#she WOKE ME UP to talk about her plans to “declutter” my room and then kicked me out of bed to make me put sheets on my bare mattress

[my-t4t-romance]

lmao my mom threatened to stop taking me out to theater classes or any other events (I don’t have my driver’s license and there is NOTHING within walking distance so I’d be stuck at home) for not being Clean/Organized by her standards and when I said “do you really think that’d help anything” she just walked out

[i-writing-is-hard-i]

Blood Traitor pt10

George Weasley x Malfoy

Summary:  You are Draco’s older sister.  A pureblood Witch, without the prejudice and anti-muggle beliefs of your family. Who just so happened to fall in love with none other than a blood traitor, just to complicate matters more Voldemort has returned.  What will you do?

okay, I suck at writing descriptions,

[Disclaimer] Mentions of sex, violence, and hints of torture, I may have screwed up the timeline somewhere along the way, and no one dies, because, thats sad

[Begining]  - [Previous] - [Next]

part 10

A couple of days had passed, school was ending tomorrow.  You had hoped by now George would have found out and come to visit you, but there was no word, then again, was it really time to share your relationship?.  Sirius had you help clear out the house, which was a great distraction, but you could feel his eyes on you all the time,  you assumed he was still trying to determine whether or not to trust you.  

It was a few days after that when the Weasley’s arrived.  You tried your best to remain out of sight of them, working on your own when you could.  You were currently on the top floor working in one of the bedrooms when the door flew open.  You immediately jumped to your feet, holding your chest, turning to see George standing there, looking confused, worried, but happy all at the same time.  He quickly closed the door behind him, rushing over and wrapping his arms around you, pulling you into a tight embrace.

“So much for moving in with me” he joked.

“Yeah, admittedly this wasn’t part of the plan” you explained, it was the first time you didn’t feel so bad.  

“You okay?” George pulled away meeting your eyes.

“Well, it was going to happen sooner or later, I haven’t said anything about us” you deliberately changed the subject.  

“I’ll tell mum and dad later on when they have finished with the meeting,” George told you, you could tell he was a bit apprehensive about it.  Suddenly there was a knock on the door, followed by Fred walking in,

“You two decent” he joked.

“No, Sod off” George replied, sounding a little annoyed.

Fred ignored his brother, coming in any way.  George let out a sigh, but you didn’t mind really.  The three of you begun clearing room.  You listened as George and Fred joked and messed around, it was nice, normal even.   When those who attended the meeting left, dinner was served.  You didn’t go down to it though, remaining in the bedroom to clean.  George brought up your dinner for you

“You can join us you know,” he said.

“Thanks but I am good here” you smiled back, George pressed a kiss to your head

“Then I will join you” he suggested

“No, it’s fine, go, I will just be working here” you reassured.  With a bit of reluctance, George left you to it.  As promised, after everyone had left to go to their rooms to get to work, George called his parents to the kitchen, while you headed to your room, taking a break.   You knew what was happening, and the thoughts stopped you from relaxing.  What if they disapprove? what if George leaves you because of it? would they make him choose? your parents would have.  These and more crossed your mind.  

Half an hour later George finally came up, rubbing the back of his neck.  He flopped down beside you, hiding his expression well.

“And?” you asked bracing yourself for the worst.

“You know, that went better than I had expected” he spoke, gauging your expression.

“You can tell me the truth, what did they say” you returned.

“Well, they stared at me for like 10 minutes, then they thought I was joking, they also asked if I knew that you were a Malfoy, of course, I said no, then they asked me what your attentions were” George stopped, once again gauging your expression

“I told me that you were only using me for my body and quick wit”  he was smiling.  

“Wait, you really said that?” you had thought he was joking, but from his expression, you knew he wasn’t

“Yup, don’t worry, I cleared it up, told them that we are very happy together and that I love you” he smiled.  You returned it with your own smile

“Then what did they say?”,

George took a deep breath.

“They are a little weary, but they said that it was okay” he finally said.

“Really?” you were skeptical.

“Yeah, it’s okay” George reassured.

You sat back leaning against the headboard, laying down slightly, not really feeling that much better about it.  George was staring at you, before laying down on your stomach, holding you tightly.  In turn, you ran your fingers through his hair, soon enough he was sleeping, you, however, were on edge.  Just because his parents said they were okay with you two, doesn’t mean they really were, would they be okay with George even being in this room with you.  You were going to wake him, but he suddenly woke up himself.

“Damn, I fell asleep” he announced, making you smile

“Perhaps you should go to bed, you do look tired”

After a goodnight kiss, he left.  You got up and got ready for bed yourself, you had just climbed into the covers, getting comfortable when the door opened, it was George, he didn’t speak as he climbed into bed beside you.

“Your parents” you whispered. You did want him to stay, but you didn’t want to cause any problems

“Don’t worry, we are both adults, and besides dad saw me coming in, he didn’t say anything”

You couldn’t really tell if he was lying or not, but you didn’t pretest instead, getting comfortable in his arms.  You had managed to fall asleep quicker than you had in a long time.

It was still dark when you woke suddenly.  George was still holding you tightly, but you needed to get up, wanting a drink.  It took a while and a few groans of complaint from George, but you were on your way downstairs as quietly as you could.  You had just poured yourself a glass of water when you heard footsteps behind you.  You didn’t expect to see Mrs. Weasley standing there, looking as surprised as you.  She did smile at you, but there was something behind it.  You smiled back, not really knowing what to say. Then made your way past her

“I really do love him, George I mean,” you said, before leaving, you turned round to see Mrs. Weasley's expression change, she could see the sincerity in your eyes.  

“And he really loves you, dear” the smile she was wearing now was warmer.

“Goodnight Mrs. Weasley”

“Goodnight, Dear”

You felt a bit better now, it was a step in the right direction at least.  You made your way back up to bed, George had managed to spread out, taking up most of the bed, ‘How am I supposed to get into bed?” you though watching him for a moment, he looked peaceful.  Eventually you simple squeezed up to him, thankfully George was held on your tightly enough that you shouldn’t have a problem.  He nuzzled into your neck, letting out a happy hum.

The next morning you woke to the light beaming through your open curtains, having forgotten to close them, it was still pretty early, you know most people would still be sleeping.  You decided to get up and make breakfast, wanting to do something for everyone.  Before leaving the room, you pulled over the curtains for George.

You had just placed the food in the right pans,, when Mrs. Weasley walked in, with her own want out, ready to make breakfast herself.

“Goodmorning, Dear” She smiled at you.

“Oh, good Morning Mrs. Weasley” you returned, still feeling a little anxious.

“Here, let me help dear” Mrs. Weasley walked up to you, but you had already made a good head start,.

“Thank you, Mrs Weasley”

Mrs. Weasley got to work on the bacon and eggs, while you continued with the tea and toast.

“Mrs. Weasley” you piped up.

“Yes?” Mrs. Weasley turned to you.

“I was, well I was wondering do you really knit those jumpers,” you asked.  You had noticed the Weasley’s wearing jumpers with their initials on, they always looked comfortable, even if George did complain about it, he didn’t realise how lucky he was that his mum would spend so much time on something like that,

“Yes I do” Mrs. Weasley sound cautious

“It must take ages” your tone was light, it made Mrs. Weasley relax, having initially thought you were making a dig.

“Well, you do it enough, it becomes second nature, your mother never make you anything”  Mrs. Weasley had stopped what she was doing to turn to you.

You let out a snort, “Why to make something when you can just buy it, she wouldn’t “waste” her time with it” you replied sarcastically.   

“Well, I quite like making them” Mrs. Weasley’s eyes remained on you for a moment.

“It means more when efforts been put into it” you smiled.

The two of you continued to make the breakfast, talking about anything that came to mind.  Neither of you had heard the footsteps coming down the stairs.  George had noticed the empty bed and decided to come in search for you.  When he heard you and his mum getting along, it made him unbelievably happy.

“Please dear, call me Molly” Molly smiled so warmly at you.  When George head this, he honestly thought he would cry and he might off if his dad hadn’t interrupted him.  Not long after Sirius Black came down the stairs too.

The three entered the kitchen, just in time for the breakfast to be placed on the table, it looked lovely.  You had intended on taking a plate back to your room, but Molly insisted on you staying.  Sirius looked indifferent in the matter, but Arthur seemed unfazed.  You took a seat beside George who was already filling up his plate, while Molly headed upstairs to wake the others.  One by one they made their way into the kitchen, taking a seat and tucking into the food, unfazed by your presence.

“This is a great breakfast mum” Fred cheered, through a mouthful of toast and bacon.

“I didn’t do it on my own, Y/N helped greatly” Molly explained you felt eyes on you, but you kept your own eyes on the food.  George nudged your knee with his own under the table, after everyone turned to their individual conversations, Fred and George were both talking to you, mostly about the shop, that was taking off already.  After breakfast, Molly insisted that you go on up and help the others with the sorting and decluttering of the rooms.

You were in a room with Sirius and the twins, emptying a cupboard of antiques.  You had nearly dropped one of them, but caught it in time to prevent it from breaking.  Sirius told you not to worry about it, it was going in the bin anyway.  During your rummaging, you came across a picture of your mother when she was younger, besides her stood her sisters, Bellatrix and who you guessed as Andromeda.  You hadn’t seen many photos of them as children, mostly because there weren’t any pictures of Andromeda.  They really did look like members of the Black family, with their pristine clothing, the perfect hair, right down to the way they stood, an ‘I’m better than you’ stance.   You could see the resemblance between you and your mother, except your hair, you very much had your father's hair.  You shook your head at the thought, placing the photo to the side.

“Didn’t think I would ever see a photo of Andromeda here” Sirius lifted the old frame, examining it with a hint of a glare and pride in his eyes.

“I have never seen her before, Tonks looks like her though” you explained,

“Wouldn’t think so, marrying a muggleborn is on par with killing your father” Sirius snorted.  By now the twins had stopped working.  You were looking at Sirius, whose eyes were still on the photo.

“Heaven forbid you to marry someone, you aren’t related to” you mumbled, unhappily.  This seemed to make Sirius laugh out loud.  He placed the photo down,

“You couldn’t be more right” he nodded in agreement, turning his attention back to his work.

It was the first time he had spoken to you since you moved in except for a thank you.  It was also the first time he looked at you with something other than distrust in his eyes.

[madamspeaker]

Hillary Clinton on where it all went wrong | The Sunday Times Magazine

The woman who lost to Donald Trump reflects on the failure of her presidential campaign and coping with crushing disappointment. Interview by Christina Lamb

First comes a man to switch the chairs. Then a young press officer to arrange their position. Two men in grey suits with tell-tale earpieces, the Secret Service, hover at the doorway. Stylists flit in, pleased the weather is overcast as it is “kind for photos”. It feels like the entourage of an ageing movie star or the forward party of an absolute monarch. “She’s just coming,” I am repeatedly told, followed by: “She’s held up.” I keep getting my notebook and tape recorder ready, to no avail. And then, when Hillary Clinton finally walks in, I am helping the photographer prepare his shot, crouching down pretending to be her and making angry and devastated faces; she did, after all, lose the election to a womaniser whose candidacy she considered a joke. Fortunately, she appears not to notice and immediately moves the chairs closer. “I feel like we’ve met,” she says, warmly. This is odd, as she is the one who is familiar, if a bit softer, blonder and bluer-eyed in person. At 69, she has been on the world stage my entire adult life. First lady, wronged wife, senator, secretary of state, first woman to run for president for a main party. Even her pantsuits are familiar; today she wears black trousers and a blue top as shiny as a Quality Street wrapper.

“I’ll bet you know more about my private life than you do about some of your closest friends,” she says in her new book. “You’ve read my emails, for heaven’s sake. What more do you need? What could I do to be ‘more real?’ Dance on a table? Swear a blue streak? Break down sobbing?”

That, of course, is exactly what I want as I wait in the hotel in Chappaqua, the small, leafy town north of New York that she and Bill call home. At the end of a nearby cul-de-sac stands their large white clapboard house, where she has been doing yoga (favourite position: Warrior II), praying and downing chardonnay to drown her sorrows. Today, it’s strictly iced tea (it’s not even midday) and she is so much nicer than that brittle woman on TV that it feels mean to ask her to relive her pain. Instead of cursing or sobbing, she is keen to discuss why child refugees are going missing in Europe, and the implications of last month’s Kurdish referendum.

We establish that we met in the bar of a hotel on a trip to South Korea in 2010 that included a visit to the demilitarised zone, where she was literally eyeball to eyeball with a soldier from the communist North standing outside the window. I was surprised then by how funny she was over gin and tonics.

Korea, of course, is very much in the news. The day before, the president had prompted gasps in his first speech to the annual UN general assembly in New York by threatening to “totally destroy North Korea” and taunting its leader, Kim Jong-un, as “Rocket Man”.

You must feel you should have been the one standing there, I say. Her smile is part-grimace. “Put aside what I would have said, how I would have conducted myself, I just found it hard to believe he was standing there as president and saying what he was saying,” she says. “It was a distressing speech — dark, dangerous, selfish, incoherent — and left as much room for misinterpretation and confusion as I ever heard in a speech by a president of the United States.”

She was particularly worried about Trump’s suggestion he would undo Barack Obama’s hard-won nuclear deal with Iran, which Trump derided as “an embarrassment to the United States”.

“They want to blow up the Iran nuclear deal just because we did it,” she says. “I think the Iran nuclear agreement was a stellar example of multinational co-operation, but more than that, it certainly put a lid on its nuclear programme. So when I hear President Trump talk in such a bellicose manner, threatening not just North Korea but Iran, it raises the potential you will have two extremely dangerous nuclear challenges in two regions of the world with unforeseen consequences, which will be horrible for people in those regions.”

Trump’s repeated use of the word “sovereignty” (21 times) in the speech and insistence that he would “always put America first” seemed intent on undoing all the effort she put in as secretary of state in the Obama administration to — as she sees it — restore the international reputation of the US after the damage caused by George W Bush’s War on Terror and the invasion of Iraq. “It’s not about me,” Clinton insists. “It’s about the message that sends to the world and what his priorities are, what he values and doesn’t.”

Of course, it is also about her. Rather than accept defeat and go quietly into the night, as many believed she should, she has written a 494-page angst-ridden book, titled What Happened. Though she laughs a lot in our interview, her bitterness resonates in every mention of the T-word — and there are many. A close female friend of hers tells me that “Hillary is utterly devastated”. “I have developed the hide of a rhinoceros,” Clinton insists to me, but I can’t imagine what it is like actually Being Hillary.

In the 1990s, she had to endure the whole world knowing about her president husband’s affair with the intern. Who can forget Monica Lewinsky’s semen-stained Gap dress? Then, when she contested the Democratic nomination in 2008, she had to watch the job go to the cool younger guy with far less experience. After that, she had to swallow her pride to work for him, which she did with great aplomb. Then, to run again and lose to a reality-TV host who boasted of sexual abuse, and tweets insults to everyone from the mayor of London to the Pope.

Clinton clearly can’t get her head round the fact that her fellow Americans voted for Trump rather than her own supremely qualified self. “I thought I’d be a damn good president,” she says. “I did not think I was going to lose.”

She admits she had prepared for her first 100 days with binders full of policies, and had written her victory speech, which she planned to give dressed in white, the colour of the suffragettes. Indeed, so confident was she that, as the results started coming in on election night, she went for a nap in her suite at New York’s Peninsula hotel. She woke before midnight to find husband Bill and her team ordering in whisky and ice cream for the shock, as the key states of Florida, North Carolina, Ohio and Iowa all fell to Trump. By 1.35am it was all over. The victory party was cancelled, the white suit packed away, and the specially built platform in the shape of the United States under a symbolic glass ceiling a terrible embarrassment.

Instead, she and Bill lay in bed staring at the ceiling. Does she still wake up every morning, wondering how it happened? “Yeah,” she replies. “I’m not living it every minute of every day, but every day I live it.”

Does she sometimes want to kick something? She laughs. “A friend gave me a little sign that says, ‘I do yoga, I meditate and I still want to kick somebody.’ I know that feeling.” It wasn’t just losing, she adds, but to whom. “It’s deeply troubling, because if I had lost to what I’d call a ‘normal Republican’, I would have disagreed with them — I had deep disagreements with George W Bush, but came to understand his worldview. I knew his father, I knew Reagan, I would have a lot of political differences, but I wouldn’t have felt the same sense of real loss for our country, that we elected someone who knows so little, cares even less and is just seeking the applause of the masses. I feel a terrible sense of responsibility for not having figured out how to defeat this person. There must have been a way and I didn’t find it.”

Instead, in the early hours of November 9, she made a concession telephone call that she describes as “one of the strangest moments of my life — weirdly ordinary, like calling a neighbour to say you can’t make his barbecue”.

After addressing shocked and tearful supporters the next day, she and Bill drove home in silence. Desperate for distraction, she decluttered all her wardrobes, arranged photographs in albums and remodelled the adjoining house they bought last year. In between, she went for walks with Bill and their dogs, read all the Elena Ferrante novels and went to weepy Broadway musicals such as Les Misérables.

But it was impossible to escape. Even the wallpaper in their bedroom, yellow with pastel flowers, was a copy of that in their old bedroom in the White House.

Then there was the inauguration that she and Bill were expected to attend as former president and first lady. Knowing the eyes of the world were on her, she steeled herself to “breathe out, scream later”, and tried to imagine she was in Bali.

Over and over, she asked herself “Why?”. Astonishingly it came down to just 77,744 votes out of 136m cast. “If just 40,000 people across Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania had changed their minds, I would have won,” she wrote.

“I thought, ‘I have to understand what happened,’ ” she tells me. “That’s why I wrote the book.”

Yet the writing process was so painful, she admits, that “at times I had to go and lie down”.

Shouldn’t she just accept defeat and shut up? She gives the very idea short shrift. “I am perfectly willing to take responsibility for all the shortcomings I can identify about myself and my campaign,” she says. “But that wasn’t the whole story. I’ve been in campaigns for decades, nobody runs a perfect campaign. People make gaffes, missteps ... This was of a different order in terms of forces at work and I think that’s one of the biggest threats to democracy.”

The “forces” blamed in the book include misogyny whipped up by Trump, the American electoral college system (which meant she got 3m more votes than Trump, yet still lost), the spreading of fake news through social media as well as other interference by the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, that she describes as “more serious than Watergate”. This includes Putin’s alleged involvement in the dumping of her emails by Julian Assange, the WikiLeaks founder.

Most of all, she blames the FBI director James Comey for firing off a letter to Congress just before the election — in which he revealed that the bureau had uncovered emails “pertinent” to a previously closed investigation into Clinton’s use of a private email address for classified information during her time as secretary of state. “What happened was almost a perfect storm,” she says. “I think I would have won without the Comey letter. I think the combination of the letter 11 days before the election, and what the Russians did weaponising WikiLeaks, raised enough doubts right at the end among a couple of tens of thousands of people in three states to vote differently.”

I point out that the former vice-president Joe Biden criticised her campaign for its lack of economic message, while Tony Blair said the anger that buoyed Trump “is not unjustified. You can’t just sit there and essentially blame the people.” They are not the only ones who accuse her of being elitist and out of touch.

“I knew that [anger] was out there,” she replies. “But I believed — and the popular vote proved it — more Americans agreed with the direction we were heading than not, and I believed Trump was temperamentally unprepared and unqualified to be president.

“I think there was lots of justified anger and distress over the financial collapse of 2007-2009,” she adds. “People’s savings were wiped out, they lost jobs and homes. But Barack Obama stabilised the markets and navigated us through it to the point that now incomes are beginning to rise and jobs are being created again.I don’t think Trump’s principal appeal is based on economic insecurity. It was a combination of playing on the fears of people who are worried about losing out in the future by fuelling sexism, racism and anti-immigrant feelings.

“The whole campaign he ran, from the very first day, was aimed at scapegoating. So if you are not in the place where you think you should be in society, that’s because someone else has taken it.”

In his campaign, Trump talked about how a victory for him would be “Brexit plus plus plus”. Did the British vote, less than five months earlier, not make her think that a similar populist earthquake was possible in the US? “Brexit should have been a bigger alarm than it was,” she admits. “It was some of the same people working for Trump, advocating for him. They thought, ‘Hey, we’ve got this figured out, just tell a really horrible lie over and over again, keep people off balance and make them think that this will, if not make their lives better, make them feel better.’ They voted against modern Britain and the EU, believing that somehow this would be good for their small village. It made no sense. The same thing played out in my race, but I didn’t think we were so vulnerable. But it turned out we were wrong — in part because the Russians played a much bigger role.”

By the “same people”, she particularly means Nigel Farage, the former Ukip leader, who was an enthusiastic advocate of Trump. Indeed, he was the first foreign politician to be received by Trump after his election. She speaks of Farage with disgust. “He came to the US to campaign for Trump and spent half of his remarks insulting me in a very personal way and talking about Trump as the alpha male, the silver-backed gorilla. Think of those images and what that says about what’s acceptable and what’s not.”

The real Bond villain in her book, however, is Putin, who she believes wants revenge for the collapse of the Soviet Union and the expansion of Nato. She also insists he has a personal grudge against her, describing him as “manspreading” in their meetings.

“US policy of the 1990s, to help democratise and protect former Soviet states, was something Russians didn’t like,” she says. “Putin said the collapse of the Soviet Union was the worst catastrophe in human history. But he never personally attacked my husband.

“There was that famous encounter Bush had with Putin when he said, ‘I can do business with him, I looked into his soul.’ I said, ‘He’s a KGB agent — by definition he doesn’t have a soul.’ So I sparred with him from a distance and as secretary of state. It was a personal grudge.”

To try to improve the situation, she says she would always go to meetings with Putin trying to find something they could actually engage on, but “as President Obama once said, [Putin] is like the bored guy in the back of the room”. She finally got his attention by asking him about wildlife conservation. “He came alive!” she recounts. “He takes me down the stairs — all of his security guys are jumping up, because we weren’t expected — into this inner sanctum with a huge desk and the biggest map of Russia and he started telling me he’s ‘going here to tag polar bears’. And then he says, ‘Would your husband like to come?’ I said, ‘Well, I’ll ask him, but if he’s busy, I’ll go!’ ”

The invitation never came. Instead, last October, the US government formally accused the Russian government of hacking the Democratic Party’s computer network, and said that Moscow was trying to “interfere” with the US election. Russia also used its own state-run media, such as RT and Sputnik, to generate anti-Clinton stories, as well as internet trolls to post fake stories on Facebook and other social media.

Last month, Facebook admitted that Russians had spent at least $100,000 on some 3,000 ads on US issues, posted on the site in the past two years. If people clicked, they received a stream of provocative news stories.

“No country has attacked the US with so few consequences,” Clinton writes. Should the Obama administration have done more, I ask. “Aagh,” she sighs, “that needs a whole other session.” She continues with a plea for the British authorities to investigate Cambridge Analytica, a behaviour-profiling company run by an old Etonian that reportedly received £5m from the Trump campaign to help swing voters.

“I hope the UK are investigating,” she says. “You know they were involved in the Kenya elections and Brexit, and are the subject of congressional and special counsel inquiries. The question to be asked is: how did they, the Russians and the Trump campaign converge?”

Grudges aside, what did Putin hope to achieve by supporting Trump? “I think it has exceeded his expectations — except for the unpredictability of it,” she replies. “He thought he was backing somebody who would immediately lift sanctions, be quiescent about Syria and Ukraine, and he’s got a lot of it.”

The Russians may have spread fake news, but why did so many Americans believe it? This, it seems, is the question that haunts her. One particularly improbable story that gained traction involved Clinton and her campaign chair, John Podesta, running a child-trafficking network from a pizzeria in Washington.

“Why would people believe that? Do they despise me and my politics so much that they are willing to believe the most horrible lie? How, in democracies like ours [can] people believe nonsense and lies on the side of buses about how much money the UK government paid to the EU? How did we let this happen?”

Clinton not only feels she inflicted Trump on the world, but that she let down women who had thought they were going to see America’s first female president.

Whatever you may think about Hillary, it was unedifying, to say the least, to see election rallies in the world’s most powerful nation chanting, “Kill the bitch!” How did that make her feel? “Sexism and misogyny are endemic in our society, so of course they are present in our politics,” she replies. “What I found so despicable was that it was stimulated by the candidate himself. In that campaign we had someone who advocated violence, who said all kinds of terrible things, who smirked at other terrible things. It was hard to believe it was happening.

“I got an honorary degree a few years ago from St Andrews in Scotland,” she continues, “and one of the other honourees was Mary Beard [the Cambridge classics professor]. She pointed out that some of the really horrible things people said about me harked back to ancient Greeks.” For example, the campaign mugs depicting Trump holding up Clinton’s severed head recalling Perseus holding up the head of Medusa.

“And Margaret Atwood, the author of The Handmaid’s Tale, told me it reminded her of puritan witch-hunts of the 17th century.”

In the book, she describes how it felt as Trump followed her around the stage in the second TV debate, two days after the release of a tape in which he bragged about groping women. “He was literally breathing down my neck,” she writes. “My skin crawled.”

“Trump was running a reality-TV campaign filled with personal attacks, giving people a great show,” she says. Yet people didn’t just watch it — they voted for him, women too. While Clinton won the vote of black, Latina and Asian women by large margins, 53% of white females preferred Trump. Was she surprised? “No, because these forces have been around my entire life. But both through legislation and broad consensus, starting in the 1960s, it became less and less acceptable in our politics to run on race or be overtly sexist. But that didn’t mean everyone agreed and all of a sudden became feminist and opened the circle of opportunity.”

This, she says, presents a huge challenge for any traditional politician. “When people come along and say we just have to figure out how to get along with voters who voted for Trump, I say, ‘At what cost? At the cost of turning our backs on refugees and immigrants? At the cost of permitting discrimination against blacks and women?’ No, that’s not an acceptable cost. How do we do a better job of conveying, instead, that we are going to grow opportunity in society, so more people can realise dreams? That has to be the message.”

She made that pitch, though, and it didn’t work. Has America now had enough of the Clintons? “I am not going anywhere, but will be active in politics, which I care deeply about.”

She is setting up an organisation to recruit and train young people — particularly women — to go into politics. “I will do not-for-profit work, working with universities and writing and speaking out [against] what I see as a global backlash against women’s progress.”

Nicola Sturgeon, first minister of Scotland, recently said: “Things that are seen as strengths in a man are seen as weaknesses in a woman.” Does Clinton agree? “I met Nicola this spring in New York and we had a great conversation,” she says. “There’s a commonality that exists among women who reach a certain level in politics.”

Has she met Theresa May? “No,” she simply says.

Do women lead in a different way? “I think I do. I am very comfortable in a more collegial way. I like to listen, I don’t like to brag or lie about what I can do, which I think put me at a disadvantage this time!”

After all she has endured, would she encourage her own daughter, Chelsea, to enter politics?

“I don’t ever think like that, because she is an independent, incredibly accomplished person. She has written a couple of very good books, I don’t think she’s at all interested in office.”

In the meantime, spending time with Chelsea and her two young children is one of the bonuses of losing. “Grandchildren are the best!” she exclaims.

Bill, she says, is a wonderful hands-on grandfather to Charlotte and Aidan. It’s an unexpected image — almost as unexpected as the affection with which she repeatedly refers to her husband throughout the interview. When I was a Washington correspondent in the Obama years, everyone told me the Clintons’ was a marriage on paper and the couple had struck a deal that she would stay with him in return for him helping her become president. She vehemently denies this, saying she is “fed up with people speculating on the state of my marriage”. In the book, she admits there were times she doubted its future, but she decided to stay with him because “I love him with my whole heart”.

Family aside, there’s always the chardonnay and a strange relaxation technique she describes as alternate nostril breathing.

It’s time for her photos, and what Clinton calls her “glam squad” appears to touch up her hair and make-up. She worked out she spent 600 hours — or 25 days — getting ready on the campaign trail. It’s not over. Next week she comes to the UK, where she will go to Swansea for the naming of a law school in her honour. “I am blessed with a strong constitution and am resilient,” she insists. “I am not going to spend the rest of my life looking backwards.”

The smile breaks and for a moment she looks as crestfallen as the 13-year-old Hillary who wrote to Nasa saying she wanted to be an astronaut. “Sorry, little girl,” came the response. “We don’t accept women into the space program.”

What Happened by Hillary Rodham Clinton (Simon & Schuster £20) is out now

Hillary Rodham Clinton makes exclusive UK appearances at both The Times and The Sunday Times Cheltenham Literature Festival and Southbank Centre’s London Literature Festival on Sunday 15 October

[growingfairchild]

Marie Kondo Meets Courtney Fairchild

As I sit here eating my 4th chocolate chip waffle of the day (ya, that’s right I say F-O-U-R-T-H) I am wondering what I can clean out and organize next.  This month I have been on a major clean out & organize spree.  It might have something to do with watching “Tidying Up”, it might have to do with the fact that I am determined not to spend $$, or it might have to do with the (still) frigid temps outside.  Whatever the reason I am going to roll with it for as long as I can.  

So far I have gone through my closet, the laundry room/craft room, the boys room & the kitchen/pantry.  I still have to do our living room, the bathrooms and our random hall closets.  

If you have ever studied Marie Kondo’s method you know that she believes you must take EVERYTHING out of the room you are working with and touch every item.  If the item brings you joy, you keep it.  If after touching the item you do not feel joy, you thank the item and get rid of it.  To be perfectly honest I thought this was totally cheesy before I did it for myself.  Once I began tossing all of my clothes on my bed the process all became clear.  I felt mortified seeing this huge pile and realizing that I constantly have a desire for more!  Picking up each item made the process feel so quick.  Right away I was able to decided wether or not to keep or donate.  

The best part of the process came when I was able to start hanging and folding the clothes.  I LOVED seeing my closet and drawers so organized and decluttered.  

Next I moved onto the laundry room/craft storage.  I really wish I would have taken photos of this because WOW was there ever a huge difference.  When I went through this room we also got a new washer and dryer at the same time which just made this whole deal even sweeter!  In this room I went through wrapping supplies, paints, notebooks, light bulbs, cleaners, camera equipment and SO MUCH MORE!  

OK, the kitchen.  I just finished the kitchen and it was a real labor of love.  I have been talking about doing the kitchen and pantry for a few weeks now but it just really felt overwhelming.  This morning when I woke up I just really felt ready.  

When I started I only planned on tackling the pantry, thinking that the kitchen area wasn’t really that bad.  Within a few minutes I realized that I was going all in.  I spent 4 hours cleaning, throwing away and reorganizing everything and dam does it feel good!  I really didn’t realize how bad it had gotten or how much space I was wasting.  

There are some organizational items that I would like to add to further spruce up my pantry but for now I feel pretty pleased.  

I still would like some baskets and cereal containers for this “snack pantry”

Before the lazy Susan was a mess with all my baking stuff and flours.  Now it is purely used to store items we don’t us as much as well as crock and instant pot.

I swear this photo does not do this space justice!  It is a small cabinet above my microwave and before you could barely see anything that was in there, yet alone get anything out without knocking something else over.  I would still like to get another lazy Susan to store all of the liquids on but for today this will work.

I am obsessed with baskets and having so many around our house really came in handy for this project.  I still would like to get a few more to complete the look (and maybe use all the same types of baskets/bins) and make it even more functional but for now I like that I was able to work with what I have.  

I can’t believe all of the extra space I have in there!  Before I organized this pantry I thought I could barely fit another item in here.

If you are totally geeking out over organizing your house (like I am) you should check out Nesting With Grace.  I am seriously obsessed with everything that she does & I totally want her basket and pillow collection.  

Not that I am an organizational master by ANY MEANS but here are a few things that have really helped me along the way:

Don’t jump into a project like this until the mood hits you.  If you force it it will only become a chore instead of something fun.

Find a good podcast to listen to.  I recommend ‘Cold’, ‘Doctor Death’, ‘The Dropout’ or ‘Over My Dead Body’.  I have been devouring them all.

Give yourself time

Clean shelving and drawers as you go along

Ask yourself when is the last time you ‘used’ or ‘wore’ this item

Follow Marie’s process

Baskets, baskets, baskets!  You can also use boxes, plastic tubs or whatever you can find to keep your items separated and organized. 

Work with what you have, check thrift stores or shop amazon for storage.  Also, if there are storage bins you really like wait for them to go on sale.  Target normally does a “storage” sale once a month, you should never have to pay full price.  I keep a list on my phone labeled BASKETS.  That way whenever I see something I like I will know if I need it or not. 

[suddennerd-blog]

totally not this blog but an old diary entry

around 04/17 Today was nice an communicative, partially sunny. We woke up at 7.10 but my anthro test turned out to be later to we sat at breakfast as emily, nameer, bakir, amr and me and had funny chit chat. The test was good and I was finished 10 minutes before time was up, then went to martin and we talked about life, relationships, people, plans until lunch. At lunch, I talked really nicely to emily with kimi, with the latter we went for a walk later, had a nice talk at the dreisam with reflections and discussions about udk and family. I wanted to wash the smell away and get clean in general because I don’t want to discuss about that with b, helene called me when I was sitting on the toilet and so kind of trapped I found a tick in my foot. Went to tracey quickly who brutally pulled that thing out and then after caring for myself in the bathroom, I packed a bag of nice stuff and was looking for a place to do some of it. Chatted with ncamiso, went to bakir to bring him something from earlier ended up kissing a lot, then at 5 went to joana where we had tea while she was decluttering her papers and I was doing my cas portfolio while she reflected on her time. She has a very cute love letter of wael on her wall. At dinner, I said with some people where I realized again that I am not sad to not having become friends with them, then studied with rebecka and bimbi in the latters room quite productively - iocs are coming, and they are actually serious! Now I am at b's again.

[plogan721]

Story Time or Storyteller: Your worst vacation

Illustration photo by P. Lynne Designs.  (c) 2017

Hello and welcome to Storytime. In this segment, to be determined when is the next time this will appear and depending on the response I get, I want to talk about my worst vacation.

Actually, it was not all bad, there were some pretty good and funny moments (read to the end), but the beginning and the end were bad.

I want to take you back to 2004, April, and my trip to Disney with my family.  I mentioned in the last post that at that time, I was a Disney Vacation Club member.  This was, and still is Disney’s way of owning a timeshare, based on in the point system.  I had gotten my first 150 points, and 2002’s points (150), and 2003’s (150) points as a way to say thank you for becoming a member.  For a family of 5 (me, my parents, my sister (age 15 at the time), and my nephew (age 8 at the time)), that was a very generous vacation week.  I had set the vacation for Easter week, which for Columbus, Ohio, USA Public Schools, this was the time when the children (and some college students) took a spring break (I still like the European system of vacation and hope one day we would adopt that system). The dates were for April 9-14, 2004.

After I book the stay at Disney’s Boardwalk Villas, I got dizzy one day after choir rehearsal, and I scheduled a doctor’s appointment.  My doctor sent me straight to the hospital, and I found out I had high blood pressure.  Not good for me, and I wondered if I had to cancel this vacation.  They put me on some medication, and it is under control today.  On with the trip.

They scheduled a follow-up for April 8, one day before the trip, which I was not happy about, but, OK.  That was not the only thing that was about to happen.

I was at my home, packing for our trip, and my sister called me.  She wanted me to pick her up from the church that was around the corner from my parents.  I refused, telling her that she can walk herself home.  My mother was packing, my nephew was playing with some friends, and dad was at work.  I also told her that I needed to get some sleep for my appointment the next day, so she got mad at me and hung up.

She got home, got into an argument with mom about staying out late, and stormed into her room.   She lit a candle for a minute.  Apparently, it was longer than a minute because she fell asleep and had knocked the candle, which was still burning.  She smelt the comforter burning and ran out the room to get something to put the fire out.  That woke up mom and my nephew, who tried to open the door to the room, but the door was stuck.  The alarm sounded, and the people from the alarm place called to see if everything was alright.  This company does a double calling.  They also called my aunt who lived on the next street over, and he called my dad to come home from work. 

In the meantime, no one called me.  I was still up, trying to pack some of the clothes I had washed for the trip. I was told later that had they called my house, I would have panicked, which I would have.  Thank God no one was hurt.

The next day, as I prepared to go to the doctor’s appointment, something told me that something was wrong, but I did not know what.  So, I got dressed, got in the car and started driving towards my parent’s house, which was on the way to my doctor’s appointment.  As I drove down the street, I noticed something strange about the house, but I could not put my finger on it.  I was pretty early for the appointment, so, I decided to stop in to see if everything was alright.

As I got closer, I noticed a big black hole where the windows of my sister and nephew’s rooms used to be, and on the side of the house on the right side was a burnt mattress.  I sped around the corner on in the driveway, got out, and ran to the front door.  There were people taking clothes out the front door and dad talking to an insurance person.  I went to the kitchen and asked mom what happened and she told me.  I am trying to make sense of everything and mom told me not to worry about it and go to my appointment. 

I got a clean bill of health to go on the trip and stopped by the house after the appointment.  Me and my parents were talking, and I had to address the elephant in the room, “were we still going on this trip?”  It would be a waste if we did not. 

So, that night, I packed my luggage in my car, locked up my house, and headed towards my parent’s house.  The plan was to pack up my car, stay the night at a hotel, which was the plan before the fire, then the next day, we drove down to the airport, parked my car, and got on the plane to go towards Disney World.

Getting lost and bad food…

We got off the plane and dad had rented a Jeep Grand Cherokee (do they make those anymore?).  Nice car for 5 people.  Roomy, I had the whole back seat to myself.  Score.  Now it is time for us to find Disney.  One of the things I like about Disney now is if you fly into Orlando Metropolitan airport and you are staying at a Disney Resort, they do have the magic Express Bus.  Not the case if you are flying from Rickenbacker Airport to Tampa International airport.  If that was the case, then three adults, a child, and a teen would not have been seen wondering through the streets of Tampa and Orlando, before reaching their destination.  The kids fell asleep, I fell asleep, and mom and dad were talking.  Nothing like a quick stop to Burger King to put us all in the mood of La-La Land. 

When I woke up, dad was trying to find the entrance.  There are 50 ways to get into Disney, and we had to pick the one that was the less noticeable.  Well, we turned around in a parking lot of a church and went back in the other direction.  Soon, my nephew, who was the only one that was alert asked, “are we looking for the entrance back there?”  We had passed it again, so we turned around once more, this time in a parking lot for all things Disney souvenir.

We pulled in and started looking for the resort.  At Disney, there are plenty of signs, and it took a minute, but we found it.  Since the reservations were in my name, I had to check us in.  Once in the suite of three bedrooms, a kitchen, two bathrooms, and our own private viewing of the pool with a clown for a waterslide, we began to rest for a moment, then prepared for our first dinner reservation of the trip, Boma.

Boma, which is located in the Animal Kingdom, is an African Buffet Restaurant.  I liked the food, the parents and kids did not.  I am the only one who is adventurous in my family, except now I can add my nephew to the mix (at least he will eat sushi with me).  When he was 8, he only ate hamburgers and French fries (now I see where my other nephew, his brother gets it from).  When that happens, I consider that a bad meal.  I cannot enjoy a meal when your family is sitting there complaining about it.  So, for future trips, we will not be going to this place.

The Rest of the Trip…

I realized this is a long story so I will tell you later.   I thought I had a copy of the posts from my Traveling to The Mouse’s House, which was a trip report (also another form of storytelling) of this trip, but when my computer had to be decluttered by Geek Squad last October), the blog file was not part of the files restored.

A couple of things to note about this trip of mine:

The last day at Disney (we had two more days before catching the flight home, which you can read about in the last post), we went to a restaurant called Ohana, which means “family” Polynesian, and if you have watched Lilo and Stitch, it also means “everyone is family and no one gets left behind”.  I do want to warn you, if you are vegan or vegetarian, this is not the place for you, although I think they have since added those options to the menu.

Anyway, we ran late (which was no surprise when you have a stubborn teen in the mix.  Our reservations were for 7 pm, and we got there at 7:15.  So we waited.  While waiting, the child and teen got into it, and dad had to issue a “no talking zone”, and to sit away from each other.  Mom got restless and started looking at the drink menu.  (Insert comic moment- things you don’t do when bored and not a drinker): Ask about the drinks.  She wanted to know what was a Backscratcher.  We told her that it would put her under the table.  Then she asked about what was in the other drinks.  Thank God, the hostess rescued us before we got into THAT conversation, LOL.

Next dad started calling everyone “cousin”, which is the proper way to greet family.  So, we had a cousin waiter, a cousin hostess, and so on.  My family is really humorous.

The other thing was once you leave Disney, it is best to go home.  We did not leave for the flight home until Friday.  Between the Wednesday, we checked out of Boardwalk Villas to our new home, a dilapidated hotel (or should I say motel, because you enter the rooms from the outside, not a lobby), and it was "Boring City" after that.  Me and my sister did not want to go visit one of Dad’s friends with them (nephew had to go because his friend was there), and I spent most of the day trying to find a place within walking distance to file my taxes, and she was in the pool. We had Domino’s pizza, and my parents came back after that.  We sleep a couple of hours before headed towards the airport. That was Thursday.  

Friday…

We dealt with a string of plane issues.  One pilot was sick so another one had to be called in.  Then, he forgot that he was called, so we had to wait on him to arrive.  Once we got up in the air, we were 5 mins from home, and the plane turned around.  Something fell off the plane while in the air, and then we had to get a replacement, so, back to Tampa, we go.   We sat a couple more hours in the terminal, then we switched planes.   Finally, we got home for my parents to deal with a home with two burnt rooms.

So, it is finally your turn:  What was your worst vacation, and write about it?  It does not have to be as long as mine, but it sometimes it may help.

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