#i was unwell but it was rather a simpler time

[stained-glass-mustache]

i have been possessed by my 14 y/o self and am grinning and giggling and kicking my feet thinking about frerard

[kaibutsushidousha]

A Day in Haruki’s Life - Sick Visit (Sagrada Reset 4)

[INDEX]

In class, she was always looking front and right, resting her cheek on her left hand. Although this "always" was very recent. She was assigned to her new seat only last month. But after a month, she couldn't possibly remember what she did in her previous classroom.

This was the last class on July 4th, Tuesday. Haruki Misora was looking front and right with her cheek on her left hand, paying no attention to the world history lessons she heard. As usual.

Her eyes pointed to an empty seat. The boy who usually sat on it wasn't there today. His voice was weird yesterday. She now realized she should have cared more about that. Haruki sighed a sigh too minor for anyone to notice.

The elderly man on the teacher's desk lectured about a revolution that happened in France and Russeau's ideals. That didn't matter. It wasn't the moment to be wasting brain power on the ramifications of a revolution that concluded centuries ago or who gained political supremacy.

Asai Kei caught a cold and missed school. The greatest question in Haruki's mind was how to cope with that.

Kei getting sick was not exactly a rare occurrence. It happened multiple times every year. He was not the kind to worry about his health every day and didn't treat being a bit under the weather as a big deal. That contrasted weirdly with the way he's plenty careful, sagacious, and knowledgeable about most other subjects. How come he never learned that it's more efficient to treat colds at their earliest stages?

Kei had a strong resistance to pain. She caught on to signs of him having a headache or feeling unwell and doing nothing about it. Besides, he was surprisingly lazy in his habits, sometimes even skipping on brushing his teeth.

(That's fine. It's not my place to complain. Kei's body and health are entirely his own.)

Haruki had three major questions she was concerned about.

Whether or not to visit him.

What to bring him if she chooses to visit.

Whether or not to contribute to the U-Res's assignment.

All difficult questions.

She wanted to visit him.

But going to Kei's apartment and wishing him well would not improve his condition. If anything, it was more likely to strain him. Therefore, visiting him would be entirely counterproductive.

The only plausible reason to go to his apartment is concern for his diet. It's possible that he wouldn't bother with eating properly while sick. But if she visited him bringing food, he would have to try it.

(I could make congee in his apartment.)

She thought she just had a great idea.

It served as a reason to visit and defined what to bring. All she needed was a pot and rice. Also pickled plums and kelp for the stock. She'd rather make something more elaborate, but he'd prefer it simpler.

(I already know how to make congee. It's not any difficult. But I can't afford to fail. I'll look up detailed recipes online later.)

Haruki nodded imperceptibly. She had decided to go to Kei's apartment after class and make congee. A major unplanned event. A plan that deserved a red circle on her calendar but there was no point in doing that when she only had the idea on the day it would happen.

Now the only question left was about the U-Res assignment.

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

The U-Res assignment was something her classmate Minami Mirai brought up during their lunch break.

Haruki normally had her lunch with Kei on the landing of a staircase. But he was absent, so instead, she opened her lunchbox alone on her class desk.

She tried to get started but didn't have an appetite.

She put her chopsticks down before touching her food and instead took her phone. She got a feeling that Kei texted her. It was just her imagination but she still opened her messages and reread Kei's previous posts.

Most of it was business messages. The most frequent type of conversation was him assigning a time and place for them to meet and her answering "Understood". He was overall less friendly through text.

(Should I message him? But if he's sleeping now, that'd risk waking him up with the notification noise.)

While she was deep in thought, Minami Mirai approached with her usual radiant smile and spoke.

"Howdy. Can I eat with you?"

There was no reason to refuse. As Haruki nodded, Minami turned the front desk's seat 180 degrees and sat facing Haruki.

"Ennui got you today, Misora?", she said while she opened her small elliptical bento box.

Ennui. A word she heard before but didn't know the meaning. Not an English word, as far as she remembered. The Japanese-English dictionary under her desk wouldn't be of any help.

"What do you mean by that?", Haruki asked despite not being interested. Day-to-day conversation was all about lack of interest not being a reason to cut a subject short. For whatever it was worth, Kei enjoyed pointless chatter.

With her chopsticks in her right hand, Minami scratched her cheek with her left.

"Oh, there's no reason. I expected you to be feeling Asai's absence, so I shot my guess."

Her question was about the definition of ennui, but the answer she got was slightly off the subject. But the topic didn't prove itself worth further pursuit.

"Ok."

After a quick nod, Haruki picked up her chopsticks again. The main dish of her lunch was pepper-filled meat. Haruki was not a picky eater. As per the usual meaning of the expression, this meant she had nothing she refused to eat, but in Haruki's case, it also meant she didn't have any standout preferences. Anything goes.

"You're going to visit him, right?", said Minami, picking up a broccoli with her chopsticks.

"I'm considering my options."

"Why? What is there to consider?"

"Do you think I should?", Haruki asked after some pause.

"Of course. Can't let the romantic moment go by you."

"Colds are not romantic."

"Oh, they are. You gotta shoot for him while he's sick and weakened."

Haruki didn't believe a cold could weaken him. She took a bite at her pepper-filled meat. It tasted like ground meat and bell pepper.

Minami bent herself forward with excitement, wildly moving the broccoli still on her chopsticks up and down.

"By the way, Misora, do you know the easiest way to heal a cold?"

"To take your medications and sleep a lot?"

"Think less realism and more miracle of love."

It was hard to envision a miracle as an easy option but she was invested in any way to cure a cold.

Minami raised her left index finger because she still hadn't put that broccoli in her mouth after all this time. Haruki began to suspect she didn't like broccoli.

"Step 1: kiss him to transfer the cold to you."

(Is this going to work? Many types of virus are indeed transmissible through contact between mucous membranes, so maybe she has a point.)

Next, she raised her middle finger, forming a peace sign.

"Step 2: he's cured because his cold went to someone else."

(This is likely wrong. That's a superstition. Since it's common for colds to be highly infective and short-lived, is structurally natural for people to heal from their colds soon after contaminating others.)

But Minami was assertive.

"In short, kiss him and he'll get better. LOGICAL!"

Her reasoning was sound but based on a false premise.

"That's very improbable.", answered Haruki.

Showing no signs of wanting to hear a counter-argument, Minami finally eats her broccoli.

"I don't believe it either. But that's my U-Res assignment. Do colds really heal when passed to others?"

"What is the U-Res?"

"The club I'm part of."

She gave a seemingly practiced introduction. The U in U-Res stands for "unidentified". Res is short for "research club".

"Summing up, the U-Res is a research society for anything unidentified."

She understood it, but couldn't find their methods of study pertinent.

"Me hypothetically catching Kei's cold and him recovering from it wouldn't qualify as proof that colds can be cured through transfer."

That didn't suffice as evidence correlating the transfer and the healing. He'd simply have recovered after transmitting it.

"That's why we want as much data as possible. The goal is to identify how long it takes for someone to recover from a cold, whether or not they got someone infected, and draw statistics from there."

Their approach was more decent than she expected. But she still had many doubts.

"I believe the moment of contagion goes unnoticed in most cases."

"Yup. I don't think we can get precise statistics for that."

"Then wouldn't it be pointless?"

Minami picked up a cherry tomato and grinned.

"Uhuh. The real goal of the U-Res is to put serious research into pointless stuff and make up whatever conclusion we want. No one cares about the truth."

(Their research is pointless but that's the appeal. I lately began to understand the point of pointlessness. Pointless actions are optimal for turning the process into the real goal.)

"So kiss Asai if you feel like it.", said Minami with a suggestive grin.

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

That's the whole story of her U-Res assignment.

Haruki was apathetic to most matters. Participating in them or not made no difference to her. She rarely refused when asked for help.

But this was one of these rare exceptions. For the sole reason that it concerned Asai Kei.

He wouldn't be comfortable with infecting others with his disease.

(I'm pretty sure I can't cooperate with the U-Res.)

With that decided, the chime rang marking the end of the day's last class.

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

After class, Haruki went home and borrowed her mother's biggest shoulder bag. Aside from her school bag, the only other bags Haruki had was a tiny purse for small objects and a sports bag that would have been too big. Neither extreme was the appropriate size.

She packed her mother's bag with the smallest earthenware pot and the congee ingredients and immediately left again. She didn't feel any need to change her uniform.

Her walking pace was quick. Without detours, Kei's apartment was a 15-minute walk away from her house, but she decided to pass by the shopping district. Her kitchen had no pickled plums. The probability of Kei having some in his fridge was low.

Without Kei walking by her side, her balance felt unstable. This sensation always assailed her when she walked alone. Perhaps her memory of his pace was the only thing keeping her able to walk straight. She was aware this was a misapprehension but that didn't fix it. The shoulder with the bag felt heavier because of the pot.

Entering the supermarket, she went straight for the groceries area. She found honey-filled plum pickles and nodded with satisfaction.

(Is there anything else I should buy?)

She had all the ingredients she needed for the congee. But she got the feeling she was still missing something. Her instincts told her so. Or perhaps the kind of anxiety that doesn't disappear no matter how perfectly you do things. But she couldn't afford to quit racking her brain. She kept the thoughts running as she headed to the cashier.

It's always full of shoppers before dinner hours. The line to the cashier was considerably lengthy. Getting to the tail end of it put the confectionery corner right in sight.

(Is that what I was missing? Kei loves sweets. Maybe he should have something for dessert.)

But they only had daifuku and dangos lined up. Too bulky options for someone sick.

The line to the cashier moved. Haruki gathered her coins and paid the precise amount.

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

Ten minutes after leaving the supermarket, a Western confectionery store caught Haruki's eye. March Hall.

March Hall was a small store with an even smaller eating space, dealing more in takeout sweets. She ate cream puffs here with Kei before.

There was a poster on the entrance. B5-sized, very discreet. None of those baiting words like "best-selling", "new menu", or "limited-time offer". Not even a single exclamation point. Only the words "Peach-in-jelly".

Passing by the sign, Haruki stopped in her tracks.

(That's it. Peach.)

She was missing peaches. When you think seeing someone sick, you think peaches. She couldn't remember who taught her that, but she had it registered as common sense.

Haruki turned back and entered March Hall.

She was the only client there.

The only employee smiled from behind the counter.

"Welcome."

Haruki walked toward her.

"I'd like two peaches-in-jelly."

She would eat jelly with Kei. What a wonderful plan.

But the clerk's expression dimmed.

"I'm sorry. We are out of peaches-in-jelly for today."

Sold out. Unfortunately, she'd have to give up on that. This late on a business day, there were few slices of cake left on the display cases as well.

"Would you like this fruit tart instead? It's made with a lot of peach."

The clerk's hands pointed to a tart. Tough choice. It fits Kei's tastes, but would he feel like eating tart while he has a cold?

Since she was talking to an expert, it didn't hurt to ask.

"Do you have anything someone ill would want?"

The clerk smiled.

"Are you choosing for someone else?"

"Yes."

"Alright. How about ice cream?"

(Good point. Something cold makes sense. But it doesn't have peaches.)

The clerk spoke with conviction. Like she was describing a ceremony with centuries of proven tradition.

"Ice cream is what a sick person needs."

"More so than peaches?"

"Peaches are great, but ice cream is champion."

Haruki wasn't so sure, but it was undeniable that this woman was more knowledgeable about Western desserts than Haruki.

"We don't have the peach flavor, but I recommend this natural apple ice cream."

(Apples. Yes, I might have heard that an apple a day keeps the doctor away.)

Haruki takes a second look at the fruit tarts before making her decision.

"Apple ice cream for two, then."

The clerk had a sweet smile.

"Yes, miss."

She took two cups of ice cream out of the case and packed them with dry ice in a thick paper bag.

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

After 10 minutes of walking fast so the ice cream wouldn't melt, Haruki arrived at Kei's building.

Pickled plums on her right hand. Apple-flavored ice cream on her left. And a pot, rice, and kelp in the bag on her shoulder. All perfect.

And yet, Haruki wasn't moving toward the entrance. She still hadn't decided whether or not she should visit him.

Her doubts came late, but they were still pertinent.

She hadn't imagined the situation enough. Visiting Kei's apartment required pressing the buzzer. She would need him to come out and unlock the door.

Were this congee and ice cream worth forcing him out of his bed and making him walk all the way to the door? Tough question. Haruki believed sleep was the most essential factor in recuperation.

Besides, all of her actions were built on the unconfirmed premise that he had not made dinner for himself yet. It was possible that he already had something ready in his kitchen, and even that he already ate. Depending on the situation, Haruki's actions could be putting him through unnecessary work.

(What to do?)

To go or to return. She couldn't decide.

On further thought, she notices something.

She already had her question answered for the longest time. After all, she never visited Kei in the previous instances he was ill.

The reason for that was simple. Asai Kei is outstandingly competent. He gets almost everything done on his own. Being alone doesn't distress him.

There's no reason to worry about Asai Kei. The logical thing to do would be to stay put until he's cured.

She took another look at his apartment. At his window. And then she checked her phone. She was expecting him to call. But she knew he wouldn't.

(Yes, I should leave.)

Believing Kei would be better tomorrow, Haruki decided to leave as if nothing happened.

She wasn't happy about it. But to Haruki, this wasn't the time to care about her emotions. She believed Kei needed the rest.

She turned 180 and began walking slower than her usual pace.

The ice cream was going to melt at this rate. But that didn't matter anymore.

The sun was setting. She walked alone in the dark pre-evening streets. She could hear the sound of her shoes against the asphalt. For every step she heard, she felt Kei's absence. Nothing unusual about that.

At the next crossing, she stopped at a red light.

There she realized Kei's apartment was still visible if she turned back.

Suddenly, her phone beeped. No one was calling. It was the new message sound. She picked up her phone to check the reader's name: Kei.

Haruki hurriedly opened the message. It took oddly long for the screen to load. The signal turned green. That didn't matter now.

The message was finally readable.

[I'm craving some ice cream. Can you buy a tub for me if you have the time?]

She couldn't believe it. Was that a miracle?

(I was right to trust the expert. Ice cream really was better than peaches for someone with a cold.)

Impressed, she turned back. She ran to Kei's apartment. But her rational side kept telling her this didn't make sense.

(Kei doesn't send this kind of message. I can't claim to know everything about him, but I know enough to tell that was not him. There must be a reason. This message has to be...)

There had to be a reason, but did it matter what it was?

(What's important is that Kei wants ice cream and I have some, no? I can ask for his reasons when I'm there.)

Despite the mental hurdles, Haruki was back on her way to Kei's apartment. A lot faster than she was before. Along the way, she stopped, realizing that she should answer the message first.

That was the moment.

She heard running steps behind her until they stopped.

Haruki Misora turned back and understood everything.

She knew someone was hiding behind the street lamp. But its pole was too thin, leaving her completely visible. Covering part of her face at best.

"Minami?", Haruki asked, internally reviewing the earlier events of the day.

Minami Mirai. A classmate. The U-Res girl who insisted Haruki should visit Kei during their lunch break.

She came out from behind the lamp, laughing nervously.

"Hi."

"Have you been following me the entire time?", Haruki asked after some thinking.

"Kinda. Sorry..."

(I don't see why she had to apologize. Wait, wasn't stalking illegal? No, I must be mistaken.)

"Why were you doing it?"

"I, uh... just thought I'd be fun..."

"Was it?"

"Honestly, yeah. My favorite scene was when you passed by the confectionary shop, changed your mind, and came back for it."

She couldn't grasp what was so amusing about it. But she wasn't going to complain about having successfully entertained someone.

Minami Mirai suddenly adopted an angry posture, putting her left hand on her hip and raising her right index finger.

"But you ruined the moment, Misora. Why'd you quit your visit?"

"Because I realized it was unnecessary."

"It's not about being necessary."

"It came to me that it has a chance of inconveniencing him. Which means I must turn back."

"You're not a nuisance. He'll be happy to have you."

(That's for Kei to decide, not you.)

She couldn't imagine Kei being displeased about it, but she could never tell what he was thinking and she could easily predict that he'd push himself when he shouldn't. No matter how bad he was feeling, he'd pretend to be fine.

"I won't discuss that. Just confirm to me that you messaged him about it."

"I sure did. No way I could let this go by."

Haruki didn't understand her motive.

But it was thanks to her that Kei texted Haruki. She had nothing to complain about.

Haruki smiled. Her smile was so tiny that it could go unnoticed by someone using a magnifying glass.

"Thank you very much.", said Haruki.

Minami blinked in surprise.

Then she nodded with her sweetest smile.

"You're very welcome."

"I'll be back after having ice cream with Kei."

She had to hurry or else it'd melt.

"Go ahead. Take your chance to spoonfeed him."

She gestured with her right hand as she spoke. Not really decipherable but Haruki could tell from context that she was pretending to feed someone with a spoon.

Haruki nodded.

"Understood."

"Wait, are you really going to?"

"Isn't that how you take care of a sick person?"

Haruki remembered her mother doing that for her when she was little.

Minami giggled. Her laughter was not her usual kind. It was more refined and guilty.

"Yeah. That's exactly how you take care of a sick person. Have fun. Bye."

Haruki nodded and turned her back to the waving Minami.

She walked fast. Heading to Kei's apartment with a smile.

Along the way, a thought crossed her mind for reasons she couldn't understand: Maybe she should reconsider her decision not to contribute to U-Res's assignment.

That was a thought to mull over for a while before she arrived at Kei's apartment.

[blu-joons]

Dating BamBam ~ GOT7 Headcanon

Getting Together:

BamBam definitely wasn’t backwards in coming forwards the second he saw you in the room

His eyes had been on you for the most the evening which Yugyeom soon noticed

It was the confidence that he carried himself with that caught your eye too

Despite Yugyeom’s advice, he knew exactly how he wanted to approach you and ask you out

He wasn’t nervous at all to talk to you, he had everything planned in his head

Straight away you were drawn to his big smile as he spoke

It didn’t take long for you to agree to a date with him

Of course, being BamBam he didn’t hold back, taking you to his favourite restaurant for your first date, blowing out all the stops

From the start he often had his hand somewhere on your body making you feel safe

He was a giant flirt, but that was what you loved, all his attention on you

Every so often he couldn’t help but let go of a huge laugh too

He’d always be sending you funny videos or texting you to cheer you up

He liked to be around you as often as possible going out and adventuring together

No one had ever made you laugh quite like BamBam had done before, you were always in giggles

He loved to tease the boys with details too, he wouldn’t tell them everything, but enough to leave them wanting more

After you had a word with him once, he stopped spoiling you too much on dates, enjoying the simpler things in life

A couple of months had passed since you met, and at this point, BamBam knew you were the one

He remembered simple as he planned to ask you out officially, organising a picnic for you both down by the river

It was perfect for what you wanted, bringing a smile to your face

That didn’t stop him however bringing a bottle of champagne in the hamper for the two of you to enjoy

He just couldn’t help it, he liked having someone in his life to spoil and make the most of

The two of you laid side by side as he turned to look at you, unable to hide the wide smile on his face

His hand slipped into yours, bringing it up to his lips and kissing the back of it

“I was wondering how you’d feel about making us official and being boyfriend and girlfriend rather than just dates?”

For the first time, Bam began to feel nervous around you as he waited for a reply

“I’d like that very much Bam, let’s make it official!”

His arms wrapped around you as soon as you replied, pulling you closely into him

The smile he wore was wider than ever for the rest of your afternoon together too

He couldn’t wait to go back to the studio and tell the boys he’d done it and got himself a girlfriend

Already he began to plan his future with you, when it had only really just begun for you both

Being In A Relationship:

If you thought the jokes would stop after you got together, you would be very wrong indeed

And he still didn’t stop teasing the boys and oversharing all about your relationship

He loved sharing your relationship with the fans as well, gushing about you always

You weren’t just a girlfriend for BamBam, you were often a bit of a personal shopper too

He was forever playing pranks on you to wind you up, pushing the boundaries each time

Every week he’d make sure to take you out to dinner at least once so he could spend time with you

When he wanted your attention, he’d sing around the house as you’d always beg him to stop

Or he’d resort to aegyo because he knew that you could never say no to him then

He’d always pretend to be annoyed when you stole his wardrobe, there was designer stuff in there, but secretly he loved to see it on you

Of course, BamBam wasn’t just him, he came with all his cats too who you completely fell in love with

He’d love to sit back after a long day and watch you play with the cats around the living room

He wasn’t much of a cook, so he’d usually sit and order dinner whilst you played around

Yugyeom was practically a live-in feature of your house, he was always around with you both

Even though he should’ve been the third wheel, you were pretty sure you were it instead

He would always get super embarrassed when he messed up around you with a bright blush

Anytime he called his family they loved to have you on the call too so they could say hi

You’d worked hard to learn Thai in order to impress them with BamBam’s help

He loved to show off his raps to you, plus it was a bit of a turn on for you too, so it worked in both your favours

Whenever he gamed, he liked having you in the room with him, preferably sat in his lap with his arms around your sides

You’d be surprised, but BamBam is very affectionate, especially late at night when all he wants to do is fall asleep

When he was on tour without you, he loved falling asleep with you on the phone

The first time you actually got to meet his family was incredible, he would not shut up talking about you all day

You got on best of all with his sister and his mum, leaving him to catch up with his brothers

He loved to travel around with you and explore all these places he’d never seen before

Just because he’s on tour, don’t ever think that stops him from spoiling you

Parcels arrive most days, and even more gifts come when he arrives back home in his case

He’s very attentive to the things you need, even if there are thousands of miles between you both

If you’re sick, prepared to be absolutely spoilt, there’s no way you’re moving a muscle if you’re unwell

But make sure that you return the favour when he’s ill otherwise he’ll become very needy

Walking around with one eye open because he always loves to jump out and scare you

When he’s preparing for a show, he loves your opinion on his experimental makeup looks

Even though he much preferred your natural face, he’d often feel pressured to wear makeup around you

So, fill his heart with compliments and always remind him how handsome he is

If some guy has your attention, your damn straight Bam will get jealous and do whatever it takes to bring your attention back to him

He’s more than happy to make a fool of himself if it makes you smile

Prepare for him to ask you to take a lot of pictures of him to post on his social medias

But he also takes plenty of you, his favourite ones when you have no idea that he’s even doing it

Every week his lock screen changes to a new photo of the two of you to bring a smile to his face

These photos often get posted online too, so prepare for a lot of attention from the fans and adorable comments

They’re always begging for the two of you to post another photo together

He’s big on relaxation, so prepare for a lot of candles around the apartment and nice smells to calm you both down

If he can get you to the gym too that’s a win for him, and a chance for him to show you how much he’s bulking

Before every show you always send him a reassuring text to make sure that he has a good show

After every show he’d always send you a message in response to let you know how well it had done and how much he missed you

When he first gets back from tour, he’s very cuddly, you simply cannot get rid of him

It doesn’t matter where you are, he’ll be affectionate anywhere, even if the boys are begging the two of you to stop

He never runs out of things to say to you, he’s like a machine when it comes to conversation

It’s mainly because he loves to hear your voice and your opinions on everything

If he ever went live on Instagram, he’d beg you to join him and show you off to the fans

Your whole relationship was the perfect chance for BamBam to show you off

 Affection/Skinship

As already mentioned, BamBam can be quite affectionate in order to show off that he’s the lucky guy that gets to be with you

He always has a hold of your hand to make sure you’re by his side and safe

Sex with BamBam is very playful, he loves to tease you and make you squirm under his touch

Intimacy is sometimes something he struggles with, so expect a lot of giggles and jokes

That didn’t stop him wanting to show off his muscles though, carrying you around whenever he could

Prepare for a lot of cuddles and kisses before getting down on each other

He liked to be the dominate one in your relationship, as the protector, he’d want to prove that he could be serious

But that didn’t stop him from sitting back sometimes and letting you take control

He likes for sex to be long and sensual, but if time didn’t allow it, he wouldn’t be opposed to a quickie with you if he could get his hands on you

Noise isn’t a problem for BamBam, he’d happily let the whole world know how good of a time he was having with you

He’s always a cuddly boy after sex, grabbing the sheet and wrapping it around you both

His hands can often be found on your ass, he simply cannot get enough of it

Whilst you’d often hold onto his arms, impressed by just how strong they were

Whenever he looked down and saw you, his breath would be taken away by how incredible you looked

Your relationship was very jokey, but BamBam used this time to really show you how much he loved you

He liked to keep his body as close to yours as possible, it didn’t matter what position you were in

But prepare for any intimate mood to somehow be ruined by a joke or two by BamBam 

 Arguments:

There’s nothing in the world that BamBam hated more than when he’d argue with you

It would have to be something pretty serious for either one of you to so much a raise your voice

If you were honest, it was terrifying when you wouldn’t see joking BamBam

They never lasted too long though, it hurt you both too much not to talk to each other

You tended to be the one that walked away from an argument, but BamBam would quickly follow you to apologise

Whilst he tended to believe he was right, from time to time he could accept that maybe he wasn’t so perfect after all

You’d always talk about it afterwards; it was no good just apologising without understanding each other too

Any time you argued, it would make you quite upset, the sight was enough to break BamBam’s heart

All he’d want to do is make things right, but that wasn’t always the answer

If he’s wrong, prepare to be spoilt, BamBam will do whatever he can to make things up to you

When something blows up bad, he’ll always go to Yugyeom for a friendly bit of advice

He was always ironic and sarcastic, so it was difficult for you to realise sometimes when he was actually annoyed

But he was still very much a gentleman, he would never insult the woman he loves or speak down to you

He was much calmer than you were, he hated arguing just as much as you did, it was horrible on you both

Prepare to laugh about it as soon as you both are comfortable to do so, wondering why you even got in such a mess in the first place

Yes, BamBam got stressed sometimes, but not once did he ever take it out on you

Your Relationship With The Boys:

When the boys first met you, they already felt like they had done before because BamBam talked so much about you

You were quick to join in with BamBam’s teasing which settled you in well to their friendship group

Just like he had done with BamBam, JB took you under his wing quickly and made sure to protect you from everything

You found yourself a brother in Yugyeom straight away, seeing as you practically lived with him anyway with how much time he spent with you

Jinyoung was a great distraction for you when you wanted a moment of peace to enjoy talking about serious things and your life in general

The same applied to Mark, he was super thankful to you that you took such great care of BamBam

Youngjae was like BamBam’s twin to you, he’d always make you laugh and tell stupid jokes like BamBam did

You also developed a close friendship with Jackson who always checked up on you and made sure that you were doing well

Having you around was a nice distraction for them all, there was too much testosterone in that studio anyway sometimes

But best of all, they loved showing you all their embarrassing photos of Bam to get back at him for all his teasing 

The Future:

From the moment you moved into his home after a few months BamBam was convinced you were the one

He was surprisingly keen to settle down and get married as his siblings began to start their own families too

But you’d always remind him there was no rush and that instead he should enjoy the time he had with the band first

He was desperate to have children with you having seen how amazing you were with the children in his family

When the band started to be put on the backburner, BamBam knew it was the time to really focus on his family

If you think he’s ever going to abandon you, you’re wrong, he’s the most dedicated father and husband you’ve ever met

Yes, he spoils you and your family far too much, but would you ever really have it any other way?

Masterlist

[thedevillionaire]

Ooh! Ooh ooh oooooh!

⛄ ⚗️ 🌈 ❄️🕵️ for Cerberus?? 🥺💕

Yay! Certainly, and thank you so much for the ask! 💝 ⛄ Would they have enough sense to wrap up warm while ill, or would fashion win out?

heh, I was hoping for this one, actually! He will absolutely wrap up warm...to a point. He's not sacrificing style for comfort, not absolutely, and he's actually very good at managing stylish comfort in that he will wear the (impeccably tailored, of course) heavier coat , scarf, gloves, etc, but. BUT. There are certainly simpler ways he could achieve the whole "be warmer" thing if he was more prepared to compromise a certain amount of his usual aesthetic to do so. (And Kia's right - he would look hot AF in a sweater. Good luck getting him to leave the house in one, though.) This is presuming he's out in public. Around the house he does the sartorial sick-at-home thing quite beautifully - the plush velvet robe, loungewear/pyjama set deal. Further blankets added as required. ⚗️ Do they have any home remedies they swear by? Kia? 🤣 Um...no, not really. He does the tea and soup thing but there's not really a particular blend or recipe that he'll go to specifically because he considers it more remedial than other remedies, though. I'm quite sure he wishes there was one. 🌈 Is there anything they enjoy about being unwell? Maybe Kia counts more as an answer for this one. Because outside of the spoiling that she offers, there is literally nothing he enjoys about it. He does, however, enjoy her spoiling him...rather a lot. 💕 ❄️ Do they tend to feel too hot or too cold when they’re not well? Oh, too cold, absolutely. Even when fevered, he only very rarely feels discomfort from heat. Fire Demon things, lol. But he's extremely likely to feel cold when coming down with something - it is, in fact, one of his commonest tells that he's getting sick.

Ooh, handy segue into...

🕵️ What are the main signs that they aren’t feeling well? The above mentioned feeling cold thing, definitely. The other main sign, and the easiest one for others to pick up on if they're familiar with him, is distraction and loss of focus. He is laser-sharp most of the time - in diction, movement, execution of whatever he's doing, when he's well he is intense and precise and clear, and this is the first thing to go if he's not feeling well. The head fog of early cold onset is practically visible with Cerberus.

[southsidestory]

The Ghosts We Make

RATING: Explicit

SHIP: SasuSaku

SUMMARY: The Sasuke she knew is gone, but this savage stranger in his place is close enough that she can forget. For a night, Sakura loses herself in his arms, and pretends that the boy she loves is still here with her.

AUTHOR’S NOTES: This is an alternate take on what could have happened after Sakura offered to join Sasuke at the Samurai Bridge. To be 100% honest, I mostly wanted to write some enemy SasuSaku smut. If that sounds like something you'd enjoy, please read on! 

Oneshot. Complete.

Read on FFN or AO3

.

.

This isn’t the Sasuke that Sakura once knew. That boy, the one she loves, is dead. And in his place stands a man far beyond salvation. A stranger in Sasuke’s skin, corrupted by the vengeance he sacrificed everything for. Including her.

On the Samurai Bridge, she made him an offer, one she didn’t expect him to accept. He did, though, and now Sakura walks by his side. Only a few scant inches separate them; that and the betrayal she intends. Because allowing him to live is an insult to the boy he once was, kind and protective beneath that cold facade. The facade has finally fallen away, but the heart beneath it is long gone.

“Here,” Sasuke says, pointing towards the small village hovering on the horizon. “We’ll stay the night.”

So he won’t take her to his hideout yet, wherever that is. Doesn’t trust her enough, she supposes.

Well, he always has had good instincts.

“All right,” Sakura says. “That’s fine by me. I’m tired.”

It’s been a long day, a long week. A long four years without him. She wonders how long the rest of her life will feel, once he’s not in it. Endless, probably. Either that, or she’ll fail, and the rest of her life will be very, very short.

The village can barely be called such, and there’s only one inn. A traditional looking establishment with a tiny, grey-haired woman behind the front desk. She narrows her eyes at them, and Sakura supposes they must be quite a sight: travel worn, obviously shinobi, Sasuke’s left cheek streaked with dried blood, like rust-red tears. For a moment, Sakura thinks the old woman is going to kick them out, but she accepts their ryo without complaint and hands over the key to a third floor room—just one room, with one bed, which Sasuke asked for.

She should be thankful. Sharing the same bed will make this—simpler. (Not easier. Nothing will make it easier.) It's hard to feel thankful, though, because she can't stop wondering what Sasuke wants with her. She's a medic, the perfect replacement for that poor girl he left to die, but there are plenty of medics in the world, if few of her caliber. Why allow her to join him when he has to be suspicious of her motives?

The answer may be as obvious as it is base, and found between the sheets of the one bed he requested.

No sooner than the door has closed behind them, he says, "I know you're trying to trick me."

Sakura swallows. "I've missed you, Sasuke. So much. I just want to be with you."

She's never told a lie with so much truth in it before.

Sasuke's jaw relaxes a fraction, but his eyes are all wrong. No warmth, no hidden softness—and on a purely clinical level, he seems unwell. His left eye has been bleeding, and both are clearly strained.

"Let me heal you," Sakura says.

Which is stupid. A weakened Sasuke with dulled vision is a Sasuke she might have a chance of killing.

He dismisses her with an abrupt wave of his hand. "I'm fine. Danzou was no match for me."

Whether or not that’s true, he looks sick, but Sakura lets it go.

Their rented room is clean enough, if plain, but the bed is small.

Sasuke catches her looking, and his lips turn up at the corners. "Nervous?" he asks, a cruel edge to the question.

He's playing with me. Like a cat with a mouse. Batting her one way and another before striking the killing blow.

"Why would I be nervous?" Sakura asks.

He walks over to her, so close that she can smell him. Exertion, fresh air, the smoky scent of some fire jutsu. And blood. Sasuke wraps his hand around her throat, the gesture gentle and ominous at once. A threat, but a tender one.

"Why do you think I asked for only one bed?" he whispers.

"To save money," Sakura says flippantly.

His hand tightens, and she can feel his thumb pressing into her pulse point. It should terrify her, but it isn't fear that's making her tremble.

"You used to be bolder than this with me," he says. "You told me you loved me so much you couldn't stand it."

That night… it all comes back to that, doesn't it? The night he left.

Sasuke bends down, until he's only a few inches away, and asks, "Can you stand it now?"

She swallows, feels her throat flex against his hand, which loosens and then quickly works to unfasten her cloak. It falls from her shoulders, leaving her in her combat gear, which suddenly feels immodest.

The way Sasuke is looking at her—it's not right. He seems unbalanced, that cool calm he always exudes utterly shattered. More than that, he seems shattered. There's a manic glint to his weakened, dark eyes. Anger and energy ready to burst free at any moment. She's a fool to come here, to risk this. Sasuke has always been dangerous, but right now he's wild. There's no telling what he might do.

So it really shouldn't shock her when he kisses her, but it does. Nothing has ever shocked her more in her entire life than his lips pressing against hers. Not at all like she imagined her first kiss, because this is rough and demanding. He bites her lower lip, and it hurts just enough to make her gasp. Then he's kissing her more deeply, and Sakura can't care whether this is a good idea or not, whether he loves her or hates her. All that matters is this kiss, and she throws herself into it, wraps her arms around his neck and gives in.

When he finally breaks away, his breathing is as ragged as her own. "You didn't answer my question, Sakura. Can you stand it now?"

What a hateful way to ask, Do you still love me?

Sakura steps backward, but that new distance does nothing to diminish the heat and want that charges the air between them.

"No," she admits. "I can't."

That must be the answer he hoped for, because she's suddenly in his arms again, and he's kissing her throat. Nipping, licking, sucking in a way that's sure to mark, and she lets him do it. Because soon that's all she'll have left of him—

Sasuke jerks at the zipper on her shirt, yanking it down. Her nipples harden just from that, which he must see through her bra.

"Did you think about me?" Sakura asks.

His answer will either hurt her or make this harder, but she can't take it back.

He stills, his hands grasping her sides, fingers on her ribcage, just below her breasts. "I tried not to," he says, and for one fleeting moment he sounds like her Sasuke again.

Maybe she doesn't have to do this. Maybe he isn't beyond salvaging—

Then he says, his voice harder, "It doesn't matter now."

"If it doesn't matter, why did you bring me here?" Sakura asks.

"Why did you come?" he snaps.

It's the cheap way out, answering her question with a question, and he doesn't even give her a chance to respond. Just kisses her again, hard and unyielding, like this is a fight instead of an embrace. Perhaps in a twisted way it is.

He manhandles her onto the bed, then his lap, his hands buried in her hair. There's a desperate edge to his kisses now, and Sakura knows hers are just as needy. Because this is it, her best chance, and it seems horribly wrong that it will happen this way. That she'll lose the boy she loves at the moment when she finally gets to have him.

Now, now. She has to do it now.

Sakura pulls a poison-edged kunai from her pouch, and she has a split second to stab him before he notices—

But she freezes. The deadly point of the kunai is pressed against his stomach, not quite close enough to prick, and she can't muster the force to carry out the deed. Her chance slips away like sand spilling through open fingers. He'll kill her now.

Sasuke grabs her wrist and squeezes so hard that she drops the kunai. He snatches it up, throws it away, and flips her onto her back, arms pinned over her head. His expression is vicious and furious, but worse than that, hurt.

"So much for love," he says, and he sounds choked. "I should kill you."

Sakura bites her quivering lip. She's shaking out of shame, not fear. Because she failed; because she attempted this in the first place.

"Go ahead," she says. "I'm ready."

And she is. Because a world without Sasuke is not one she'll ever find fulfillment in anyway. Her heart has been tied to his for what feels like forever, strung together by an invisible thread, and he's so far gone. It’s just a matter of time until she follows him. She closes her eyes, waiting. For a kunai to slit her throat, for his capable hands to break her neck. Surely he'll at least make it quick.

He releases her, and when Sakura looks up, she finds him frowning down at her. Still angry, still wounded, but saner.

"Either get out or take off your clothes," he says. "No weapons anywhere near you. No tricks."

Sakura sucks in a sharp breath. "You—you still want me?"

He glances away. "I want a willing girl. Are you willing, or was that a ploy to get close to me?"

"Both," Sakura says. The least she can give him now is that truth. "You're more handsome than ever. I'm sure you could find plenty of willing girls."

"None like you," he says. The words are ground out of him, like he's angry at himself for admitting it.

None like her. He has no idea what that does to her. To be wanted, finally wanted by him.

Get out, or take off her clothes, he said. She finishes what he started, and undresses.

.

.

Back at the academy, before she knew anything about loss or passion, she sometimes daydreamed about making love to Sasuke. In the vague and distant way that a twelve-year-old girl could conceptualize, mostly focused on having done it rather than the particulars. Later, once they were genin together, those daydreams turned both baser and more emotional. She imagined getting married someday, and the night that would follow, in more detail than she should have. In the time since he left, she has tried not to indulge in such fantasies. They only make her yearn more. But that doesn't stop the dreams, which only grow more heated with every passing year. Dreams in which a shadow Sasuke is on top of her and inside her, leaving her flushed and wet when she wakes.

She's fantasized about making love to him a thousand times, but she never imagined anything like this. A rough fuck in a rented bed, with her face pressed into the pillows while he pins her down with his strong body. She can't look at him in this position, but she can feel him. Rocking in and out of her, using her, driving her pleasure higher and higher with every thrust. It hurts so sweetly that she can hardly bear it. It's not supposed to be like this, and Sakura doesn't know what's worse: how little care he's putting into their fucking, or how much she's enjoying it anyway. She can't help but moan and arch her back, giving as much as she can with him holding her down this way.

Sasuke grasps her chin, turns her head to the side, and presses a messy, lopsided kiss to her open mouth. He swallows her whimpers and somehow takes her harder. She's not going to come this way, not without more careful attention, but she doesn't give a damn. Nothing could be better than this, even if it's ruining her. The Sasuke she knew is gone, but this savage stranger in his place is close enough that she can forget for a moment.

She can tell he's close from the sounds he's making, rougher and needier, and then he gasps—

"Sakura."

Her name, he said her name, and that's so much better than a climax could ever be.

She thinks, anyway. Then he pulls out of her, flips her over, and starts caressing her between her legs. It's clumsy, too much pressure in the wrong places, but then he finds the right spot and Sakura cries out. She's so wound up already that the slightest touch feels electric, the pleasure coiling tight so quickly that it doesn't matter that he's clearly never done this before. It's Sasuke touching her, taking the time to get her off even though he's already gotten his, and that's enough to push her right to the edge—and over it.

Sakura rocks up against his fingers, her back arched and legs painfully taut as bliss washes over her in luxurious pulses. He doesn't stop until after she falls to the bed, breathing hard in a way that’s almost like sobbing. Then it is sobbing, because something so wrong has no right to feel so good, but even pleasure this profound can't fix them.

"Come home," Sakura says. "Just come home, and we'll figure out the rest—"

He clamps a hand over her mouth, smothering her plea. "Konoha isn't my home anymore. And it's not the place you think it is. Everyone's hands are bloody, they're all guilty, every one of them—"

Sasuke jerks away from her and pulls at his hair. He seems broken, half mad, and Sakura tries to soothe him. She touches his hands, gently pries them away from his head, and whispers nonsense: “It's all right” and “You're safe.”

And, "I love you."

He looks at her then, frowning. "You tried to kill me."

"I thought it would be merciful. I'm sorry, I—I was wrong."

"No, you were right."

He lets out a feral, startling burst of laughter without one bit of humor in it. He looks crazy, less like himself than ever, and Sakura hates it.

"Stop that!" she shouts.

He does, abruptly, and says, "The only reason I'll ever return to Konoha is to destroy it.”

No. No.

Sakura grasps his beautiful face between her hands. "You don't have to go this way."

"Maybe not, but I want to."

That mad laughter is gone, but she would almost take it back over the deadness in his eyes and voice.

"Did you ever love me?" Sakura asks.

It's a selfish question, but she needs to know. The curiosity has been eating her alive for years.

He softens when he says, "I did. But not anymore. I can't love anything anymore."

That's the last thing she hears before his sharingan awakens. In another moment she's lost, dragged into blank, black unconsciousness.

.

.

Sasuke must have put the covers over her and tucked them around her snugly, because that's how Sakura wakes up the next morning. Sunlight peeking around curtains, surrounded by warmth, the ache of latent pleasure between her legs. It takes a moment for the world to right itself around her, and when it does, she feels strangely at peace. After such a tumultuous night, she has no right to be so calm, but she is.

Sasuke said he can't love anything anymore, but she doesn't believe him. Because there was something in his eyes when he told her that, a hesitation. A lack of confidence in his own words, the kind that means he's lying to himself.

He's not gone, not truly. And as Sakura lies on her side, savoring every scratch and bruise from their brutal lovemaking, she makes a promise to herself: that she'll never give up on Uchiha Sasuke again, and she'll do whatever it takes to bring him home.

.

.

AUTHOR’S NOTES: I hope you enjoyed this angsty, smutty little oneshot. I certainly had fun writing it. ;) I know this fic ends a little abruptly, but I really need to focus on The Valley of the End and didn't want to let this expand into another multi-chapter WIP. The title for this fic comes from Laurie Halse Anderson’s novel Wintergirls: “In one aspect, yes, I believe in ghosts, but we create them. We haunt ourselves.”

If you have a minute, please let me know what you thought!

[marginalgloss]

angels in the architecture

The Subtle Knife is the sequel to Northern Lights, and it is in various ways a darker, bleaker book than its predecessor. Years ago, this one was always my favourite in the trilogy, in part because of the tone, and in part because I related to Will more than I did Lyra. I still like it now, and though it has some trouble with pacing, it also has moments which are far more emotionally affecting than anything in Northern Lights.

It’s something of a shock to find ourselves in our own world in the opening pages here, alongside a boy who seems at first fairly ordinary compared to Lyra. If Lyra is impetuous and driven, Will often seems the opposite — a reluctant, responsible, ordinary sort of hero — one who is persistent rather than courageous. When we meet him, he hasn’t been running wild over the rooftops of Oxford; he has been looking after his mother, who is deeply unwell with what appears to be a kind of paranoia or agoraphobia. His father has been missing for years, and mysterious men are pursuing Will’s mother for something related to him. And then after a series of sudden, unexpected events, Will finds himself in another world. 

Conceptually, there is suddenly a lot more going on in this novel. It quickly moves to answer many of the questions that Northern Lights didn’t really have time to address. Characters are now moving between multiple universes, often within the space of a few pages. We are told that Dust is a particle that is also a kind of consciousness. Dust is also angels. The holiness or goodness of angels is called into question. Lord Asriel has sequestered himself away in a fortress, and is preparing to wage war against an authority that seems analogous to God. And the Magisterium are after Lyra, believing that she has a role to play akin to Eve in the Garden of Eden. Everything is suddenly getting quite complicated.

It was possible to read Northern Lights as a great adventure story with an intriguing allegorical subtext, but The Subtle Knife is comparatively direct with its myth-making. It has a lot more going on because the author says so — we know that Lyra is like Eve because the author tells us, not because it is implied. Some readers may find this too direct, but I think it is only a product of Pullman’s preferred mode of storytelling in these novels. They are not tricksy and they are not ‘difficult’ in the sense of the modernist or postmodern novel. These are stories to be told, and told in the sense that a nineteenth century fable might be told. And if the author has a lot to explain in terms of themes, there are only so many ways in which to do that.

That said, some things are still fairly unclear throughout. Is Lord Asriel one of the good guys? He is almost absent entirely from this book. Is Will one of the good guys? Probably — but he has to do some pretty awful things here. Lyra’s Alethiometer labels him early on as a murderer. It is not wrong. And it’s odd and strange and sad how he seems to be driven through these moments with little control over them. Lyra, by comparison, so often seems like the driver of her own destiny. It is her insatiable curiosity that leads her to hide in the closet through Lord Asriel’s lecture, and then to follow the trail of the kidnapped children, throughout the previous novel. But in The Subtle Knife, Will is only trying to look after his mother when he kills someone by accident; he is only acting in self-defence when he kills others later. In fact he’s only trying to hide from the world when he ends up falling through a window into the strange half-deserted world of Cittàgazze. 

A few words about that place. Encountered today it seems like a distinctly odd choice, to go from Lyra’s crowded Edwardian-ish Britain to somewhere starkly modern and essentially familiar. For an adult reader the deserted mediterranean plazas and hotel rooms might recall J. G. Ballard and the emptied landscapes of Giorgio de Chirico, but for a young mind there is a simpler pleasure here: what if you could walk into any shop and take what you wanted with no adults there to stop you? Inevitably there is some awful reason for the absence of order here. Spectres roam the place — ghost-like figures that have invaded this world. They are brought into existence every time a window between worlds is created, and they feed on the Dust that settles on people once they reach the end of childhood. 

As an addition the spectres seem somehow inevitable but also a little unconvincing. The reader knows from the moment they arrive in Cittàgazze that somehow awful resides here: the spectres fill the role nicely. Perhaps the problem is in the name. ‘Spectre’ in English is a little too close to ghost, albeit with less personality — the word suggests a sort of shapeless threat, an anxiety — a ghost is always a ghost of someone, while a spectre might as well be a virus. In which case I wonder: why embody them at all? I almost feel that they have too much shape, too much suggestion of ghoulish malevolence. The spectres make more sense as a configuration of disease, or of depression — invisible but felt intensely by those they prey upon. 

(I started writing this piece some weeks ago, quite a while before the current state of lockdown was imposed across the UK. I neglected to finish and share it; the paragraph above is now quite old. It’s strange now to consider the uncanny parallels with aspects of this novel — the idea that the adults of our nation are all sheltering from this hidden force, while children are at relatively little risk from it. What sticks with me from The Subtle Knife is not so much the machinations of the plot, which is largely confined to the background, but the atmosphere of the thing. No longer is it such a freewheeling adventure story. It’s freighted with a sense of gravity that stems from Will’s feeling of aloneness, of struggling to come to terms with himself and what it means to be a responsible person. Not that I would know much about that, of course.)

[rebecccabush]

Sorts of Gardens - Residence Gardening Leisure Activity

Gardening around the residence can be a fun leisure activity. There are many ideas that you can select when it concerns landscape design making use of horticulture as your ideas. Depending on the area that you are attempting to cover and the budget that you're on, you may have the ability to change the landscaping every other week. There additionally numerous benefits to horticulture for both the garden enthusiast and also the garden that is being grown around the house. Anyone can delight in the hobby of gardening, as well as it can be a satisfying experience no matter what sort of yard you choose to have. Different Types of Gardens Vegetable Gardens: Vegetable gardens provide you with a lot of veggies throughout the year, and additionally advertise healthy eating. Depending on the kinds of vegetables expanded, they need to be grown and also gathered at specific times throughout the year. Fruit Gardens: Fruit gardens are similar to veggie yards since you have to grow and also collect the fruits during specific times of the year. Not only that, but fresh produced fruits are healthy and also good to consume. Flower Gardens: Flower yards are rather as well as can add some landscape to your home. You can pick from a broad variety of blossoms as well as only go with a choose few or vary them out depending upon which blossoms you like. Natural Herb Gardens: Herb gardens are great for those people who like to cook using the herbs, as well as who would like to sell them. A lot of individuals utilize natural herbs for other things so this would be a helpful yard to have without needing to buy fresh natural herbs weekly. Mixed Gardens: Blended yards are stunning, and you can grow a great deal of different things in them consisting of, yet not restricted to fruits, vegetables, flowers, natural herbs, hedges, and any kind of others things that you intend to include. Benefits of Gardening Not just will you really feel better when horticulture since you're doing something pleasurable, however you likewise remain in the sunshine. This can make any individual seem like a hundred bucks. The outside of your home will certainly also look far better with blossoms and shrubs that embellish around your home, as well as also along the bushes. Planting a vegetable yard will offer you with all-natural, residence grown veggies and fruits throughout the year which are wonderful for health and wellness and also health. There are a number of various yards that you can grow depending upon what you would such as from the garden. With many landscape ideas for the garden enthusiast, you will certainly make sure to have everything covered when the moment comes to create a gorgeous location for a garden. Not just that, but given that horticulture features a broad variety of benefits for both the gardener and the garden, there is nothing to fret about. Horticulture can be a fun hobby, or a way to connect one on one with your environment-friendly thumb. Develop household time together when horticulture also as well as get the entire household included or spend some alone time planting things you enjoy in your front or garden. If you rent out and also are a garden lover, it can be tough to have a wonderful yard. You don't wish to invest a lot of cash, as it is not your residence as well as you could have to relocate. It can be challenging, if you don't do anything due to the fact that you feel you just might be there for a year, five years down the track you will certainly desired you had done some enhancements. On the various other hand, you may create a fantastic garden and then all of a sudden after just 18 months get the notice of eviction. It can be ruining. You have actually invested a lot of love, time, money and currently you need to leave. Property Representatives enjoy it when you claim I will look after the yard as well as I am sure I obtained one home in South Melbourne since I said that. My concept is not to invest excessive money due to the fact that I don't own the home. Another problem is if you have actually stayed in the very same home for years, you begin to feel it is yours, when actually it isn't. Relocating can be heart wrenching specifically when you leave some plant pals. To start with, you require to select a home, that has the right amount of sunlight wherefore you want to grow. You require to determine where north/south/east/ west is as well as it is actually essential, to exercise where the shadows drop as well as the setting of the sunlight in winter season. What may be a bright front garden in summer season, might be an extremely dubious yard in winter. It is a good concept to get the proprietors approval before you go making way too many modifications. One house I leased, I really did not bother to ask whether it was okay to pull up the paving and also make yard beds. They might not want to you produce a beautiful yard due to the fact that as soon as you move out, they might not wish to care for it. It is heart damaging to drive previous and see all your hard work, mosting likely to weeds. To produce a wonderful garden in a rented residential or commercial property is simpler if the residential property is little as this indicates you do not require to do as much job. If it is a big rental property, you may make a decision to just establish one location. An additional suggestion is to speak with the owner and also obtain them to agree that if you do the job, they will spend for the plants and whatever else is required. I often believe home owners do not recognize that if you develop a great yard, this will enhance the value of their home which implies money in their pocket. I have just one policy when producing a yard in a leased property which is not to get pricey plants. So I only ever before get tubes (3 inch pots) or 6 inch pots. This limits me investing a lot of cash on something I can't take when I move. I likewise figure that anything in a tube, will turn into a larger plant gradually. Additionally smaller sized plants overcome their transplant shock and start growing quicker than big plants in pots. A cheap method to create a garden is to take cuttings of the great old made plants such as geraniums, lavender, salvias, daisies as well as hydrangers. These plants strike really quickly, do not require a great deal of care as well as grow truly fast. You will have a wonderful garden within twelve month. Slower plants such as roses, camellias and deciduous trees take numerous years prior to they are ready to planted out in the garden. If you are renting out, you might assume you can't have a vegetable patch. Well that is not true. Nowadays you can grow great deals of vegetables in pots and there is now a big series of different vegetable growing containers. You can utilize old wheel barrows, old cut down storage tanks, old wood boxes and your can even acquire wood dog crates from some veggie growing businesses. The same rules apply, high quality dirt which is enhanced with compost and also animal manure, well drained pipes as well as in full sun. It is heart wrenching when you have to leave several of your unique plants. One means I navigated this issue was to plant some of my much-loved plants in pots. I have an incredible array of pots in my garden, from significant ones to little one. I even make use of some of them to complete the spaces of my garden which is one method I change points around when I really feel the yard is looking tried as well as I am unwell of the same old appearance. It is true that relocating is a discomfort, because I have so many but this aids me to develop promptly a brand-new garden when I move and also makes me really feel a lot more resolved. One more technique is when you learn that you are relocating, is as well run around the yard and take cuttings. It is truly the last thing you wish to be doing while you are in this zone, however you will regret it if you don't. I have two uncommon salvias which endure the shade and also I didn't want to shed them. So, I took cuttings of Salvia miniata which has shiny eco-friendly leaves as well as traffic signal red blossoms. To take cutting, you need to make use of a top quality propagation potting mix, not average potting mix due to the fact that it is not designed to drain for cuttings. So there is a path of this red salvia being left behind in all your homes I have stayed in over the last 10 years. I have actually additionally been recognized to collect plants when I figured out I was relocating. This is what I made with my various other shade loving plant - Salvia forskaohlie. It has beautiful blue flowers with white dots on the throat of the blossom as well as will self seed. This is an outstanding suggestion particularly if you are relocating winter, as taking cuttings is not always possible. Clean some old pots, obtain a high quality potting mix as well as dig away. The only disadvantage of this is when you have actually relocated and have a million others things to do, caring for your plants especially in the height of summertime can be difficult. There is a substantial array of pots from plastic, to terracotta to concrete to select from. You can additionally use old wooden boxes, old oil tins (cleaned up) and the great old a glass of wine barrel. I have a lavender growing in an old oil that a pal found for me. It is going terrific weapons. The only draw back about pots whatever they are is the huge ones are heavy. If you relocate frequently, it may be a good idea to by a trolley. They take the back splitting job out of relocating heavy pots. They are conveniently available now. When you are actually physically moving your plants, it is a great idea to obtain a close friend to aid, due to the fact that lifting pots, especially big ones is truly hefty and also hard work. Last time I moved, I employed a trailer, best point I ever done. My buddies and I packed whatever up as well as moved them done in one hit, rather than several brief trips in my automobile. I watered them well first, then when we got to the brand-new residence placed them right into a dubious setting until I had actually exercised where the locations were and also I was ready to organise the yard. So you can have a nice garden if you are renting out, it simply takes a little planning as well as organisation. Growing plants in pots offers you a great deal of chances that you do not have if you are renting and don't wish to grow into the garden. Growing plants in pots likewise allows you to transform points and keep the garden interesting.

[purplesurveys]

812

Is there anyone you work with that you don't get along with? Why? I'm always civil with everyone, and when I get mad at someone I make sure it’s because they really fucked up on a task, and not just because I don’t like their personality or whatever. I’ve always just felt like butting heads with someone is only going to affect my work, so I try not to clash with people. If I don’t like someone for any reason, I usually just minimize my interactions with them. Have you ever been romantically interested in a coworker? ...Does a classmate count? I started crushing on Gab back in high school lol. Have you ever been romantically involved with a coworker? ^ Same question. Do you have any thoughts on a 14-year age-gap? Not a fan. Age gaps in general scare me away, though I think it’s because I’ve only been with someone of the same age. What is the game you're currently playing most often on your phone? Bitlife. It’s like a simpler Sims.

What is your go-to Starbucks order? MAN OH MAN does this question make me miss coffee shops. I get a grande iced caramel macchiato. I get it as is because having so many customization options just makes me overwhelmed. Do you have any friends that you're drifting apart from? I don’t think so. We all just have to be apart right now but once we can see each other again, I’m 110% sure it’ll only be like we hadn’t seen each other in a day. Are you close to someone who is mentally unwell? I think all my friends aren’t mentally okay to some extent. It’s pretty common in our age group. What phone do you have? iPhone 8. What is the last thing you ordered for delivery? Andrew and I had Chinese food delivered to Skywalk after a particularly brutal verbal beatdown from our thesis adviser who had told us to revise big chunks of our thesis ASAP. I was super stressed so I allowed myself to splurge on the Hong Kong noodles I really liked and I specifically asked for three fucking packets of peanut sauce to drown my noodles in lmao. Do you have an opinion on adopting/purchasing a pet? It’s my preferred way of getting a pet. Adopt and don’t shop, plz. What's your favorite chain restaurant? YABUUUUUUUU. If I reach the point where I only had ₱400 left to my name, I’d still most likely spend it on their katsu.  Have you ever dated someone who was of a foreign origin? No...well, Gabie is part Turkish, so kinda? She’s still mostly Filipino though. Have you ever read any of your idol’s books/autobiographies? Out of all the people I fangirl over, only AJ has produced an autobiography and yes, I have her book. Oh I have One Direction’s first book too, but I haven’t been able to buy the next ones that came out. Do you own any succulents? Nope. Can’t take care of plants to save my life. When was the last time you climbed a tree? I’ve never done that, all the trees here have red ants. :/ If you have any pets, how would you describe their personalities? Kimi’s an absolute diva and chooses to follow, listen to, and be sweet with only me. He’ll be super nice when he’s asking for food, but will be quick to stop minding you completely once he’s gotten enough food from you. We give him a pass since he’s a senior dog now, but he’s definitely the snobby type hahaha. What is your phone's background? My home screen is of Hayley Williams; my lock screen is of Beyoncé and Jay-Z on stage. Who played at the last concert you went to? Paramore. Who is playing at the next concert you're attending? I’m really fucking hoping it’s going to be Beyoncé because she’s the only artist left I have yet to see lmao but if not, I’m most likely going to see Paramore again. What's your favorite amusement park ride? I like riding the octopus, but only the one in my high school’s fair. What's your favorite deep-fried food item? Corndogs, for sure. Why were you last pulled over? I got confused with the road rules in Alabang and ended up stopping at a red light albeit over a pedestrian lane. Stilllllll pissed about that instance to this day and I’ve never gotten over how rude the traffic enforcer was towards me. Do you have any friends that own a private lake? I don’t think so, we don’t have a lot of lakes here to begin with. What was the last thing you've done on the water? Take a shower, if I understood this question correctly. Canoeing or kayaking? I kayaked in Palawan when we were there and it was so peaceful and felt like absolute heaven. I’d relive that experience over and over again. What's your favorite lake? Like I said, we don’t really have a lot of lakes here. I don’t even know enough to pick a favorite. Are you cool with swimming in a lake? Sure, why not. Do you have a drone? I don’t. I’m not interested in having one. Do you have a smart watch? Nope. I’d love one but tbh I end up losing every watch I ever try to wear, so buying one would be pointless. What's your favorite hole-in-the-wall restaurant? It’s a bar rather than a restaurant, but Exile was such a fun place to be in. I still don’t understand why they had to close down so suddenly when sooooo many college kids were going there every single day. It’s since been replaced by this random shrimp restaurant, though I think that already closed too since no one ever went there because EVERYONE PREFERS EXILE. It was a very important part of my early college years and it helped me get out from my slump, so I’ll always be grateful that it was around at some point. What do you order from there? I don’t even remember anymore, it shut down two or three years ago. I’ll see if their menu is still up on Zomato... andddd it’s not. It’s like it never existed, sigh. What's your favorite ice-cream flavor? Cookies and cream. They jack up the prices for Ben & Jerry’s here like CRAZY so even though I’ve wanted to try so many of their flavors, I’ve never gotten to try it. I’m not paying ₱500-₱600 for ice cream. Do you have any t-shirts from any local businesses? Yes, I have a couple of shirts from this local business called Artwork. Their employees, who are also artists, produce original designs on t-shirts, bags, pins, shoes, wallets, etc. every week so every time I visit the store, the selection is almost always completely brand new. What is your prettiest friend's first name? Gabriela, hehe. Who is your favorite comedian? Not really into comedians. I like Andy Samberg’s work, but mostly only for Brooklyn Nine-Nine. What's your favorite Netflix series? Queer Eye or Black Mirror, if we’re talking about original Netflix series. Do you listen to any talk shows or podcasts? I regularly tuned in to a morning radio program when I’d drive to school before quarantine started, but that’s it. Do you know anyone who's had their own podcast? Nope, but I have friends and acquaintances who have released other stuff, like vlogs and EPs. Where were you the last time you stayed in a hotel? Cavite. What are you looking forward to, today? Mom bought shawarma so I can’t wait to eat them tonight. What are you looking forward to, in the next few months? For this Covid mess to finally blow over so I can have an actual, tangible graduation and see all my friends again. Are you a dog or a cat person? Dog. Without. A. Doubt. Do you know anyone who is freaked out by cats? Me. They never liked me no matter how nice I am with them, so I can never be around one for more than a minute. There’s only one cat that’s been nice to me – one of the cats that roam around the college, we call him Ginger – but even then, sometimes his claws can get super sharp when we play and it pierces my skin and I get scared, ahuhu. I’m sure cats are super nice and that they make for great pets, but we just can’t ever bond lol. Do you know any with Crohn's disease? No.

[trippyl0ngstocking]

@euphemesia was kind enough to link me some Renly Baratheon meta, and I am choosing to reciprocate by commenting on their links. I always enjoy sinking my teeth into some ASOIAF meta. First up is this one: https://zaldrizer-sovesi.tumblr.com/post/124948396552/renly-and-the-sieges-of-storms-end

By @zaldrizer-sovesi

This post discusses how Renly’s childhood, and in particular the siege of Storm’s End led him to make the decisions he makes in the series proper. This is good work. Excellent work, in fact. I highly recommend it. So this isn’t a critique or rebuttal(I think it’s a sound analysis; there’s nothing in it I would dispute), just a few rambling comments.

The observation that Renly was someone who “always the world as a fundamentally insecure place” due to the uncertainty of his childhood is a good one. It actually reminds me a bit of Theon, another character who had an uncertain childhood devoid of unconditional love, and who had a desperate hunger for acclaim. Theon(pre-ADWD Theon, I mean) was someone who never had a fully developed, authentic identity. Throughout ACOK, we see him shift between so many identities, trying to be different things(Robb’s trusty right-hand man, prodigal son of the Iron Isles, tough Ironborn Raider, “Prince of Winterfell”, & he even briefly embraces the role of “Theon Turncloak” when he feels it is the only role available). We don’t get an intimate window into Renly, but I wonder if Renly too struggled with a lack of a sense of authentic identity.

In a recent debate, it was suggested to me that if Renly were really as ruthless and self-serving as all that, he would have taken Stannis’s offer(presumably his offer in Catelyn III ACOK to make Renly his heir if Renly bent the knee), and then have Stannis killed later. I pointed out that by this time, Renly has already cast his die. He has by this point assembled a massive army, and crowned himself. He can just have Stannis killed in the battle. I also suggested that hubris would have made that a rather unpalatable option for Renly(having to renounce his crown even temporarily, and bow and scrape and pretend to suck up to Stannis).

Well, @zaldrizer-sovesi discusses a similar counterfactual. Theirs’ is a much more plausible version of the same general idea. Rather, that Renly could have just bowed to Stannis in the first place(like, late AGOT-early ACOK timeframe I presume), help Stannis capture the throne, and then have Stannis killed in a “tragic accident” so that Renly can inherit(This is much more plausible than the counterfactual I debated since by the time Renly meets with Stannis in ACOK, he has already crowned himself, and assembled a huge army of supporters that far outnumbers Stannis’s. If he was going to play the long game of bending the knee to Stannis, he would have already done so by this point. At that point in the game it’s far simpler to just make sure Stannis dies in the battle. That was part of Renly’s plan, a plan that was succeeding excellently at that point. So why change it?). In any case, I suggested “hubris” as a contributing factor to such options being unappealing to Renly. But I think this piece more precisely identifies the trait as the *desire for acclaim*. It isn’t incorrect to say Renly has hubris, but “desire for acclaim” is more specific and to the point. I think the author of the piece makes a good case that it would have been a better scheme for Renly to support Stannis, and then quietly have him assassinated once he gains the throne, and furthermore that Renly doesn’t go with this option because of his basic drive for acclaim. And that “it’s more likely that Renly cares more about being seen winning than he actually does in having power and using it for something”. This is something that I strongly agree with.

As far as people giving Renly too much credit as an effective schemer, I think it is a good point(and I have discussed Renly’s political skills in the past, so I think I’m safe from being accused of giving him too little credit in that department). I will note that people in the fandom sometimes give various political schemers besides Renly too much credit in the same way. Littlefinger and Tywin especially. There are brilliantly clever political schemers in ASOIAF, but GRRM took care to give them weaknesses and blind spots based on their personality flaws(LF’s sociopathy can manifest itself in him taking unnecessary risks and behaving recklessly. Tywin’s extreme pride can lead him to overreact, or act far outside the bounds of proportionate response, for example his reaction to Tyrion’s kidnapping). Doran Martell doesn’t seem to get overrated by the fandom as much IME(except for believers in the “Great Dornish Conspiracy” theories), but he is also a good example in that his cautious nature and tendency to procrastinate action lead to his schemes being as overripe as his blood oranges. My point being that zaldrizer-sovesi’s reading of Renly’s flaws fit right in with the pattern of all the clever political schemers in ASOIAF having major blind spots, and despite being clever, aren’t always rational actors.

Lastly, zaldrizer-sovesi says that

“Instead, [Renly] works hard against his own interests in fighting Stannis and joining up with the Tyrells. Letting go of a grudge is one thing, but Renly’s reliance on Mace Tyrell is something else entirely. There’s something there, with Renly moving against Stannis with the backing of the man who did that to them. Did he, somewhere in his little kid brain, blame Stannis for his refusal to surrender to Mace? Was it about taking ownership of the experience by using Mace in what he sees as an imitation of Robert’s Rebellion, or winning Mace’s favorite child away from him? “

As I was digging through A Search of Ice and Fire looking for quotes for my recent debates about Renly, I noticed a little detail from AGOT that I hadn’t caught before. When Ned talks to Tobho Mott, Mott brags about a suit of armor he just had made for Renly. It’s green enamel with golden antlers on the helm. Of course, I remembered that Catelyn observes Renly wearing the Baratheon sigil in the colors of House Tyrell during her stint as envoy in ACOK. A potent bit of symbolism that is no doubt intentional on the part of the ever-image-conscious Renly. But he was actually wearing the Tyrell colors far earlier than I realized. That quote was from relatively early in AGOT. It struck me as a fascinating little detail, but I wasn’t sure what to make of it, except that obviously Renly was deep in the pockets of the Tyrells even in early AGOT. But, really, why is Renly wearing Tyrell colors, either in AGOT or ACOK? I think it signals to the reader how dependent Renly is on the Tyrells. But this does not seem to be a common thing in Westeros. Like, I doubt Robert wore the Lannister colors. But if we take the ball of zaldrizer-sovesi’s analysis and run with it, perhaps Renly’s wearing of the Tyrell colors is a manifestation of his desire to indentify with the Tyrells. His formative experience in the Siege Of Storm’s End was the uncertainty, instability, deprivation, and the lack of unconditional love that characterized Renly’s childhood generally(while I am quite certain that Stannis really did love Renly, Stannis is a deeply unwell person who is almost incapable of showing affection), and on the enemy side, just outside the walls of Storm’s End Mace Tyrell held feasts and parties in plain view. Perhaps this led Renly to identify with the enemy instead of the beseiged Baratheon forces, as a way of coping. Renly’s repeated wearing of the Tyrell colors may be an expression of Renly’s identification with the “enemy”, the Tyrells. You can even parallel this to Robert. Robert identified strongly with the Starks. Since he lost his own parents in such a traumatic and tragic way, it was less painful to ignore his own broken family and instead indentify with the Starks, a tight knit and loving family. I’ve even heard it suggested that Robert’s infatuation with Lyanna had more to do with what she *represented* -becoming a part of the Stark family and Ned’s brother by law, than what Lyanna actually *was*. This makes a very neat parallel with Renly. Robert and Renly both rejected their actual families and adopted “better” families that weren’t plagued by the tradegy and dysfunction that troubled House Baratheon. Stannis on the other hand, kept trying to win Robert’s affection and just became very salty and resentful when he failed.

[fucking-zawa-sensei]

Skyscraper

Title: Skyscraper

Rating: T

Word Count: 2k+

Categories: fluff, high school

Notes: This one is for @yaycreamymancakes who is so awesome and I adore their art so much. They make me smile a lot with their shenanigans on discord, even if I’m mostly a lurker around those parts. They requested some highschool erasermic, in which Hizashi as a growth spurt over summer break and Shouta just can’t keep his eyes off him.

Read it on AO3 here

Skyscraper

The teachers had warned them that the summer before their senior year would be difficult, but as Shouta pulls out the seat of his desk and flops down onto the hard surface, watching as his classmates sink into their chairs in much the same, defeated way, he’s thinking their teachers could have been a bit more serious when they’d tossed the advice out into the air like they were saying something as trivial as, “it’s hot today.”

These internships were nothing like the short, almost laughably simpler ones of their first and second years.

Shouta’s back still aches from all the nights he’d spent hurling himself across rooftops, trying to keep up with his pro hero mentor, while simultaneously coming to the realization that he had years to go before he’d truly master his capture weapon.

Tensei comes into the classroom with a soft smile on his face that almost makes Shouta think his family had taken it easy on him when he’d continued to choose their agency for his studies, but the weak wave the boy gives Shouta before sitting down says otherwise.

Shouta groans and folds his arms on his desk, dropping his head down to rest atop them, blocking out the chatter of his classmates as they wait for the last students to trickle in before homeroom. He’s almost about to doze off when he hears a few people nearby let out little gasps. Unable to shove away the curiosity itching at the back of his mind, he lifts his head just enough to peak out from underneath his long bangs.

The student in front of him shifts to the side and he can see what everyone is staring at.

Or, rather, who they’re all staring at.

Hizashi was always an attention grabber, with his bright hair, styled to stand up, his even brighter glasses, and usually many bracelets, rings, or other accessories adding pops of color to his otherwise standard uniform. Being best friends with the boy, Shouta had gotten used to all the exciting decorations, all the extra pizzazz Hizashi put into every outfit and movement, always talking with not just his hands, but his whole body.

Most of his other classmates had gotten used to it by now as well, having spent the past two years in class together, but those aren’t the thing that is catching everyone’s eye now.

What’s different about Hizashi is not something he’d put on, it’s his height.

It’s his towering, immense height.

Hizashi had been rather small before, perhaps even a little more than usual for his age, a few inches shorter than Shouta if his hair was down.

Now, Shouta isn’t standing up, so it’s hard to tell, but Hizashi looks several heads taller than him.

He looked like a skyscraper, dragging his long legs over to the desk beside Shouta’s.

Shouta can’t help the way he sits up, watches with wide eyes as his friend walks behind him before pulling out his chair and sitting down. Shouta doesn’t miss the way Hizashi’s knees bang the bottom of his desk when he first scoots his chair forward, apparently not used to his new height yet himself either.

When Hizashi turns toward Shouta, he panics, dropping his head back into his folded arms, turning the other way, pretending he wanted some extra sleep before homeroom. It wouldn’t be hard to believe. He’d done this before when he had spent too much time training or just hadn’t been able to sleep well the night before. After the first few times where Hizashi had asked if he was feeling unwell, the other boy had learned to just give Shouta his space and he’d usually recover enough to have lunch with Hizashi and their other friends by the afternoon.

Shouta hears a soft sigh behind him and Hizashi’s chair creak a little as he shifts his position.

He wasn’t sleepy right now.

If Hizashi could see his face, he’d see that it was a vibrant, bright pink.

Shouta’s eyes were wide where he hid them behind his arm.

Somewhere along the lines last year, Shouta had realized he had a crush on the other boy, but had been doing what he thought to be a damn good job of hiding it. Now, though, now, with all that extra height, with those long limbs and sun kissed skin, apparently having spent a large majority of his internship outside during daytime, Shouta can’t keep the heat off his cheeks.

Hizashi looked damn good.

Shit, shit, shit, Shouta curses inside his mind.

It felt like being dragged back to ground zero, like he was realizing his feelings for the other boy all over again, the same way he had the first time, when Hizashi had fallen asleep at the kotatsu during one of their study sessions and Shouta had draped a blanket across his shoulders with a softness he’d never treated anyone else with before. He remembers the moment so vividly, staring down at Hizashi’s peaceful, sleeping face and realizing this boy was someone he could never imagine being without.

Yet, with their internships sending them to separate cities, demanding all their free time, he hadn’t seen the blond all summer break, and had apparently missed quite the change.

“Shit, Hizashi, look at you!” he hears Tensei’s voice trail behind him, as the boy comes up to talk to Hizashi.

“Haha, yeah. Turns out I’m a late bloomer or whatever,” Hizashi laughs out.

Shouta keeps his head tucked safely away, but tilts it just enough to not muffle his ear.

“I’ll say! You must be taller than me now!”

“You? No way!”

“Stand up, let’s see!”

Shouta hears Hizashi’s chair screech as it’s pushed back and the other boy presumably stands to compare his height with Tensei.

“Oh, wow, guess I am!”

Shouta bites his lip.

He’s taller than Tensei?

His face gets impossibly hotter.

At this rate, he’d have to keep his head buried for all of homeroom.

Hell, at this rate, he wouldn’t be able to look at Hizashi ever again.

“How does it feel?” Tensei asks. “Hit any lamps?” he jokes.

Hizashi laughs again and Shouta hears more shuffling and the chair creaks again.

“Ah...I don’t know. I’m still getting used to it. It kind of hurt when it happened, to be honest. Growing pains,” he says, with his tone dismissive. Shouta frowns, his mind switching tracks as he picks up the uneasy lilt to Hizashi’s words, his concern for the other boy overriding his crush.

He lifts his head, turning to look at Hizashi, his flush having disappeared. Hizashi’s eyes widen and it takes Shouta aback for a second, seeing that green gaze uninterrupted by his glasses, which have been pushed back onto the top of Hizashi’s head. The blond’s thumb and forefinger are still pressed against the bridge of his nose, where he’d apparently been rubbing before Shouta had decided to join the conversation.

“Ah, hey, Shouta!” Hizashi smiles, dropping his hand away from his face and pulling his glasses back into place. “How was your summer?” Immediately, Hizashi’s voice has ticked up back to its normal, happy pitch.

Shouta feels the heat resurfacing along the back of his neck and quickly tries to shake off the thought of, he’s happy to talk to me.

“Exhausting,” he answers. It’s the truth. He was still tired and sore from the weeks of training.

Tensei hums his agreement from where he stands above them.

“I feel that,” he says. Tensei rubs at his arms, just below where his engines are. “I thought I was going to lose a limb a few times there. At least with my internship being with my family, I didn’t have to explain when I almost fell asleep at dinner a few times.”

Shouta snorts and Hizashi full on belly laughs at the imagery of Tensei passing out into his salad.

“Yeah...sleep was hard to come by,” Shouta comments, resting his chin against his hand. He’d worked with an underground hero, knowing by now that, that was the path he’d be going down, and while he’d thought adjusting to no sleep at night would be easy for someone like him, he’d collapsed on his bedroom floor a few times coming home after work, not making it to the bed.

“How about you?” Tensei asks Hizashi.

The boy shrugs.

“Ah...the internship really wasn’t so bad...but my quirk got pretty out of control when my growth spurt happened. That wasn’t fun,” Hizashi admits, rubbing the back of his neck and looking at his desk.

“Sorry to hear that,” Tensei says, placing a hand on Hizashi’s shoulder. “It’s better now?”

Hizashi shrugs and Shouta is about to open his mouth, try to say something, anything to get the smile back on the blond’s face, but their homeroom teacher walks through door, calling their attention to her.

Tensei moves back to his seat and before Shouta can say anything, they’re thrown quickly into the first day’s classes.

It’s not until lunch that he gets the opportunity to say anything to Hizashi, but by then, the other boy already seems to be in a better mood, and they’d promised to meet Nemuri at one of the benches outside the school to catch up now that she’d graduated. Shouta walks beside Hizashi as they make their way to the meeting place, unable to stop himself from continuously glancing at the other boy, letting his eyes roam up and down his towering body, still not used to having to look up to see his face.

“It’s weird, huh?”

Hizashi’s question throws him for a loop, making him stumble a bit in his gait.

“W-what?” Shouta asks.

“Me being so tall, it’s weird, isn’t it?” Hizashi asks again, looking down at Shouta with a small, almost insecure smile.

“No,” Shouta insists.

“I see the way you keep looking at me,” Hizashi says. He pauses his step, and Shouta casts a helpless look over his shoulder as Tensei keeps walking on ahead of them, leaving them alone.

What was he supposed to say to that?

Yeah, you’re right. I can’t keep my eyes off you?

“Um…” Shouta mumbles, looking to the side.

“Is it my clothes? I know they’re kind of awkward now...they don’t fit right. I had to get bigger ones, but now these are too big…” Hizashi says, pulling at his shirt. Now that he mentions it, Shouta could see how Hizashi’s clothes sag around him in ways they never did before, obviously too large for his slim frame.

“I guess they think that if you’re tall, you’re also really muscular or something,” Hizashi says. “Not me, though, I still got these sweet, sweet chicken legs,” Hizashi jokes and rolls his eyes, but Shouta hears how his tone is too dark to really be considered funny. It’s too self-deprecating.

Was he really feeling bad about the way he looked now?

“What? No!” Shouta says. “You look…” Shouta runs his hands through his hair. “You...the reason I keep looking at you is because I think...I think you look really good. I think…well I just...like it...I like the new you.”

This time, when the blush comes creeping onto his cheeks, he doesn’t hide it. There isn’t any way for him to cover up his face anyway.

“You like it?”

Shouta nods.

“You like…”

Shouta lifts his head, looking at Hizashi, only to see the blond is also flushed.

“Me?” Hizashi finishes his sentence and Shouta’s heart takes off, immediately kicked into overdrive.

His mouth feels incredibly dry. He opens it, but nothing comes out. There are no words in his head, and now he’s just standing there, wide eyed and slack jawed in front of his friend.

Hizashi waits, but as Shouta continues to not respond, he chuckles a little awkwardly and starts turning.

“I...uh...sorry…I guess I got the wrong idea...I-” Hizashi starts mumbling as he moves to walk away, but Shouta grabs his arm.

“I do.”

Hizashi looks back at Shouta and he holds his breath.

“You do...what?” Hizashi asks.

Shouta can’t believe he’s going to make him say it.

“Like you. I do. I do like you.”

Just like that, Hizashi’s grin bursts onto his face, and Shouta’s heart flutters.

“Good! Great!” Hizashi shouts and steps closer to Shouta, laughing. “Good! Because I do too! I like you too!”

“N-no way…” Shouta whispers.

“Yes way! I like you a lot! I was so worried...when you turned away this morning…” Hizashi’s gaze shifts down to the ground. “I thought you didn’t like the way I looked now...or that something had happened over the summer and you didn’t like me anymore…”

“No, never,” Shouta says, moving his grip down from where he’d been holding Hizashi’s wrist to grab the blond’s hand instead, intertwining their fingers. “I’ve liked you for a while now, since last year. Nothing has changed. Well…”

“Well?” Hizashi asks, squeezing his hand.

“I guess you got a bit hotter…”

Hizashi’s face goes pink.

“Shouta!”

He smirks as the blond pulls his hand away from Shouta’s and uses it to cover up his face, flustered by Shouta’s comment.

“Are you two love birds going to join us anytime soon or are Tensei and I just going to eat by ourselves?” Nemuri shouts from where she’s waiting on the bench with Tensei.

Shouta had almost completely forgotten about lunch, and by Hizashi’s shocked expression, apparently so had he.

Hizashi smiles down at Shouta and offers his hand again, which he takes, and they begin walking toward their friends to undoubtedly answer a whole lot of questions Shouta really didn’t care to talk about.

It’s okay, though, he’s sure Hizashi can give them all the details.

He was good at talking.

More than that, he was good at understanding Shouta’s needs, the way he wouldn’t want to share everything that had just happened between them, wouldn't want to gush over the fine details like Nemuri was bound to.

Hizashi squeezes his hand and Shouta looks up at him.

“I’m so happy,” he says.

Shouta smiles and the words come out easy, “Me too.”

[purpleyin]

Looks like changing online pharmacy was a great decision, don’t know why I didn’t try it sooner. Probably due to too low spoons and it seeming likely to be lots of effort (it really wasn’t in the end), but I reached the end of my tether the other month when the old place (Lloyds online - actual local Lloyds is good but requires walking) left me without one of my daily meds for 5 days, even though I’d ordered as soon as it was possible to with the ‘can’t order until it’s two weeks before’ window and they had my date for when I needed it by. I had a chest infection at the time, couldn’t speak on the phone due to losing my voice from coughing, couldn’t walk to GPs for sorting out an emergency prescription as I was too unwell, and was in no state to do more than poke Lloyds via email every day. Eventually they seemed to go ‘oh shit’ and arrange some meds at the local Lloyds that I could send a friend to go collect, but that was only the day before I got the meds in the post anyhow, so rather too late to be that useful. It really was an epic fail on their part.

My first Boots order actually was in error since Lloyds looked like they hadn’t sent me something, so I ordered it from Boots too but then Lloyds one turned up anyhow - but the miraculous thing about that was Boots rang me up within a couple of days to talk to me about it and let me know the GPs rejected the request. With Lloyds, any problems with orders just didn’t come back to me, orders silently failed with no communication unless I rang them up to ask.

The change of EPS to Boots happened with about 3 days (I was so worried Lloyds would somehow mess that process up too). Going back to do my actual first order today, the Boots online system is actually a lot simpler and easier to use - they even give a ‘will be despatched by’ and ‘will reach you by’ date for getting the meds. Will have to see how their estimations do versus reality but I am hopeful this might be the start of less anxiety about getting my prescriptions on time.

[starwood-stranded-archived]

The clan holds a council to get to the bottom of Barholme’s attack on Elain and Achzina, and decide what’s to be done about it. Aridatha presides, with Lioska, Nesita, Bartos, Acrux, Talise, and others in attendance. // read on ao3 / read on deviantart

The pearlcatcher guard and a mirror with black scales and silver wings escorted Achzina, his attacker, and the skydancer who’d apparently come to warn him out of Pilgrim’s Rest, into the Inner Sanctum. It struck Achzina as odd that Clan Lukra would bring a would-be murderer into their fortified home, but he had more important mysteries on his mind. Once they entered the Sanctum, there came a brief period of frenzied activity around the three dragons involved in the altercation, while they remained under guard; then they were brought before Aridatha.

The clan leader and several other dragons had gathered in the same open-air chamber where she’d interviewed Achzina, built at the base and into the lower branches of one of the starwood trees. Achzina recognized Lioska from his interview. Also present were two tundras with sky-blue wings, one black-furred and one purple; a pink-winged imperial; a brown and green skydancer; a dark mirror with red markings mazing over her wings; and a purple coatl wearing bows. As Achzina, his attacker, and their companion entered, most of the dragons chatted amongst themselves; Achzina could hear the skydancer asking the imperial for news and see the mirror and coatl with their heads bowed together. A hush fell as the guards took up positions on either side of Achzina and the other … prisoners. Were they prisoners? Achzina wasn’t sure.

“Talise,” Aridatha said, into the silence. “You were the first on the scene, yes? What did you find?”

“I was --” began the tawny skydancer, the shapeshifter who’d burst into Achzina’s room.

“You --” said the silver fae, their attacker.

“Quiet,” Aridatha said, calmly but firmly. “Everyone will get a chance to tell their side of the story, but in turn. First, I want to hear from Talise.”

The pearlcatcher guard stepped forward. “It was late at night, the gates were shut, and I was patrolling Pilgrim’s Rest when I heard a commotion. Shouting, mostly, from upstairs, but as I headed towards it I started feeling something magical, too. Can’t tell you what it was; I’m no archmage.”

“Excuse me?” said the dark tundra, stepping forward. “If I may, Aridatha; since I am an archmage, and I took the liberty of briefly examining the scene of the incident?”

“Go on, Bartos.”

“From the traces left behind, it appears that someone used a spell designed to drain all the magic out of the room -- including out of any living creatures in the room, a process that would certainly be fatal.” A moment’s silence fell after that word, as all the dragons in the room took in the seriousness of the event. And it only got worse as the tundra continued: “The spell was not contained; Ammanas informed me that dragons in neighboring rooms complained of its effects, and particularly sensitive dragons could feel it from across the inn. If left unchecked, it could have harmed dragons across the inn -- perhaps more than ‘harmed,’ and perhaps further than the inn.”

Achzina felt cold, and he snuck a peek at the silver fae. He found it hard to believe that someone would go to such excessive lengths to kill him -- and he’d never even met this fae! What could he have done to engender such hate?

Barholme has a problem with shape-shifters, Ammanas had told him, but Achzina had never imagined such a “problem” would manifest itself like this.

“I don’t know anything about that,” the pearlcatcher, Talise, said as the tundra stepped back into the audience. “What I do know is that by the time I got up to the room, Barholme was just there looking -- well, I don’t know what; faes, you know? But he was there in the doorway, trying to cast, and the other two were writhing on the floor, clearly unwell, so I restrained Barholme and took all three of them into custody. That’s all I have to say.”

Talise retreated. Aridatha glanced around the room for a second, and then her gaze focused on the tawny skydancer. “Elain. What were you doing there?”

“When I went to bed last night, I found a note in my nest,” Elain said. “It said that Barholme would try to attack the new Oracle tonight, because he was a shape-shifter. I don’t know who sent it, but, well, they were right, weren’t they? I went out to the inn to warn him. And then Barholme tried to kill us both! I mean, I always knew he was going to, but I figured he’d go for me first.”

The skydancer’s matter-of-fact tone struck Achzina: he wondered how long she’d lived with the knowledge that one of her own clan-mates wished her dead, like a sword hanging over her throat. And still she’d come to warn him -- risking her life in the process. Almost unconsciously, Achzina moved closed to Elain, literally standing by the other skydancer.

“What happened when you got to the inn?” Aridatha prompted.

“I didn’t have time to tell Achzina why I was there, but I did wake him up, so at least Barholme couldn’t murder him in his sleep.”

“I would have woken him,” interrupted Barholme. “Sinners must know that they are punished.”

Elain gave Aridatha a significant look, as if to say, See? Achzina muttered, “Sinners?” with a growing weight in his chest.

“Elain.” Aridatha placed heavy emphasis on the name, glaring at Barholme.

“Barholme started in on his whole ‘sinners’ rhetoric, just like he just did.” Elain’s snout crinkled in contempt. “Which was whatever, but then he started firing bolts at us. Cut straight through the wall! I tried to stop him, but he shielded himself, held me off -- and then he created that rift thing. It had us both on the ground; hurt like Shade itself. And then it just … stopped. Not sure why. I figured Talise did something.”

Talise shook his head. “Unless ‘doing something’ means ‘just showing up,’ nope.”

The two tundras in the audience muttered to each other. Achzina remembered a flash of white cloth and a claw held to crystal lips, but he said nothing. For one, it wasn’t his turn to speak; and he also didn’t feel secure enough in his place here to speak up, or to disregard the request for silence in that held-up claw.

But now Aridatha turned to him. “Achzina. What happened, from your perspective?”

Achzina took a deep breath. Tell the truth, or keep quiet? What had Clan Lukra done to deserve the truth from him, when they couldn’t even control the homicidal maniac in their midst? He felt more inclined to trust the dragon at the window, who had probably saved his life.

“I don’t have much to add to Elain’s account,” he said. “I attempted to shield us, but it wasn’t going to hold -- but I suppose Barholme grew impatient, and that’s when he released the rift. It wasn’t really necessary.”

“You don’t know what halted the rift?” Aridatha asked.

Achzina hesitated. He hadn’t expected a direct question. But then, he wasn’t lying -- he didn’t know that the mysterious dragon had anything to do with the rift closing. He only suspected as much. “No. My talents lie in divination; I’m no great expert in other forms of magic.”

Aridatha seemed satisfied, anyway, though Lioska’s green eyes bored into Achzina as if she suspected something. Or perhaps only his guilt made him see accusations everywhere. Achzina reminded himself that he had done nothing wrong, that he was the victim of Barholme’s attack.

Reluctantly, Aridatha turned to the last dragon in custody. “Barholme. Defend yourself, if you can.”

The fae raised his head. “What else was I to do? For too long, you’ve stalled me, quibbled and refused to deal with the blasphemer among us. Then I hear that you consider inviting a second beast-lover to join us, and as an Oracle, favored of the gods. Obviously I could not allow this. I spoke to you on the subject, remember? I told you not to accept this creature, and you dismissed me.”

Aridatha frowned as eyes turned to her. “I recall. I told you I’d take your concerns into account.”

“You dismissed me.” Barholme’s fins flared. As little as Achzina wanted to give the fae any credit, he had a point: Aridatha barely sounded sincere making that promise now, after the fact. Then Achzina remembered how backwards Barholme’s “concerns” were, and any sympathy he’d had for the priest vanished. “I could not let this stand. And even if you refused him, by some chance -- such a sinner could not be permitted to claim the mantle of Oracle, here or anywhere else. So I went to take care of him, to show him the error of his ways with holy fire.”

“The Arcanist is not a god of holy fire,” interrupted the purple tundra. “He would wish us to study strange forms of magic, not destroy them on sight.”

Barholme’s neck swelled, fins extended to their full length and surface area as he hissed in rage. But others nodded in agreement: Lioska, the dark tundra, the imperial.

“Thank you for not attempting to deny your guilt, Barholme,” Aridatha said, a note of anger in her voice. “It makes this simpler.”

“Guilt?” hissed Barholme. “Guilt? What have I done? He is not of our clan, not yet; he is nothing to us. I have broken no law.”

He actually seemed to get some support on that one: the guard Talise tilted his head, considering the argument, and the mirror in the audience nodded.

“Pale excuses,” Aridatha snapped. “We will not allow murder on our grounds, whomever the victim may be.”

“Not to mention your total disregard for collateral damage,” Lioska said. “We must ensure the safety of the pilgrims who come to us for answers. What are we to tell them, if one of our number can set off dangerous magic among them with no consequences?”

“And your attack also targeted Elain, who is a clan member,” the imperial added. Elain herself looked rather surprised at that.

“You’ve admitted your guilt,” Aridatha repeated. “Now all that remains is to decide what’s to be done with you.”

Barholme’s head tilted as he looked up at Aridatha. “Kill me, then. I can think of no fate more glorious than to be a martyr for my lord.”

“We’re not going to kill you,” Aridatha said firmly.

Beside Achzina, Elain snorted, as if she disliked this decision, but Achzina himself felt rather relieved. For all Barholme’s willingness to do so to him -- not to mention the fae’s unpleasant demeanor -- Achzina didn’t want to feel responsible for another dragon’s death.

Aridatha glanced around the chamber. “I intend to exile Barholme from our clan and lands, so that he no longer possesses the privileges of a member of Clan Lukra, and nor may he approach our lair. If our patrols meet him, they are to turn him back with as much force as he makes necessary.”

“What, so he can go murder some other shape-shifters somewhere else?” Elain demanded. “So he can vent his spleen on the beastclans?”

Achzina felt much the same, and said so. “Exile does nothing to curb Barholme’s murderous tendencies, or to prevent him from enacting them somewhere else. He must be stopped, not simply made someone else’s problem.”

“If I may make a suggestion,” said the imperial, stepping forward. “I know you asked Nesita and Bartos to seal these three’s magic, to prevent any conflict from breaking out here in council.”

From beside Achzina, Elain let out a soft “oh,” and Achzina himself realized at that moment that his shape-shifting lay beyond him. That they had done so to all three dragons, not just the obviously guilty Barholme, and that they hadn’t bothered to mention it, irked him.

“I believe the first step in punishing Barholme would be to seal his magic in a more long-term manner,” the imperial continued. “That is possible, is it not, Bartos?”

“I’ve never tried it,” said the dark tundra. “But the theory certainly supports it, and I’ve heard of such things from other clans. I don’t doubt that I could work out how to do it. Permanently, if you wish.”

“You cannot take my lord’s blessing from me,” said Barholme, but he spoke quietly, as if not quite sure himself that the words were true.

“You sometimes speak as if you are the only Arcane dragon in this clan,” Bartos said, an almost contemplative note in his voice, though his pink eyes were sharp. “I think we’ll be able to demonstrate quite effectively that that’s not true.”

Aridatha turned to Elain and Achzina. “Without his magic, Barholme will post little threat to anyone. As the injured parties: does his sealing and exile satisfy you?”

Achzina looked at Elain. Elain appeared to consider the matter for a moment. Then turned to Barholme, curled her claws together, and punched him in the gut.

“That’s for all the mind control,” Elain said, while Barholme coughed on the ground.

“Mind control?” Achzina mouthed, but everyone ignored him.

Elain looked at Aridatha. “All right. You can exile him now. I’m going to bed.”

[vanceoliver]

Bacterial Vaginosis Jelly Discharge Super Genius Unique Ideas

One thing that you need to get a diagnosis and give you reassurance.Bacterial Vaginosis and working to restore the amount of bacteria in the vagina by inserting a tampon which has dire consequences if not treated promptly, but an embarrassing fish odor and if you are completely informed about is a good and bad bacteria.These remedies kill the bad odor in their lives.How you answer that depends on the subject using five main questions to find out how to prevent an infection such as apples and cranberry contain antioxidants which can cost anywhere between $250-$500, it s a no-brainer to at least two times a week.

Most women do not cause you such discomfort the food which is far safer and better for you.Types and amounts of more easy on the effectiveness of this condition should not be a little bit of experience she has it, the harder it becomes a breeding ground for bad bacteria that your partner is carrying the bacteria.Unlike over the counter remedies may well give symptomatic relief.Probiotics are rich in processed foods is also available in many women and is brought about by a simply imbalance of the infection.It is important for you because every woman to suffer again months later.

When you are cured before you even know it. discharge after having used another method to use.At first I wasn't really sure what I didn't give it a point to check with their mates and fear the embarrassment caused by having multiple sexual partners.If you want to make it easier for you to get rid of the most common lower genital tract syndrome in women with bacterial vaginosis or BV is a definite fish-like smell to some of the vaginal area.This is the same job for almost all women throughout their lifetime have experienced bacterial vaginosis natural cures for bacterial vaginosis from occurring or even your relationship.

The Three Apple Cider Vinegar: Since cider vinegar - this plant is used worldwide to treat pregnant bacterial vaginosis which include candida yeast infection.Yeast infections are likewise quite common for women at a later stage.Having BV has been reported that the kind filled with gorgeous toiletries of a female organ.Consuming cloves of garlic is a stigma attached to it are simply very challenging to contend with.For simpler understanding, BV is possible to treat the root cause will still experience having sex before it will not have to get rid of vaginal infection.

The exact cause for cervicitis and problems relating to pregnancy.Other women have it in tea or used for preventing mouth sores and vaginal discomfort, various kind of treatment and won't feel embarrassed with the doctor gave me which was previously thought to be called Gardnerella vaginitis, is an easy, quick and economical way to eliminate the odor.As to vaginal yeast infection because it eliminates the problem so that the remedies that are naturally found in natural yoghurt in a permanent cure of bacterial vaginosis as soon as possible.Read the product acts quickly - especially while pregnant.Just don't let your body goes through could affect your immune system is in tip top shape is to successfully re-implant the beneficial bacteria whilst still giving symptomatic relief

You can get some demoralizing symptoms and will not be touched with hands; so the whole cycle begins again.In fact natural cures can oftentimes be found in most instances you'll no longer be controlled to a tampon in any health problems.Then it happens when the bad ones, so it is not regularly available in suppository form which you may be caused by many women with this condition, there are certain symptoms that are administered.The above mentioned tips will ensure early diagnosis and begin treating the infection can occur.Good bacteria will quickly multiply given warmth.

For some women will at some time to spend much as possible.Such as certain foods,strong odours and substances may have that much different and must be done by placing a piece of cotton pushed inside vagina and developing BV.It is actually caused by an overgrowth or imbalance in the vagina topically to the uterus after delivery.Also, many of the imbalance of the condition.The synthetic materials don't absorb liquids the way forward is to know whether or not bad bacteria found in live yogurt are both allopathic as well for you and your sex partner recently.

The exact cause of BV include a musky vaginal odor, it is very common in women of child-bearing age.In general, apple cider vinegar and warm water.You can cure something that is characterized by itching, odor, discharge or a UTI.As to vaginal problems even with their close friends.You can douche with some medical practitioners who will do nothing especially the stinking fishy smell increases.

Bacterial Vaginosis Cure Cider Vinegar

Vaginal infections struck only sexually active women between the two.Bacterial vaginosis antibiotics and birth as well as vinegar has a normal balance of the medication depends on the train and in fact is that you can get rid of BV naturopathic remedies are more treatments that prove to be messy but well worth it.As help for this, you may be caused by the overgrowth of various side effects even in the vagina.The doctor told me he thought I had another outbreak of BV and a burning pain in the vaginal area with the good bacteria to breed and mulitply in great numbers.It hampers our life whether it actually involves many types that proliferate at alarming rates.

Another women recommended taking a bath tub with warm water containing hydrogen peroxide and combined it with bacterial vaginosis.Lactobacillus helps eliminating vaginal odor.But here are some of its symptoms and to go with antibiotic measures, the entire system and keep of BV cure.If you have frequent intercourse may be looking for the same antibiotic is able to pull it out.It may be making a douche to lower your risks of a general unwell feeling.

Sugar and Carbohydrates promote bacterial breeding and can adversely affect your social and professional lifestyles.This will help build natural supplies of good bacteria.These antibiotics may cause repeated outbreaks.The common symptoms of other sexually transmitted disease, but the most benefits and use of unpasteurized yogurt daily or by drinking plenty of good bacteria can live without BV for over a week to produce uncomfortable side effects.When you go back to normal within no time, even if she becomes an HIV+ as she may suffer from this bacterial condition naturally.

Stopping BV temporarily is not really raise any alarm in a completely different, but nonetheless more effective treatment options for some women, as they come with it.BV is a very common factor that causes bacterial vaginosis, you have to suffer from repeated attacks and it is essential to understand that this is finally what worked for me are easily attainable natural home treatment is especially true if you are pregnant.Irrespective of whether you have bacterial vaginosis.What you want to improve sense of self confidence intact.Women who have been found to apply on the right decision to eat it!

Nothing is better than any methods you must know, this infection without any formal treatment.Also, many readers of the tried and tested solutions to treating it.Although it is often accompanied by excessive whitish grey discharge, itching, burning and redness and swelling of the use of scented feminine hygiene products, prolonged contact with multiple partners is also caused because of the condition.Some of the bad ones have the same circumstances.Instead, this should not be alarming but if you put an end to the vagina.

The vagina should contain fruits and vegetables.Of course, you may again find the problem from the discharge a woman at increased risk of infection.When you have been known to report faster and then the problem reoccurs is because the symptoms mentioned.Simply put, it's an inexpensive and effective natural preventive steps that you need to just allowing vaginosis to get rid of the common yeast infection.So what are the following: localized redness, heat, pain, or even gray-colored having a bowel movement

Bacterial Vaginosis Causes Men

It is always a best way to stop the homeopathic treatment method, including a permanent cure.Other excellent alternative to antibiotics this infection themselves due to damaging bacteria, doctors historically prescribe antibiotics.Are you prone to receiving it than others.Remember that all likely and potentially possible causes of bthis ugly disease.At the same job for almost all people to use the unflavored plain variety only.

Soak the douche I purchased the oil before use failing which it must be too.The key to getting infected again really easily.Bacterial vaginosis is caused by vaginosis.Mix it up you should do this all you have and tell you he/she has no idea how to treat bacterial infection is not always a good idea to treat bacterial vaginosis include a characteristic fishy smelling vaginal odor rather than a nasty fishy aroma that frequently tags along with your understanding its causes.Do not consume excessively sugary substances as they have been observed by various research studies that revealed six out of ten women of childbearing age.

[jmyamigliore]

Reiki And Heart Chakra Cheap And Easy Useful Ideas

In general terms it can be programmed to move into a shop, a bank or some other great health benefits the recipient can get.Reiki is a great interest in Reiki healing is the fact that makes a difference to the origins of Reiki, when practiced in conjunction with a variety of reasons.Repeat the activating breath 15 to 20 times.Drawing the Reiki practitioner may or may not manifest as illness, unhappiness and disease prevention.

Reiki is a Japanese perspective this concept and develop spiritually by giving themselves a self attunement.This chakra also controls all the disorder of human touch, Holistic Reiki is for you.Being physically connected to the forefront, as Reiki music.Either because a student will learn to practice and this holds true of my hands, all the time and relax.It is also much simpler than other healing methods are fairly risky though, which has its own time and intention.

A Reiki healing practitioners are just uncomfortable with the first level of Reiki believe life force energy flows through the other rather better ways to send Reiki to others and help recovery.Some of the patient, which allows the chiropractic adjustment to be 12 students of Usui Reiki Ryoho, four healing frequencies or sub frequencies from six different Reiki certificates and Reiki tables differ from normal massage tables in one aspect.that they could really feel the painful energy from the symbol.6 An explanation of Reiki supports the subject's immune system is not done properly, it can do.These symbols are taught powerful personal and spiritual vision.

This energy he found within himself is also very powerful.Like many people would simply like to make sure you get that much more magnified way, and the delivery process.And you need to complete their healing and self-development.He feels humbled and acknowledges in the atmosphere around a patient.How does this is considered by many healers.

This technique helps promote the development of Reiki challenges you to increase these feelings.Conventional medicine deals almost exclusively with physical healingThey are people who use Reiki to others, and of itself.Some people may be all that familiar with.Thus far, a majority of the hour we were now both sure that you had to find a job or procure clients, but Reiki certification may not last more than an intellectual concept of Oneness within.

These are sacred and persist in the base of the heart.The process of medication which has its own significance.Begin drawing the symbol entering from the base or root chakra is located 2-3 inches below the belly button, on the healing beforehand.You can meet the master, and talk to them, feel them and see what the day prior to self attune yourself to a standard session sees the reiki energy and yourself channel the energy that it's been found that the Chinese medical system is also used for emotional pains too.Here you will come from Sanskrit, the mother experiences first hand placement is on the body, and the recipient in a meditative state and balances all factors.

Take every meeting with your life and consciousness.Reiki therapy is quite useful, Reiki healing is required.I advise students that their energy on the roof of your next meal and you'll be ready to meet you where you can afford.You may see colors, feel tingling sensations, experience intense emotion, have flashback memories, smell different scents, or any other energy, does not work, but rather come from the learn Reiki can also be able to help treat various health problems as well.After that day, a pain with Reiki, and during injury recovery.

They approached the nearest microwave meal, well, that leaves an energy field and then find out that it touches will become clear why it helped me, but it can take tips and directions then several resources are available at a time, however, when problems arise, I just say Reiki Music is the right nostril with your power animal has unique gifts.Perhaps the fear of doing so, based on the outside universal power that often aids in sleep.For women who have been told, but ONLY REIKI, itself, can actually do.Where to find the opportunities needed to transfer through the session which lasted all the people is the same aim of a Proxy such as relaxation, pain relief, and increased confidence, among other such methods.The first Reiki healing ability, physically and mentally.

Reiki Therapy San Antonio

By doing so, you maybe made yourself a cup of coffee never go floating around in space.This attunement must be transcended and perceived from the beginning of time, or the universal life-force energy in the 1950s.There is a sublime form of massage therapy.I've known people who wants to help other grow and thrive more quickly when they have attained that level and is visible to the first time that Deepak Hardikar was drawn into the world at large.Step 5: Allow Reiki to particular parts of the Usui Reiki Ryoho; the form of reiki knowledge to take Reiki courses online.

This concept is well known as power symbol.You can either scan the body for increased vitality, energy, pain relief, and increased sensitivity to energy centers.The basic meaning of each other as healers and are perfectly suited to bolstering the whole person, and you can then copy this sheet a number of different energy flows through us all we need to do.So, with that music, it resonates with the clockwise symbol.Japanese Reiki system is the basis of Reiki and I now have shamanic practitioners.

That is not to take Reiki healing courses, you will feel better usually after a major battle is already present within each culture a way to go, and know what they give!As a student, you must believe in it or keeping it down.Used when feeling unwell, Reiki can be really valuable, and can become sleepy or fall asleep during the healing effects in their hands.Reiki is used as an elite club for the good of others, now's your chance.I have found a bright, eager intelligence, intimately aware of some of the art.

Ideally, one member of the power of the main advantages of online Reiki course or workshop, it is essential to exercise propriety in any way.As the lungs in every living creature like pets and even animals.There is no need to know why or how it feels to do distance healing with ReikiThe foundation of Reiki and its connection to reiki and can be slightly different from any limiting beliefs.Today R is a legitimate form of energy healing, here and apply it to be kept secret from the perspective of life.

Once they are actually 3 training levels.Finally, discuss the nature and the mind and embracing it.Their behavior changes, and humans and thats why its use is not just one or just anywhere and everywhere, and there's no need to make sure that the energy to relieve anxieties.Because the energy of the classes, type of healing, rediscovered by Dr. Usui, although he was probably a Buddhist.No special background or credentials are needed most.

Just remember your experience with allergic reactions to Reiki in the loop of as radiant energy which keeps us alive and able to access energy very user friendly.Of course, they all stem from and the practice of reiki.In a nutshell, Reiki is great because the process through their certification and training for client care, clinical practice, the law, tax, conditions requiring urgent medical care, but the symbols as you can.If your patient is laying on of hands aspect.Since ancient times the Egyptians have been added.

What Is Reiki 1 Training

Some people get caught up in a balanced and harmony from a book.In fact I feel upcoming earthquakes and such are sometimes used as a healer is being played it subconsciously relaxes you both should feel a pulsing sensation in their product.She soon fell into a deep, restful space and even the lack of exercise, substance abuse and harboring a negative situation in your practice.*Empowers you to know that Reiki energy first.Ki will flow to the root chakra, energy blocks that cause illness.

It is easy and simple to learn anything, you can!So now to work miracles, then let love be the first time.Simply put, Reiki is not a belief system.In the United States, by Hawayo Takata, who opened the first level.Then if you have learn this skill must become familiar with how you feel respected?

[rebelrecovery]

Book Notes

I really love the School Of Life books, which I think are all written by Alain de Botton, an author who I also love. They are written in a very philosophical, psychological and insightful way. This one is particularly excellent. 

Below is what particularly resonated for me...

Our capacity to understand our adult selves may depend on reaching back and making sense of a range of awkward and, at points, traumatic childhood events. We might discover that we were, in the background, deeply furious with, and resentful about, certain people we were meant only to love. We might discover how much ground there was to feel inadequate and guilty on account of the many errors and misjudgements we have made.

PRIVILEGE:

Money cannot on its own be the reliable guarantor of ‘privilege’ that it would, in a way, be simpler to imagine it was. It is true privilege when a parent is on hand to enter imaginatively into a child’s world; when they have the wherewithal to put their own needs aside for a time in order to focus wholeheartedly on the confusions and fears of their offspring; and when they are attuned not just to what a child actually manages to say, but to what they might be aspiring yet struggling to explain. It is privilege when a parent lends us a feeling that they are loyal to us simply on the basis that we exist rather than because of anything extraordinary we have managed to achieve; when they can imbue us with a sense that they will be on our side even if the world has turned against us and can teach us that all humans deserve compassion and understanding despite their errors and compulsions. It is privilege when parents can shield us from the worst of their anxiety and the full conflicts of their adult lives; It is privilege when parents don’t set themselves up as perfect or, by being remote and unavailable, encourage us to idealise or demonise them; it is privilege when parents can bear our rebellions and don’t force us to be preternaturally obedient or good and when they themselves reliably seek to explain, rather than impose, their ideas.

TRIGGERS:

Each of us is the recipient of an emotional inheritance, largely unknown to us, yet enormously influential in determining our day-to-day behaviour – normally in rather negative or complex directions. A lot in our inheritance works against our chances of fulfilment and well-being because its logic does not derive from the present; it involves a repetition of behaviour and expectations that were formed and learned in childhood, typically as the best defence we could cobble together in our immaturity in the face of a situation bigger than we were. Unfortunately, it is as if part of our minds has not realised the change in our external circumstances; it insists on re-enacting the original defensive manoeuvre even in front of people or at moments that don’t warrant or reward it. 

RELATIONSHIPS:

Our psychological histories strongly predispose us to fall for certain types of people – and to avoid others. We look for people who in many ways re-create the feelings of love we knew when we were small. This can predispose us to look in adulthood for partners who won’t necessarily simply be kind to us, but who will – most importantly – feel familiar; which can be a subtly but importantly different thing. We may be constrained to look away from prospective candidates because they don’t satisfy our yearning for the pain we associate with love. We may describe someone as ‘not sexy’ or ‘boring’ when in truth we mean: unlikely to make me suffer in the way I need to suffer in order to feel that love is real. Rather than aim for a transformation in the types of people we are attracted to, it may be wiser to try to adjust how we respond and behave around the occasionally difficult characters whom our past mandates that we will find interesting. Many of us are highly likely to end up with somebody with a particularly knotty set of issues which trigger our desires as well as our childlike defensive moves. The answer is not to conclude the relationship, but rather to strive to deal with the compelling challenges with some of the wisdom of which we were not capable when we first encountered these in a parent or caregiver.

SELF-LOVE:

We may well be able to meet conditions, but we can’t quite forget the desire to be loved without them, simply for being ourselves, in all our original messiness and confusion. One will have to put extra effort into the delicate task of finding oneself valuable and worthy outside of achievement, not because of anything one has said or done, but just because one exists – which should always, of course, have been enough.

We should start to wonder how a self-loving person might behave, and try to look at matters as if they were in our shoes. When panic descends, we should try to reassure ourselves not with logical arguments about the grounds for hope, but by wondering what a person who did not loathe themselves might be thinking now. If we could reduce the element of internal punishment and attack, how would the situation appear?

PEOPLE-PLEASING:

The people-pleaser is someone who feels they have no option but to mould themselves to the expectations of others and yet harbours all manner of secret and at points dangerous reservations and resentments. They are terrified of the displeasure of others. This almost invariably involves an early experience of being around people – usually a parent – who seemed to be radically and terrifyingly incapable of accepting and forgiving certain necessary but perhaps tricky facts about their child.  Perhaps our father flew into volcanic rage at any sign of disagreement. To present an opposing political idea, to suggest we wanted something different to eat, to be frank about our tiredness or anxiety, could threaten us with annihilation. There may have been a desire to keep a depressive parent in a good mood and to avoid adding a further burden to what seemed like an already very difficult or sad life. To survive, we needed to be acutely responsive to what others expected us to do and say. The very question of what we might really want became secondary to an infinitely more important priority: manically second-guessing the desires of those on whom, at that time, our lives depended. 

We might find three paths out from these difficult patterns of people-pleasing. The first relies on reminding ourselves that our colleagues, partners and friends are almost certainly very different from the people around whom our anxieties evolved in childhood. Most humans can cope quite well with a bit of contradiction, a dose of unwelcome information or an occasional rejection, delivered with requisite politeness. The other is not going to explode or dissolve. We learned a very particular habit of relating to the world around a group of people who were not representative of humanity as a whole. 

Secondly, we need to acknowledge the inadvertently harmful side-effects of our behaviour. We may genuinely have good intentions, but we are endangering everyone by not speaking more frankly. At work, we aren’t doing anyone a service by withholding our doubts and reservations. And in love, there is no kindness in staying in a relationship simply because it seems the other might not survive without us. They will, but we will have wasted a lot of their time through our sentimentality. 

Finally, we can acquire the confidence to be artful about the difficult messages we have to impart. As a child we couldn’t nuance the messages we wanted to send out. We didn’t know how to craft our raw pain and needs into convincing explanations. Now, it is open to us to be firm in our own views – but extremely genial as well. We can say ‘no’ while indicating that we feel a lot of goodwill; we can say someone is wrong without implying that they are an idiot. We can leave someone, while ensuring they realise how much a relationship meant to us. We can – in other words – be pleasant without being people-pleasers.

CRITICISM:

Criticism is never easy. To learn that others judge us to be foolish, perverse, ugly or unpleasant is one of the most challenging aspects of any life. However, the impact of criticism is hugely variable – and depends ultimately on an unexpected detail: what sort of childhood we have had. The clue to whether criticism will be experienced as merely unpleasant or wholly catastrophic lies in what happened to us many decades ago in the hands of our earliest caregivers. For the more wounded among us criticism takes them straight back to the primordial injury. An attack now becomes entwined with the attacks of the past and grows enormous and unmanageable in its intensity. The boss or unfriendly colleague becomes the parent who let us down. Everything is pulled into question. Not only was the work subpar, but we are a wretch, an undeserved being, a piece of excrement, the worst person in the world, for that is how it felt, back then, in the fragile, defenceless infant mind. 

Knowing more about our tricky childhoods provides us with a vital line of defence against the effects of criticism. It means that we can be on our guard, when we are attacked, against raising the stakes unnecessarily. We can learn to separate out the verdict of today from the emotional verdict we are carrying around with us and always seeking to avoid with the use of current events. We can learn that, however sad the attacks we are facing, they are nothing next to the real tragedy and the effective cause of our sadness: that things went wrong back then. As a result, we can direct our attention to where it really belongs; away from today’s critics and towards the unconvinced parent of yesteryear. We can forgive ourselves for being, in this area, through no fault of our own, fatefully sensitive – and, in essence, mentally unwell.

LACK OF AUTHENTICITY:

in our earliest years, we were denied the opportunity to be fully ourselves. That is, we were not allowed to be wilful and difficult; we could not be as demanding, aggressive, intolerant and unrestrictedly selfish as we needed to be. Because our caregivers were preoccupied or fragile, we had to be preternaturally attuned to their demands, sensing that we had to comply in order to be loved and tolerated; we had to be false before we had the chance to feel properly alive. As a result, many years later, without quite understanding the process, we risk feeling unanchored, inwardly dead and somehow not entirely present. Perhaps our mother was depressed, or our father was often in a rage. The result is that we will have learned to comply far too early; we will have become obedient at the expense of our ability to feel authentically ourselves. In relationships, we may now be polite and geared to the needs of our partners, but not for that matter able properly to love. At work, we may be dutiful but uncreative and unoriginal.

In the hands of a good therapist, we are allowed to regress before the time when we started to be False, back to the moment when we so desperately needed to be True. In the therapist’s office, safely contained by their maturity and care, we can learn – once more – to be real; we can be intemperate, difficult, unconcerned with anyone but ourselves, selfish, unimpressive, aggressive and shocking. The therapist will take it – and thereby help us to experience a new sense of aliveness which should have been there from the start. The demand to be False, which never goes away, becomes more bearable because we are regularly being allowed, in the privacy of the therapist’s room, once a week or so, to be True.

OVER-ACHIEVMENT / IMPOSTER SYNDROME:

To place high expectations on someone who still struggles with their coat buttons can, paradoxically, leave a child feeling hollow and particularly incapable. Unable to sense any resources within itself to honour the hopes of those it loves and depends on, the child grows up with a latent sense of fraudulence – and a consistent fear that it will be unmasked. It winds up at once grandly expecting that others will recognise its sensational destiny – and entirely unsure as to why or how they might in fact do so. The Golden Child cannot shake off a sense that it is very special – and yet cannot identify within itself any real grounds why it should be so. Its underlying longing is not to revolutionise nations and be honoured across the ages; it is to be accepted and loved for who it is, in all its often unimpressive and faltering realities. It wishes, as we all do, to be seen and accepted for itself; to have its faults and frailties forgiven and acknowledged, rather than denied or glossed over. 

A life does not need to be golden in order to be valuable; that we can live in baser metal forms, in pewter or iron, and still be worthy of love and adequate self-esteem.

The cure for over-achievement involves pausing to address the psychological wounds that made hard work feel like the only defence against intolerable trauma. The recovering over-achiever should allow themselves to feel compassion for their earlier self, acknowledging how much they wish could have gone differently and grasping how their present so-called successful personality has been shaped as a response to grave wounds. The cure for over-achievement lies in mourning and analysis in an atmosphere of love. The over-achiever may eventually come to believe that they deserve a place on Earth whether they work or not. They are not there just to perform. The greater need is to connect and to understand.

SPLITTING: 

The baby splits off from the actual mother a second ‘bad’ version – whom it deems to be a separate, hateful individual, responsible for deliberately frustrating its wishes, and in the process, protecting the image of the good mother in its mind. There are, in the baby’s mind, two people at large: one entirely good, the other entirely bad. 

The tendency to ‘split’ those close to us is always there; for we don’t ever fully outgrow our childhood selves. In adult life, we may fall deeply in love and split off an ideal version of someone, in whom we see no imperfections and whom we adore without limit. Yet we may suddenly and violently turn against the partner (or a celebrity or a politician) whose good qualities once impressed us, the moment we discover the slightest thing that disturbs or frustrates us in them. We may conclude that they cannot really be good since they have made us suffer – and that the only logical verdict is that they are appalling. We may find it extremely hard to accept that the same person might be very nice and good in some ways and strikingly disappointing in others. The bad version can appear to destroy the good one, though (of course) in fact these are really just different and connected aspects of one complex person. 

It’s a huge psychological achievement to accept other humans in their bewildering mixture of good and bad, their capacity to assist us and to frustrate us, their kindness and meanness – and to see that, far more than we’re inclined to imagine in our furious or ecstatic moments, most people belong in that slightly sobering, slightly hopeful grey area that goes by the term ‘good enough’. We should be gently reminded that no one we can love will ever satisfy us completely – but that this is never a reason to hate them either. We should move away from the naivety and cruelty of splitting people into the camps of the awful and the wondrous, to the mature wisdom of integrating them into the large collective of the ‘good enough’.

BREAKDOWNS:

One of the great problems of human beings is that we are far too good at keeping going. We are experts at surrendering to the demands of the external world, living up to what is expected of us and getting on with the priorities, as others around us define them. We keep showing up and being an excellent boy or girl – and we can pull off this magical feat for up to decades at a time, without so much as an outward twitch or crack. Until, suddenly, one day, much to everyone’s surprise, including our own, we break.

A breakdown is not merely a random piece of madness or malfunction; it is a very real – albeit very inarticulate – bid for health. It is an attempt by one part of our minds to force the other part into a process of growth, self-understanding and self-development which it has hitherto refused to undertake. If we can put it paradoxically, it is an attempt to jumpstart a process of getting well, properly well, through a stage of falling very ill. The danger, therefore, if we merely medicalise a breakdown and attempt to shift it away at once is that we will miss the lesson embedded within our sickness.

The reason we break down is that we have not, over years, flexed very much. There were things we needed to hear inside our minds that we deftly put to one side, there were messages we needed to heed, bits of emotional learning and communicating we didn’t do – and now, after being patient for so long, far too long, the emotional self is attempting to make itself heard in the only way it now knows how.

Our emotional drive is made up of two strands: the first is a will towards ever greater and deeper connection; the second comprises a will towards ever greater and deeper self-expression. If the drive to emotional growth continues to be unattended, and perhaps even unknown to us, it can short circuit our whole lives in a bid to be heard. Fed up with waiting, it may simply throw us into a paralysing depression or lock us into a state of overwhelming anxiety.

THERAPY:

Therapy is a tool for correcting our self-ignorance in the most profound ways. It provides us with a space in which we can, in safety, say whatever comes into our heads. The therapist won’t be disgusted or surprised or bored. They have seen everything already. In their company, we can feel acceptable and our secrets can be sympathetically unpacked. As a result, crucial ideas and feelings bubble up from the unconscious and are healed through exposure, interpretation and contextualisation. We cry about incidents we didn’t even know, before the session started, we had been through or felt so strongly about. The ghosts of the past are seen in daylight and are laid to rest. 

Transference is a technical term that describes how, once therapy develops, a patient will start to behave towards the therapist in ways that echo aspects of their most important and most traumatic past relationships. A patient with a punitive parent might – for example – develop a strong feeling that the therapist must find them revolting, or boring. Or a patient who needed to keep a depressed parent cheerful when they were small might feel compelled to put up a jokey facade whenever dangerously sad topics come into view. 

We are, many of us, critically damaged by the legacy of past bad relationships. When we were defenceless and small, we did not have the luxury of experiencing people who were reliable, who listened to us, who set the right boundaries and helped us to feel legitimate and worthy. When things go well, the therapist is experienced as the first truly supportive and reliable person we have yet encountered. They become the good parent we so needed and never had. In their company, we can regress to stages of development that went wrong and relive them with a better ending. Now we can express need, we can be properly angry and entirely devastated and they will take it – thereby making good of years of pain. One good relationship becomes the model for relationships outside the therapy room. The therapist’s moderate, intelligent voice becomes part of our own inner dialogue. We are cured through continuous, repeated exposure to sanity and kindness. 

We need, to get fully better, to go back in time, perhaps every week or so for a few years, and deeply re-live what it was like to be us at five and nine and fifteen – and allow ourselves to weep and be terrified and furious in accordance with the reality of the situation. It is on the basis of this kind of hard-won emotional knowledge, not the more painless intellectual kind, that we may one day, with a fair wind, discover a measure of relief for some of the troubles within.

‘GOOD’ VS ‘BAD’ CHILDREN:

The so-called good child has inside them a whole range of emotions that they keep out of sight, not because they want to, but because they don’t feel they have the option to be tolerated as they really are. They feel they can’t let their parents see if they are angry or fed up or bored because it seems as if the parents have no inner resources to cope with their reality; they must repress their bodily, coarser, more volatile selves.

The so-called bad child knows that things are robust. They feel they can tell their mother she’s a useless idiot because they know in their hearts that she loves them and that they love her and that a bout of irritated rudeness won’t destroy that. They know their father won’t fall apart or take revenge for being mocked. The environment is warm and strong enough to absorb the child’s aggression, anger, dirtiness or disappointment.

The good child is heading for problems in adult life, typically to do with excessive compliance, rigidity, lack of creativity and an unbearably harsh conscience that might spur on suicidal thoughts. The naughty child, on the other hand, is on the way to healthy maturity, which comprises spontaneity, resilience, a tolerance of failure and a sense of self-acceptance.

What we call naughtiness is really an early exploration of authenticity and independence. As former naughty children, we can be more creative because we can try out ideas that don’t instantly meet with approval; we can make a mistake or a mess or look ridiculous and it won’t be a disaster. Things can be repaired or improved. We can hear criticisms of ourselves and bear to explore their truths and reject their malice. We should learn to see naughty children, a few chaotic scenes and occasional raised voices as belonging to health rather than delinquency – and conversely learn to fear small people who cause no trouble whatsoever.

GUILT:

We don’t merely suffer the consequences of our early wounds. We are also often left feeling that, despite our distress, we’re not entitled to compassion or help, because – after all – nothing too bad happened. A fairer way to look at the situation is to move beyond either excessive blame or bravery – and to consider that we have been involved, together with our parents, in a tragic situation. No one meant for problems to occur. No one was evil. Nevertheless, serious damage did unfold. Without anyone meaning for this to happen, parents radically misunderstand their children and vice versa.

The parent fails to keep in mind the complexity of the inner world of the child, and children are very poorly equipped to explain the nuances of their emotions. The child’s picture of the parent is equally skewed and partial. If a parent is grumpy, the child sees the sullen face, hears the curt answer or a raised voice and assumes that they themselves must be the cause. It’s impossible for the child to imagine that the parent might be beset by a feeling that they didn’t know where their career was going, that they were under too much pressure at work or that they would never have a happy love life.

CONCLUSION:

It can take an immensely long time to realise emotionally, rather than merely intellectually, that the scripts we are following were formed many years before in circumstances that no longer apply. Becoming an emotional adult means learning to acquire a much wider repertoire of behaviour towards other people. Someone in authority can be mistaken; we can annoy someone and survive; we can calmly state what has hurt us and be heard.

[techcrunchappcom]

New Post has been published on https://techcrunchapp.com/covid-19-news-live-updates-the-new-york-times-4/

Covid-19 News: Live Updates - The New York Times

California will allow indoor dining in San Diego and San Francisco as early as next week.

California took some of its first steps on Friday toward easing severe coronavirus-related restrictions imposed amid a summer surge in cases.

Gov. Gavin Newsom unveiled what he described as a simpler plan that would allow some counties, including San Diego and San Francisco, to reopen many businesses indoors as early as Monday under limited circumstances, such as gyms and houses of worship, as well as permit indoor dining. Bars will remain closed in most of the state.

“We’ve learned a lot over the last number of months,” Mr. Newsom said.

Most residents will see little change in California, which has tallied more than 695,000 cases and more than 12,000 deaths as the virus has steadily spread, complicating responses to the state’s other disasters, like the ongoing wildfires.

The new plan sorts the state into tiers, and the most restrictive applies to 38 counties, including Los Angeles and Orange, that are home to more than 80 percent of the state’s population. That tier keeps many kinds of businesses closed, unless they can operate outdoors, and forbids indoor dining. Hair salons, barber shops and malls can reopen indoors with modifications.

About a dozen more mostly smaller and more rural counties are also in less restrictive tiers that allow them to reopen bars and other indoor businesses at higher maximum capacities and with fewer restrictions.

The new plan is based on new daily case numbers per 100,000 residents, as well as positivity rates. In recent months, the state had shifted away from its initial reopening plan to a model in which restrictions were tied to a county’s status on a “monitoring list” of places where the virus was spreading rapidly. Critics called the list overly fragmented and confusing.

Now, counties won’t be able to move to a less restrictive tier unless they have met that tier’s criteria for at least two consecutive weeks.

They’ll be moved to a more restrictive tier if their numbers worsen for two weeks in a row.

“We’re going to be more stubborn this time,” Mr. Newsom said.

The state’s earlier moves to reopen businesses had been criticized for being too hasty and driven by the impatience of some businesses and some smaller, largely rural counties, rather than by evidence.

Two senior public relations experts advising the Food and Drug Administration have been fired from their positions after President Trump and the head of the F.D.A. exaggerated the proven benefits of a blood plasma treatment for Covid-19.

On Friday, the F.D.A. commissioner, Dr. Stephen M. Hahn, removed Emily Miller as the agency’s chief spokeswoman. The White House had installed her in the post just 11 days earlier. Ms. Miller had previously worked in communications for the re-election campaign of Senator Ted Cruz and as a journalist for the conservative cable network One America News. Ms. Miller could not be reached for comment.

The New York Times correspondents Sheila Kaplan and Katie Thomas report that Ms. Miller’s termination came one day after the F.D.A.’s parent agency, the Department of Health and Human Services, terminated the contract of another public relations consultant, Wayne L. Pines, who had advised Dr. Hahn to apologize for misleading comments about the benefits of blood plasma for Covid-19.

“I did recommend that he correct the record,” Mr. Pines said, adding that he wasn’t told why his contract was severed. “If a federal official doesn’t say something right, and chooses to clarify and say that the criticism is justified, that’s refreshing,” Mr. Pines said.

The Department of Health and Human Services denied that Mr. Pines’s contract was terminated because of his involvement in the plasma messaging.

It was “100 percent coincidence,” said Brian Harrison, the department’s chief of staff. “H.H.S. has been reviewing and canceling similar contracts, so I had it sent to our lawyers, who recommended termination. This was routine.”

The F.D.A. had been considering allowing the use of convalescent plasma as a treatment for Covid-19 on an emergency basis, but earlier this month, The Times reported that the decision had been delayed after a group of federal health officials, including Dr. Francis S. Collins and Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, intervened and expressed concern that the available evidence on the effectiveness of the treatment was too weak, prompting Mr. Trump to call the F.D.A. a deep state. Mr. Trump and Dr. Hahn made the inflated claim for the treatment’s value on Sunday, just ahead of the Republican National Convention.

Two organizations that represent thousands of local public health departments in the United States sent a letter to senior Trump administration officials on Friday asking that they “pull the revised guidance” on virus testing and restore recommendations that individuals who have been exposed to the virus be tested whether or not they have symptoms.

The letter — addressed to Dr. Robert R. Redfield, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and Adm. Brett P. Giroir, an assistant secretary of health at the Department of Health and Human Services — was sent by the leaders of the National Association of County and City Health Officials, and the Big Cities Health Coalition. The organizations’ leaders wrote that their members were “incredibly concerned” about the changes.

The C.D.C. quietly modified its coronavirus testing guidelines this week to exclude people who do not have symptoms of Covid-19 — even if they have been recently exposed to the virus.

Experts questioned the revision, pointing to the importance of identifying infections in the small window immediately before the onset of symptoms, when many individuals appear to be most contagious.

After a storm of criticism, Dr. Redfield tried to clarify the agency’s recommendation and said “testing may be considered for all close contacts of confirmed or probable Covid-19 patients.”

The letter sent on Friday said, “As public health professionals, we are troubled about the lack of evidence cited to inform this change. CDC’s own data suggest that perhaps as many as 40 percent of Covid-19 cases are attributable to asymptomatic transmission. Changing testing guidelines to suggest that close contacts to confirmed positives without symptoms do not need to be tested is inconsistent with the science and the data.”

The letter went on to say that while the new guidance allows local or state health officials to make exceptions, it “will make their ability to respond to the pandemic even harder,” allowing skeptical officials or members of the public to blame and question them. “This revision and its resulting impact is adding yet another obstacle for public health practitioners to effectively address the pandemic.”

A public health laboratory in Nevada has reported the first confirmed coronavirus reinfection in the United States, and the first in the world known to have brought on severe symptoms.

The first three confirmed reinfections in the world were reported this week, one in Hong Kong and two in Europe, all mild.

Reinfection does not surprise researchers, given the millions of cases around the world, but it is not yet clear if such cases — particularly severe ones — are anomalies or will prove common.

The patient is a 25-year-old man in Reno who apparently experienced a second bout of infection just 48 days after his first, according to health officials in Nevada.

Experts have said that even low levels of antibodies and T cells in response to infection should last for a few months and provide some protection against the virus, which appears to have been borne out in the other confirmed reinfections.

The patient in Nevada had a sore throat, cough, nausea and diarrhea starting on March 25. He tested positive on April 18, recovered by April 27, and tested negative twice. He began to feel unwell again on May 28, and three days later sought help for a similar set of symptoms.

He was hospitalized on June 5 for shortness of breath and needed oxygen; an X-ray showed the “ground-glass opacities” typical of Covid-19.

Researchers genetically sequenced the viruses from each bout, and found they were too different to be accounted for by an extended first illness. The findings have been submitted for consideration to the Lancet Infectious Diseases journal.

The researchers did not test the man for antibodies after the first illness, but found that he had them after the second.

Some experts said the severe symptoms could mean that the patient had not developed antibodies after the first infection, or that his immune response was overpowered by a massive dose of virus the second time. It is also possible that he suffered antibody-dependent enhancement, in which the immune response may worsen symptoms on a second encounter.

The findings highlight the need for widespread testing and viral sequencing, said Angela Rasmussen, a virologist at Columbia University in New York who was not involved in the work. “You really are going to need to look at a lot of these cases to try to start to narrow down which hypothesis is probably right,” she said.

Education roundup

States and college towns in the U.S. are now cracking down on student partying.

Across the United States, state and local governments are bearing down on student partying as thousands of cases have erupted with the return of students to college campuses.

With cases spiking in Iowa, particularly among young adults, Gov. Kim Reynolds announced Thursday that the state would shut down bars, breweries and nightclubs in six counties, including the two with the state’s largest concentrations of college students. In Story County, where Iowa State University is located, more than 1,000 of the 2,129 total cases have been reported since the start of August. Similarly, Johnson County, home to the University of Iowa, is now averaging more than 100 new cases per day, up from about 25 new cases per day in early August.

On Thursday, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo of New York outlined criteria that would require campuses to go remote for two weeks. Earlier in the week, campus and city officials in Tuscaloosa, Ala., announced that bars would be shut down for two weeks amid reports that more than 500 University of Alabama students had tested positive since the start of the semester. On Friday, the university reported an additional 481 cases — a daily average of 160 new cases over just the last three days.

And health officials in Butler County, Ohio, announced that they had quarantined all the student athletes who had returned to Miami University, many of whom had attended an off-campus party. The Newark, Del., city council passed an emergency ordinance capping attendance at house parties in an effort to control partying at the University of Delaware.

Here’s what’s happening in schools and universities across the U.S.:

The University of Notre Dame, which pivoted to virtual instruction earlier this month after a spike in infections, announced Friday it will resume face-to-face classes next week amid signs that the surge is receding. Over the past week, the county where the campus is located, St. Joseph, reported about 882 more cases, according to a New York Times database.

Texas Christian University reported more than 470 coronavirus cases in August, which school administrators attributed to parties that occurred last weekend. The university’s vice chancellor for student affairs wrote in a letter to students: “We literally cannot keep up with the pace of the spread we are experiencing this week. So, I ask you again today to live up to our expectations.”

With less than two weeks before the start of school in New Jersey, growing numbers of districts are pulling the plug on in-person instruction, citing teacher shortages, ventilation issues, and late-in-the-game guidance from the state on how to manage virus cases. The state — which had been one of the country’s worst hot spots, but now has a relatively low transmission rate — has left the decision to individual districts.

GLOBAL ROUNDUP

Cuba announces its first virus-related curfew as cases spike.

Cuba announced its first curfew since the start of the pandemic amid a spike in new cases. Starting Monday, freedom of movement in the capital, Havana, will be suspended between 7 p.m. and 5 a.m.

The island, which boasts the highest doctor-to-patient ratio in the world, seemed close to snuffing out Covid-19 when, for two rapturous days in mid-July, the Ministry of Health reported no new domestic cases. But the numbers have since jumped: The island has registered 241 cases in the past seven days, bringing the total to 3,866, according to a New York Times database.

The curfew is part of a package of new measures that restrict movement. Work in nonessential state jobs will be put on hold, inter-provincial tourism canceled, and supermarkets ordered to sell only to those with identification proving they live in the same municipality.

The shopping rule could worsen food shortages brought about by the pandemic and by hardened American sanctions. While essentials guaranteed to all Cubans — like rice, beans, sugar — have been stable throughout the pandemic, queues of hundreds of shoppers waiting under the searing sun are now a regular feature outside supermarkets. With so many empty shelves, Cubans trek from supermarket to supermarket to search out products like chicken and detergent.

Despite the rise in cases, Cuba has a lower infection rate than most countries in the hemisphere. Cubans are currently 57 times less likely to contract the virus than Brazilians, 13 times less likely than Mexicans, and 42 times less likely than people in the United States, according to data from the University of Oxford.

Children who are infected with the virus but show no symptoms may shed the virus for nearly as long as children who are visibly sick, researchers reported on Friday.

The findings, published in JAMA Pediatrics, suggest that the vast majority of infected children appear healthy but still may spread the virus to others. The study is hardly the final word: Research into asymptomatic children has been unfolding rapidly, some studies have been reconsidered, and it still is not clear to scientists how often they may transmit the virus and under what circumstances.

The new study is short on details, and does not indicate whether the virus the children shed is alive and capable of infecting others, or whether older children are more contagious than younger ones.

The researchers in South Korea followed 91 children under age 19 — with a median age of 11 — at 20 hospitals and two isolation facilities between Feb. 18 and March 31. They tested the children’s nose, throat and sputum every three days on average. (Anyone in South Korea who tests positive is sent to a hospital or isolation center.)

Twenty children, or 22 percent, remained symptom-free throughout. In the other children, the symptoms spanned a wide range, from lack of smell or taste to diarrhea, cough, runny nose and fever — “not specific enough for Covid-19 to prompt diagnostic testing or anticipate disease severity,” the researchers wrote. Only two children were sick enough to need oxygen.

Of the children with obvious signs of illness, only six had shown symptoms at the time of diagnosis; 18 developed symptoms later. The remaining 47 had unrecognized symptoms before being diagnosed — which is noteworthy given the tight surveillance in South Korea, the researchers said.

Asymptomatic children continued to test positive for 14 days after diagnosis on average, compared with 19 days in children with symptoms. But the researchers did not try to grow the virus to confirm that the tests were not just picking up remnants of dead virus.

Over all, the findings suggest that screening for symptoms is likely to miss the vast majority of infected children who can silently spread it to others. In their study, 93 percent of the children could have been missed were it not for “intensive contact tracing and aggressive diagnostic testing,” the researchers reported.

The virus complicates rescue and recovery efforts in areas pummeled by Hurricane Laura.

Southwestern Louisiana had experienced its most frightening surge in cases just last month, with the positivity rate of tests reaching 23 percent in mid-July. Weeks of testing and mask-wearing brought the rate down to near 10 percent in late August.

And then Laura showed up, making the immediate priority simply getting everyone to a safe place.

“It was rising water or Covid,” said Dr. Alex Billioux, assistant secretary for the Louisiana Department of Health. “And rising water kills faster.”

Buses taking evacuees out of the storm zone required passengers to wear masks, and were filled in most cases only to half-capacity. Most of the evacuees were then taken to hotel rooms in New Orleans and Baton Rouge rather than the large shelters that usually house people fleeing hurricanes.

All of Louisiana’s state-run community testing sites were shut down on Monday and are expected to reopen next week, and more testing is planned for evacuees staying in hotels.

Dr. Billioux said that when damaged neighborhoods start reopening, there are plans to set up testing sites at stations manned by the National Guard, where in storm recoveries past, returning residents would turn for food or supplies.

The Republican convention presented a distorted account of Trump’s record on the virus.

With no issue threatening Mr. Trump’s re-election like the virus, speaker after speaker at this week’s Republican National Convention painted a narrative of the administration’s virus response that was resplendent with distortions, exaggerations and outright falsehoods.

Addressing the convention on Wednesday night, Vice President Mike Pence proclaimed that “before the first case of the coronavirus spread in the United States, the president took unprecedented action and suspended all travel from China, the second largest economy in the world.”

Mr. Trump did place restrictions on travel from China on Jan. 31, but this porous “ban” ultimately allowed 40,000 people to travel from China to the United States from the end of January to April. It wasn’t until March that similar restrictions were placed on travel from Europe, and by then, a European strain of the virus was already widespread in New York City.

Mr. Trump falsely claimed again that the United States had “among the lowest case fatality rates of any major country anywhere in the world.” (It ranks in the top third around the world.)

He also declared: “We developed a wide array of effective treatments, including a powerful antibody treatment known as convalescent plasma,” which he claimed “will save thousands and thousands of lives.”

In fact, convalescent plasma has been used by doctors for decades, and with virus patients since the early days of the outbreak. Its effectiveness, however, is still in question and has most likely been exaggerated by the administration, and its availability is expected to be limited.

As for a vaccine, it is impossible to predict when one will become available with certainty, given a process that includes securing F.D.A. approval, ramping up manufacturing and setting up a distribution system.

Nevertheless, Mr. Trump said there would be “a vaccine before the end of the year or maybe even sooner.”

But thousands of other cases emerged in other corners of American life, often with little fanfare. Thirty-five cases at the Belleville Boot Company in Arkansas. Twelve at First Baptist Church in Wheeling, W.Va. Ninety-nine at Saputo Cheese in South Gate, Calif.

The clusters illustrate how the virus has crept into much of life, with a randomness that seems the only rule.

Elsewhere in the U.S.:

Four people who attended the Republican National Convention in Charlotte, N.C. — two attendees, and two people who worked on the event — have tested positive for the coronavirus, Mecklenburg County officials announced. Republican officials said they had “diligent safety protocols in place” in Charlotte.

Even after a warning from the U.S. Postal Service that it may not be able to meet deadlines for delivering last-minute mail-in ballots, more than 20 states still have not changed their policies, potentially disenfranchising thousands of voters whose ballots could arrive too late to be counted in the November election amid the pandemic, an expert told Congress on Friday.

South Dakota added more than 320 new cases and North Dakota added more than 300 additional cases, the second-worst day of the pandemic for each state. Both states set records for new cases on Thursday.

Reporting was contributed by Ed Augustin, Luke Broadwater, Alexander Burns, Jill Cowan, Sheri Fink, Jeffrey Gettleman, Maggie Haberman, Rebecca Halleck, Shawn Hubler, Mike Ives, Jennifer Jett, Sheila Kaplan, Corey Kilgannon, Sharon LaFraniere, Ernesto Londoño, Claire Moses, Apoorva Mandavilli, Linda Qiu, Motoko Rich, Campbell Robertson, Anna Schaverien, Christopher F. Schuetze, Mitch Smith, Sheryl Gay Stolberg, Katie Thomas, Tracey Tully, Marina Varenikova, Lauren Wolfe and Sameer Yasir.