daddy1762

[gods-favorite-autistic]

Today I found out that some people genuinely believe artificial food dyes cause adhd and cancer??? How do you come to that conclusion. 99% of the junk food we eat has artificial food dyes and last I checked most people who eat a lot of junk food don’t have cancer??? Or adhd????

[deathbyvalentine]

Tiny Prompts

Dimitri and Marcella

He knew it was her before he looked up. There was something in the solidness of her hand, the lack of hesitation that so many of the others here had. With his face pressed to the grass, he didn’t shake off the hand on his shoulder. He breathed in deeply, trying to steady himself, though grief was escaping through every pore. When he got up, he would have to dry his tears, put on his professional face, deal with the demon. But right now, he didn’t have to pretend in front of her. After all, she wasn’t easily daunted.

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Hayfever

There’s pollen inside of my lungs. It’s clinging, trying to be helpful, trying to grow where it isn’t wanted. I hold my breath until I am outside, then exhale. Me and the bees have something in common - we both make flowers grow.

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Best Friends

“Fee?” Constance’s voice drifted across the room, cautious as ever. From the floor, or more accurately, from the pile of cushions and duvets on the floor, there was an annoyed groan, confirming that she was indeed awake. Or, that she was now. Constance propped herself up on an elbow to look down at her friend, illuminated by moonlight. “Have you ever been in love?” “It’s too late for this Con.” came the muffled reply and Constance let herself fall back against her pillows, gaze resting on the cracks in the ceiling. It was hard to imagine Felix in love with anyone. She always seemed so utterly self possessed, so independent. Crushes, yes. She was much more obvious about her hate-crush on Johnny that she wanted to be. Love? Well. That was for weaker people surely. Constance, not for the first time, wished she was more like her best friend.

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Lance and Maria

He had seen her before. Lance occasionally had the power to be observant when it suited him, and generally, parties were such an occasion. And fundamentally, there were a limited number of nobles in the sector. You got used to seeing the same faces, even on different planets or ships. But he had remembered her for different reasons. The shine of her blonde hair, the confidence in her walk. She was beautiful and Lance, as a general rule, liked beautiful things. He also had correctly identified she was far out of his league unless she was the type of girl that would care about a last name. He decided to shoot his shot all the same. A glass of amasec and a charming smile, his cravat loosened and jacket discarded...somewhere. It was a move that worked a hundred times before, bedding a hundred pretty people. Not this time. Shot down instantly, and he mimed a heartfelt wound. He wasn't the slightest bit downheartened. He saw the way she smiled as she sauntered away.

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Baking The Cake

It didn’t look quite right. She looked at the recipe book in her hand then at the creation in front of her, resting on the perfect crystal cake stand. She wasn’t quite sure where she had went wrong. The kitchen looked like a bomb site. She was thoroughly coated in flour, smoke curled aimlessly from the hob and the back door had been flung open to release some of the terrible smell. The recipe had said she could use substitutions. In fact, it even said that as long as you kept the ratios the same, nearly any of the ingredients could be replaced with common alternatives. With a frown she snapped the book shut. What a waste of blood.

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A Forgotten Memorial

Memorials were meant to stand longer than those who remembered the original act or life or event. That’s why they were there. A testament to morality and the short memory of the world around it. So he wasn’t quite sure if it could be called a memorial. It was not built on steady ground. It was built on shifting sand and close to the sea. It could last months, or weeks, or days if the wind picked up and stayed persistent. It seemed right. He hadn’t been a famous man. He hadn’t waged wars or invented anything or discovered a country. But he had been loved, throughly and safely. The sea had loved him best of all. It would be the sea that claimed the last memory of him. When the human lives that had him ended, it would only be the sea that remembered.

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Noticed

A gaze had weight. She always knew when she was being looked at. She would be reading a book and the hair on the back of her neck would prickle and she would look up as somebody’s eyes met hers. On buses, in corridors, when she was idly scrolling through her phone. She always knew. Above her the sky stretched blue and endless. Around her, the golden corn swayed softly, whispering amongst themselves, accompanying the sound of her heart. All was peaceful and lonely. The hair on the back of her neck prickled.

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Tattoos

Astrid squirmed, her face screwing up, slightly smudging the glitter around her eyes. Luckily, the artist had foreseen this turn of events and had firmly leant on her arm, keeping it straight and unmoving. Astrid opened her eyes to glare at her girlfriend leaning in the door of the parlour. “You don’t have to enjoy this quite so much you know.” Syn’s smile didn’t falter. “I know babe. But what can I say, you look cute.” Astrid pulled a tongue for the barest moment before she howled again, the needle hitting a particularly sensitive area of skin near the crook of her elbow. She waved in the general direction of Syn and with a faux long suffering sigh, she came over, brushing a hand through her lover’s hair. “See. You can be nice.” “Sometimes.”

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A hug that feels like home

It has been a long long time. There were changes, which shouldn’t have surprised him, but it did. The door had been painted a deep red instead of the peeling green he could remember. The gate was darker, like a varnish had been applied. It hadn’t occurred to him before but it did now. Maybe the man he remembered had moved. Maybe he didn’t live here anymore. Maybe it was sold to some perfect family with a dog and three kids. He faltered on the path, the bag strap cutting into his shoulder. “Matthew?” The voice came from behind him and he turned. This was not how this went, not in movies or books. They weren’t reunited when one was holding about a hundred Tesco bags in one hand and car keys in the other. As it turned out, it didn’t matter. The embrace felt the same. It felt like the perfect ending.

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A(nother) bad decision

What Lance had long since learnt was that if someone was the type of person to say “this is a one time thing”, it would absolutely not be a one time thing. Which was good for him. Because it meant that his fingers were finding the door knob behind him while he was kissed, all the while he got to have a smug smile painted on his face. Later he would get to decide if the making out was the bad idea or the smirk was. You see, it turned out Maria kept to her word. It also turned out that when insulted, she was not adverse to turfing somebody out into the hallway in just their boxers. Interesting.

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Straight up weird

”Right.” “Okay.” “Well. It’s good we can all see it I guess.” “Yep.” Tillie put her hands on her hips. Liza knew she did this when she was making a decision. Though what decision she was going to make about the inter-dimensional portal that had opened up in their treehouse was anybody’s guess. Shooting across a look at Frances, the oldest girl looked similarly baffled, trading a mystified shrug with Liz. Tillie bent down, retrieving a chequer piece from the board. She rolled it inbetween her fingers, contemplating the piece which had just minutes ago, been central to the game. With a sudden twitch, she tossed it into the swirling mass of unnamable colours and for some reason, purple. Nothing happened. Not until it came back at hit her in the face. Liz wasn’t sure how but she got the sense the portal was offended. More cautiously, she moved forward, fetching her baton. She tried to poke it. It immediately tugged it out of her gasp and tugged it inside, tossing it back violently a moment later. And still, that sense of judgement. “We should tell my mom.” Tillie said with an admirable show if not believable show of confidence. “What’s your mom going to do?” Frances snorted. “She freaks out at spiders.” Ignoring the bickering behind her, Liz ventured forward, until she was a breath away from the surface of the portal. The swirling was mesmerising. She raised a hand as though in a dream. And touched it. She was wrenched inside. Frances and Tillie barely had a moment to yell before the portal spat back a thing that looked identical to Liz, and they embraced her, relieved.

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Peas in a Pod

Kitty pressed the pod between her fingers, plucking the pea from where it erupted and putting it in her mouth. Her mother always warned her about eating too many young peas, something about an upset tummy, but it was advice worth disregarding. The peas tasted like the beginning of summer. And what a summer this one was going to be. The last one before high school. The last one of bikes and hopscotch and tag. Before the magical transformation happened that meant she would find all these childish persuits boring and trite. She had seen it happen to her sister after all. Her sister who once delighted in grazed knees and finding tadpoles now spent all her time in her room, fingers curled around the telephone chord, whispering secrets. She popped another pea into her mouth before discarding the pod. Under her nails had been stained an emerald green. She’d have to be careful not to stain her white cardigan, not that she would need it again. The high school had a different uniform. One with a blazer. That would be no fun in the summer, none at all. Before she turned onto the road that lead her to her house, she turned her face up towards the sky, a sunflower looking for direction. A moment to breathe before it all begun.

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The Sacrifice and the Reward

Some gods required you to change your life. To live holy and to alter your behaviours to be more like them. Some gods simply required you to give somebody else's. They were both a sort of murder. All gods required something. It was spring and the petals were falling from the trees. The wind still had the barest hint of ice in it, enough to raise goosebumps on Therese's skin. She buried her bare feet in the soft grass. This was the last day she would feel it, after all. She thought she would be more scared. As it was, what she mainly felt was peace. The world around her seemed to press in, every sensation urgent and lovely. She had never truly appreciated what miracles she was surrounded by. The blue of the sky, the heat of the sun. The feel of air in her lungs. Later, when she was on the altar, even the cold stone on her back felt good. She closed her eyes, palms flat. She didn't even see the knife coming. She didn't have time to feel pain. She didn't have time to feel anything much. The next world was unspeakably beautiful. Differently beautiful from the earth she had just left behind, but beautiful all the same. Here it was, the reward for a life of praying, service and devotion. A new plane of existence, time to think and the sound of nothing at all.

[gaiatheorist]

Delusions of doing OK.

(Not global affairs, or even UK affairs, and especially not my health, all of these things are FUBAR. This one’s about cake.)

There’s an old unspoken tradition that, in a ‘traditional’ family, the best cut of meat and such would go to the ‘breadwinner’. I remember reading something, a million years ago, about the mother of a family picking up a piece of meat that she’d dropped on the floor, making sure nobody had seen it fall, and putting it on her plate, because she couldn’t afford to throw it away. I’m reminded of that, because I’ve just ‘substituted’ some fancy fig jam for sugar in a cake, having forgotten to buy ‘baking’ sugar when I did the grocery shopping.

This isn’t a new thing, there were two decades of using ‘proper’ coffee when we’d run out of instant, and smoking cigars when we ran out of tobacco, we were chaotically arse-about-tit. The difference between the ex and I was that I knew what was in the bank account, because we both used my bank account, it was my overdraft we were living in. When he opened his own bank account, I never asked him for money, and I never asked him what he was spending his on. Now, separated, it’s only an issue when he forgets to send me the money for the motorcycle insurance that’s sill coming out of my account.

I grew up dirt poor, he didn’t. For him, saying “I’m sorry love, I can’t eat this, is there anything else?” was perfectly normal, because he’d been used to his parents obliging his food-weirdness. (Some fish was ‘too fishy’, he’d claim to be incapable of eating a sandwich if the ingredients had been assembled in the ‘wrong’ order, and he had a massive aversion to anything with bones in- I’m the one with the disordered eating issues, though.) I resented preparing second-alternative meals for him, while mine went cold on the table, or worktop, and our son saw that behaviour. That’s not healthy, and led to one pivotal instance of the boy choking down a meal that he didn’t like, as not to ‘upset’ me. I recognised that point, and advised the ex that he could prepare his own meals, if he didn’t want to eat mine. (Which led to the corned-beef and raspberry omelette fandango, and the boy declaring his father “The least useful of my parental units.)

From the initial honeymoon-years, the ex was given the ‘better’ parts of everything, and I obliged his weird requests to make a second alternative if he said he couldn’t eat the first. I didn’t want to ‘be my mother’, and yell “Gedditetten!” (Yorkshire-English translation: “Get it eaten.”) If you left half of your meal on your plate, you’d be hungry until the next meal, that’s how it was. There was no civilised ‘not leaving the table until the plate is cleared’, because we generally ate from plates on our knees, in front of the TV. (Every plate in the ex’s family home was cleared, but generally by his sister, who’d eye up other people’s plates, all vulture-like, and ask “Are you not eating that?”)

I compounded his behaviours, initially because I wanted to please him, and eventually because I didn’t want the plate-flinging sulking if I refused. I was the one who knew what was in the fridge, and how long until pay-day, he just assumed we were doing OK, because I kept producing meals. We weren’t doing OK, we were the polar opposite of doing OK, I was rifling to the back of the cellophane-wrapped lumps of cheese in the ‘bashed tin shop’, to find one that was less than 40p. If we ran out of milk, because he’d ‘fancied’ drinking a pint of it, that I knew was meant to last until Friday, I’d be ferreting about for loose change to replace it. 

As much as I internally raged at him for being so wasteful, it had been going on for so long without me saying anything that I never found the time, or the words to bring it up. He’s not from a ‘rich’ family, but he’d never seen me picking the blue bits out of the bread for his sandwiches, or shaving a suspicious lump of cheese, so he just carried on asking for ‘more’.

 I find myself rolling my eyes and sighing when people say “It’s only £50, who can’t find £50?” or “Own brand pasta isn’t real pasta.”, but I don’t always attack, and point out that for some people, that is reality.

Cut to now, and I’m still sort-of perpetuating it, though thankfully not every day. During the period between the ex moving out, and the boy going to uni, I taught the boy a lot of eking-out tricks, avoiding food-waste, getting more food for less money, and how to make a little go a long way. I fed him well, and I taught him that the toaster is not the only appliance in the kitchen that ‘men’ can use. (The kid and I probably both fit into the non-binary category, hence the sarcastic quote-marks.) I’m still ‘feeding’ them, though, both the boy, and the ex, it’s become something of a routine, I can’t rightly place when it started, but, I cook and bake for them at the weekend. (The kid goes to his Dad’s most weekends, and they stop by here as they’re taking the boy’s mate home.) 

The kid checks my fridge. My child looks in my fridge, to make sure I have an adequate supply of food, and haven’t spunked all my money on gin. This has led to the Sunday-fridge-shuffle, where I rotate whatever is in there to ensure it looks well-stocked. As I was rooting about for a sugar-substitute this morning, I found a vacuum-packed carton of tofu that’s only a month out of date, and I’ve put that in the fridge. I am fucking ridiculous, I’m window-dressing my fridge, as not to worry my son that I’m not eating. I’m cooking and baking at the weekend, so that the boy has some decent Mum-made snacks and meals, and it seemed rude to give the boy freshly-baked goods, and not let the ex, who was doing the Bisto-kid sniff, take some as well. 

Delusional, no? I am quite literally one pay-cheque away from not being able to pay my rent, and I’m foraging about in my kitchen-stocks, to make sure the kid, and the ex have ‘a bit of something home-made’. Well, it keeps me out of trouble, and my kitchen smells of cake, I don’t suppose it’s hurting anything, and a cake made with fig jam instead of sugar will have an ‘interesting’ texture.