#new year's with the single day

[booksandwords]

New Year's with the Single Dad by Whitley Cox

Series: The Single Dads of Seattle, #6 Read time: 1 Day Rating: 3.5/5 Stars

The Quote: Don’t shy away from love simply because your heart has been broken. The heart mends. The heart is resilient. You are worthy of love. You are worthy of being someone’s everything again. Don’t waste the best years of your life angry at what was, and instead spend those years searching and hoping for what could be. — Zara Olsen

I quite liked this novella. Zara Olsen and Emmett Strong have quite possibly the most delightful meet cute I've read in a while. Twin coffee orders, as in identical and spoken in an almost eerie synchroisity. That is just the first of three unlikely conincidences that ahow their alignment. Their similarly aged children with the nicknames Nono and Jojo. Those super cute and adorably manipulative childrens comfort giraffes Zelda and Ziggy. Even their own childhood comfort toys still so present in their lives (Arabella Blossom von Bearson and Dr Arnold Strong respectivly) tied to their grandparents in diffent ways. The novella plays with the fate. The whole piece takes place over around 24 hours (excluding epilogue). In the first twelve they meet four times which includes them seeing each other in their professional settings as a florist and a doctor. This is a seasonal work that uses NYE as a time of growth and change. The plot can be kinda predictable but that really doesn't bother me if a work is as season focused as this.

I'm just going to add a quute dump here...

• "Until Valentine’s season hit them like that fat winged-baby’s arrow, that is. Then it’d be all red and pink hearts and more glitter—AKA the herpes of craft supplies." — (Emmett) Omg yes. My besties ex hated like an almost phobia level hate of glitter. It really does get everywhere. • “This might hurt a little. But I’m going to numb the area before I apply the sutures.” Zara swallowed and nodded. “Okay. I’ve been through childbirth. A little sting is nothing compared to that.” — (Zara) This is one the reasons I like Zara she has no filter and I adore it. • "So when I turned thirty-six, I decided I didn’t want to wait any longer to be a mom. Michael and I had Nolan a year later. We lived together, raised him together. Until he met Shane and they got married. Then they moved a few blocks away, and now we share custody of our son and the three of us are raising Nolan.” — (Zara) This is the ultimate love is love to me. Nolan knows • “He’s not dead—as much as I sometimes wish he was. Bastard has two kids with Tobi—with an I—because she’ll tell you. ‘I’m Tobi—with an I,’” Zara said in a baby-doll voice at the same time she tilted her head to the side and cocked her hip. “‘I’m Tobi, with and I and I have the IQ of a lemon wedge.’” — (Zara) Zara is jaded and omg this line makes me laugh so hard. • “Those girls started to be mean to me. Then they took Zelda from me and wouldn’t give her back. Then they started playing tug of war with her and pulled her legs off.” — (Josephine) As someone whose comfort toy was decapitated I can assure you this is most distressing. I can laugh about it now but it can still be a bit of a soft spot if the person who did it mentions it at the wrong time (and I'm 33). • “I’d rather someone tell me I’m doing a great job with my son than say I have a nice ass any day. Looks fade, but our children are our legacy. Our children are a reflection of us … our successes and our failures.” — (Zara) Do know how much this line made me smile. It's nso good to have a woman acknowledge that there is more to her than her looks. Even better that Emmett complimented her on how she raised Nolan first. • "However, I don’t know if I want to wreck my relationship with my florist. Where would I go if the relationship went south? Pike Place Posies? Pffst, no. Zara knows exactly what my mom likes. The relationship between a man and his florist is sacred. I don’t know if I could jeopardize that by sleeping with her.” — (Mason Whitfield) WTF Mason. But okay fair I guess. • grabbing Emmett around the back of the head and, before Emmett could pull away, planting a big, smacking, closed-mouth smooch onto his lips. — This is Mason and Emmett. (view spoiler). The moment just made me laugh and made think that apparently bro don't let bros kiss bimbos.

I got this free as part of a massive kindle giveaway at New Years. So I come to this novella knowing nothing of the wider series, though I do know they can all be read as stand-alone. In this novella, you do see the characters from many of the other books in The Single Dads of Seattle series. The NYE party is hosted by Hired by the Single Dad's Mark and Tori. Mitch and Paige from Saved by the Single Dad are referenced but not present. Mason's novella is Valentine's with the Single Dad, he makes a fantastic appearance including a reference to the shop that is important to that novella Wicked Sister Chocolates. Liam and his relationship with Richelle is the focus of Falling for the Single Dad are somewhat important to this story. Liam is interesting. He's loaded, started the support group and is more than a little jaded. It's a helluva combination. A couple of these are appealing to me. The whole series is a bit unusual with its focus on single fathers over single mothers and some beautiful seasonal themes.

[ionomycin]

2023 favorites

[buglaur]

fireworks show 🎆

material preview version is very cute also :)

i struggled with the lighting on this one so badly, but it turned out alright in the end.

i actually started it last year for new years 2023 but never got around to finishing it, hence no progress pictures this time sadly lol. i do have a very low-res, first draft, test gif though

stills 🥳

[squeakadeeks]

"In this world, I'm known as...the Winter King" 🌨❄️🌬

This cosplay was so so close to never seeing the light of day, as this was the aforementioned project I rage quit to procrastinate with Nekomancer on haha. I really adored the fionna and cake special (and adventure time in general) and wanted to cosplay from it for eons...although I will admit this project was intended to be "generic blue and silver winter regal outfit for a variety of characters" and it was a toss up on whether or not the first run was going to go to the Winter King/Simon or Jack Frost...but I couldn't find my jack frost wig so here we are!

This was my first time working a lot with velvet and low key....I loved it and would love to use it more.

[glitchedcosmos]

it’s his year 🔥

[deep-space-netwerk]

So I wanna tell y'all about something very near and dear to my heart.

This is the Psyche asteroid, or, at least an artist's representation - we don't know what it actually looks like yet, but this is a fair enough guess. It's a roughly 200 mile wide asteroid in the asteroid belt, and it's made almost entirely out of metal. Its composition makes it unique; it’s the only large metallic body we know of in the entire solar system.

We think it might be the core of what used to be a planet.

When solar systems form, they start out as disks made of interstellar gas and dust, called protoplanetary disks. Here's a picture of HL Tauri, one of the best images of a protoplanetary disk we have.

That dust globs together into larger and larger pieces, and eventually forms hundreds of "planetesimals", which are rocky bodies about a kilometer across. Planetesimals had very erratic orbits compared to the modern planets - the dust of the protoplanetary disk caused friction and drag, which threw them off course.

They frequently collided with each other, and either broke apart or stuck together and grew even larger. Arrokoth is actually a leftover planetesimal, a time capsule from the early solar system, and we were able to visit it wayyy out in the Kuiper belt with the New Horizons probe!

Once planetesimals get to be about the size of the moon, we call them "protoplanets". Protoplanets were fundamentally different from their planetesimal siblings - we believe they were differentiated. When an object in space gets big enough, a combination of radioactive decay, impacts, and gravitational pressure causes them to heat up and melt. Denser materials like iron and nickel sink towards their centers, while the lighter materials rise to the surface. The differentiation process is why Earth's core is made of iron, while the surface is primarily rock.

While protoplanet orbits were much more stable than those of planetesimals, they still eventually collided with each other until everything settled into the planets we see today (though gas giants had a few extra steps - that's a different post!).

We think the Psyche asteroid was a protoplanet, well on its way to becoming a bona fide planet, when an impact struck it hard enough to strip away its rocky layers, leaving behind the dense, metallic core - like in this illustration.

More and more, we think  the properties of a planet's core are fundamental to its long-term evolution. Venus, Earth, and Mars are all roughly the same size and roughly the same distance from the sun, cosmically speaking, yet they're so different! Venus has hell death clouds, Earth is home, and Mars is dry and dead - why?

The Psyche asteroid gives us the unique opportunity to actually observe a planetary core directly - it's much harder to dig to the center of a planet than it is to go to space, so that's exactly what we're going to do!

On Thursday October 12th at 10:16am Eastern, the Psyche spacecraft will launch and begin its journey to the asteroid belt! You can watch at https://www.nasa.gov/nasatv/!

I've been a part of this mission for over four years now, and I can't speak highly enough of the team that made it happen through all of the ups and downs. Good luck out there, buddy. We're all rooting for you :')

[azuree1733]

Zag😛

[cerubean]

it's been raining nonstop in brindleton bay...

[angelmush]

the other day i walked around the golden lake w my love and the sun was setting hot and orange and we watched a brown duck preening through the weeds, ducking her head under the dark water. the cool lake swallowed up my tired feet to the ankles and we counted the dog walkers with their curly panting doodles and their handsome german shepherds and their whip smart little terriers and we admired the careful construction of a sand castle whose moat held determinedly against the lapping of the waves. we could feel in our chests the persistent thunderous thumping of celebratory music at the finish line of the lakeside 5k, welcoming each gasping runner across its bounds. and i felt like crying. i felt like curling into myself and crying. we walked through the swamp of the bird sanctuary afterwards and listened to the woods sing and croak and groan and then we went and got ube and yuzu gelato and devoured it suntired and sweating on the couch in our living room. and i was so overcome w a deep and true unshakeable happiness and a sort of confused grief that i wanted to sob and sob and sob.

[akanbleh]

AKANBLEH!!! GIVE ME MORE SUMMER HE-MAN AND MY LIFE, IS YOURS (I have been waiting all summer, Need more He-Man/Prince Adam)

Your wish is my command :)

[explodingstarlight]

the emo trinity is alive, well, and prospering in 2023

[ninja-knox-ur-sox-off]

The way I have not written a single word for like a month it feels like I have been busier in the last two weeks than I have been in the last four years of my life and will continue to be busy for the next two weeks I got one day between a four day family trip and a sib visit gotta sew a monkey during the trip and if monkie kid drops in that time I will simply combust

[sapphire-weapon]

no fucking shit

in other breaking news: the earth is rotating around the sun

[lightscamerabitchsmileee]

Vote for your fave, reblog and share your thoughts in the tags ❤️❤️

Check out my masterpost for the other era singles polls the Debut poll is closed but the other era singles (Fearless-1989) polls are still open ☺️☺️

Thank you everyone and have fun ☺️☺️

[indianajcnes]

Harold Ramis behind the scenes of GHOSTBUSTERS (1984)

[softpine]

Did you hear about the pregnant bed bug?

I KNOW THIS ONE I KNOW THIS ONE

she's having a baby in the spring :D