to the kitchen to leave a note.

“Sunny, Needed to fly back quickly. Can you please bring my suitcase when you come? See you in a couple of days. Call when I get home. Tell your mom thanks for dinner. Kate”

I carefully gathered my few things in the living room and made for the door. The youngest sat up and rubbed his eyes, then asked where I was going. I lied to the boy, told him I was needed at work, and that I’d see him in a few days. He shrugged, nodded, yawned, and went back to sleep.

I sat in the airport for only a couple of hours before I got on a flight to Denver, where I sat for two hours before I got a plane to New York. From JFK, I took a taxi back to the apartment. As I was walking up the three flights to the apartment, all I wanted to do was take a long hot bath, cuddle with my Spazzie, and get a full night’s sleep. I planned to spend the rest of the weekend lounging around and maybe doing some packing for the impending move looming on the horizon. It was about 11 pm. I unlocked the door to my apartment, stepped in, turned on the lights and saw…nothing.

Literally nothing. Every single thing was missing from our apartment. No futon in the living room. No dishes in the cabinets. No towels in the bathroom. And, the horror hit me as I realized, EVEN THE CATS WERE MISSING!!! For the third time since I moved to New York, I was dialing 911 to report a theft. And, bless her heart, Officer Yang came to take the report. I tried to give a pretty good description of what was missing. Her partner went down to the super’s apartment but there was no response. About half past midnight, Jake’s mom came home from her shift and looked in. We found out from her that a group of men had come first thing that morning and had been packing up our stuff. She had assumed that she had misremembered the date of our move. She offered to let me stay in their apartment, but I didn’t relish another night sleeping on the floor. Instead I called a cab as soon as the police left.

I had thought about going to a hotel, but figured they would pretty much be booked solid. I decided the best place for me to go would be to the Tower. I knew there were comfortable looking sofas, at least, and I figured that all the residents were gone for the holiday. Maybe I could convince The Man to hurry up the remodel because we really did have nothing. No sense in buying furniture, moving into the old apartment to just have to move it the following week. I had the taxi drop me off at the Tower, and I stood just outside to make the phone call I was dreading. I had to tell Sunny we had been cleaned out. I got her voicemail, which made some sense to me. It was closing in on 1:30 am, which was 10:30 pm there.  And her mom was always fussing about her being on her phone. I left her a message and promised to call after I got some sleep. Then I went inside.

The night guard was someone I hadn’t met before, but I had my badge so he let me in. The elevator ride up was the longest leg of my journey. I was reviewing all the events in my head and was starting to feel overwhelmed when the doors opened on the 91st floor. I had decided that I was going to have a cup of tea before trying to find a blanket and settling in on the sofa in the lounge. Surely The Man wouldn’t begrudge me that after everything I had been through. I hung up my coat and stashed my carry on in the closet and entered the common area, headed to the stove to heat water in the rarely-used kettle.

Standing at the island were three men. I recognized Captain Rogers and Sergeant Barnes from news stories I had seen over the years. The other one was unfamiliar to me. They were casually dressed, sweatpants and tees. It appeared they had just come down from the training room, they were slightly sweaty with a healthy glow. Captain Rogers was pouring some post-workout smoothie thing into glasses. I took a deep breath, feeling everything from the past few days welling up behind my eyes, and my nose starting to tingle and burn. I was desperately trying to contain my emotions in front of the people that I was definitely going to be running into in the halls and elevators, residents of the Tower. I was not going to lose control.

They glanced over at me as I came in. Captain Rogers welcomed me, asking if I was one of the housekeepers. I told him I was and then he said he thought we’d be back Sunday evening and where was my partner. I told him that she was still in Washington, and we were supposed to be back Sunday, but I had to leave early. Sergeant Barnes then asked why. And I think that’s where I started to lose that tenuous hold on my emotions. I tried telling them about the disastrous 24 hours that Thanksgiving had been, but I think I became a bit flustered. I don’t think I was making sentences. And then pieces of the past 2 days came spilling out and I absolutely burst into tears. Next thing I knew, I was seated on a stool at the island, Sergeant Barnes was doing his best to awkwardly comfort me with an arm around my shoulders, and the man I didn’t know was pressing a tumbler of some form of alcohol into my hand and demanding that Captain Rogers go find Mr. Stark and bring him up immediately. Before long, hthe Captain had returned with The Man Himself in tow. I will admit, he was concerned to see me sitting there sobbing, and he asked me what was wrong. I lost it again, someone handed me a handkerchief, and after about 5 more minutes, I regained some control. I blew my nose, took a deep breath and started to speak, but when I tossed back half the dark amber liquid, there went my voice.

When it returned, I told him as calmly as I could about the stress at Sunny’s mom’s house, that I just had to leave before really bad things were said, the layovers, the crying babies, coming home to a literally empty apartment, finishing up with the emotional outbursts they had all just experienced, which I assured him was a rare occasion, and could I please have a blanket so I could crash on the sofa. I finished the drink while waiting for the answer. I noticed glares aimed at The Man from the others in the room. And then the Captain threatened to call Miss Potts. Finally The Man said to follow him.

We went down on the elevator together, all four of us. I could almost feel the heat of the glares directed at my boss. This was the second elevator ride I’d had with him that was in complete silence, but somehow I felt like the awkwardness was coming from him this time. The doors opened on the 62nd floor.  I followed The Man down the hall to the door opposite the one he had showed us at the beginning of the week, the others behind me like some sort of guard or something. I now thought that what he was going to do was bring up a bed for me. Maybe this convinced him to complete the remodeling ASAP. But when I stepped into the now opened doorway, I was completely flummoxed. There, inside that room, was my apartment. Complete with cats. Spazzie came racing towards me and I scooped him up cuddling and scratching behind his ears. And I started crying again. I put him down for a minute and asked what the hell was going on.

The Man shrugged and told me he’d figured it would be great if we came back and found everything already moved in. One less thing for us to worry about, as it were. They had gone in, packed everything up and moved it, though they hadn’t known what stuff was mine and what was Sunny’s, so unfortunately we were going to have to go through the boxes ourselves. I was really jet lagged, and it was after 2 in the morning, so it took a little while for everything to sink in. But when it did…

I yelled, I screamed at him, I cried big fat hot mad tears. Sergeant Barnes smirked, thoroughly enjoying every word. Sunny’s cat, Aaron, came into the room and started pawing at me. I scooped him up and continued ranting. And then I realized something was climbing my leg. I looked down to see this cute little gray tabby kitten working its way up. And that was most definitely not my cat. I’d never seen it before. The guys all insisted that it must be ours because it was inside the apartment when they packed it up. And it had a collar. About then I felt all my energy drain from my body. I ordered them out and told them that we would finish this conversation tomorrow. I fell into the bed in the bedroom and pulled a comforter up over me. Spazzie curled up behind my knees, Aaron was behind me, and the kitten sprawled out on the pillow next to me. I’ve got to call Sunny tomorrow to let her know everything is OK and to just come to the Tower as soon as she gets in. But right now I need to sleep.

[adventures-in-transmania]

This doesn’t have anything to do with being trans. This has everything to do with living in a goddamned trailer park for my entire life.

I don’t remember much from my childhood. I remember helping out with home repair by getting tools/supplies. I remember being 10+ and worrying about how we’re going to fix something, how we’re going to afford to fix something. I remember being anxious about hearing water leaking, about hearing my parent cuss under their breath and worrying what it was now. At 23, I still have anxiety revolving around my parent cussing under their breath because it did and still does quickly turn into them yelling. It wasn’t usually *at* me, but it could easily turn to me if they were irritated enough, which I understand now. I didn’t at the time.

I remember my worst day. I worked at a coffee shop, oftentimes for long hours with usually no breaks. At the time, I was a shift leader. I had little experience with managerial stuff, but knew my way around the other areas, one of the reasons they made me a shift leader. I digress, though (kind of, context after all). At the time, we didn’t have a car, but I don’t recall why. We also didn’t have hot water. Our hot water tank had broken a while ago and I had been taking showers for college on the college campus in the fitness center. It was awful. It had been 8-10 months at the time that we didn’t have hot water. It was frustrating because we had the new water heater but couldn’t get rid of the old one to install the new one. Neither of us were strong enough to pull the old one out.

So, no car, no hot water. I biked to work at 3am to get there by 5 am. I worked a 12 hour shift, no break, no manager on duty (it was Sunday), and I had to figure out price/ad changes on my goddamned own. I had to do things that weren’t part of my job (so, same as usual, jfc). Then I had to bike home. I got about half way, and I remember to this day, that I came really fucking close to just giving up on everything. I broke down crying but somehow I made it home (thanks Ayden). I probably had to be back at work at 5am. I don’t think I ever told anyone, considering it was the middle of summer, so of course I wasn’t in contact with anyone from college, nor was I close enough to anyone to talk to them about it. It’s also not something you broadcast. Even when I was in school, talking to people every day, I didn’t tell them we didn’t have hot water, I didn’t tell them I was showering on campus in the middle of winter when it was too cold to shower at home.

Anyway, 11 months (almost an entire year of not having a hot water tank), we finally got it installed. There have been several instances where we had to turn the water completely off (of course not for 11 months). It got so bad that my parent put a turn-off valve on anything they could, so if the kitchen sink was fucked up, we could turn those faucets off without turning the rest off. We had issues with the toilet seal a while back but we got it fixed within a month. It was hell, lemme tell you (especially with the parent yelling to high hell impressive swears), but we survived. Context I want you to get from this is that I am super fucking sensitive when it comes to the sound of water spraying/leaking against plywood and I am super fucking anxious when it comes to water leaks or anything regarding water leaks when it comes to this place.

SO. Last Thursday, after a shitty day for the parent, they come home and our sewage line is acting up. They try to fix it the same way I did about four hours before. They break the seal on our toilet. We’ve been having issues with backup in the bathroom sink, the shower drain, and the kitchen sink. Not a surprise, I guess, but still a pain the dick. So begins the long fucking week of finding creative ways to get rid of sewage.

They’re so frustrated and tired that they’re at the point “it doesn’t matter.” Of course, I know better. It may not matter today, but it will tomorrow, especially when it comes to our elderly grandmother who has the most inconvenient timing for literally everything. So, I resort to prior experience. I go into problem-solving mode, which works for a day and a half. They still have to deal with some difficult stuff while we try to fix it. Obviously, we’re at the point where this is getting fucking ridiculous to deal with. I realize that I make enough (or could, if I work a certain number of hours a week that I could potentially do) to get us out, so I start looking for an apartment. They get hope that we can get out, so they start looking, too. We’ve lived here for 23+ years, a mobile home that is clearly past its prime and I am able to get rid of it, so we’re looking into that, but it’s not instantaneous, so we’re fixing what we can to live here while we look, right. So, it’s a week long process of effort, money (that could be put into a new apartment), and stress into fixing a problem in the short-term (as long as it lasts a few months, we’ll be fine). As long as we have a working toilet for the next 1-3 months, right?

So, we get the PVC, we get the couplings, we get what we need to fix it. We end up fucking it up, fixing it again, fucking it up, fixing it again. WE FIX IT. 5-6 trips to Home Depot, another 2-3 to a local hardware store. Meanwhile, I’m spending my days off dealing with this. I’ve already been stressed to the point of almost breaking down in front of several supervisors (”do you feel better?” “I hope you feel better than you look.”). I’d had several breakdowns prior to this, based primarily on work. But, yeah, I had the capacity to deal with this, too. It was the first time I asked to leave early from work in the 5 years of working. So, I was looking forward to having A SINGLE FUCKING DAY OFF, right?

Yeah, no. I get not a single day off. I have to say, college was fucking tiring. I worked 20-35 hours on top of college, right? When our manager when out, I was there to cover a lot of her shifts. I didn’t complain because she couldn’t help it. I was able to do it, I guess. It was hard, but it was nothing compared to what I’ve had to do. I stayed up some nights. It wasn’t an issue, I don’t know why. Apparently class wasn’t as difficult as I thought it was? That was a break compared to “real life.”

I have my job now. I have a hard time not sleeping between jobs. I have a hard time not sleeping for 24 hours. I have a hard time having jobs for 18-24 hours straight. Perhaps it’s more physically demanding? I think I’ve reached a new low and I don’t know what to do. I’m so tired, I’m fucking exhausted and I don’t know how to fix it. I don’t think there is a ‘fix.’ Sleep doesn’t help. Even when I get decent sleep, I’m still miserable. In the last 2-3 weeks, I’ve reached an all-time low several times.

I broke down for some reason about 3 weeks ago. I want to blame it on being tired, being exhausted. I talked to someone about stepping down from a position of responsibility, someone I thought I’d disappoint that it turned out I wouldn’t. It was a long day, I guess, a lot of energy drinks, a lot of emotions. I was vulnerable. I had a great breakdown. It was my breaking point, but I had to keep going.

Work kept me responsible. What I mean by that is, I had a shift that I was expected to know what I was doing, then was expected to know what I was doing at the next shift (”just ask Riley, they know all about this account”) on top of being sensory overloaded and having people on top of me and it being warm and the account itself being tedious. It didn’t help, I was supposed to be back there again the next morning. It was just a tiring day all around and to have there be scheduling changes...Anxiety was a thing.

The next day brought a store that I guess was my ‘break.’ I didn’t really have to be responsible for anything, but I didn’t really think of it as such, given that there were 3 people scheduled and it was a travel store. The next store after that (a store I thought I’d get a nap for, that I didn’t) I knew I’d have hella responsibility for, give that I was granted an email about what responsibility I’d have. I broke down during that store and asked to leave early, knowing I had two stores the next day. It was the first time I asked to leave early in my entire career. I cried the entire way home and texted a friend to come see them instead of going home. I wasn’t okay. It wasn’t the worst day I had, but a very close second.

The next morning, these same assholes decided “hm, he left early because he couldn’t handle shit the night before” then put me on to lead a flow the next fucking morning. I legit thought the people saying “yep, you’re flow lead,” were joking because of the night before. I almost cried right then and there. I just wanted to count. Especially when another lead came by and changed the game plan entirely. It was due to my area manager being highly understanding that I stayed. That same day, I had another shift that they put me as flow lead. It was hard to fuck up, but it was still tiring, emotionally draining, considering the morning I had.

Basically since the one day, the day I ran Tops (6-12) I haven’t really had a day off, that RGIS hasn’t decided training was necessary, or that life hasn’t fucked me completely over. I’m fucking exhausted. I have no support system and I’m exhausted.

[canaryatlaw]

I need to write because I’m feeling emotional about a bunch of instagram comments that just resulted in a giant twitter rant but I think I got most of it out. Today was alright. I had my alarm set for 11:30 for my job interview at 1:30. So I started getting ready, doing my make up and all that, getting my suit on and was ready to go by 12:30. This one wasn’t far from me, one of the only offices not located downtown but rather a good bit north. This wouldn’t necessarily be an improvement though, because I’d still probably have to be at court every day in the loop, so it would just mean breaking up the travel more during the day but would still take a good bit of time. I got there just around 1, which would normally be the point I found a coffee shop or such to chill in for a bit, except now that I wasn’t downtown there wasn’t one within sight, so instead I ended up going into the sports bar across the street (which was mostly empty given it was the middle of the day on a Thursday) and told them I had a job interview across the street in half an hour and asked if it was cool if I got a soda and chilled there for a bit and they said sure, so I got a coke and chilled out there for a bit, then went to their bathroom to make sure everything was in working order. Went over a few minutes before 1:30, waited a few minutes, then got called back to the office. The first few minutes were awkward because he couldn’t find the resume I sent him which he had printed out for our phone conversation the other day and he was like “you don’t have one with you?” and I had to be like yeah no....generally if they have it in advance that’s not something I need to do. so that was kinda awkward but then he found it and it was all good. It was a pretty good interview I’d say, I could definitely tell that they liked me a lot, they were very impressed with my class rank (top 15% baby) especially the other lawyer who came in to help who was an alum of my school, so that was good. The subject matter is basically the same as my old job would be, personal injury stuff, which obviously is not my favorite, but it is what it is. Whenever I go into an interview with this stuff I end up talking about working with my dad and they’re all like “well why aren’t you just working with him?” and of course the answer is because that’s not the type of law I actually want to do but I can’t say that, so I just throw in a line about how my brother’s eventually going to take over the business and I do not want to work with him in a professional environment (they were pressing me a bit about this like “well why not?” is he just an asshole?” and I was just like “yeah he’s an asshole 😂😂😂 and that was about it). I know I do a good sell in interviews about my previous experience applying even if it’s not the same subject matter because I have experience doing all the major components of a law practice (court, motions, all that good stuff) and my main goal is to help people, and that translates of course because personal injury is still helping people, just not quite the way I’d want to, but I can make a fairly good argument for that. When they asked about where I’d like to be down the road I went with the whole well I want to be with a nonprofit and for that I need to know the civil law system, so I’m gonna get experience with that here, which was the game plan with the last job, so it makes sense. But yeah it went pretty well, they definitely liked me and told me as much, though I’m still rather conflicted over all of it. I used the bathroom before I left only to find I had a giant lipstick smear across my teeth and I was like !!! men!!! they don’t tell you these things!! lol but oh well. I was originally gonna take the bus back but then the app said the next one wasn’t coming for 17 minutes, so I went to get an uber pool but that was taking forever to load, and while that was still trying to figure that out a bus pulled up (the tracker app is wrong sometimes) so I just cancelled the uber (before it was set so I didn’t lose any money) and got on the bus, then took that down to the red line which I took north and got off at the Target because I needed to pick up prescriptions and a few random items (like lemonade, pretzels, flour, sugar, and seaweed) which I got and then did an uber pool home which was a bit of a mess because we were supposed to pick up another passenger after me and the guy didn’t know what he was doing and I was trying to help but the car was moving in the wrong direction on the app and it was a whole big mess and the other rider ended up cancelling so it was like welp just wasted 5 minutes trying to figure that out. Oh well. Dropped me off close to home and walked the rest of the way, I was starting to get cramps at this point (period started today, happy valentines day to me) so I kinda just wanted to curl into a ball and die at this point. but I put the groceries away and changed back into my pajamas and flopped in front of the tv to watch some of the Americans, which I ended up watching through the season 3 finale. I’m going through it a lot faster that I thought I would, probably because the seasons are only 13 episodes. I’ve been craving bubble tea like all week, so I finally got some of that, and then a bit later decided I was gonna get my rice ball so I ordered one and a small pizza (the delivery minimum was $15 and the rice ball was only $3 so I needed more) so I got to enjoy that (the rice ball wasn't quite as good as I was hoping, but definitely still enjoyable). I switched over to tv shortly before Brooklyn 99 started and then watched that, which was such a quality episode I loved it. when that was done I went to netflix to watch some more of Reign, but of course netflix still wasn’t cooperating and keep freezing every 3 seconds which was super annoying. At some point I called my dad to talk about the interview and everything. The thing is I’m so close with OPG on the horizon and so close to being within grasp I really don’t want to get stuck at a job I really don’t want- and tbh I really don’t want this job because it’s not at all what I’m interested in, and they also made it clear they were looking for someone who was going to stay late several days a week and work on the weekends and like.....I can’t do that, I have a life, I don’t want to be working 70 hours a week, I don't think my body could even sustain that. But I mean, if I get offered the job it would seem foolish to turn it down.....but I mean at this point if it happens I might have to do that because I don’t want to get stuck. At this point I’m definitely not going to apply for any more jobs, I talked to the temp people the other day and they said they hadn’t had an applicable projects yet but probably would soon, so the ideal situation would definitely be to work with them being very flexible until the OPG situation works itself out, so I’m just hoping that’s what I’m able to do from here on. It just stresses me out because I’m already stressed about money and I’m hesitant to book any more con plans without having some income (and there’s at least two that we want to book right now) so I’m hoping the temp stuff will get me some soon. so I vented all of that on my dad and he pretty much agreed with me that I should wait for the job I really want, so that’s encouraging at least. It was a good convo, talked to my mom a bit too before going back to netflix. so yeah, lots of feeling going on today. I watched Reign for a while longer until my roommate got out of the shower and I started getting ready for bed, then while going through the few instagram accounts I check daily I stumbled upon a conversation about a person asking if God still loved them even though they were gay, and that gave me a lot of emotion so I left a long comment there and then went on a whole twitter rant about it, which is probably influenced by me feeling extra emotional because I’m on my period, but oh well, it was good stuff and I don’t regret it. and yeah, after that I started writing this and now I am here. Tomorrow I’m free during the day and then going to the Kpop concert at night, then super early Saturday morning we’re flying out to New York for the weekend, seeing The Cursed Child parts 1 and 2 on Saturday then spending Sunday and Monday with my family, so that should be good (I’m just probably going to get very little sleep Friday night since our flight leaves at 5:50 am). But yeah, should be good, and that’s it for now, it’s almost 1:30 am so it’s definitely time for bed. Goodnight loves. Happy Friday.

[thegrassisaalwaysgreener]

NYC, September 2017

I love NYC! I was very excited to hear that my boyfriend had never been to NYC and had planned to go in the fall. I decided to join him on this trip. We had been experiencing one of the hottest Septembers I could remember so I was excited to have nice weather but also a bit sad that there wouldn’t be tons of beautiful fall colours. Thursday September 21st, 2017           I decided to try the GO bus from Hamilton to the airport for the first time. It is pretty cost effective (~$12 each way) and is fairly efficient (1 hour and 15 minutes door to door). It is great when you are travelling light with just carry on. Alex and I were flying with Air Canada (he just loves them) so we met in the international side after customs before heading over to the maple leaf lounge. Since he often flies with AC, he had some extra lounge passes. I had only been in a lounge one other time and was very excited to return. Lounges make the flying experience that much better and way less stressful. They are typically way less busy than the rest of the terminal and much quieter. They have comfy seats, decent food and snacks and of course, all the booze! We each enjoyed some wine and pizza in the lounge before heading over to the gate for our short flight into NYC. We sat in the premium seats at the front of the plane, which I really enjoyed and took (so lame) our first selfie after I had had a glass or two of wine on the plane.            When we landed, we made our way to the special area of the parking/transportation zone where Ubers could pick passengers up.  I think it is smart for airport to do that to help with congestion however it is a bit annoying as a passenger to have to navigate the busy and somewhat confusing airport terminal to find the ride share area. In any case, we hopped in our Uber that took us to our humble abode on Knickerbocker Ave. in Brooklyn.  The AirBnB that were staying in was awesome! IT was a two bedroom, two bathroom apartment with a decent size living space to share. Barry, our host, was not there at the time that arrived but would be there later on. We were both super excited to have arrived and ready for dinner. We wandered around our area for a bit, taking in the sights of the city before deciding to have dinner and drinks at Sea Wolf. It claims to be “The best of land and sea” and we were looking forward to seeing if this was true. The atmosphere was super cool- the windows were all open and there was a large garage door open as well that lead out to more seating overlooking the skyline. We enjoyed several beers along with buck a shuck oysters during happy hour. We had some wings (which were also featured in the happy hour menu and were delicious) along with a fish dip that I didn’t love and some charred octopus. After being contently satiated, we made our way back to Barry’s where we enjoyed some wine with him and getting to know him a bit better. While this was not my first Air BnB experience, it was the first one that the owners were there during our stay. I have to say, it was a bit weird but didn’t bother us all that much. We weren’t planning on spending much time in the apartment anyways. Friday September 22nd, 2017           After a slight sleep in (we were out of the apartment by 9) we grabbed coffees and pastries (Alex is a bad influence on my breakfast choices and waistline) for breakfast. We had the most decadent Nutella croissant and cannoli donut. The L train was super close and we took that over to Chelsea. Chelsea is probably one of my fave areas of NYC and since it was a beautiful day, I thought it was the perfect time to wander around and enjoy the weather. We stopped in at the Chelsea market for some souvenirs and to pick up lunch from the Davidovichbakery. Obviously, we grabbed a bagel with cream cheese and smoked salmon for our lunch. We enjoyed our coffees while walking the Highline. We took lots of photos and walked to the end of the Highline around 34th street. 34th street is a great one to wander around since it has so much to see and do. We admired Madison Square garden before heading down towards the flat iron building and Eataly. I was super excited to check out Bierria which is on top of Eataly but was disappointed by the lack of view. We split some pasta and enjoyed an exceptionally over priced Peroni while enjoying the weather and good vibe of the place. We took lots of photos of the  Flat iron building (so iconic) before heading down Broadway. One of Alex’s fave youtuber/vloggers (Casey Neistat) has an office just down broadway before Madison Square Park so we checked that out before enjoying the fountain and arch in the park.            We saw Canal street and all the madness that can ensue there. I was not in the shopping or haggling mood but did grab some sunglasses since I was missing mine. We came across a carnival at Grand and mulberry called “The feast of San German” which was pretty neat and seemed very busy. We wandered around both Little Italy and China town before crossing the Manhattan bridge. I didn’t realize how long the bridge was! Its almost 2 km in length and offers some great views of the city. We hopped on a bus into Williamsburg (Bedford and 11th) to visit the Wythe hotel. This hotel boasts one of the best views of the city for cocktail hour. It was $20 to get in and then about 16-30$ per drink which is pretty pricey. The view is definitely worth it though. There was a good mix of after work and Friday night crowds. We enjoyed our drinks before wandering around the rest of the area which had some really neat hotels and restaurants. We stopped at Pokeh restaurant for dinner. We both love Pokeh and were excited try a new place (Pokeh Hamilton is still my fave ;)). We hopped on the train and made it back to our airbnb in about 20 mins. We stopped in a the dollar store next door to the airbnb building to grab some necessities and found that it was super sketchy and looked ransacked. We were glad to put our feet up and enjoy some wine while watching a movie before bed.

Saturday September 23rd, 2017              Today was a nice sleep sleep in day! Alex and I both lead very busy lives normally so lazy mornings are the best! We grabbed coffee and snacks at Circos again before jumping on the J train to Fulton Street. The plan was to explore the bottom half of the island including One World Trade and surrounding area.             We wandered around the World Trade area enjoying the Occulus which I had never seen before. I am not sure how I missed it during my last trip to NYC but really enjoyed it. We grabbed Joe and the Juice coffees (Alex is the biggest fan that I’ve met) and wandered around the memorials and pools. Since I loved the observatory at One World Trade and had raved about it, we made our way up. The video they play right before you get to see the view still gives me chills because it is so magical. After taking all of the touristy photos at the top, we headed back down to grab more coffees and make our way towards the New York Stock Exchange. This was another new place for me as I hadn’t checked it out on my last visit. Alex checks the stock market at least 10 times a day so this was a pretty neat stop for him. Since we were right in the Financial District, we joined the crowds taking photos at the Charging bull and wandering down Wall Street. We enjoyed our prosciutto and mozzarella sandwiches from Eataly outside of the Museum of Indian Culture (Look up actual name) before walking around Battery Park. The last time I was in Battery Park, it was a) a lot  warmer out and b) had a lot more artsy things to look at. There had been many large globes of the world decorated by various artists in different neat colours and designs which I had been super excited to show to Alex but was disasppointed that they were no longer there. We saw all the kids on the Carosel before getting in the large lines for the Staten Island Ferry. The last time I was in NYC, I paid for a boat cruise that takes you on a tour of the harbour and gets you close to the Statue of Liberty. Word to the wise, just take the State Island ferry! While it is much busier, it is free and there are super cheap beers in the station. We grabbed a few 6$ tall boys for the voyage across the Hudson? And sat out side to enjoy the views.             The Staten Island Ferry took about 1-1.5 hours round trip. The weather was perfect and it was a nice place to relax after a long morning of walking. After getting off the ferry, we made our way towards the Brooklyn Bridge (my fave spot in the city) but came across a super cool market. On Fulton street, there was a festival with lots of food trucks along with a self pour! IT was called the Clinton self pour and was a super neat concept. You bought a card with whatever denomination of money you wanted and you would go up to this stand in the middle of the street and put your card into the reader. You would then pour your beer and watch the amount on the card decrease the more full you made your cup. We had a few different beers (Heinkens and local Brooklyn Brewery IPA which was not my fave) at a decent price (about $40 the cards and a couple pints each). We made our way to the Brooklyn Bridge where we enjoyed an AMAZING sunset with hundreds of other tourists. I also made Alex take a ton of photos which he was super thrilled about. He did see the allure of the bridge, especially at sunset.               We finally made it across the bridge (took us well over an hour) and headed to the Almar Italian restaurant in Brooklyn. We had an amazing dinner of cured meats, cheeses, burrata, meat balls and of course wine. We grabbed a few pints of Halo top (my fave ice cream because it is low cal and high protein) before grabbing an Uber back to our AirBnB and settling in for the night. Sunday September 24th,2017             Today we had a pretty decent tourist day planned. I wanted to make sure he got to see all of the best parts of NYC. We jumped on the L Train (If I recall correctly) to Union square where we wandered up to another fave part of the city- Grand Central Station. I am a huge Gossip Girl Fan and Grand Central was always featured in the show which I loved. It lived up to every expectation that I had when I first saw it. The large cavernous roof with the big windows and old school train schedule are just so fun. We hadn’t had breaky so we enjoyed chicken burgers, fries and split a decadent milk shake at the Shake Shack. Since Alex had also never had Magnolia bakery, we grabbed a treat for later on. We made our way across 42nd towards the UN which sadly didn’t have any tours on (as it was Sunday) . It was still pretty cool to see the building and all of the information outside along with the security measures outside. We chatted about definitely doing a guided tour on our next visit.             After the UN, we wandered across 48th to Rockefeller to check out the area and take all the usual tourist photos (the flags, Prometheus etc.)We enjoyed a coffee and some people watching in Bryant Park which was lovely. The last time I was in Bryant Park, there was a huge Christmas market along with a massive tree and skating rink. This time, there was a cute Library along with snack stands and tons of people just out enjoying the nice weather. After stopping at Whole Foods (another one of my fancy boyfriends faves), we headed to check out Times Square and all the madness that is the area. After a bit of shopping and souvenir buying, we saw Radio City Music Hall as well as the NBC building and such around that area. We wanted to check out his fave vloggers’ wife’s store (Billy) on 5th but it wasn’t open sadly (next time for sure!). 5th Ave is such a fun place in the city filled with ritzy hotels and shops. When I last visited the city, Trump had just become president and was still residing at Trump Tower so there was police and barricades everywhere. This time, we were able to go into Trump Tower ( to see how gaudy it is) along with THE Tiffany’s. After Tiffany’s, we headed to check out all the stores in the Plaza along with the lobby of the Met before wandering around Central park for a while. We soaked up some rays in Sheeps Meadow and watched a group of people roller skate which was pretty neat. We had dinner on Madison at a great restaurant called Serafina. We enjoyed some beers and thin crusted pizza before heading to St Patrick’s to light a candle (tradition for my Catholic grandparents). We had already explored Times Square during the day but as I explained to Alex, it is something else at night. It is really special and so we hung out in Times Square for a little bit and did some people watching (and selfie taking of course). Since we had a busy travel day the next day, we headed back to the AirBnB to get packed and a good nights sleep. Monday September 25th, 2017          We were sadly leaving today☹. We had a mini sleep in before tidying up Barry’s place and heading down the street to Barcy’s for breakfast. Alex and I both love brunch so we were excited to try this place out. We wandered over and had a yummy breakfast of coffee (obviously) and chicken and waffles for myself and a breakfast sandwich for him. This restaurant had a bit of an Asian vibe to some of their menu options and the chicken I had was different than regular fried chicken. It tasted more like the chicken skewers you get at AYCE sushi restaurants and was DELICIOUS. We leisurely enjoyed our breakfast before making our way back to the AirBnB to grab our stuff and get an Uber to Laguardia. We made our way quickly through security and enjoyed another coffee and some coffee flavoured chocolate while waiting for our flight back to Toronto. We had our comfy  premium seats at the front of the plane and enjoyed our last few hours together for a month or so. I think I speak for both Alex and myself when I say that we had an awesome time in NYC. We were both very surprised at the weather (it was a heat wave the ENTIRE trip with temps in the high 20s and low 30s) It felt like summer which was very nice when we weren’t in super crowded, tourist-y areas. Any trip with a new friend or partner can be challenging and a learning opportunity (which is definitely was) but, I think we had a great time regardless and I can’t wait for our next trip together ☺

[dandelliongirl]

It’s been

three weeks.

Wow I’ve been both busy and lazy.

So Eurovision, right? That’s where I left off. I had an amazing evening with two homemade pizzas all to myself and a bottle of disgusting non-alcoholic wine. I loved Portugal’s song and it was one of my favourites. Actually all of top 3 were according to my list so it was definitely a good result. Now I also have many new songs that I actively listen to.

I spent Mother’s day with mum and dad. We went to the cottage and I got to work on my landscape and macro photography. Mum and dad assembled the little pier/dock for the summer and I went around taking photos. We came back as it started getting cloudier. I started working on a post-BoTW fic. I have a lot of issues with the writing and story of that game, some of which obviously come from the genre and can’t really be fixed because the story is completely optional but I kind of want to put my spin on the story a little bit and take the headcanons from my head onto paper. I still haven’t finished my post-TP or SS fics either so we’ll see what happens with this one but it’s not like I publish my fics anymore so...

On Monday I worked on school stuff and ACNL. I also cleaned the house a bit. In the evening my guy took me to see Kimi no Na Wa. It wasn’t my favourite, mostly because I couldn’t relate to either of the protagonists on any level. I was impatient and couldn’t wait for the movie to end. It just wasn’t for me even though most people seem to love it and usually I’m all up for time travel stuff. Anyway after the movie my guy’s sister came over. We stayed up until 2am talking and watching stupid YouTube videos. I can’t believe she’s graduating high school in a week!

On Tuesday I walked my guy’s sister to uni entrance exams and went to do my office hours while she was taking the test. Then we walked back and spent a few hours hanging out at the apartment. Then she went to visit some family friends for a night. I went to a housing cooperative meeting and rushed off to ballet. The dance mat was completely ruined and wrinkly so we couldn’t do anything with our pointe shoes on so we scheduled some extra rehearsal time on stage for Wednesday morning.

We had to be on stage at 8:15am. Our dress rehearsal started at 8:30 and the show at 10. It was over in a flash but it was pretty tiring to do two pointe choreos almost back to back. We did our Coppélia variation and then me and my friend performed Pearls in the same outfits. After the show I came bcak to the apartment and worked on school stuff again. I revised for my methods exam and my guy played DAI. His sister came back over to spend the night with us.

My guy’s sister went to another exam on Thursday morning. I went to study Japanese with my friend and then we had lunch together. I had a sort of an exam and self-evaluation/peer evaluation class for Methods. I hated every second of it but at least it’s over now. We had to write an essay and then evaluate and grade ourselves. Then we graded ourselves for the rest of the course and then we took a break before evaluating course assignments in groups. Then we discussed the course and how to improve it in the future. It was a really tiring experience spending four hours in methods class.. After class me, my guy and his friend played some BoTW before I had to go to my last ballet class. We had our last rehearsal with lights and clothes and the camera crew checking angles and edits.

On Friday I had my last master’s thesis seminar. We went through the last seminar paper and then gave feedback on the course. Our teacher also told us about finishing the thesis itself and we discussed employment and future plans together. It was stressful and I think it has really hit home that in a year from now I have to have a plan of sorts. Right now I have three options: either to stay at the uni and get a PhD in history, study to become a dance teacher or get a degree in education management. If none of these work out for me or if I don’t feel like studying any more after finishing my MA thesis I need to start job hunting after Christmas. Super scary.. I have some serious soul searching to do over these next few months.. Anyway the rest of Friday was spent relaxing and mentally celebrating the end of the academic year. I also picked up a new internet modem from the post office and prepared everything for the weekend’s dance shows.

Saturday was a full day. I went to dress rehearsals at 11 and got out around 2pm. I had some lunch, took a shower and put on my hair and makeup for another dress rehearsal at 5:30pm and a show at 7:30pm. We did Pearls for the last time, and it went pretty well.♥ After the show I listened to a concert that was happening out on our street right opposite from my livingroom window. It was a warm and summer-y day and we had a city festival with lots of events and lots of people outside. I also Facetimed my parents.

On Sunday I had two shows; at 3pm and at 6pm. At 12 I went downtown to pick up a flower for our teacher on behalf of the whole group and I had to be on stage at 2:15pm for a last minute check. Mum and dad watched the 3pm show from their AirBnB apartment and I hear granny watched the show as well. ♥ Makes me happy. Both shows went pretty well, although there was some drama between them. My guy was out getting his car back up and running and him and I were supposed to go look for a new phone for me inbetween my shows. Well he was an hour late and I was super pissed off since I had hurried off stage, handed my responsibilities to my friend and skipped the end of the show where all dancers come on stage to receive applause. I ended up sitting outside for an hour and giving up. I was seething with rage and it really screwed with my performance. My friend ended up covering for me in the second show as well. My guy did drive me and my friend over to her place and we dropped her off at the bus station though.

So this Monday my guy and I went to get me a new phone. The Huawei Honor 8 lite was on sale for 199€ and since it was under the 200€ budget I had set for myself I had to get it. The entire day was spent on configuring everything and learning how to use it. So far it has been a very good phone but honestly my old one was so bad that you don’t need much for the new one to be an improvement. It’s dark blue though so I’m desperate for my case to arrive because I can’t find it. My old phone was bright pink with a bright blue case so it was easy to spot and this one is dark and flat and sneaky. I had a dance feedback discussion with my teacher at 5:15pm and I went off to another housing cooperative meeting that started at 6pm. This was a long and tedious one, and there was this one asshole who saw fit to nitpick over every single detail of the printed materials. I was out of there after 8pm-ish and went to pick up my friend from the park. She came over to test hairdos for a wedding she’s attending this weekend. We played ME2 while I did her hair.

On Tuesday morning we went shopping. It was a sunny day so I decided to screw thesis-writing since there’ll be lots of rainy days to waste on that stuff. It did give me anxiety to throw away my plans like that but at the same time it felt kind of nice to spend a sunny day with a friend. We spent a good hour or so at the park eating take-away salads and soaking in the sun and warmth.☼ We came back to the apartment, I dyed my friend’s hair and curled it for the official hairdo test. We ended up going for two simple waterfall braids combined in the back with corkscrew curls. In the evening my friend went for the movies and I got a really big anxiety attack from skipping my responsibilities and throwing away my plans on two consecutive weekdays. I did check my emails on Tuesday morning but I hadn’t even looked at my calendar and I realized how much stuff I had left to do. I had to do something to feel productive so I scrubbed our bathroom basically from floor to ceiling for no other reason than - well yes it was dirty but I felt like I needed to do some form of actual work.

On Wednesday I was really productive. I went to study Japanese with my friend at 9 and to a meeting at 11. Then I went to the office to delegate a bunch of my work to our intern. She is a real angel since I was just realizing how badly I was drowning in work. I’m spending two full workdays next week at an event so I won’t be at the office at all and she is a huge help in doing office stuff for me. ♥ It took me until 6pm before I was back at the apartment.

Mum and dad came back from Hungary late Tuesday/early Wednesday. Their flight was postponed because of a broken weather radar on the plane and a huge storm. The electricity was cut at the airport security and water flooded in through the ceiling. Apparently subways in the city were not operational either because of all the water. Anyway after Wednesday’s office day I biked over to spend the evening with mum. We went for a bit of a run in the warm sunny summer weather, did some Pilates workouts and went to the sauna. I’ve really taken to heart spending the few sunny and warm days outdoors and saving thesis writing for the inevitable rain and gloom. I wasn’t back at the apartment until 10pm -ish. Mum got me a super cute almost tie-dye -ish lace dress and I love it!

Today I caught up on my thesis writing for this week - finally. What a relief. It was also rainy and colder today so it was fitting. Around 1pm my friend came over and we played ACNL until around 6pm. She gave me three of my dream villagers as a late birthday gift. I got Chevre, Carmen and Annalisa. She also got us Felicity to share and a bunch of cards of her own that she can scan in using my NFC reader. Even my guy played ACNL with us and we went on a bunch of island tours together. ♥ ♥ ♥ I worked on Sonetia’s layout/landscaping and I’ve decided where I want to put Carmen’s house. I’m replacing Henry with Carmen, Lolly with Chevre and probably Pekoe or Melba with Annalisa. Then all I need is Merengue but she’s expensive and hard to find. Also Marshal but I already have a piece of land set out for Merengue, which is currently empty. I did some reconfiguring with my paths to get a little plantation going. I finished my illuminated tree project and next I’m either building the scarecrow or taking down the fence to get Carmen to move in. I’m also doing lots of gardening to get some more hybrid flowers to decorate town with.

My guy made some dinner and me and my friend baked chocolate brownies with mocha frosting. They didn’t turn out that great but at least the taste was on point. We played BoTW for a while and then she left. I’ve been typing this catchup blog post for at least an hour now.. I really hope I have more free evenings now so that I can blog more often. This is such a special time in my life and I don’t want to forget a single day... I find it super sad that even a week or two is enough for me to forget lots of details and events. I want to come back to this day, the 25th of May, Ascension day, in the future and remember that I had the best time playing ACNL with my friend.

So yup, spending tomorrow doing JLPT stuff and playing ACNL. Doing my friend’s hair for the wedding on Saturday morning but other than that it’s a free weekend. Finally! I need time off after the past few weeks.

[missylou22]

Oops I did it again… 

Yup, another giant adventure. New Orleans was making me melt, so it was time to venture back up north towards the family.

But in all honesty, one of my teammates vacated his North Carolina position and I jumped at the opportunity to be a quick 6 hours from home instead of 17. No more missed birthdays, buying flights for holidays or trying to figure out appropriate vacation time.

So after a few back and forths for details, I was offered the same position I’m currently holding, just for North & South Carolina! It was a busy, hectic, and stressful few weeks trying to finish up regular work while also needing to fly up to find a suitable new apartment, pack my tiny 1 bedroom in New Orleans, move it all up to Charlotte, NC

I took a few days back in March to do the apartment searching. And because work has conditioned me so well, I plugged the few places I had in mind into mapquest route planner and scheduled out 6 visits in about 4 hours :)

Luckily my teammate and I are good friends and I was able to arrange a private tour of my new city with him and his wife and indulge in some North Carolina BBQ for dinner. Because I came in on a weekend, I was able to knock out about 3 more locations on Sunday and had one last one to see Monday before a flight back to NOLA on Tuesday afternoon. I figured 4 days would be decent since that’s what dad and I took to find my NOLA apartment but found it on day 1. I have another friend (former Redskins coworker) in the area too so it was nice to be able to have someone with me for a few of the places.

It came down to 2 locations on Monday – a third floor 1 bedroom 1 bathroom with sunroom (for my office), but no elevators or washer & dryer in unit, or a 4th floor, 2 bedroom, 2 bathrooom with everything but a little more than what I was already paying. Guess which one I chose…

Yup, welcome to the 2 bedroom life!! It was really going to suck having to lug suitcases up and down 3 flights of stairs… I pay for convenience.  Now I have a dedicated office AND a guest bedroom!! All I had left to do was pack up my New Orleans apartment, find movers, and get on the road…. crap.

How the hell am I going to pack all this junk into appropriate boxes and where the hell am I going to put it when I get there?

Packing your entire life in 672 sq feet while also trying to keep life normal is very difficult. I took my mother’s advice and packed a few boxes every night for a week or two until I didn’t have any more space to put boxes, suitcases, etc. in my living room.

While trying to keep up with that “normal” life idea I tried to keep work as fluid as possible while also saying see ya later to the friends I made in the Big Easy. Luckily those friends are lifelong ones and made sure to give me the proper sendoff with  all-you-can-eat Crawfish, booze, baseball and Beauty & the Beast on my final weekend.

I also got some help from our Junior in Atlanta who drove all the way down to clean out my storage unit. Since the process of hiring my replacement is ongoing we wanted that BDM to be able to start fresh with a new storage unit – meaning it was up to us to completely clean it out and ship back whatever wasn’t taken/recycled. We loaded & unloaded the car 3 times, returned my corporate vehicle, and FedEx’d stuff to corporate all in one day. It was only fair that I introduce him to Crawfish and Bourbon Street. We celebrated hard on Bourbon Street – go big or go home right?!

Go big we did. I’m pretty sure I was still inebriated when I woke up before the movers arrived… It was a rough morning trying to pack the rest of my crap. I had to be careful not to stand up too quickly and rehydrate. By the time the movers got there and started taking the pre-packed boxes, I was just shoving the rest of it in garbage bags going “I’ll figure out what’s in what when I get there”. It took them about 3/3.5 hours to load everything and off they went. By the way, Abba Movers, a local business in New Orleans was AMAZING. I liked the idea of not having my stuff thrown in a storage unit somewhere to await another 18wheeler loaded with random people’s belongings and then maybe being delivered the next 7-10 days…. These guys assured me they would load everything securely, drive to Charlotte, and unload all within 3 days. Yes please!

Once the big stuff was out, it was just the little stuff and cleaning left before I closed the door on my NOLA life. Sir Quilliam Thatcher was the last thing in the car before heading out to return my Cox router for the 5.5 hour drive to Auburn.

We were loaded down and ready for the next road trip adventure! I arrived to Auburn around 10:30 that evening, threw myself in the shower and flopped into bed. I don’t have a large travel home for Quilliam yet, so I set him up in the spacious jacuzzi tub of the hotel. 

Because hedgehogs are nocturnal, he decided that 4am was a good time to throw all the plastic pieces/toys around which got him locked back in hedgie jail.

Thursday we loaded back into the car and continued through Atlanta to our new home and upon arrival, I had already forgotten how big the new space was. I spent that evening locating an air mattress for myself to sleep on and sitting on the floor in the middle of the giant living room just appreciating the quiet.

The movers weren’t due to arrive till 10am on Friday but I got a call asking if they could move it up to 9am… ummm ABSOLUTELY. And at 8:45am they arrived ready to unload and while I worked my way through e-mails and created a newsletter, they unloaded everything into my new 1,187 sq foot space, not one thing missing or broken! That’s a LOT more space than I realized and all my furniture looked too small… Good thing Mom & Dad were on their way down to help me organize, decorate and check out some new furniture!

The super clutch piece to the whole weekend was the flatbed cart the apartment complex had available to help me move everything in and out. The only casualty of the entire move was a small hair I found wrapped around poor Quilliam’s tiny foot, luckily my bff is a vet with vet friends all over the place and she was able to find me a local team that see’s exotics.

Once the parental support arrived we unpacked the essentials, picked up an aggrivated Quilly, and shopped around until my hangriness got out of hand and we had to check out the restaurant downstairs.

Saturday morning we’d hit the ground running for some big girl furniture. I initially saw this fantastic looking white buffet piece to put my TV on at the Value City Furniture store. I found it in my original apartment search trip, went back to look at it when I arrived Thursday and this was my 3rd trip to the store to confirm I liked it. While I did like it, I was annoyed I couldn’t take it home with me immediately. So after declining to wait for it to be delivered, because I am impatient (and the Kitchen table we were looking at was sold right underneath our noses) I did some googling to find top rated furniture stores in Charlotte.

Welcome to Nadeau! Furniture with my soul captured as soon as I crossed the front door threshold. I was entranced. It was almost an antique setup store with furniture piled on top of each other and on my treasure hunt I went. We were overwhelmed by the amount of quality looking pieces in there, I wanted everything. And after much deliberation between pieces, what I wanted my apartment to look like, the ideas that had been stored in my brain for years and checking prices, I left with 3 items purchased.

We were able to load the small table and the bench into mom’s new car at once, but the buffet would be trip #2. As we excitedly got the pieces into the space I could see it all coming together. I was still bummed about missing out on the other table and was deciding which style I wanted for my very first kitchen table. Circle?! Square?! Rectangle!? If I get a circle farm style table I’d want to move this light a foot over, can maintenance do that? But what if I get a rectangle table? I could slide this bench over and not have to buy chairs? WHY IS ADULTING SO HARD?!

Once I decided on the colors of the first 3 pieces, I knew the style I was looking for but still hadn’t decided on shape. We went back to pick up the buffett and took another look around at the tables and there it was. A beautiful Mango wood rectangular table. I’ve never been more in love with a piece of wood… I’m hoping it lasts me a while. And my jaw about hit the floor when the sales kid told me it was only $289…. I just looked at dad with the most surprised expression while dollar signs flashed in my eyes. Yup. Mine.

We stopped at Home Depot after loading the last 2 pieces and then dad got to work attaching the legs… funny, I’m pretty sure I have the same photo of him putting together my desk 2.5 years ago :) (except this time we didn’t have to load & unload it all ourselves!! WIN!)

Now that I had some new furnishings, it was time to really make this apartment home. On to the decorating we went!

My mind is still boggled by how much space I have. I’m used to living on top of all my posessions. Here, everything is put away. It’s clean, it doesn’t look cluttered, it’s so zen!

Because I have 2 giant walk-in closets, I no longer needed my homemade garment rack, Mom and I decided to turn it into a display/headboard piece for the spare room/office. Yes the air mattress is currently in there until I find a new sectional sofa and move this tiny/semi-broken one in there.

The spare room now is not only my office, but also a reminder of all the fun things I’ve done so far. Mardi Gras items, signed sports stuff, my favorite books, etc.

The last piece of the puzzle was my master bedroom suite. I’m pretty excited to have my bathroom right in my bedroom actually. Again, because of all the space my bedroom is quite empty now that I’ve put everything away. There’s no longer a bike or grill next to my bed, clothes out in the open or crafting flowers laying around.

I legitimately don’t know what to do with myself…. Maybe I’ll add a really cool & fun chair somewhere. I also needed a little extra storage space in my bathroom so I found a cabinet unit at WalMart and put it together after Mom & Dad hit the road.

My first dinner at my very own kitchen table was a turkey sandwich, as was my first lunch. I’ll get to cooking eventually :)

I spent my office day for work on our normal conference call which was very odd because I’m used to waking up and having to get right on the call since I was an hour behind the rest of the team. It’ll take some getting used to having a whole hour before the call now. I actually had time to make coffee!! I set up my office space as well, and started planning out some sales calls for my first few days after I pick up the company car and check out the storage unit.

I’ll make the first 6 hour drive home this weekend for Nugget’s 3rd birthday and Easter. I’m super excited to be back within driving distance from the family. Can’t wait to see what this new adventure brings!

That’s enough adulting for now. I’m tired.

Queen City Oops I did it again... 

[fredericksmeg-blog]

Week 6? 7? Who knows!

An exciting 10 days in the UK!!

Monday, Feb. 13th On Monday, I slept past noon. I was absolutely cashed from the past two weekends in Barcelona and Paris (I know this is a privileged problem to have) so I spent the day recuperating. Oh, and typing a paper. Once I actually became a functioning human, I went to the grocery store to restock my food, and then I was up pretty later typing the better half of a paper for my media class.

Tuesday, Feb. 14th On good ol’ Valentine’s Day I got up and went to my BLC class. We walked about socioeconomic classes in the UK and its relationship with accents. We also got a briefing on our internship interviews, which were taking place that week. I went home for lunch and then walked back to our campus building for art class, where we all gave presentations on different exhibits that we visited around London for an ongoing project. We had about an hour left of class at the end so we went to the Victoria and Albert Museum and I was so hungry at this point I couldn’t even tell you what we saw. In media class, we talked about the British press. We sorted through different newspapers and tabloids and discussed each one in a little bit of detail.  It was pretty interesting, actually.

When I got home, I flopped around until Will could facetime me for our equivalent of a Valentine’s Day date, aka I was in my pajamas watching him do some homework and being sad that we aren’t together. We didn’t talk for too long but we made a plan to talk for longer later in the week.

Wednesday, Feb. 15th On Wednesday I attempted to get my life in order by uploading pictures from the weekend and starting to prep for our spring break trip to Italy. I did a run through for my internship interview: finding the place, seeing how long it’d take me to get there, etc. On my way back from there I walked almost the entire length of Oxford St. to grab some “outdoor” wear for the adventure weekend in Wales that was happening at the end of my spring break trip. I came home, made dinner, and then we did more Italy planning, booking hotels and buying train tickets and such. I went to bed soooo nervous for my interview the next day because I am a rambler and stress is not my best friend.

Thursday, Feb. 16th On Thursday I woke up really early because I was in the zone, basically. I had a nice breakfast and prepped for my interview, and even tried to look like a real human girl. I got to my interview reaaally early, so I read on a park bench for a little bit. When I got there, it took me a while to find the actual office because there are a few. I found it, though, and sat down for pizza and pasta and a beer (!) with my supervisor. It was super casual and we just talked about what I’m studying and how the market operates. I’m working on their general admin team and hopefully working with their community manager on some projects that benefit the neighborhood, which is struggling a little! I felt really good about the whole thing.

From there I zipped back to Kensington to go to the class that my interview had been scheduled during. I think we just talked about press issues, like #fakenews. I genuinely have no idea what I did after class. I’m pretty sure I ate and took care of travel related things. Later I facetimed Will for a pretty long time which was nice.

Friday, Feb. 17th On Friday I had my first little explore in London for weeks (since I’d been traveling on most Fridays). Bri, Natalie and I went to the Wallace Collection in Marylebone, mostly to see Natalie’s favorite painting, “The Swing” aka that painting from Frozen with the big skirt. We walked to an area near Paddington station called “Little Venice” that Bri found out about. It was cute, but also really small. We stopped into a café on a little boat. It was cute. I had some soup. From there we went to Primrose Hill to spot some dogs and watch the sun set. We bought some Jaffa cakes and I ate a whole sleeve and I do not have any regrets. We actually ran into a million other people from our building on the hill, go figure. Then we headed back to HPG to eat dinner and get changed! On the way back I picked up a Valentine’s Day package from Will and I sat on the floor in a puddle of my own tears reading the little note he sent me. Will is too good. He is a good boyfriend and a good friend and it’s really hard to be good at both of those things at the same time. 

After dinner Bri and I headed over to Shoreditch for a pub-crawl that apparently every UW student in London was attending. The pubs/bars weren’t anything special, but I had a really good time with my friends. Wow, cheesy I know. I even got to sprint through an empty King’s Cross Station (More importantly, I got to see the Platform 9 ¾ trolley without a line in front of it).

Saturday, Feb. 18th I slept late on Saturday because I could. I managed to type up a day-by-day itinerary of our spring break trip and figure out logistics like museum prices, food recommendations, etc. That took a really solid chunk of my day, but at the end of it I had nothing else to figure out for break and I felt really prepared. Bri, Natalie, and I were also planning to go to Cardiff (the capital of Wales) for the day on Sunday morning. So, we prepared a little bit for that and went to bed early, because we had to catch a bus in the morning.

Sunday Feb. 19th On Sunday, we went to the coach station and got on our bus to Cardiff. I fell asleep pretty much immediately. It’s amazing how good I’ve become at falling asleep in public over the last few months. It took us about 3 hours to get to Cardiff. When we got there, we took a walk through Sofia Gardens, which is where their bus stop is located, and checked out Cardiff castle before heading to the Pieminister (which is a wonderful, wonderful establishment that has a stand at Borough Market) for brunch pies! British food typically really sucks but wow, I have fallen in love with pies. Not fruit pies, like chicken potpies, but with other real hot foods and meat and mash in it. I think my pie was more of a quiche inside of a pie crust; nevertheless I was a huge fan. Then we bopped around central Cardiff, shopped a little, and then we decided to walk all the way to the bay. It was kind of funny because I recognized Cardiff Bay from episodes of Doctor Who, because the filming of the show is based there and they’ve used it as a location several times.

This is a perfect Segway because after that I parted ways with Natalie and Bri and went to the Doctor Who Experience. This was a totally given for me if I was visiting Cardiff. I don’t really keep up with the show anymore but it was a huge part of my life in high school so I enjoyed seeing the props and some sets at the tour. After that I met back up with Natalie and Bri, and we went to grab dinner at a restaurant that overlooked the bay. It was nice, and I had a nice beer. It was really relaxed and we just hung around for a while and got some food. After that we walked back to central Cardiff, and sat at a pub close to the bus stop until it was time to leave. Just a nice day out of the city really. Got to see some of Wales.

Monday Feb. 20th Monday was my last day of not having class all day, since after the break my schedule changes. I went to the British Library in the morning to see the Maps and the 20th Century exhibit, which I wanted to see before it closed because a) I love maps and b) I was presenting on it for a class project later in the semester. It was very cool and I had a great time. There were lots of war maps, and some original maps from J.R.R. Tolkien as he worked out the geography of middle earth.

After the library I went to a nearby café in Russell Square to work on my final presentation for media class. After that, I went to Covent Garden and after much deliberation, I bought a pair of Vans because my Nikes were dying. I also bought a carry-on suitcase because I brought my backpack here as a carry on, and I needed something bigger for break. Then I came home, ate dinner, and went to go do my laundry. Then I worked on my presentation for so long it was the worst.  But I finished it so it was fine.

Tuesday Feb. 21st On Tuesday, I had BLC in the morning and we walked around the British Museum, which marked the 4th time I had been there so far. My professor doesn’t think that the Parthenon Marbles are that great so I was a little displeased. Anyway we were only there for about an hour but I saw some stuff that I hadn’t before. I went home to eat lunch before I had to go back into central London for a trip to the Tate Modern with my art class. We saw Elton John’s photo collection, which is a ticketed exhibit there right now. It was interesting – it had the Migrant Mother depression era photo in it. On Tuesday night most of my media class gave their final presentations. I was at the end of the list, though, so I had to wait until Thursday. So I mentally checked out and coasted through the rest of that class, I won’t lie to you. 

Wednesday Feb. 22nd Wednesday was an action-packed day full of packing and prep. I woke up and ran to H&M to pick up a few things to layer for the Wales adventure trip I was going on. I honestly think I just packed and blogged and hung around at home for most of the day. I did a lot of homework as well that needed to be submitted before I left. That night, we celebrated Emily’s birthday at a dim sum restaurant in Shoreditch called the Drunken Monkey. We ate so much food it was amazing but I was so disgusted with myself afterwards. That was one of the first times that all 8 of us had been in the same place at the same time since Amsterdam I think. After dinner, Jas and Bri and I encountered a tube strike disaster. The district line was pretty much shut down, it was raining, and the central line was completely closed due to the strike. So, we took two buses all the way home. Obviously we’d just eaten our weight in Chinese food, and we were all tired and feeling pretty nasty. There was a pug on one of our buses though. So I’ll count it as a win.

I’ll leave it here because the next post will be about my break, which includes Thursday! I’ll post that really soon, it’s basically done because I worked on it while I was in Italy.  Cheers!

[rueur]

Morning Pages #42 (12.03.2017)

Sunday 12th March - 10:54 p.m.

I moved back home after a little over a week in Northcote (from Friday the 3rd till now). And funnily enough, I spent most of this last week with Evan. I’m not even exaggerating when I say the only time I wasn’t with him was when I was with other people, or when I was at uni really. I saw him on Saturday the 4th in the afternoon. He came over, and we had sex for the first time. I think I wrote about that, but I can’t be entirely sure. This past week has just become a collection of really blissful memories, and precious conversations. We went to a party on Saturday night, yes I definitely wrote about this. Then I stayed over at his on Saturday night because of the spider. And then on Sunday morning I left, I went to see Jerica at Greensborough and then was right with Evan again from 3 p.m. onwards. That was also the day he went into the city and bought his portable speaker, a JBL Charge 3. We spent the rest of Sunday listening to each other’s music. He got into Acid Rap, which I was ecstatic about when he told me what he thought about it on Tuesday night when he came over again. He stayed Sunday night too, but left Monday morning before I left for uni. His friend Daniel wanted his help, bouncing ideas off of him and a bunch of his other friends. Daniel is a businessman, rather idealistic but well-intentioned, and perhaps even a revolutionary, from what Evan has told me. Tuesday night and Wednesday he was back here again. He left Wednesday afternoon, but late. He was back Thursday evening, and then left again Friday afternoon. He came back Friday night, around 11. I spent Friday evening with Rachael, but Friday morning Evan and I were in the city and we had a bit of a shopping day. Saturday was, however, a very lazy day. A truly lazy day for the both of us. Although we did do a bit of writing - I wrote a poem, about him...about us, actually - and we did leave the house at one point but only to get some dinner after realising that we actually wouldn’t have enough food for the day because we had ammi’s rice (that she packed me on Wednesday night because I went home on Wednesday night) for breakfast, for a nice change from porridge. Not that I was the one who needed a change from porridge, because the bag of oats I’d brought to Emily’s was pretty much used by me to replace a lot of meals. I didn’t eat super well, I mean when I was on my own. When I was with Evan, and Rachael and Jeri, I ate quite well. I was afraid that I ate almost too well, but I weighed myself today and I’m a little under 52 kilos. Which is where I’ve been for a while, so I’m happy with that. I went to the gym today too, after 11 days of having not gone. I realised this upon checking my session sheet. The only downside to living in Northcote is the fact that I tend not to work out during my stay. But I guess it doesn’t matter too much anyway because I don’t really eat during my time there, well not as much as I would at home. And uni also naturally takes a lot out of me, all the walking and thinking. I’ll be riding my bike to the station tomorrow morning for the first time in a while and I keep thinking about that. I wonder if my legs will be okay, I don’t know. Of course they will be, like I don’t doubt that at all. I guess I’m just making myself fret for no real reason.

I had a dream last night that really messed with me. It was bad enough that it made me wake up feeling totally anxious, but Evan was there too and so I felt rude and odd on top of already feeling anxious. But it’s hard not to feel good around him generally. And I felt a lot better after I just told him about the dream. What I remember started with him abandoning my on a train, well I say ‘abandon’ but I guess what actually happened was that he was being kind of short with me on a train and then one second he was there and the next he’d just disappeared. But because he was being short with me, I interpreted his disappearance as an abandonment. Anyway, I told him that and he immediately put on a funny voice and said ‘Dream Evan is sorry’ and I grinned and all was right once more. But the bulk of the dream was academic stress: another dream where I’m enrolled in a class I had no idea I was enrolled in and halfway through the semester I realise I’ve totally failed to attend any classes and hand in any assignments. Uni tends to mess with me as well. But I’m taking comfort in the fact that this is going to be my last full semester, because with my intensive over the winter break, semester two will only have three subjects. I can’t wait to see what that timetable will look like. I might even get three days off out of the week rather than just two. We shall see, we shall see.

I had a glass of wine tonight, just to write out the scene I needed to write out for Advanced Screenwriting tomorrow. Tomorrow is Labour Day but it’s famously not a university holiday, so I’ll be back at Parkville at noon for my Journalism lecture and I’ll be there till 5:45 p.m., lord. I just took a bit of a break to check the LMS and see what weekly tasks I have left to do for this upcoming week (week 3). I need to do the reflections for both Environmental Politics and Management, and Sustainable Development. That’s it, I think. Oh, I need to submit my first draft for my first article for Writing Journalism. And I still feel like I should do my Week 5 tutorial paper for Advanced Screenwriting (on Sound and Radio drama) ahead of time, just to be safe. Because I’ll be travelling to and from Northcote for most of this semester too, in fact Emily’s just called me back for next weekend. From the 19th to the 26th, or thereabouts. That might be nice, because Evan is seeing Adele on Sunday, I think. He’s been playing Adele incessantly for the past few days. It’s been kind of nice, but honestly I liked it a lot more when he played J. Cole and some Chance, upbeat stuff I guess. And stuff that I knew, too. He’s gotten into Chance.

I feel like the wine was supposed to focus me, because I’ve heard that a glass of red wine before or during some writing can really help clear your head and get your best ideas out. But I didn’t have a glass, I had a mug. And I fear that I might’ve had too much. I’m not drunk, but my head does feel a little heavier than usual. It’s nearly midnight too, and I feel like I should go to bed soon. I haven’t finished my wine yet though. Nor have I finished today’s pages, even though it’s under a quarter of an hour away from being Monday morning. It’s thirteen minutes away from being Monday morning, and I just got a new toothbrush from my mum. I asked her for one a couple of minutes ago. I threw my old one out before I moved out of the Northcote apartment, because I recently realised that I’d been using that toothbrush a full year now. I had it when I was living at Rachael’s so it’s actually been a full year. Ikaros’ pink toothbrush is still in my room. I feel like I should throw it out but I also feel like I should return it to him, because he liked it. He probably wouldn’t want it though, because of the memories? I don’t know. I want my books back from him too. He has Lord of the Rings, and Harry Potter & the Chamber of Secrets, and my Sherlock Holmes book too.

He went clubbing with Cameron this weekend. One Puf. I haven’t been there, but it’s Cameron’s kind of scene and I feel like it wouldn’t have been Ikaros’ kind of scene. Although Laundry wouldn’t have been Ikaros’ scene either and I was going to take him there before we called it quits. I’m sorry, I’m feeling really restless right now. My heart isn’t in these pages anymore. I think it was when I started writing, because I was writing about Evan and I. Maybe it’s no longer in it now because I started talking about Ikaros. Maybe I should stop talking about Ikaros then, and just let myself be happy in the now. I am quite happy in the now. Sometimes I think about what the future might be like with Evan, rather than with Ikaros. Because it’s been Ikaros in my head for the past two or so years, and the ideas we had for each other are hard to shirk. It is however, rendered easier by all the times I can recall where he started talking about HIS future and excluded me from his hypothetical fantasy entirely. He did a lot of things that hurt me, and made me insecure. He didn’t make me truly happy. He didn’t treat me like I meant all that much to him. Evan, on the other hand, essentially spent a solid week straight with me and is keen to do it again. He invited me over to his on Tuesday night, to stay over. He wants to cook for me Tuesday night and Wednesday morning, because I made all the meals whilst we were living in Northcote. He said he felt bad about that, but honestly I really liked cooking for him, and he did help a little bit. Ikaros tended to take the reigns with everything: with cooking, with plans, with sex. Evan likes me on top, which is also really working for me, like quite a lot. He likes to look at me, I think. He’s not at all dominant, he’s more an equalist when it comes to sex. He’s more interested in sharing that physical intimacy with me rather than dominating me, and it feels amazing. I feel so inelegant just saying ‘it feels amazing’ but it does. It’s intense. It actually feels so much more intense - and I feel so much more present because of that - because I feel like it’s just him and me in the moment, holding each other, feeling each other. I can’t help myself, I run my hands up and down him and tighten the grip that my legs have round his torso. He’ll pull me to him and he’ll look at me, like he won’t take his eyes away from mine and just the focus that he gives me alone is enough to send shivers through me. We work really well together, and in all the ways that I hoped we would too. Sometimes I still can’t believe that this is the same boy I danced with exactly two months ago now! It’s Monday the 13th now and I met him on Friday the 13th. That first night, I still remember it so well. He was so cute. And of course I was already feeling his arms through his cardigan, goodness. I still remember that. I still remember dancing with him and feeling so so happy, so alive. I just want to go back and read what I wrote about that night right now. I remember thinking at that time, when he danced over to me, that he was really playful and sweet. He’s proven me right about that over these past few months. And over this last week, he’s just gotten so much more cute and goofy with me. I just miss him so much right now, I want to just call him and fall asleep to the sound of his voice in my ear. But I will make do with Jasper Jones, and take comfort in the hopes that he’s reading Of Mice and Men right now and thinking of me, hoping that I’m reading Jasper Jones. I wouldn’t be surprised if that were the case. I really don’t think I would be. We’ve been so in sync so often now (and in such a small timespan too) that the coincidences are no longer surprising to me, more just lovely and welcome: further proof that this is cosmic. This is meant to be.