#this is what we do when it's cold where the normal cold is about 55F idk about anywhere else lol

[geminitay-quotes]

GeminiTay Appreciation Week Day One

For Day 1 of GeminiTay Appreciation Week!! Writing prompt: Comfort fic (This event was proposed and coordinated by the lovely @dronepikachu! Thank you so much!)

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Winter on the Hermitcraft server was cold. This was jarring for some, as they came from a variety of home servers with lots of different climates, but it was a simple fact. It was frequently near or below freezing from late November until about mid-March.

Our story begins on one such winter day, snow falling heavy outside, and GeminiTay standing in her kitchen - singing an upbeat song as she put soup on the stove.

Unlike some of her neighbours, Gem was well equipped for the cold. The nature spirit was used to long winter nights, and as a matter of fact quite enjoyed them. There was something nice about sitting curled up next to the fireplace with hot chocolate on a cold evening, no sound but the fire crackling and your own breath. Perhaps some music if you were so inclined. It was a kind of comfortable solitude that you could rarely get most other times of year.

Gem looked out the window as her soup simmered. The landscape was quiet and beautiful, coated in a thin layer of whiteness that she could already tell would grow thicker in a matter of hours.

She served herself a bowl and brought both her soup and hot chocolate into the living room... There was no need to eat at the table if nobody was around to see her anyways! After lighting the fire, she relaxed into a bean bag.

Leaving her now-empty soup bowl to the side for future-Gem, she took a comfort read off the shelf and allowed herself to get absorbed into the book. Before she knew it, the ginger was fast asleep.

And yes, maybe she did forget to take in that soup bowl. And yes, perhaps she now would have cold chocolate to wake up to. And yeah, she did forget to turn off the fireplace. But as long as it didn't burn the base down (and it wouldn't - Impulse was much too used to fires and had installed in Gem's opinion too many safety measures), that would all be a problem for morning-Gem.

Because for now, night-Gem was going to stay right here in her little cocoon of warmth, and nothing you could say or do would get her to move.

[bomberqueen17]

long drive

for the record it takes almost exactly the same amount of time to go up thru western PA and come up 219 to come back from Baltimore as it took to go down via 90->390-> wherever that gets you. So. Avoiding the Thruway is possible!

Ironically enough we were only inspired to try this to avoid the snow. i know! Drive up thru ski country and the Snow Belt? But from the weather maps, the lake effect seemed to be mostly in a long corridor right along the Thruway, so like. It’s easy enough to avoid lake effect if you just don’t go where the wind is. Normally the wind angles down southward, that’s why that’s the snow belt, but when it doesn’t, it’s perfectly save to drive there.

Unless the wind shifts. Which it didn’t. So we left Maryland in 55F fog, and arrived in Buffalo at 20F ice, and I still haven’t chipped my car out. Dude said he wasn’t going in today so I just took his. Mine is like. Encased in ice.

It’s convenient that it’s cold though, BIL gave me a pile of nicely-packaged venison since he has too much in his freezer now, but Farmsister had just given me a bunch of beef from their last cow processing, and I do not have a chest freezer, and my regular lil freezer is kind of full of.... I’m not sure what. So I need to do a cleanout and rearrange, and meanwhile it’s 15F and I have a cooler sitting outside with venison frozen solid in it. Very nice.

(I’d been saying on Discord I couldn’t live anywhere that never let me use the outdoors for cold storage at least occasionally. That, and killing off all the bugs. When I mentioned this to my sister she had a third thing that winter gets you but I forget now. Anyway as we drive into our next whiteout I’ll chant my lil mantra of porch fridge, kills bugs to remind myself why anyone would want to live somewhere like this.

This incidentally marks the first time this winter I’ve located my winter coat. I did wear it today. I do own a down parka. I should’ve dug it out a week ago for that COVID test where I waited two hours in the parking lot, but I didn’t know I was gonna wait two hours.

By the way. It is now seven days and I never received the results of that test. Thank heavens I did not need them! The rapid test served my purpose.

God, we’re all fucked, we’re all so fucked.

Anyway I’m back at work and I’m just exhausted about it. I might take a couple of days off sometime this month. I’ve taken tons of days off work but like. None for me, and anyway there’s not that much work for me to do here, I’ll be caught up with the post-Christmas WTFery in no time.

I need a day to sit at home. I need like, three days; two to sit around and feel guilty, and one to actually do some shit. I did manage to get a lot done last night-- I got out of the car and immediately made dinner, since it was 3pm and we hadn’t eaten since 7am, and then I did all the dishes from dinner, and then I put together a loaf of bread to rise for today’s dinner, and started rearranging the freezer, and then Dude went grocery shopping, and I pre-packed today’s lunch and got the meat out of the freezer (well out of the cooler in the driveway) for this week’s meals (BIL for some reason packages everything in 2-lb increments which is an insane amount of meat for two people but I have a plan, at least for this package), and anyway we’re having hangover soup and venison hot dish this week because it’s fucking cold and I need to expand my horizons, culinarily.

[againjack]

Knight in Shining armor

Recently a major snowstorm came through the area. This was very unusual for this area, which gets on average an inch a year to get a foot in one storm. Needless to say, it caused chaos all over. Including my losing power Saturday morning at 2:12am (according to my power company app) and came back online sometime after 10pm Sunday night. 

Saturday I woke to this horror. I tried to ride it out. I read in bed. Napped. But by 3pm Saturday with no idea when it would be back on and being 55F indoors, I broke and called Colby, asking if I and my dog could stay at his place. I was a bit miffed that he didn’t just offer that sooner, though to be fair everyone was on a hope it would be a quickfix. Of course he was ok with it.

I have been battling a minor cold and feeling off and antisocial because of it. After Colby ensured I was settled in at his place, and even offered for me to play his new PS4 with FFXV, he went off to game night without me. I was sorta relieved, because I thought he might expect me to go along even though I told him a few days before about being antisocial. The game took forever to update, being the first time it was loaded. I ended up reading and watching tv (finally having had him explain to me all his gazillion remote controls) and going to bed before 9pm. 

Colby got home around 2am, we chatted very briefly before we both fell back asleep. 

Because of roads still being dangerous in neighborhoods, even though main and most secondary roads were ok, both our shul’s canceled Sunday/Hebrew/religous school Sunday morning. Luckily Colby learned this before going to gamenight. I know he doesn’t get many opportunities to sleep in, so while I was up at 730, I let him just sleep. The game had finished updating, so I played that for a few hours. Then I got myself together and went to check the house. I was not happy with what I saw. 

Colby got up around 3pm around when I was making a late lunch. Luckily it was a large thing I intended to share anyways. :P We hung out all day, some together some apart. He was doing his online holiday shopping so I played more FFXV. Around 9 he decided he was hungry (after I had been trying to decide if/when to make dinner for a few hours) so I made dinner. 

While making dinner he did the cutest thing ever. Colby was doing laundry. For some reason his place was coldish. When he grabbed stuff out of the laundry, that was when he realized how cold the house was, and he went on a schpiel about how great hot laundry is when it is cold. He hugged his laundry and said I needed to hug it too. So there we were, in the middle of the kitchen, in the middle of dinner prep, hugging each other and kissing around a pile of warm laundry. It was so silly, spontaneous, and frankly awesome. It was that moment, that if I wasn’t already in love with him, that I would have marked as falling. It was so nice to see him so real, so open; no wall, no worries about who would see and/or judge or make him feel embarrassed. 

More hanging out Sunday night. After I got the email that a significant number of houses were back online - and checked the app for my personal circumstances to confirm I was one of them - we chatted about what to do for Monday. 

He set me up so I could work from his place. We decided that even if I was back, since I had lost all the food in my fridge and freezer(s) that I would eat dinner at his place. We didn’t exactly firm up where I would sleep if the power was back. On a long lunch break I went home to find I did have power! I let Colby and a flurry of people know.

It was so weird being at his place without him for so long. But, it finally started to feel like I belonged there, like it was somewhat my place too. He called me while he was on the way home and we chatted about so many things. It’s like he couldn’t wait to get home before talking with me. I wonder if he forgot I was staying for dinner, because when I mentioned I was waiting for him, he seemed to rush off. Only seemed because he was only two minutes away at that point. 

Dinner was nice and simple. He had a million things to do (like normal) but I told him that this was the night I was going to ask him to make true on his promises to clean up. This turned into a production where one thing led to another, it was almost like he was procrastinating doing other stuff. lol Seriously, he went from putting dishes in the dishwasher to putting away leftovers to scrubbing the pot and pan, to meticulously cleaning out the soap dispensers and refilling them (which was a production), to a bunch of other things. I floated between talking and hanging with him to reading or putzing on my phone in the living room. 

After cleaning up he sat on the couch with me and asked that I show him FFXV. It was at that point I wondered if he got the PS4 more for me than him. :P He is having trouble and not enjoying Battlefront and isn’t interested in FFXV. But he enjoyed watching me play, listening to me explain the game to him, etc. As I was explaining how this version compared to previous versions I used various terms that he looked at me with that “holy shit she’s awesome” and “holy shit she is for realz” look and said he only understood half of what I said. lol It kinda made me proud to be recognized for my moderate gamer knowledge/skills and appreciated for it. It was also really nice to be taken seriously without any ‘fake gamer girl’ bs or machismo some guys do. 

At a certain point I realized how late it was, so I saved and ended the game.  It was really nice to have that quality time actively together.  Colby then wandered upstairs to do his stuff. I hung out for a bit with him in the office, but ended up going to bed before him (to no ones surprise.) I have no idea when he came to bed, though I did wake enough to say hi and stuff. 

The morning went like normal. Including our wonderful, sweet good bye. I’m really spoiled and super lucky. I really enjoy how we love spending time with each other, enjoy the simple things, enjoy doing things apart, We are comfortable in a nice way.