#(for those not in the know my blog got restricted for 6 months)

[nyanbinary-87]

hello mcyt nation is this anything

[starknature]

I'll update this post daily because I don't want to keep posting over and over 💀

Day 1: Stats

SW: 98lbs? I might have realized I had a problem a bit before that but I genuinely don't remember.

HW: 115lbs, I was 15/16 and Jesus given my proportions it was so bad.

Lw: 82.5

Current weight is 84

BMI: 14.9.

I want to at least get down to 80lbs but I'll take as low as I can get and still be able to maintain my job.

Day 2:

I'm 5'3", and no, I do not. Too short lol, causes intense dysphoria.

Day 3:

They're similar to my build, just thinner. They don't have the extra fat I do. I think these pictures are my favourite thinsp0

Day 4: my greatest fear is that I'll have to quit for my job, or that I'll be forced to recover if my family notices.

Day 5: I first wanted to lose weight because I have very round features, I have a round face, its all very feminine. I can't medically transition right now where I live, and I'm more angular and masculine looking when I'm thinner. Boobs are made of fat, the women in my family carry their weight around the middle and in the hips and I refuse to gain anymore, and I need to lose what I've got. I'm not a woman and it's throwing off my silhouette. It's gotten to the point where I now realize I'm fat regardless, and especially where I carry it is unacceptable and unnecessary.

Day 6: I don't think that my binging technically fits the criteria because at most I eat a couple to a few hundred calories over my limit, but I do feel in the moment like I can't stop, and it's still going over my limit so I count it as binging.

Day 7: I know my mom knows to some extent, but I don't have to worry about her doing anything about it because I don't live with her. Noone else really notices, fortunately, except for my brother that recognized it because of his own eating disorder.

Day 8: I have chronic pain so I don't exercise much outside of work, I'll go on long walks though when my joints let me out of the house💀 at work I'm running back and forth across a store and carrying heavy crap, and it's a mile away from the house so that helps with getting my steps in.

Day 9: my curves, chubby face and where I carry fat around my hips heavily contribute to my misgendering, although not the sole reason. Family members also used to make comments frequently.

Day 10: DR. PEPPER!!! THE DIET/0 SUGAR TASTES LIKE CRAP. Also my Autistic Comfort Food™️ dollar spicy ramen bowl. I'd eat one every day istg, half the time I'd omad it but literally a month before I relapsed hard, the guilt got to be too much LMFAO

Day 11: I don't necessarily have a favourite thinspo blog? But I do keep up with DecomposedMoon on twt.

Day 12: Sometimes 100cal oatmeal with flax seeds, I'll eat rice cakes with a little whipped strawberry cream cheese, those 70cal protein buffalo tuna salad packs, idk. I'm just getting into making shakes and I ordered vanilla protein powder so excited about that.

Day 13: I'm trying to mainly eat healthy foods but am definitely restricting more than is considered healthy, so an unhealthy way.

[toshinoris-spouse]

[Permanent RP Ad | MHA/BNHA | Soulmate AU | Doubling]

I'm going to put this in a new format, using how I posted RP ads on Reddit as a base. Since this is the only thing on my mind... I figure I'll also post it onto this blog, for anyone who wants to find it! No one probably will, but there's always that hope, huh?

Currently: Not Accepting

Genres: Romance, Adventure, Action, Fantasy Literacy: Proficient/Advanced Lit (anywhere from 6-8 paragraphs per RP reply [per character side], minimum). Preferred Reply Speed: Once a week, up to once a month (feel free to take longer if life's being a pill, but please warn me in advance if you can!). It used to be twice every two days with once a week being the max, but- my own reply speed has fallen. Wouldn't be fair to ask others for quick responses when I can't do the same. POV: 3rd Person, Past Tense Fandom: My Hero Academia/Boku No Hero Academia Alternate Universe?: Yes, Soulmate AU (First Words) Characters: Finley Well (SI), Toshinori Yagi, Your OC, Your OC's Love Interest Pen Name: Writer Platform for RP: Discord

This ad is only for fellow muns who are 18+, though the RP itself need not be rated that highly. I'd just feel better RP'ing with a fellow adult.

Additional info under the cut!

I figure I got everything specific up there, but there'll be more here, so let's go! I work a very early-morning style job that can get insanely stressful. I'm usually up by anywhere from 4AM to 6AM (work days vs. days off), and my work schedule fluctuates from week to week. I'm in the EST timezone, but I don't mind chatting with mates from other timezones, no matter how extreme the difference.

I have seen up to episode 127 of MHA, so I'm between the Paranormal Liberation Raid and the Dark Deku arc. I can RP as any character up to that point, but any who have major character stories/backstories revealed past that are currently off-limits, since I would have to spoil myself on a lot more than just basic details in order to portray them. Shoto Todoroki is also off-limits, mainly because I have an OTP for him and just don't see him with anyone other than a friend's OC. So aside from those restrictions, you are free to ask me to portray anyone for your OC! I like to dig into characters and ships and develop headcanons as we RP, so be ready for some OOC chatter.

The Soulmate MHA universe itself can be explained via my Reddit account, where I made a single post containing every last bit of info I could recall on its machinations. If you haven't guessed by now, yeah, this will involve plenty of reading. I'm sorry in advance. There is also Finley Well's info doc, which is linked in my blog's pinned post.- But don't feel obligated to read that if you aren't interested in the AU itself, or in the concept of how your ship would also function in this take on MHA.

In simplified terms, Soulmates have Words printed somewhere on their body that are written in their Soulmate's native language and personal handwriting from birth. Not everyone has a Soulmate, and some people have multiple.- When the Words are first said by one's Soulmate, they'll glow- and they'll only stop glowing once the person realizes who their Soulmate is. If your Soulmate dies, then, depending on how strong your will/body is, you can live a month without them... Before you also die. Meeting your Soulmate gives you a stat boost- whether just to your actual stats (strength, speed, etc.) or your Quirk (if you have one).

If you are interested, I would gently ask that you check my RP doc before reaching out to me. Make sure to contact me and let me know your pen name, any OCs you would like for me to RP against (please include their info/a link to their info if you can), any Canons you want me to portray for said OCs, and any limits in the RP. If your OC n' LI are minors in the eyes of US law (under 18), then I will only allow NSFW to occur on one side of the RP (YagiFin). If you are not interested in NSFW, then the topic will not be touched on at all.

The RP will take place during the events of MHA. The general starting point is always around the entrance exams, sometimes before, sometimes a day or so into school- I'm fine with whatever floats your boat. It'll take a day (possibly more) of plotting before we start the actual RP, and the RP will gradually diverge more and more from the canon material. So... Have fun, and I hope to hear from you!

[time-gear]

Goodbye 2022, Hello 2023

Helloooo!! I don't really write journals and blog posts anymore, but I’d like to try and change that! At least a yearly one for art stuff since it’s nice to be able to set some goals and they’re kinda fun to look back on. Also I’ve been overly mysterious and closed off online and I feel like I come off kind of cold because of it sometimes. I miss connecting with people over shared interests like I once did before adulthood happened. Giant post under the cut!

Before we get onto art stuff, I kinda wanna touch on some personal stuff. 2022 was so chaotic for me. I got to visit Latvia, Estonia and Lithuania. (all very last second with the planning LOL) Those were the trips of a lifetime, my brain will never be the same. (in a “i found myself in europe” kind of way) I went to arizona to see my partner’s family again after 4 years of not seeing them because of covid and jobs and all that fun stuff. Yeah I’ve been on 14 airplanes in the past 6 months I’m done with traveling for a while I hope xD Also had a really amazing time with some long time friends that I never thought I’d meet in person, but here we are! I have anxiety issues, but I unknowingly did a lot to help myself this year and I didn’t realize that until I was looking back on everything recently. There were some other things earlier in the year too but those are boring/personal but were still a lot. I’m exhausted, but not for negative reasons.

Since covid restrictions lessened, my dayjob became much less busy. I was also able to go on actual vacation and It gave me some time to think about life and what it means to me. Do I care about money enough to grind like this? Can’t buy a house so, if I can pay my bills and save a little bit each month, that's enough for me. Maybe the antiwork reddit posts helped me on my way a little too LOL. Anyways the tl;dr is that the cost of owning and maintaining a second car was basically using up all the money I was making at work. I was able to quit, sell a car and take some commissions and the profit margin remained the same. It’s.. kinda sad. I’m mad at my old employer for dicking me around with small ass raises and stressing me out so much for no… reason…………….. Haha…………. He took good care of me (aside from the money thing) and taught me so many things that will be relevant for the rest of my life, but I’m glad I’m not managing 4 fast food stores anymore. I quit on super good terms and I got free pizza for life. Also I don’t have to listen to stupid ass customers yell at me over fucking pizzas anymore!! Yay!!

All that being said, I’m shifting my focus to art now. I’m in a way better mental state and I have a lot of support from my partner so I’m not worried about burning out again. I’m already pretty pleased with the fact that I’m actually improving again! I guess I just needed time to consistently work hard, instead of always being exhausted from a dead end dayjob. Also gotta shout out the people who pick me up and encourage me when it comes to art, you know who you are <3

Moving on from that, I want to talk about more art stuff! The first thing I wanted to say is that I’m DEFINITELY going to be streaming again. I got way too busy around the holidays so I haven’t streamed in a couple of months, but I’m gonna be doing that regularly again this week or next week. So many people have asked when I’ll stream again and that I helped get them through their work day????? Like DAMN you guys I’ll cry. I’m so glad y’all like my company, the feeling is definitely mutual. <3 Like I mentioned, I am a pretty anxious person so it’s gonna be hard for me to stick to a schedule. It’l be during weekdays around 1pm EST like it has been, just I’ll be doing it on random days to spare myself the worrying. Also sometimes I take NSFW work and that is not allowed on twitch, so yeah |D

Another thing I’ll definitely be sorting out this year is a discord server. I spent a lot of time thinking about this and talking to some of my friends who have one and I think it would be fun. My only worry is my inability to consistently check discord, so I’d need mods or to just pray nothing fucked up happens in there while I’m not looking :’D I’ve seen too much dark and questionable stuff happen in small, niche discord servers and public chatrooms. I’m terrified of fostering that kind of environment but I’m aware that isn’t likely to happen bc I think the people who follow me are pretty… normal? If anyone has any advice I am all ears! The point of the server would be to have a feed channel and some premium channels with extra goodies every month. (I’d connect it to my twitch subs. You guys deserve some extra snacks) Maybe some people wanna be pinged when I open for commissions I don’t know! It seems everyone has one these days and I want to try it. Any premium content will be hosted on my website PWYW style as well. This way if people wanna support me they can, but also you can download my silly little sketches for free if you don’t want to give anything. There would be other stuff but that’s the gist of it.

Lastly, I am officially open for commissions. You can find all that information on my website here: https://timegear.ink/commissions/ I have an empty slate right now so the turnaround should be pretty fast.

I guess that’s pretty much all I wanted to talk about? Thanks for reading my silly little rambles if you made it all the way through. <3 Here’s to a fun and productive 2023!

[jodilin65]

SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 30, 2008 Got a long letter from Mary. The good news is that Nathan’s starting a blog and is going to post her writings. She’s going to send him short stories she’s written for him to type and post.

The bad news is that her case has been bumped up to March. She thought she’d be home for Christmas for sure, so she’s bummed out. I, of course, am not the least bit surprised. She didn’t need to hear this from me, so I didn’t say anything, but if there’s really ever an end or any kind of closure to her case, they’re going to drag it out as long as possible. I still think she’s going to end up in prison with the max, or more than she ever expected she’d get, which would be something her lawyer may not tell her. He may be a paid lawyer as opposed to a public pretender, but that still doesn’t mean I’d trust him to be completely honest and open as to the extent of possibilities that could go wrong. I think that given the times, the nature of the case, and the fact that she’s white, they’re going to want to keep her in for as many more childbearing years as they possibly can. She’s got about 14 of those left, but they may very well figure that the more they can take from her, the less likely she’ll be to have more kids with abusive guys who only want to abuse them.

Anyway, I hit a couple of instants. I won a Birds Eye Steamfresh Meals for Two coupon which has a $9 value, and a $5 Chevron GC!

I dropped back down to 135 pounds, too.

SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 29, 2008 I’ve been having trouble getting back on track since jumping up two pounds to 136, mostly because of hunger. So I decided that since I don’t mind being fat and was mostly out to just get in shape and get to where bending over to trim my toenails was easier, I’m just not going to lose any more weight if the hunger persists. This is where I usually plateau anyway.

I agree with Tom that I don’t look 136, but more like between 120-125. It’s cuz of the muscle.

It rained a couple of days ago and each time it does it gets a little greener out there. The leaves have thinned out a bit, but we still have major privacy. It’s the dogs I could do without. They went barking by in the afternoon and I saw one of the dogs heading up towards Jesse’s place, though it’s still been quieter overall. That’s good too, cuz as long as we don’t shoot these dogs, they’re going to be here as long as we are. If money ever improves we’ll have to decide if we want to do something about them (since no one else will) or do we just live with them?

I hate the cooler weather! My robe keeps me nice and warm, but I hate being bundled up like this. It really restricts my movements and the sleeves get in the way and catch on things all the time.

FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 28, 2008 I know Apple’s expensive and that $50 doesn’t go a long way with them, but it’s my Christmas present to Tom anyway, which I’m sure he’ll love. He just may not get to use it till after the promotion ends on the day before Christmas.

Thanksgiving turned out to be quiet. Tom didn’t see Jesse’s truck, his dogs, or the freeloader’s dogs, which is good considering that the dangerous one is a pit bull.

THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 27, 2008 How many more days, weeks or months am I going to have to see Obama’s fucking face everywhere I go on the web! God, I’m so sick of it and hearing about the same damn people over and over again! Everything’s black this, black that. Meanwhile, whites, and especially gays, continue to get shit on and treated like 2nd class citizens.

Meanwhile, there’s not much to do at nearly 6:00 in the morning. I’m done sweeping, so I guess I could do some story-proofing. The fucking dogs are going to be going off any minute, so I’ll put the sound machine on so I’m not interrupted.

I hope Mary goes home soon. I really do! I’m just worried she’s going to go right back to her old ways. Abusive guys and having babies like crazy were all she knew. I hope she’ll choose life over children, but it’s like she doesn’t think she can live or will be complete without them. As it is she’s already talking about moving in with Nathan. Not right away, and he may not be like most other guys she’s known, but the point’s still the same. First it was Todd, then Jose, and now Nathan. I’ve tried to point out to her that she doesn’t need a man to survive, and that if she wants a shot at doing the things she says she wants to do, then she can’t be tied down by a baby. And who knows if she could even afford one with the fortune they cost these days, not to mention the fact that there are enough damn people in this world and we don’t need anymore. In the end, though, it’s her life. If she’s going to throw it away on babies and bad boys, well, that’s her choice.

Well, well, Amber decided to unsubby from my journal. So I subbied to hers instead! Then I’ll drop her as well. I love to ruffle this bitch’s feathers.

Yay, Florida for doing the right thing and overturning a bigoted ban on gays adopting! It’s the person that makes a parent, not the gender or marital status, although I am all for banning the poor from parenting, as well as other children. No one should have kids under 30, but I’d be willing to extend that down to 25 in some cases. If it was a male judge, though, the ban probably wouldn’t have been overturned. They’re just more hateful for some reason.

With half the kids being born to singles these days, it’s amazing the religious bigots aren’t trying to take them away!

WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 26, 2008 I’m desert dreamin’ of a bigger piece of land but with a smaller house next time around. Oh, how I miss the desert and hope we’ll one day be back in it, even if it won’t be the same desert!

Tom got $36 for selling CDs and DVDs I’ve won over the last year and $600 for pawning the TV and the Mac which he says actually has a 20” screen and not a 22”. Either way, I’ve still got mixed emotions about the whole thing. I’m glad to get the money we need but tired of these poor spells. Whatever possessed God to decide we don’t deserve to have money? I’m tired of Him letting others have it all for nothing! Meanwhile, we work our asses off just to live like little bums! What’s wrong with THAT picture? I try to tell myself it’s better than living in some third-world country, but this is still bad enough. Why compare or try to play down something when it’s bad enough in itself? It’s good that we’ll be ok for at least a while, but bad that we’re still going through this shit this late in life.

He’s got 4½ months to buy the stuff back for $660. That’s a lot of money if he can only get a shitty-paying job and the horses turn out to be a joke yet again. Of course, I’m still wondering if he’s going to get a job in the first place!

Next time I win something good, I’ll know better. I’ll know that it’s not just for our own enjoyment, but something to pawn next time whatever’s up there feels like whipping our asses with money problems for the millionth time. It sure would be nice to win another TV of the same or greater size and be able to just forget about this one. If not we WILL get the stuff back. I’ve already decided that one way or the other, Jesse’s going to pay whatever we can’t. We’ll pay him back, we’ll give him collateral, but he IS going to help us if we need it. We’re not going to suffer to make a rich man richer!

I do NOT want to do another 40 years or so in the poorhouse! It’s just too hard, too stressful. It’s simply no way to live. That program HAS to work this time around or I HAVE to win big. Even if it’s just enough to buy a place of our own. But I know I should quit dreaming and just accept my fate as it is, for that’s all anyone can do. A poor person is who I was meant to be. Just like I was meant to be short.

TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 25, 2008 Tom took a bunch of bottles to a recycling center he found close by. He said he had to wait a while. I guess a lot of people are recycling these days.

He also said Jesse appeared to have returned to work and that there was very little barking. I heard more than “very little” early this morning.

I guess we whites can be lazy too, because I should be cleaning now, but instead I’m typing this. After this, I’m going to enter sweeps and do more proofreading.

Tom is going to pawn the TV and Mac tomorrow. It’s nice to know we can do this and get the money we need, but it still pisses me off that we not only have to do this but are doing it for a guy who doesn’t need the money. He bugs us, his dogs annoy the hell out of me, and he’s loaded, yet we’re giving this stuff up for him. What’s wrong with that picture?

Jessie says she too, is worried about her and David’s jobs.

I just hope that between the horses, my prayers and spells, and my helping to jinx-write lots of money coming our way, we’ll find our home in the Mojave Desert by 2010. I want to be queen of the desert again! I miss it all; the dry heat, the fierce winds, the wild monsoon storms. The only scary thing about going extreme rural like we’d be going is that here, if he got hurt I could call and an ambulance would pick him up in minutes. Not where we’re talking about going! We’d also have to get a gun if we didn’t get one here. The snakes don’t bother me. I’ve lived with them before. There wouldn’t be bears or wolves, but there could be big cats. Cougars in particular. And of course, I wouldn’t like rejoining the tarantulas, but I’ve survived them before. If I can deal with the baby tarantulas we had invading the Sonoran Desert house, I’ll deal with them again. The idea is to go where no one else is around and to a place that’s not building up, the land being divvied up like crazy. So what if we had to take an icebox and drive an hour a few times a week to go grocery shopping? It sure would beat him having to drive 50 minutes from Maricopa to Mesa and back like he used to 5 days a week.

Gas prices are lower than they were before we went to Oregon!

MONDAY, NOVEMBER 24, 2008 After working on it for the last year and a half, even though it’s been an on-and-off thing, I finally finished my book! Woot! The skeleton of the story is complete. Now it’s time to fine-tune and flesh things out, then do the final proofreading with the reader.

Finishing my book is the good news. The bad news is the same old shit we’ve been dealing with since the early 90s – problem neighbors. See, this is a prime example of why I have a hard time agreeing with Tom that things just happen randomly. Getting next to freeloaders - blacks and Hispanics in particular - for over 15 years is not RANDOM, it’s a PATTERN. That’s some outer, higher force cursing us. Why, I do not know. Were we horrible neighbors ourselves in a previous life or something?

I’m sick and tired of Mexicans being a problem everywhere we go. Everywhere we go! Not once have we had Mexican neighbors who were quiet, civilized and working. Instead, all they’ve wanted to do was sit on their asses at our tax dollar’s expense and make as much trouble as possible. These people simply do not want to get along with anybody. Hell, they LOOK for trouble! I swear it’s like they live to annoy whoever they possibly can. It’s like they’re trying to score a huge record as to how many people they can make miserable during their lives. They don’t want to work, they don’t want to respect others, yet society continues to put them up on this pedestal they don’t deserve to be on, and they continue to give, give, and give while the freeloaders take, take, take. How backward can things get? Why are people kissing the asses of such assholes and giving to such undeserving people?! Meanwhile, we work hard, we respect others, yet we’re pawning our lives away! No one’s giving us shit! Why is that? Are we perhaps too damn white?

Between the shooting, the dogs, and being home all the time, I knew they were not only renters but probably freeloaders as well. And when Jesse, who obviously isn’t much more respectful himself, came down with their address and the name of José G, that pretty much wiped out any lingering doubts about them being welfare bums. The only thing we’re not getting this time around, and I hope to hell it stays this way, is the damn car stereos. I have heard an occasional beat thumping every now and then, but nothing frequent or for longer than a few minutes at a time. Everything else is the same old bullshit, though.

So here’s what happened as far as I know. Dumb cock came down on his ATV at 2:00, and miraculously I slept through it. Tom didn’t take my advice about ignoring him by SHOWING him since TELLING him obviously won’t work, that we’re not going to run to the door every time he runs down here. Earlier, from 6:00 - 6:30, the dogs were barking their asses off and pissing me the hell off, of course, so I had to put the sound machine on.

Jesse came down to warn us that one of the dogs is dangerous. It’s a pit bull. Yeah, I knew trying to restrain them was a crazy idea. I don’t think he got bit, but he wasn’t able to tie them up. Instead, they hurt one of his dogs and it can barely walk, so he took the day off to deal with that. Now maybe the dumb shit will smarten up and start taking them inside if only at night, but I doubt it. Leaving them out would really be asking for trouble, but that all depends on how much he cares about his own dogs, and so far he doesn’t seem to care much. Somehow I doubt he’ll take just a day off. I think that once again, he’s got money and would prefer to just hang out here and fiddle with shit around the land. So we may soon be switching back from barking to engine-gunning. The engine gunning is harder to drown out, but at least I know it won’t be happening at midnight. Also, since he’s proven that he can be just as much of a pest whether he works or not, I guess I’d rather have him around in case of a problem. And I see a few problems that could result from this, and I have to wonder if we’re going to get caught up in the middle in any way. I’m all for fighting back as opposed to not doing anything and sending the wrong message, but I still worry about this.

Jesse says he filed a report and that the more people that complain means they could lose their dogs and not be allowed to get anymore. I laughed at this one of course, knowing he obviously hasn’t had the experience we’ve had with these kinds of people. These are the most defiant people there are, next to terrorists. They will literally die for us or for anyone else and all for the dumbest of things, too. I can guarantee you that if they were given the choice right now to either be shot dead or give up their dogs, they would gladly take a bullet all in the name of not “giving in.” These people aren’t just unwilling to cooperate, they’re vindictive, unreasonable and potentially deadly. These are the kinds of people that shoot people. The shots they fired last week were no doubt in regards to him having just gone down there to tell them off. It’s their way of saying, “We’re gonna do what we’re gonna do, and to hell with neighbors, cops or anyone else.” It’s the people that cops, landlords or city officials can’t even tame that are the scariest. If they can’t get them to do the right thing, who can?

Tom doesn’t think they’ll do anything, but if Jesse succeeds in getting the dogs taken away, or if he finally gets fed up enough to shoot them, what’s to say these crazy freeloaders won’t shoot at us or torch the place? That’s simply the way they handle things. They don’t run, they don’t reason, they don’t negotiate. They get violent. The Phoenix Mexicans only ran because they were illegals with God only knew how many outstanding warrants.

It’s going to take a long time to go about it the way Jesse’s trying to go about it, and if they do lose their dogs, they WILL get new ones while they’re busy crying racism. No doubt about that. It’d be quicker and easier to just shoot them as they got them.

Once again, I’m not sure that rural is the way to go. If it’s going to take a few years to build up the money anyway, we may be better off in a retirement community. The only thing I wouldn’t like about that would be the lack of space, but cursed or not with neighbors, I can’t believe they would come and go a dozen times a day, have tons of company, blast music, and leave their dogs outside 24/7. These things are simply not allowed there. And I know there wouldn’t be any freeloaders there to raise hell or screaming kids bouncing basketballs just a few feet away.

I hope we’ll live to get to decide these things, as well as whether or not we should continue to stay here in the meantime. I asked Tom if he would consider Jesse a pest if he lived alone and he said no since nothing’s being manufactured in any way. Oh, I know these are real issues. It’s just that there’s always SOMETHING. If this dog thing ever did get resolved, which I doubt, we’d just go right into a whole new problem where he’d just have to come down every few days to a few weeks, because he’s too stupid to get that we want him to pick up the phone instead. Or doesn’t WANT to get it. I’m still not sure which is which. He is pretty dumb. He may be good with building and fixing shit, but he’s stupid otherwise. The guy’s too hyper to really talk to, and since he butts in before we can finish explaining whatever, he doesn’t give himself a chance to comprehend. Maybe he has ADD cuz he sure doesn’t stay focused very well. He interrupts us, tells us the same things over and over, and it just gets frustratingly old. It really does!

But if we left, would we really be better off if this curse is just going to follow us everywhere we go? Sure, it’s easy to say that if we’re going to have to listen to the barking and deal with people coming to our door anyway, we may as well do it in the convenience of the city in a bigger place, but this is about as cheap as it gets. Plus, if we moved we would no longer have just dogs to deal with. Then we’d be back with the stereos, the door-slamming, the screaming kids, etc.

I told Tom to make sure he backs up his Mac real good, cuz there’s no guarantee that what goes out is ever coming back. He reminded me that if we can’t afford to buy back the TV and Mac, we’ve got problems a hell of a lot worse than that! Yeah, I know. That’s what I’m afraid of. I still haven’t had any scary dreams, but no one’s called yet either. He originally said he’d be worried if no one called by the 1st, and then he remembered Thanksgiving is this week. He thinks that by next week they’ll call.

The problem is that we may or may not have enough money to have the horses rescue us if a job doesn’t do it first, and there just aren’t any jobs. No one’s hiring anywhere. Although it’s still looking really good, there are only a few dollars in the horse account right now and it’s hit or miss as to whether or not the amount would go up with just one shot. It’s going to take a few hundred to make a few thousand. Because he’s going to get more than we need from pawning stuff, he may use some of that, but I’d rather not have to go that route. I’d rather he get a job and use some of that because it’s “looked good” before. Test profits are one thing, real profits are another. So until I actually see it make money consistently, I’ve got to believe that nothing’s changed, we’ll be poor most of our lives, living in dumps, etc.

Welfare bums really make my blood boil. The fact that “minorities” are getting first dibs on all kinds of golden opportunities tells me that people like this CHOOSE to be the way they are. Meanwhile, my husband, who would love such opportunities to come his way, can’t get them because he is white. It pisses me the fuck off – AAARRRGGGHHH!!!

I cleaned out the fatty fryer and am not going to use it for a while. I was really getting carried away with it, frying French fries and chicken wings like crazy. I’ll fry potatoes in the skillet in margarine later. That way I can use the slicer again. It’s so fun and easy! It’s so cool to be able to slice a potato in just a minute. Before it would take me forever to do it by hand.

What’s weird is that while I had jumped two pounds to 136, I’m almost down to 135. It must be the tea. I ran out of the Oolong tea I’d gotten from eBay up in Oregon, and so Tom got me this tea that contains Oolong, jasmine and green tea from the local store. It seems to help with water and my metabolism just as well, along with running nearly every day.

I’m jam-packed with muscle, though I still have 25 more pounds of fat to lose – ugh! I’ve been rather muscular since my 20s, though it sure would be nice to have a Bowflex machine after the fat has been shed. That’d really show them off! I like for my muscles to show, especially in my shoulders and arms. If it shows through all this fat, I ought to look pretty scary without it!

SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 23, 2008 Amazingly, we made it through the weekend without Jesse coming down. I really thought he’d find something to bug us about. As I told Tom, I think we should stop answering his every beck and call. Maybe if he sees he won’t get a response that way, THEN he’ll start using the phone.

It’s been surprisingly quiet the last few days. I still wouldn’t be surprised if the dogs barked all day tomorrow as soon as Jesse leaves for work, but I’ll be asleep through most of it anyway.

The horses are continuing to test very well. So well that Tom’s starting to think he may be able to quit working (if he ever gets a job in the first place) by the end of the year. It’ll still take a year or two to save up for land and a house and all that, though, as you’re talking a few hundred grand.

Meanwhile, we’ll be reduced to having to play pawn-it this week. I just wonder how many more times we’ll have to go through this shit if the horses don’t work out? How many more times??? Well, they BETTER work out because if they don’t, and if I never win big, we’re very likely looking at being poor for the rest of our lives. If he were in his 20s he’d have a shot at big bucks, but not at 51 years of age.

I dreamt that the horses won $220 the other day. Funny how the number 2 is always present in these kinds of dreams. First they won 2 grand, then 2 million, and now 2 hundred. I just hope these dreams are a sign that yes, they will indeed make money! I’ve never had a negative horse dream yet.

FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 21, 2008 I could’ve easily jumped back on track with my diet, but when our new deep fryer arrived, I knew I just had to be a bad girl! I made fried chicken and later I’ll make French fries. Oh, and of course I had to have caramel-filled candies for dessert!

This fryer is way better than the one we used to have. It’s half the size, but perfect for just two people. He hates chicken so I’m the only one I make that for. This one has a screen so it doesn’t make the mess our old one did and splatter all over. That, and the slicer I have yet to use, sure is a hell of a consolation prize!

The trip to the temp company in Roseville turned out to be a total waste of time. Definitely not a dream come true. This is because I dreamt he got offered a job for $10 with no insurance. Well, he didn’t get offered a damn thing! All they did was tell him to call every week to see what they’ve got. Now why did they have to tell him this in person? They’re obviously not going to give him shit, and I wonder if anyone else ever will either. If the horses let us down again, we’re dead if he doesn’t get something by February. That’s when the car insurance and other things will be an issue, although we probably won’t bother with the renter’s insurance.

He not only let them know how upset he is with them but tried to find out what his prize is. They had a raffle and he supposedly won something which they claim they don’t know about yet. I say it’s all bullshit. There is no prize, there is no job, and so something else better rescue us soon enough.

THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 20, 2008 The good news is that the testing is still going well, and the dogs seem to have been a little quieter today.

The bad news is that it looks like I may not be able to lose any more weight which doesn’t surprise me much. I haven’t been able to lose more than 10-15 pounds since getting over 35. Now I have to decide if I want to keep on dieting anyway to keep the weight off a while longer, or take a break and let it come back, then re-lose the weight again. It would come back in just a couple of weeks, so I’ll probably keep at it a while longer. I’ll exercise no matter what to keep fit.

Tomorrow our deep fryer will be here so I won’t be dieting at all then!

Strangely enough, the temp company called Tom today to set up an appointment for 9:30 tomorrow morning to “see what kind of job he wants.” What he doesn’t get is why they need to ask this when they should have enough information already, and why they didn’t do this a week ago if they just had to do it. This makes us both think they’re probably going to give him a shitty job without benefits or with benefits we could never afford. With the exception of the last two years in Oregon, we’re usually pretty broke, so I was never expecting a high-paying job in the first place. Even when he was making $16 an hour in Arizona, most of the money went to the house so we were still broke. We’re broke when we are, we’re broke when we aren’t! So except for those two years, it’s nothing new. We’ll take the damn $8 - $9 job if we have to, and I’ll freeze my gums and pull my own teeth.

He still thinks the horses will work out, and although he doesn’t know how much time it will take, he’ll eventually be able to make us more money than we need just from that. I hope he’s right, but after so many letdowns, seeing is believing for me. I believe that the longer something is a certain way, the more likely it’s meant to be that way forever. So if we’re in our 40s and 50s and still broke, it’s hard to believe that would ever change, be it suddenly or slowly. For now, though, I agree that it would be nice if he could get a job at a company that wasn’t going out of business and be hired on. Working at temp jobs with companies that are going out of business is no way to have security in life.

Poverty. Couldn’t imagine life without it! They say God picks on at least one member per family and Tom and I are definitely it within ours!

The most important thing is being able to pay for the things we NEED in life. If you can’t pay for the necessities, you’re really screwed! So yeah, we’ll take the shitty pay, cuz shit pay is better than no pay, but it’ll suck that we’ll have to stay here no matter what. I’d prefer to stay here until and if we can ever get our own place, but I also like to have choices. The more choices in life, the better. I hate to have to be locked into anything, even if it’s a good thing, or mostly good anyway.

What’s up with all the foreign friend requests I’ve been getting lately? Not that I mind, but strangely enough I’ve been getting hit with a few a day on Kiwibox. I’ve got friends in Pakistan, Canada, India, Australia, Russia, the Philippines, and probably other places I’m forgetting!

WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 19, 2008 Yet again the barking has been a real nightmare! We turned the air cleaner up to ‘medium’ in the living room to try to drown most of it out, but you can still hear it a little. So as long as people are going to be stupid and not deal with the problem properly, we’ll just have to live with it. I am going to try to get Jesse to move his own damn dogs to the other side of the house at some point. I can’t believe all the barking is other things stirring them up. I think they’re just lonely and sick of being tossed outside and left alone. I don’t think they’re going to get used to no one being around all day. Therefore, if we make it through these tough times but it doesn’t look like we’re going to be able to get a place of our own anytime soon, I’m going to push for a rent deduction. And fuck pawning things, too! He’ll just have to wait till we can come up with the rent, although Tom says it may provide us with extra cushion for other things anyway. Meanwhile, I still don’t see why he can’t take the fucking things in at least at night. Then he wouldn’t have to worry about being woken up at night, and we wouldn’t have to deal with it either.

I suppose Jesse may be down to bug us anytime now. It sucks that he’s finding just as much time to be a pest, even though the guy’s apparently working long hours. He seems to be gone for about 12 hours a day.

I wish it would rain more often. Rain and heat helps shut them up, but it’s been incredibly dry so far compared to last year. Somehow this doesn’t surprise me either, now that we’re here, but it’s been desert-dry. I don’t think it’s rained more than half a dozen times in over half a year.

Tom’s “horsing around” is still seemingly great. I hope this is finally it! Another letdown in this area would be SUCH a cruel tease!

The Supreme Court is going to hear arguments about the gay marriage ban, but you know me, I’ll have to see them win to believe they will. Tom says he would think they’d have a good chance or else why would they bother hearing the argument in the first place?

I jumped up 3 pounds and would really like to not eat until tomorrow so I can undo the damage caused by all those Fritos, shrimp chips and caramel cake in less time, but I don’t think I can do that. As it is that Jimmy Dean breakfast bowl with yummy cheesy eggs, bacon and potatoes is really calling out to me!

TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 18, 2008 I actually feel bad for Jesse now, even though he’s still pestering us with coming down here. I feel bad for him for the same reason I feel bad for us; the renters absolutely refuse to tie up their dogs and are continuing to stir up his dogs like crazy. Last night’s 2 AM disturbance woke him up. This is why I learned years ago to sleep with fans or sound machines. Right now I have my radio off-tuned to a station to create white noise so I can concentrate.

Anyway, he came to give us a business card with the Animal Patrol number which differed from the one I got online. Again I asked if he had Tom’s cell phone so he could save himself a trip and just call if there are any updates on the situation and when he gets their address. He says he’ll give us a ring, but I’ve got to see it to believe it. The guy’s just dumb. Good with building and fixing things, but dumb. Very hard to talk to, too. He interrupts a lot and it’s hard to get a word in edgewise at times. Repeats things a lot, too.

Jesse also says that this weekend he’s going to try to tie the dogs up when they come around and then call AP which would result in the owners having to pay a fine to get them back. He said he’s never had a problem like this before. I know he hasn’t. He’s having it cuz we’re here. WE’RE the one the dog curse is on. I totally believe this, too. I don’t just believe it, I KNOW it. I don’t think he understands, though, since he obviously hasn’t had the experience we’ve had with neighboring dogs, that the only way to solve the problem is to either hope they move or shoot the dogs dead. A fine isn’t going to change anything. They’ll just pay the fine, turn them loose all over again, then cry, “But they don’t DO anything!” See, waking people up and annoying the hell out of them when they are awake just isn’t “doing” anything according to most people. Nonetheless, people just don’t care and some are so damn defiant they’ll gladly pay to make others miserable.

I know I’M not going to try tying them up if I see them down here! I don’t mess with anything inhuman that weighs more than me. If you’re a person and you way more than me and would like to get into it, fine, bring it on. Even if I thought I would lose, I’d rather get beat down than send the wrong message by not at least trying to defend myself. Not defending yourself basically says, “Do it again, cuz I won’t fight back.”

So much for being able to call this place quieter than Maricopa!

Still no job calls for Tom. I asked if he’s stressed out yet, and he said no, not unless there are still no calls by the 1st. Worst-case scenario, he never gets a job, the unemployment eventually expires, and we kill ourselves so we don’t have to die slowly and miserably on the streets and or shelters. Ain’t life grand? Yeah, it’s so damn nice to know we can die in the comfort of our own bed as the carbon monoxide from the charcoals quickly shuts our brains down!

I jumped up a couple of pounds because I’ve been horribly stuck lately and took a couple of days off of dieting. Oh well. I’ll get back on track soon enough.

I decided that since I’m so much busier these days, it’s a waste of time to enter the daily sweeps every day. Multiple entries really don’t up your chances of winning. It isn’t how many entries you’ve got, it’s how many entries other people have got. So I wiped out most of my dailies from My Sweeps, keeping only the instants and the huge cash prizes.

MONDAY, NOVEMBER 17, 2008 ¡Un otro gana bien (another good win)! I almost didn’t get to today’s entry because I’ve been so busy. Busy with the usual work and chores, plus picking out what I wanted from the cooking site I won from. It was actually a consolation prize. They had an instant sweep and it told me I won a coupon for a free Bird’s Eye Steamfresh meal for two on one page, then the next page told me I wasn’t a winner and to try again the next day. So I complained, along with others who were experiencing the same glitch, and was surprised with this generous consolation prize. At first I thought they’d send the coupon, plus maybe an extra one. Then I thought they weren’t going to do anything since I hadn’t heard from them and there are a lot of scam sweeps going on now due to the economy. But today I got the email with the prize code and was like, wow, that’s quite a consolation!

It’s a pretty big site and there was much to go through. We’ve been talking about getting a new deep fryer for too many years now, so I got one of those, plus a fruit and veggie slicer they call a Mandoline. It slices, shreds and juliennes. I especially like it for slicing potatoes!

Speaking of food, I’ve been rather fatigued from having under 1000 calories a day for several days in a row, so I ate a little more today. Better to lose weight slower and feel better, than to lose it faster and be tired.

Got a letter from Mary. She says I should email my mother and maybe accept the spa win and go see her, but as I’ll be reminding her in my letter to her, A, the spa turned out to be a scam. B, my mother decided she doesn’t want anything to do with me. C, I don’t want anything to do with those who don’t want anything to do with me. D, I don’t know what my mother’s email addy is. E, I appreciate her saving our asses, but I don’t wish to associate with anyone even remotely like her.

I did find a couple of email addresses for a certain black bitch that once made my life a living hell when I got curious and searched various names and various sites. You can only get so much info without a premium membership, but I did find a couple on the sick bitch and couldn’t resist sending her my MD journal link. Whether or not she’ll really get it and check it out, I’ll never know. I would think she’d be curious. If she is, she’s not going to leave me any feedback about it. She’ll run to her pig pal instead or some other pig.

Mary says she’s pretty sure my family’s reading my journal out of natural curiosity, being someone they know, especially their daughter. She says they’d be curious as to how they’re described and what’s going on with my life.

I asked Tom what he thought and he has no idea.

Ugh, damn bugs! You KNOW you’re not in a seasonal climate when bugs are attracted to your monitor in November.

It’s under 80º in here now, so I can turn the fan off.

Anyway, I go back and forth between thinking yes, they’re reading my journals, and no they’re not. It’s easy for me to think they’re not because if they’re not interested in keeping in touch with me, then why bother with the journals? But I also think they are because they’re only human, and it’s a way of keeping in touch without really keeping in touch. I know that if I suddenly knew that someone I personally knew had a journal, even if I hated their guts, I’d be naturally curious. It’s just normal human nature, even though my mother doesn’t always do the so-called “normal” thing, so I’ll never really know. I don’t even know if they bothered giving the link to Tammy, but if they did, she’d be more likely to check it out. I’ll admit the idea of it is rather amusing, but in the end, it doesn’t matter. I like to write and so my journals will go on even if no one ever reads another word again.

Jessie’s been busy but is okay. She says her husband infested their computer with all kinds of viruses, so she doesn’t use it much. She also said she’s not looking forward to the week she’ll be spending in Vegas at all because all she’ll be doing is working. She won’t even have much time to eat and sleep. It sucks that we won’t be able to see each other, but oh well.

The dogs were going crazy again at sundown, but I was surprised to learn they were quiet all morning, according to Tom. They’ve also been quiet since it’s been dark, but they could go off anytime. Tom said he heard them in back calling their dogs when he was in the bathroom.

In other news, no job news yet for Tom, who plans to hit the local job center. Unlike in Oregon, though, he can do it online here which is definitely more convenient.

Hopefully, the horseracing testing will keep doing as well as it has been so he doesn’t have to work anywhere but right here, and we can get our own place! I’m not moving with less than 20K, though. Not after what happened the last two times we changed states!

Let’s see, other than the usual ear and teeth pain, plus my annoying ingrown toenail, I’m doing ok. I ended up being up forever yesterday and only sleeping for 5 hours, so I’ll probably crash earlier and sleep longer tonight.

SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 16, 2008 13 pounds bite the dust! My waist is down 4” so far.

Today’s been quieter dog-wise because of the heat. As it is they’re saying it could be 85º tomorrow. Ah, but that’s still not hot enough for me! If the horseracing program works out or I win big, we’re going back to the desert! If we really ever get to build/buy our own place, it’ll probably be in the California desert around the Death Valley area. You know, where Charles Manson and his “family” holed up on some ranch.

The program will be in the testing phase for about a month. We know better than to jump the gun and get our hopes up after just a couple of good days. I hope this is finally it, though, I really do! Even if it were dead quiet here all the time, this place is still too old and definitely too small. In today’s test picks, if he’d have bet $18 for real, he’d have profited by $8. Had he bet $144, he’d have profited by just over $300. Had he bet $400, that would’ve made an $1100 profit!

It’s rather ironic that right after we reapply the Return to Sender spell we get good news from Unemployment, plus these awesome test results.

SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 15, 2008 We got a letter from Unemployment today saying we’d be getting $300 a week! Tom said that’s way better than the $230 he expected. We don’t know yet if we’ll need to pawn the TV and one of the Macs, but if we’re really careful, we could make it on $300 a week till he finds a new job. That’s only $75 less than he was taking home, and since he hasn’t been driving 45 minutes a day or more, he’s been saving on gas. It lasts for 6 months, but we know he’ll certainly have a job by then.

Jasmine said that while she can understand that having to pawn things may be humiliating, you gotta do what you gotta do to save yourselves, and there’s nothing humiliating about escaping death or the streets.

She’s got a point there! We’ve all gotta do things we don’t want to do, and the humiliation of pawning things could never compare to the sorrow, fear and just downright horror of having to kill ourselves to escape a slow, miserable death on the streets. No one wants to die. I just hope we won’t continue to be teased about our survival like this every so often. The stress is a killer! It still is a little scary and it probably will be until he gets hired wherever.

Anyway, the reason the unemployment checks are this high is because of all the overtime he was getting for a while back in the motel.

I won a Blu-ray movie and got another coffee sample. It’s a dark roast, so I don’t know if I’ll like it. I can’t believe the amount of coffee I’ve been winning and receiving samples of lately!

In gay news, they’re protesting up a storm, but I’ve still got to see them conquer all the bigots of this world before I’ll believe they ever will. Some say what happened here was the best thing because it stirred up lots of support all over the country, but until gays have a full bag of rights in every state, I don’t see any improvement coming anytime soon.

The only bad thing, other than the stress of being unemployed of course, is the barking. It’s been terrible lately. Just terrible. Even worse than Oregon in some ways. Like I said, I’m not sure Jesse’s returning to work is a good thing after all. I like how it doesn’t give him as much time to come down and bug us, but it’s just as noisy, so what’s the point?

I’m also not sure if we’re better off here than in the city. I guess maybe we still are because it’s cheaper here. Besides, we can deal with the dogs, but there’s nothing we could do about all the car stereos and door-slamming in the city. Then again, if we do shoot the dogs, it’d only be a matter of time before they got new ones. People just don’t care. I don’t know why they’d get dogs just to toss them outside 24/7 and risk someone getting as fed up as we are, but that’s just what they do around here. They get dogs, they throw them outside, and they basically forget about them. And if the neighbors have a problem with it, tough shit.

We’ll have to just wait and see what kind of job he gets and then weigh the pros and cons of moving or staying. I know I’m just sick of moving and sick of this shit following us every fucking place we go! Then again, if he gets a shitty-paying job, we’ll HAVE to stay here. This is a classic example of how I can’t believe some things don’t happen for a reason. No one “happens” to get this shit everywhere they go. This is a definite curse and it’s been on me since the early 90s. I’m sick of running as I said. We’re not the problem here, the dogs are. So I think we should take care of the problem. If we leave and find a quiet place, we may have a bigger more modern place, but it’d only cost more and it too, would get noisy in just a few months, so we may as well stay put, face the problem and deal with it. The only thing is that it might be a while before we’ve got the money to deal with it properly, the only way it can be dealt with.

For now, we’re not going to say anything in case we need a few days extra to pay the rent, but Jesse needs to control his own dogs, too. They’ve been barking like crazy, more than the renter’s dogs. I don’t know what kind of setup he has up there, but I’d like to see if we can get him to put the dogs on the other side of the house.

Tom’s been taking this extra free time to work on the horseracing program. Not wanting to jump the gun again until it’s been tested enough, he’s been making picks without betting, and so far it looks good. It’s seemed that way before, though, so it still needs more testing time.

Wouldn’t it be oh so wonderful if I was wrong? I mean first I thought what happened last year happened to reunite my family and I, then I came to fear it was just preparation for death after all, only it would be a year later. Well, wouldn’t it be nice if this layoff was meant to be so he could have more time to fine-tune the program?!

FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 14, 2008 Tom had originally planned to sell the TV on Craigslist if necessary, but then he was like, wait a minute. We’ve got a $1000 TV and two $1200 Macs. All it would take is one Mac and the TV to pay the rent, so while he still thinks some job will come through for him before we have to do that, that’s what we’re going to do if need be. He could always pull out one of the old monitors from the shed if he had to till he could buy them back. It’s a bit humiliating to have to be reduced to playing “pawn it” yet again, but at the same time, I thank God for pawn shops!

We’re not completely out of the woods yet (yes, I know that sounds funny since we live in the woods), but things aren’t looking as hopeless as they were.

Unfortunately, no one called today, but Tom said that Fridays are always iffy for interviews. Meanwhile, the unemployment should kick in soon, and while he still thinks the temp agency will come through first, he’s excited about Best Buy and Sears, which he applied for online because they would have excellent benefits. He’s also going to the local job hunt center on Monday and will be within good signal range should he get a call to go in for an interview. He feels that because he’s older and a Vet they’ll really push to get him a job.

Part of what was stressing me out so badly was this huge misunderstanding I had about his past online efforts at getting a job. A few months ago Tom put in job applications and not one of them responded. I was freaking out wondering how the hell he could possibly get a job in a few days or even a few weeks if no one would give him a job for months. That’s when he explained to me about a certain boo-boo he made at the online job search company he used. He wasn’t aware of it for a while and thought the lack of calls was due to the economy. Anyway, he said he wouldn’t work for less than 40K a year! And I guess this company doesn’t let you fix things like this and so now he couldn’t use this service for 6 months to a year. I had to admit it was funny and it felt good to laugh after being so stressed out. So he was asking for 40K at jobs that said they paid $9 an hour! LOL, I just hope this wasn’t a case of divine guidance in a bad kind of way, though, designed to hold us back.

Of course I also had to freak out a bit at the thought of being denied unemployment, but Tom says that’s not possible. He quit his job in Oregon, but here he was laid off. There’s a difference, so we’ve learned. When it comes to jobs and taxes and things like that Oregon and California are like two different countries!

As much as I hate a zillion things in life, I’d still prefer to live. Even if that means having to deal with the renter’s shit like we did today. They fired 3 shots. Tom said he couldn’t tell where it was coming from since gunshots are so loud (it was loud alright), saying that it could’ve come from up at the summit. Sure sounded like it was down in the canyon to me. On the flip side, though, the dogs were quiet all day. It was nearly 80º today, so that was part of it. I swear I wish it would either be hot all the time or rain 24/7! The Klammers are going down to 27º tonight while we still haven’t even come close to freezing. The rain we had sure greened things up a bit around here.

With the pawnshop giving me a bit more hope of rescuing us, I reentered the land of the living a little more today. I didn’t work on my story, but I entered sweeps, did laundry and even cleaned most of the place. I ran too, and went back on my homemade timer diet, ready to kill the 13th pound.

Jasmine says her idea of reincarnation makes it so that if you commit suicide to get out of something, you will have to face that same pain again in your next life. She believes that life is a challenge for every person and that by the end of it, our souls get wiser because we have learned what it is we came into the world to learn in the first place. She doesn’t think the lesson is exactly the same for each person. So when she has thought of suicide as a way out, she didn’t do it because she strongly feels that whatever she’s running from now will definitely find her again and she would have to deal with it anyway. So her argument for “preparing to die” would be that no one is preparing to die but rather everyone is preparing for the next step, the next lesson, the next challenge(s). We’re all working to become better beings and you can’t become something better in just one life so that’s why she believes in reincarnation.

I still don’t believe in reincarnation myself.

THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 13, 2008 Got up at 7:00 and it’s been terrible around here so far. Just terrible. I haven’t seen them yet, but the renter’s dogs are going off and stirring up Jesse’s dogs and so it’s been a non-stop symphony of barking ever since. It’s going to be warm today, so hopefully the heat will shut them up in a few hours from now.

I can’t believe some people, though! I mean that’s really asking for someone to shoot the fucking things! Some people really just don’t give a damn about those around them or even what may happen to their own pets. And sooner or later they’re going to kill someone’s chickens or get into something and someone around here will shoot them. It’s just a matter of time. I can only hope it happens soon because I’m just itching to get a gun and do it myself!

Meanwhile, if Tom gets that job we’ll have a tough decision to make. If noise is going to follow us everywhere we go, maybe we should get out of here and listen to it in a bigger, newer place without the landlord in the picture to conveniently bug us so often. Or maybe we should stay put and continue to put up with it because this place is cheaper and we can save money faster.

Later…

It got into the 80s in here and we had to run the cooler for a while. Meanwhile, just when we thought that for the first time in 16 years, we found a place where barking wouldn’t be an issue, the dogs have been stirring each other up every couple of hours or so. So it’s not much quieter with Jesse back at work. There just has to be a problem everywhere we go. No one’s going to do anything about these dogs. Not the owners, not Jesse, not Animal Patrol, not anyone. It’s going to have to be up to us, but it’s looking more and more unlikely that we’ll get the chance. So that’s one less thing we’ll have to deal with, I remind myself, every time I get sad, mad or scared knowing that our number’s almost up. That and the fact that we’ll get to die in the comfort of our bed and not on the bathroom floor of a motel.

I can’t believe I named the last chapter of my autobiography Paz en las Maderas! We’re at anything but “peace in the woods.” But Tom isn’t ready to face it yet. He said he’d rather not discuss it or make any final plans till after he gets to watch the last car race of the season on Sunday.

Instinctively I start to think of ways out of this mess, but then I’m like, hey! This is bullshit! I’m not going to be reduced and humiliated into begging and pleading for our lives and our survival every 1-3 years! This is utterly ridiculous! I’m sick of being teased with life! It’s maddening, just utterly maddening. In another week, if we last that long, I would think I’ll have descended way down into the bowels of insanity by then. My will to fight to live is already slipping away, so why not my sanity too, right?

I’ve decided that the last things I want to do during my final days on earth is diet, exercise or clean. But dieting is what I’m used to, running makes me feel good, and I hate a dirty, dusty house. I also said I wasn’t going to sweep anymore, but I’ve been doing it just to be doing something. I can’t concentrate on my stories, so We’ll Meet Again Someday, The Influencer and Rainbow Dreams will just have to remain unfinished.

Some would say that suicide is a cowardly thing, but if not wanting to be on the streets means I’m a coward, then so be it. I’d rather be a dead coward, than alive on the streets until it killed us, and eventually it would. Maybe not Tom, but it would kill me for sure.

I’m pretty emotional right now as the pros and cons of living versus dying run through my head in torrents. I want to live to see if my husband and I can one day own our own home again, but I don’t want to live for my eyes to get any worse. I want to lose more weight, but I don’t want to listen to the barking fits day after day. I want to get ahead, but I don’t want to get kicked back like we do every time we get ahead.

I still wonder about the afterlife. Is there any such thing? The last thing I believe in is reincarnation, but if that’s what happens then maybe I’ll be born to a family who truly loves and accepts me as I am next time around. Maybe there won’t be any foster homes or funny farms. Maybe I won’t have a sleep disorder that gets worse with time and that prevents me from working outside of the house and doubling our income. If there is an afterlife, but it’s not reincarnation, I hope to hell there’s no such thing as money there! Money has a way of killing people.

People say I should focus on my blessings when things get rough and remind myself that I have Tom, I can sing, I’m good with languages, I can draw, I can play instruments, I can dance, I learn faster and easier than most people, I’m still prettier than most, I’m psychic, I’m a good writer and a damn good actress, too. But none of these things can save Tom and I in the end.

Later…

I won’t miss getting older and grayer, but I’ll miss my favorite websites.

We reapplied the Return to Sender spell. I don’t know if it’ll help save us any more than the bamboo plants or my spells and prayers will, but we’ll see. I wish we got around to picking up a horseshoe, but we never did.

I just can’t shake the feeling that yes, things do happen for a reason, and what happened last year happened to help prepare me to die with my husband so we don’t have to die on the streets in a much slower, agonizing way. But can anyone ever really be prepared to die?

I also can’t shake the feeling that I was crazy for thinking there was a good God after all that gave a damn about us. Was I really just a naïve, silly little fool in that department?

WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 12, 2008 I’m so bummed out right now. I can’t believe we came this far just to quite possibly end up dead since we don’t want to lose everything and live in shelters or on the streets. I still don’t have doom vibes, I haven’t had nightmares, but no one called at all today. Tom thinks he’ll hear something by noon tomorrow. Let’s hope he’s right!

Then again, do I really want to be saved this time? Would it matter if we had family who cared enough to save us? My mother, for some reason, decided she didn’t want anything to do with us after she helped us last year, so there’s no way I can see her helping us now. Besides, we can’t go running to others for help every year or two. We’ve got to either sink or swim on our own, and if he doesn’t get a job in time to save us, we’ll just have to sink.

His family quit caring about us years ago and made it clear that they would never again be there for us to help us if we ever needed it, and our friends, who don’t live in the area, aren’t able to help us even though I’m sure they would if they could.

So we are right where we were the day they laid him off, waiting to see what happens. Again, I’m not sure that I totally want saving this time. I’m just so tired of trying to get ahead just to get kicked back like this, especially if that good-paying job doesn’t hire him real soon. Quiet or not, I don’t want to live in old bummy places all my life. I don’t want to save and save and save just to end up struggling anyway. I don’t want to grow old and deal with the problems old age brings. I have enough problems as it is with my ear and teeth. I don’t want to have to worry about who’s going to take care of us when we get too old to fend for ourselves.

So I guess I’m okay with whatever happens. There are pros and cons to both living and dying, and I got to do the things I wanted to live to do anyway when we were in the jam we were in last year. I got to listen to my stereo again, have my stuff and wear the clothes that had been packed for so long, hang my wind chimes, etc. So as sad and as scary as it still may be, I’m ready to move onto the next plane, whatever that may be, if that’s what it comes down to.

Death has always scared me. Any form of death at any age has always been a terrifying thought because we can never really know for sure what happens afterward until we’re actually dead. Maybe God really does hate gays and I’ll go to hell for the half a dozen women I’ve been with, even if all but two were one-night stands. Maybe I’ll just float about, able to drop in on anyone or anyplace I want. Maybe I’ll be reincarnated. Maybe I’ll just sink into total nothingness. The point is the same, I’m going to find out someday anyway, so does it really matter when it happens if it can keep us from being homeless? There are just as many bad things in life to escape in our 40s and 50s as there would be in our 70s and 80s.

We would prefer for him to get a better job, for me to win more like I used to before the economy went to hell, for me to be able to go to a dentist, and for us to one day buy a home of our own. But life isn’t usually what we plan it to be. Most folks don’t want to believe this, but it’s true.

We got $100 worth of propane, so at least we won’t have to die cold if it does come down to the streets or death, although the afternoons have been nice. I’ve got the windows open now, the fan running, and I’m not wearing much either. Propane’s down a bit, too. Last time it was $2.34 a gallon and now it’s $1.99.

The dogs haven’t been as barky as I thought they’d be, not used to Jesse being gone all day, and I got a small win in the mail. Just air freshener and Ziploc bags for steaming veggies in the microwave. I guess it’s better than nothing.

Meanwhile, It’s back to waiting on death row. Are we going to make it or not? Guess time will tell and whatever’s meant to be will be as I’ve said before.

TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 11, 2008 Jesse ended up engine-gunning as usual yesterday, but no one came down here. His dogs have been barking on and off since I got up at 6:00, but right now he’s the least of my concerns. I wish I could have slept longer so I wouldn’t have to deal with reality!

The phone rang while we were talking yesterday, but instead of it being a job for Tom, it was a year’s supply of baby wipes for me. I use wet wipes mainly to freshen up during periods, so I figured if these can be used on babies, why not me? So I’ll be getting 24 70-count packs and 12 tubes of cream. Hope I live to get to use them all! What’s funny is that it’s an ongoing daily sweep in which they pick a monthly winner each month, and I quit entering a long time ago, focusing on mostly big prizes. So I’m winning what I haven’t entered for, in a sense.

I hit 135 lbs which I should be happy about. I am, but I wasn’t supposed to hit it because I was too stressed out to eat much, not knowing if we were going to live or die. So much for thinking there wouldn’t be a “next time.” And after we scrambled to save as much as we could to prevent this from happening all over again! Are we being punished for escaping the city yet again, or does something up there just love to tease us that badly financially? Why can’t we just live in peace?!?! Why are we so destined to struggle in poverty like little lazy bums?! Well, we’re NOT lazy, we’re NOT drunks, we’re NOT druggies, so why does this happen to us every few years?! If we can never get rich, why can’t we at least have enough to live on?!

I know a lot of people would be quick to say that suicide is not the answer, and I agree that for most people it isn’t because most people have families who give a damn about them. Tom and I have no family that cares and the few friends we have that would help us if they could, aren’t exactly in the position to do so. Imagine if it was you who was suddenly faced with either losing everything and living on the streets, or dying. I would think most people would agree that the streets are no place to be. That’s just no way to live at all! We would still prefer to be ok, but what’s meant to be is going to be no matter how hard we try to survive. We just may not be meant to live anymore, depending on what happens. And I think I know what’s going to happen. I think it’s kind of obvious. Unlike Tom, I still think things happen for a reason, and I thought that what happened last year happened in order to bring me and my family back together again, but now it looks like it was to prepare me to die. God, or whatever, knew we weren’t meant to live much longer. We only got an extension, not a reprieve. So once again the “trigger-happy psycho” has his gun pointed at our heads, and I can only hope for a miracle to remove it before he squeezes the trigger. Tom could probably make it on the streets, but I certainly can’t. He always promised me he wouldn’t let me die alone, and so that’s why we’d both go together if we do end up backed into the corner I think we’re being pushed into. We’ll know for sure in a few weeks.

Tom tells me that I should have a positive attitude and go on living as normal until and if the end truly comes, but that’s very hard for me to do. Why enter to win prizes I’ll probably never be able to receive?

I can’t believe there isn’t a law that requires temp companies to replace their laid-off workers! As I’ve always said, though, we have so many laws we shouldn’t have, and we lack so many we should have. Yet unless a miracle happens and he’s able to start a new job no later than next Monday, despite the horrible economy, I don’t see any way out of this jam. Therefore, I’ve got to try my hardest to focus on the bad things in life we’ll no longer have to deal with and not the good things we’ll miss. I won’t live to see my 43rd birthday on the 4th, but I won’t get another period either. Yes, I wanted to lose more weight now that I finally found a diet that works for me, but I won’t have to be hungry anymore. I won’t have to deal with my ear and teeth anymore, and if we have to go, now’s the best time of year to go, since December and January will be cold.

It’s still a terrifying thought; the thought of actually going through the steps to kill ourselves, which I’m not going to get into now, then the dying process, then whatever afterlife may await us. I just hope it’s better than this if nothing saves us!!!

Later…

Now we’re not safe from Jesse even after dark! The pest came storming down in his truck right before dark, obviously a little tipsy and very mad, cussing up a storm, saying he was just in back complaining to the people about their dogs running loose all over this land and stirring up his own dogs. Apparently, they gave him a hard time, not surprisingly, insisting their dogs are little sweethearts. But they refuse to tie them up so obviously they don’t have a problem with someone getting fed up enough to shoot them.

Jesse said he was calling the cops and would send them down here so we could back him up, but they never came down. They only went up to his place which is fine with us. You know how we feel about pigs. The pest himself came down again, this time on the ATV, to ask that we call Animal Patrol if we see them. He said, “We could get in a brawl and I could go to jail,” which has probably happened before from the feeling I get, but as he added in the end, he’d rather they just keep the damn things tied up. So do we, but as we didn’t need to bother pointing out to him, people who let their dogs run loose in the first place could care less about what happens to them, or how their neighbors feel about it, and they’re not easily bullied by Animal Patrol either. Still, we’ll definitely call them.

I got the impression he was out all day today because there were tons of barking on and off all day that I feared the cooler weather would bring. It seems to be that we get engine-gunning when he’s here and barking when he’s not. And he’s not going to be here tomorrow. He’s FINALLY going back to work tomorrow, so he says. Hopefully, his extra income will make him all the more willing to work with us if we have any real setbacks, but with the call that came at 4:00, we’re hoping there won’t be any.

The temp agency called and asked for his resume to be sent to a company here in Auburn that makes ceramics. He’d be working 3rd shift, lifting and getting very dirty to the tune of $13.20 an hour. He’d settle for any job, but $13.20 an hour would be awesome! And it would enable us to move if things ever got ugly with the neighbor curse that obviously still hasn’t gone away, even if it’s not technically our neighbors. God, I hope there aren’t any real problems there! We don’t need to get caught in the middle of anyone else’s shit. We really want to stay here until and if we can own our place again.

Most of the morning I spent feeling stressed and doomed. I couldn’t help thinking that just when I was proud of myself for not getting anything but incense for several months, which doesn’t cost much, this shit has to happen. While there are always things we’d like to have, I have been disciplining myself really well and haven’t even wanted dolls lately. When we get so much of something, even if it’s a good thing, we tend to get sick of it. And I’ve definitely had my fill of dolls and my share of dusting them, too. So to be rewarded with financial ruin after being so good about saving, even if I don’t always get the cheapest groceries, would really suck.

To try to calm me and reassure me, Tom pointed out that I hadn’t had any death dreams, which was true. Then at around 10:00, the feeling of doom and gloom suddenly lifted. I didn’t exactly have any positive vibes either, and I still don’t since we’re not officially out of the woods until and if he’s hired before the money runs out, but then the call came and so hopefully he’ll start there real soon. No psychic is perfect, but I definitely have better feelings than I did earlier. He applied for jobs online, including Walmart, and plans to go out hunting in person tomorrow, but hopefully this company will save him the time and gas and just have him come in for an interview tomorrow morning. It would be awesome money, and we’d save a ton of gas. We don’t know if insurance is included, but if not, we should be able to save a hell of a lot faster to get me into a dentist with him working here for $13.20 than with him working in Rocklin for $10.

If Jesse’s working 1st shift, and if Tom works 3rd shift, that may keep Tom from being woken up by him since he’d do most of his sleeping during 1st shift hours. Of course, he could still be a pest after 3:00 or whenever it would be that he got home, plus weekends.

We saw tons of dead trees along the side of the drive when we went to the store and the mail place yesterday. I can see where it would be a lot of work and why it has to be done, too. Dead trees like that could fall across the drive or hit cars and cause all kinds of headaches.

The propane people had an emergency call today, so they said they’d be out first thing in the morning.

Meanwhile, I’m trying to have the positive attitude Tom wants me to have and consider the fact that it’s unlikely the temp lady would’ve asked that he submit his resume for this company if there wasn’t a good chance of him getting the job. I mean, certainly she’s got to have asked for it for a reason, right? Well, I’ll certainly be praying and doing spells!

MONDAY, NOVEMBER 10, 2008 It’s happening all over again, and once again this could be the beginning of the end for us. Just the other day I was telling Tom how it still seemed like he was forever trapped at Comtek without one of us winning big. He couldn’t get fired back when our lives were on the line last year and he’d be late due to lack of gas money, he couldn’t quit because no one else was hiring, and he couldn’t even get laid-off, which he said a part of him wished would happen since there’s a company right here in town that makes LCD lights for slot machines that are hiring that the same temp company is involved with. But you can’t have a temp company transfer you, so unless they laid him off, we knew he was pretty much stuck there until more people started hiring.

Well, they did lay him off. So we’re either on the path to something better for us or on the path to death if the money runs out before we can build ourselves back up since we both agreed we’re not going to live on the streets. I simply can’t. I’m just not cut out for that.

He’s got an application in for the Auburn job which pays a dollar more at $11, and while I know they could call him about it today and things could turn out amazingly well for us, things aren’t usually that easy for us. Or that quick. Things slowly get worse before they slowly get better. The problem is that while we have enough money for food and gas, we’ve only got half the rent money so far, so if things go too slow, we’re TOTALLY fucked. Unemployment would help us for no more than about a month. So here we are again, quite possibly back on death row, and all we can do is hope for a reprieve but try to focus on the good there would be in escaping this crazy world if we can’t go on and it’s either kill ourselves or be on the streets. I was the one who just said the other day how I sometimes thought of killing myself because of how twisted this world is. I was the one who said I didn’t want to grow old and arthritic, with no one to help us or care for us in any way.

Like any human being, I’d rather be able to live and be successful, but what’s meant to be is going to be no matter what. All we can do is try our best. I had stopped my daily prayers to God on Election Day because I was upset with Him for not helping gays. Well, coincidence or not, my ear and teeth have been bothering me since, and now this. So while I’m still upset with Him, and I’m still sorry gays are getting so shitted upon, I’ve got to think of Tom and I first. Tom said it wouldn’t hurt to pray for both. If praying to Him or to whatever forces may hear my prayers means making a better life for us, then so be it. I feel strange praying to something that could allow for the things that have happened to us and to others, but as I said, if that’s what it takes to keep things running smoother, then I shall pray every day as usual and hope that last year wasn’t just a preparation for what could come within a month or two from now.

Meanwhile, just in case Tom and I don’t get to ring in 2009 together, I’m doing what I did last year in the motel. I’m gathering contact info. I hate to put our suicides on Jesse if that’s what it’s going to come down to, but I’ll make sure I leave a note so that our families can access my online journals, our photos, and then decide what to do with our stuff and our bodies. I realize that my parents may want to bury me in Massachusetts while his mom may want him to return to Arizona, but we’re ok with that. When you’re dead, you don’t need your body anymore, so it won’t matter what anyone does with them.

I can’t believe this shit is happening all over again! And if we do survive this one, are we just going to be teased with our survival every year or so?! We also have to pay car insurance and get more propane this month, too.

I can’t help but think of something I’ve been saying for a long time now; that it’s only the good places that are hard to stay in. If this was a noisy apartment, would this be happening? I hate it when the dogs go off, and I hate it when Jesse guns his engines, but I certainly don’t hate it here overall.

Speaking of dogs, Tom said he heard one of them squealing in pain while I had the music on. I hope someone killed one of the renter’s dogs. Then again, if they hurt one of Jesse’s, maybe that’s what it’ll take for someone to finally do something about them.

I’m too stressed out to write much more at the moment!

SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 8, 2008 So Jesse came down yesterday morning after 11:00 to tell Tom that he’s going to bring trees that he’s cut down up to his place to be cut up, then drag the drive with the bulldozer.

Now why did he have to come down today to tell us what he told me yesterday? Does he not think I can tell Tom what he tells me?

Just when I thought something came up, since it was fairly quiet most of the afternoon, the damn kid comes down at around 3:00 on the ATV. He was down twice and I don’t know if he was just looking for something in the shit pile or what because he was in and out awfully fast. Please don’t tell me the thing’s going to come down just for the fun of it!

I’m so glad it’s getting darker earlier, but a part of me wishes it would rain 24/7 just because I’m sick of all the shit he does around here, and I’m sick of him coming down here, even if it’s gotten to be less often. He’s never going to leave us alone for more than a month!

It used to be that if he didn’t bother us by around 1:00, I could pretty much count on him not coming down for the rest of the day. But now his kid is coming down later in the afternoon, and so now I have to consider the possibility of being woken up or having my peace disrupted then, too. Next thing I know he’s going to start bugging us after dark!

I still don’t get the impression he wants to work elsewhere. I think he’s rich be it by inheritance or whatever, and he knows he doesn’t really need to work. It kind of burns me up to know that Tom’s slaving his ass off to give him money he doesn’t need while we struggle to save so I can finally get to a dentist! Finger injury or not, he hasn’t worked since we came here last April. That’s not a sign of a person who needs/wants to work.

I sometimes still think it might be a good idea to keep my eyes peeled as to what else may be out there. I just don’t think we could find anything this quiet, and I definitely don’t think we could find anything this cheap. Not in this state! And even if we could, how would we know the people would be honest with us up front about “the neighbor?” Then again, had Maryann told us who “the neighbor” really was when we first came to check the place out, it’s not like she’d have added that he sometimes gets noisy, can be quite a pest and that no matter how much I ask that he call before rudely coming down, he’s just going to ignore me.

But is he ignoring me, or is he just too damn stupid to get it? I mean, what can he possibly not get about the words, “Please call first when it comes to non-emergencies.”

Either way, he’s not getting the gift card. As I told Maryann in the email I sent, I later discovered that our name and address were on the card. Therefore, it is not transferable. I apologized for getting anyone’s hopes up, and let her know I had books, CDs and DVDs that I’d be willing to sell, but not to worry if she wasn’t interested as we’ll eventually take them to swap meets.

Hey, at least I had shorts on, the windows open, the fan going, and it’s November!

Tom believes that the things that happen to people are simply random events and that God doesn’t control our individual lives. He said if everyone’s life were the same, then he’d believe there was a plan, but because there’s so much diversity in life, he doesn’t think there is any plan.

I asked him why he thought some of the things I’ve prayed for were granted, like that time I was praying for the pawnshop to buy the diamond when we had to play poor-assed bums on the street if he didn’t think God controlled things within our lives. He explained that he didn’t think our prayers literally went to God but to various forces. He could have a point there, but as for destiny, I’m not sure what I believe anymore. It’s hard to believe certain things are just happenstance. It seems we’re all blessed and cursed in certain areas of our lives and sometimes it’s hard not to believe it isn’t supposed to be that way for whatever reason.

Later…

It’s after 10:00 now, so anything goes as far as Jesse goes for the next 7 hours. I appreciate his waiting till Tom’s up, but I don’t think he realizes just how annoying he can be even when we are up with the racket he makes, and especially with coming down here.

Meanwhile, I have a case of writer’s block. I know where I’m going with the rest of the story I’m working on, but can’t seem to figure out the best way to tie up loose ends. Oh well, I guess I’ll figure it out soon enough. Writing books never gets easier. We may get better at it, but it doesn’t get easier.

Later…

OMG, Andy left two messages! His number didn’t show up at all, though, because he apparently forwarded it to our machine. I guess he didn’t want to talk to me directly. He started off by saying he didn’t mean to sound like Chin Fatt Kong’s little sister which made me grin. The messages were basically about the tape I made of his voicemail messages. I don’t know if the tape got damaged or what, but he thinks I have a full 90-minute tape of these messages, yet as I told him in the letter I’m sending Marla, I sent all I had of his messages. He insists that there are blank spots throughout the whole tape and that there are only 10 minutes on each side. I also told him that all I do have are old pranks and edits which we burned onto CDs years ago.

He also seems to think I was mad at him and set out to deliberately punish him. I can see where he would certainly feel that way, but as I tried to explain to him, I wasn’t mad or trying to hurt him in any way when we moved and I basically “wiped the past clean” by walking away from everyone I knew.

He said receiving the tape is the only chance I have of him forgiving me for hurting him, but since I can’t send him a tape I don’t have, I don’t expect to hear from him again or for him to visit the links I enclosed. I gave him the links to my online journal at MD and Webshots.

Lastly, I told him that while nothing could undo me dumping him or hurting him, I am very sorry for being an asshole. What he does from here on out is up to him. I told him I’d love to know what’s been up with him (and this next part is quoting from my letter), but the phone’s not a good way to go about that. It’s not only the most costly, but we live in a trailer in the woods on an 8-acre parcel of land that’s surrounded by huge mountains and trees and flowers and chirping birds and basket weavers that sit and smile and twiddle their thumbs and toes. That means the metal trim around the trailer interferes with the cell phone’s signal. We do have a landline, but it’s usually full of static. So we don’t use the phones unless we have to. I hope you can write or send an email.

So Tom, who usually goes to the mail place and the store right by it on Saturdays, just took the letter to be mailed to both Mary and Marla, since he didn’t give his own address.

He sounds EXACTLY the same, as both Tom and I agree. As Tom pointed out, it’s kind of sad that he still wants to sit and listen to these tapes after all these years. Mostly because of Quinn of all people, who abused him and then killed himself.

And “tapes?” Sounds like my suspicions about his life being the same year after year like Paula’s might be correct. He probably doesn’t own a computer, an MP3 player, and maybe not even a CD player. He’s probably still broke, waiting tables, and just as loveless as always, getting only sex once in a blue moon. He’s definitely still smoking pot. He sounded high on the phone.

Jasmine and Amy said people shouldn’t forgive others for what they can give them, but out of pure emotion. She has a point there, too. I already gave him what I had of his and so now the rest is up to him. I’m not going to work at convincing him, that’s for sure.

Got a letter from Mary. She still hasn’t heard anything about the case. Gee, what a surprise, huh?

THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 6, 2008 11 pounds down, 26 more to go!!! That helps make up for some of the sadness, disgust and rage I’ve been feeling. Really, I’ve never hated Mormons & Catholics as much as I do now (no offense to any good ones out there who may be able to live their lives without having to control others who are different than them)! Even though I wouldn’t want to be with anyone other than Tom no matter how much I may flirt or fantasize along the way, I’m still one of “them.” And even if I’d been strictly dickly all my life, I’d still feel the same emotions I feel right now.

Anyway, I knew I was getting ready to hit 136 pounds. I can tell when my body’s getting ready to drop another pound when my end-of-the-day weight doesn’t go up as high as usual. I woke up yesterday just a 10th away from nailing it.

So I’m still upset and appalled by the way gays have been shit on and dehumanized all over the country. What happened in California is definitely the worst thing that happened, but what happened in Arkansas is almost worse than Arizona and Florida. It’s scary when people will spite themselves in order to spite others cuz those can be more dangerous. Half the moms these days are single yet in banning singles from adopting/fostering, they’ve spited their own as well as gays, plus any children involved who just might’ve gone to a loving gay and or single home, versus an abusive all-mighty straight married couple. Don’t be fooled. Just because I’m too selfish to give up my life to kids, not that we could afford to, doesn’t mean I hate them and want to see them suffer!

I had been looking so forward to this election ending because I was getting so damn sick of hearing about it and the people involved, but I STILL see Obama and Palin’s faces everywhere I go on the web!

Yet another victory for blacks and another slap in the face for gays. Sick. Just sick. Blacks continuing to get ahead is fine. It’s fine for anyone to get ahead. But gays getting set back half a decade is not. For a country that has such a bleeding heart for its troublemaking blacks and Hispanics, it sure loves to discriminate against its gays any way it can. I still feel like it will be 20 years at the very least before there are any real obvious signs of progress for them. As it is it took them 25-30 years to go from it being illegal for simply being who they are to being able to marry in just two states. And like I said before, it wouldn’t surprise me if they lose that, too.

To help make up for the sad world we live in a little more, I won a Country Music prize pack valued at $150. It consists of 8 CDs, a book about June Carter Cash autographed by John Carter Cash, a pocket watch, and gourmet coffee.

I also won a PC game Tom’s looking forward to trying out. We’ll sell most of this stuff eventually. I just hope it’ll be by choice and not because our survival depends on it!

Jessie said she doubts she’ll be able to come up and see us in January because she’ll be working 12-14 hours a day.

The annoying Jesse was quiet two days ago and stayed that way till 3:30 yesterday afternoon when his youngest son came down a few times on the ATV to get stuff from his shit pile I wish he’d take up the hill with him. They were cutting trees towards the front section of the land. So again I had to wait to go to sleep, fumigating over there always being something, and wishing the landlord didn’t live here.

Then the renter’s dogs went up and started shit with Jesse’s dogs who chased them off. Then they came down here and Jesse came down when he heard me screaming at them. He recommended we get a gun or a BB gun. Gee, I never would’ve thought of that! He showed me the slingshot he has, saying they’re cheap and you can get them at the Roseville auction. He showed me how to fling a rock with it.

He said he’s looking for work, trying to get in on some new casino and that after next week he won’t be bulldozing, cutting, etc. I have to see it to believe it! I had no idea there’d be so much damn activity on this land! He won’t start till around 11:00, though.

I told him we were getting to the dump on our own, and he said he was going and could take some trash. I told him we’d keep the recyclables for now and he just took the old suitcase that has been on some journeys I definitely don’t care to remember.

I mentioned the flooring GC I won and sure enough, the project junkie said he might be interested if he could see a picture of it. He doesn’t have a PC, so he told me to call Maryann and get her email, which I did. I’ll be sending her a link she says she’ll look at over the weekend.

WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 5, 2008 Right now I am extremely sad, mad, disgusted and ashamed of the bigots of California and the God above that continues to allow gays to get shit on by them. The bigots only won by a few percent, but a win is a win, and so once again it’s back to legal discrimination against gays. I had become so proud of this state, too.

Let me vent about some other issues first.

Jesse’s been driving me absolutely crazy with the engine gunning. I mean CRAZY! Especially today. He was grading the drive and whatever else he could think of for nearly 4 fucking hours and I was forced to be up much later than I’d have liked because the thing was unbelievably loud. He’s become much worse than the dogs. It used to be once a week or so he’d get on my nerves with the engine-gunning, but now it’s every 2-3 days. Sometimes I wonder if we got that good a deal after all. If we’re going to have to listen to people’s shit everywhere we go, we could’ve done it in a more modern place in the convenience of the city. On the other hand, we’d have had to pay utilities and it’s still quiet here more than he’s noisy.

But enough is enough already with all the loud engines! When is it going to stop? And when is this cock going to return to work? He can’t be out of work because of his finger or else he wouldn’t be able to do all the shit he does here. He’s out of work because he’s a rich, spoiled, pampered little boy who can afford to stay home and annoy us. Especially me. Remember, I’m the one who can’t sleep through noise, and I’m the one who works from here.

Tom said he saw the grader parked by the fork and that it’s an old, ancient thing. Great, that means he’s not done yet and that he’ll be at it again around the time I want to go to sleep. I’m tired enough cuz of this asshole! I was up nearly 20 hours and only slept for just over 6 hours. Maybe I ought to call up there at 3:00 in the morning and screw with his sleep for a change.

The MedSpa people have changed their story and are now telling me I wasn’t one of the 3K winners and that I only won a $150 certificate. They’re still scamming assholes. That’s not a prize, that’s a DISCOUNT.

As expected, Barack Obama is now president and I have mixed emotions about that, too. McBigot would’ve been worse, who almost won to my surprise, but I don’t think Obama should’ve been elected simply because he’s black. Yet people have been favoring blacks since the L.A. riots in ’92, and it’s obviously not going to end anytime soon.

The only good thing I’ve seen in all the elections is that women didn’t lose their rights in a couple of states that were trying to ban abortion, and they legalized doctor-assisted suicide in WA. It’s also legal in Oregon. That’s the way it should be everywhere. We put animals to sleep that are suffering, so why not people? Then again, animals do get more rights than some humans, don’t they?

Anyway, gays really got fucked over big time. They reset the constitutional amendments in Florida and Arizona defining marriage as between straights only, and now AR is discriminating against singles from adopting or being foster parents (even though half the kids born these days are to single women what with the way so many guys run when they learn their woman’s pregnant) and admitted it was actually gays they were targeting. So they shit on their own kind to shit on gays.

These bigot’s logic is totally twisted as far as why they think gays shouldn’t marry. They say it will encourage others to be gay, which is pure bullshit. You can’t encourage gayness any more than you can straightness. We are who we are. Period. The day we can choose who we’re attracted to is the day we can choose what flavors and colors we like.

Then they bring up the issue of gays not being able to produce kids, which is also BS or else they wouldn’t adopt or have artificial insemination. The population isn’t rising because more people are having kids, but because people are living longer. If anything fewer women are said to be having kids because of the emphasis on work, the economy, whatever. So if fewer straights are getting married and fewer of them that do are having children, and more children are being born to single mothers, then why aren’t these idiots running to ban straight marriage? After all, it isn’t producing nearly as many children as it was 50 years ago and this seems to be such an issue for them. These assholes are so stuck in a time warp and not only seem to hate gays, but singles, single mothers, and people who are married without kids! If all marriages supposedly produce kids, then I’m amazed they don’t try to keep people like Tom and I who don’t want any from marrying, as well as old people and infertile people. Oh, and of course they’re so sure that gays will raise gays. Like straights only raise straights, right? I can’t believe some people are as dumb as donkeys!

They claim they’re not trying to change what gays do and that they just don’t want them to marry, but that IS trying to change what they do. I agree that it’s ok to hate someone. You can think it, you can say it, you can write it. But you shouldn’t have the right to make their own personal decisions for them! And they shouldn’t be jerked around where sometimes they have rights, sometimes they don’t. Why won’t they either just give them their rights and leave them alone, or forever deny them? Why keep cruelly teasing them and going back and forth?

There have been times I’ve actually thought of killing myself even when things weren’t going all that bad in my own life simply because I’m so sick of living in such a sick, unfair, crazy and twisted world. The whole thing just makes me want to throw up!

Maybe gays should incite a riot. Hey, it worked for the blacks. Ever since ’92, the laws have been favoring them like crazy and they’ve got more rights than whites ever had. A white person can be charged with a hate crime against a black person, but since when have you ever heard of a black person being charged with a hate crime against a white person? You haven’t because reverse discrimination is perfectly legal!

And so all that money was spent on legally discriminating against gays that could’ve gone to the hungry and the homeless. I’m still not sure what money has to do with influencing people’s opinions anyway. I’d still feel the same whether I was rich or poor. Still, if that many people hated me I’d just want to give up and crawl into a closet and just hide away from the world forever. I’ll bet a lot of gays probably feel hopeless right now, too.

Tom said not to let this fool me into thinking that most people hate gays. He insists that most people don’t vote and that most of the people voting are the ones who hate gays. It’s also been said that older people tend to hate them more and that as they die off the world will be a better place for gays, but I have to see it to believe it. For now, it looks like things are getting worse. Tom says it’s only a matter of time before it’s back on the ballot and passes, but what’s the point? It’ll only get shot down again a few months later. What’s the point of getting ahead if you’re going to just be torn down? I also heard that males tended to be more against gays, but they’re more against everything from kids to women’s rights and everything in between so this doesn’t surprise me. I almost wish that only women could be gay because then they might’ve won. Gay women are still more accepted than gay guys.

I agree, though, that while the younger folks may be more loud, rude and obnoxious, they sure are less hateful. And yes, in another 20 years, a lot of bigots should be dead. I know I was thrilled to see the pope go after the way he’d openly flaunt his hatred towards gays.

As Tom and I agree, if most people believe in something, it’s usually for a reason. So I started to wonder what if all these people are right? Could all these people who hate gays so much (and I still think 70 to 80-something percent do, unlike Tom who thinks most people don’t care) be right about God seeing us as evil sinners and sending our souls to burn in hell forever? Tom doesn’t believe in heaven or hell, saying he doesn’t see how any place could be either all bad or all good. I don’t know that I believe in heaven or hell either. I don’t know what to believe. I do know that I’d still rather be who I am and take my chances than be someone I’m not and find it was all for nothing. And while we can never know for sure what, if anything, happens to us after we die, I don’t see why God would create a group of people He hated, as much as the way He allows them to be treated suggests He hates them at least somewhat. I think the fucking bible is what started all this shit. A group of hateful people got together, bashed gays in it, called it God’s word, then managed to brainwash an awful lot of people throughout the decades, and the hate spread like cancer. This is why I know I could never be religious in any way. Too many rules and restrictions that simply make absolutely no sense to me. Seriously, I’m sick of this “the bible says” bullshit. If the bible suddenly said that people must torture and kill their loved ones, would they do it? Probably so! People sicken me. They really do.

Speaking of God, I’m not going to cuss Him out and risk Him retaliating by making our lives as miserable as He helped make it last year, but I’m through praying. No one who can allow for such mean and unfair treatment of gays (and others for that matter) is any friend of mine. When He’s ready to give them a break, then we’ll see. For now, though, if He doesn’t care about groups of people, why would He care about little ole me? It isn’t just my own misfortunes and gay people’s misfortunes that I get fed up with, but what about the children who are still molested and murdered? What about the women who are still beaten and raped? What about arranged marriages and the legal murder of women in the Middle East? Our military now not only legally discriminates against gays, but it now legally tortures people in Cuba! As Tom said, he’s all for executing them, but torture opens the door to all kinds of horrendous possibilities.

Of course, so does the bigot’s victory over gays. This is going to go to their heads. Once they see they can do this in California where there are tons of people, they’re going to go after gays in Massachusetts and Connecticut. Maybe even Jews. Or maybe they’ll just target short people or redheads, anyone they can get away with picking on.

The ban won almost all of SoCal. I was surprised. With all the people down there I’d have thought it’d fail almost as badly as the coast. Again, 10-year-old “singer girl” didn’t dream of this when she’d go California dreamin’! First this state tried to kill us while it drove me batty for 8 months, now this. Tom just said it was cuz there are so many Mexicans down there and they hate gays. Figures, huh? Yet THEY expect to be accepted and treated fairly.

It just enrages me to hear the blacks gloat about yet another historic victory, but what about gays? When are they going to get theirs? I wish to hell someone would assassinate him!

MONDAY, NOVEMBER 3, 2008 Jessie said she didn’t think she’d be able to go to that spa because they not only wanted $150, but they want money for treatments that runs between $175 - $3K. What a fucking liar that Lisa is! She said it’d be “no cost” to whoever I recommended. I’m sick of all these scam sweeps the shitty economy has brought about. Usually, they just don’t deliver the prizes, but in this case, it’s not even a “prize.” It’s just an opportunity to buy something very expensive. No wonder my mother hung up on her right away. She was smart enough to know better. So yeah, their not writing isn’t anything personal. It’s like what Tom said; they’re just respecting my wishes about not wanting anything to do with them. Not communicating is what we’ve been used to for the last decade anyway. Besides, no normal mother dumps their kid for something they may say that they disagree with anyway, or else I’d have been dumped before I could get out of diapers. I’m sorry if I judged them too harshly and I’m sorry I was hard on myself at times. I didn’t say anything wrong in my letters. I know it and they know it. But this doesn’t change the fact that I have seriously mixed emotions where they’re concerned. I’m still very grateful that they saved us, but they’re still people I don’t like and that has caused me a lot of pain and misery for many years.

I can’t wait for this fucking election to end! I’m so sick of seeing all the messages of hate all over the web. Everywhere I turn it’s nothing but Obama, Palin and gay marriage bashers galore!

Got the game points that Kiwi owed me. Of course this was right after I put in for a glitter cube mind teaser, not knowing if I’d ever get any more points, but it’d still be nice to have. I just hope they send it because they haven’t sent the CD yet and I never got that sticker sheet either.

SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 2, 2008 I’m so mean, I know, but I just couldn’t help myself. I just had to play with them bigot’s heads at their bullshit “protect marriage” site. In the feedback section, I left a few highly explicit and graphic paragraphs of a highly intimate nature. And I assure you the people getting it on were anything but straight! HA, HA, HA, HA, HA, HA!!!!!!!!

Just how do you protect something that was never hurt in the first place anyway??? And I wish people would stop calling the bible God’s word! God didn’t write the bible, people did.

Still raining cats and dogs here and it’s going to be doing that till Tuesday. No need to worry about wildfires now!

Tom and I are having a relaxing weekend. If only my teeth didn’t hurt!

SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 1, 2008 Woke up at 3:30 to pee. The annoyance up the hill was doing his engine-gunning thing and I thought I wouldn’t be able to get back to sleep, but I did. Ever since I got up at 6:00 it’s been raining. To see that it was 81º in here put a smile on my face. I’m definitely NOT in Oregon anymore!

[whywishesarehorses]

Limitless - 2021 Pacific Crest Trail Ride Through

3 days ago, on April 7th, Jess Goodlett started the ride of her dreams - a 2,650 mile ride of the entirety of the Pacific Crest Trail, border to border. She is attempting this ride alone, with two BLM mustangs she has trained herself. Jess is part of the Limitless team, a group of women going on various adventures to prove that the things women can accomplish in pursuit of their dreams are Limitless. This ride is fantastic, and Jess is still sourcing financial support. She has venmo, PayPal, and merch set up if you are interested in helping out!

This is similar in spirit to the idea of Unbranded, and Jess has been in contact with some of that team for advice.

Below I've shared a blog post she wrote discussing the trip and her plans! Under a readmore because it's LONG.

Time to Make this Official.

Yes, the ride is on.

I am planning a thru-ride on the Pacific Crest Trail for 2021.

My name is Jess Goodlett. I am 25 years old, and I have been a part of Limitless since the beginning.

📷Photo of the Limitless group from 2017

People seem to say that I am pretty outgoing and adventurous. When I set my mind on a goal, I definitely become very determined to make it happen. Most of my family and friends were not too surprised when I dropped the news that I was going to continue the plan to attempt a thru-ride on the Pacific Crest Trail. This trail has been on my mind for years, and it was actually how Limitless got its start.

My trail name is Raindance (this is how I got my trail name), and these are my BLM Mustangs, Makani (10-year-old bay roan mare) and Malana (7-year-old chestnut mare).

Also, here is little Zendaya. She is too young to join in on the fun next year, but maybe she will get the chance to tag along in the near future.

📷Zendaya (Daya for short) is my youngest mustang. I hope that she will be able to join in our an adventure in a few years. She is only 3 right now, so she still has some growing to do.

Here [is a photo] of me from a few years back, when I was able to set foot on a small section of the Pacific Crest Trail. This is the moment that sparked up the passion for the trail again after dealing with nostalgia from the group’s ride on the Colorado Trail in 2017.

I had convinced my dad and uncle to drive a rental car up some narrow mountain roads just to be able to set foot on part of the Pacific Crest Trail near Big Bear Lake. It felt magical getting the chance to hike a very small section of the trail. It was like getting a small taste of a big dream. My time on the trail may have only lasted 30 minutes, but it made me realize that I was still very passionate about this trail even after my experience on the Colorado Trail.

📷Repping Limitless while dreaming of a thru-ride on the Pacific Crest Trail.

Making Plans

The plans have gone back and forth a few times, but the goal is to set out on trail in the Spring of 2021. For me, there are a lot of emotions tied in with this thu-ride. I am sure there will be a lot of time for reflection on the days leading up to the trail, including each and every day spent out there with my horses.

This is a big trek. Every time I look at the maps, I feel excited. Maybe a little nervous. But I am focused on what is ahead. The days are flying by fast, and I know the day that I head out to California will be here sooner than I can even imagine. A lot of my time right now is being spent with the horses, and any additional free time goes toward researching the trail.

Let’s talk about the trail.

📷Hike at Kendall Katwalk (part of the PCT) near Seattle, Washington near Snowqualmie Pass

What is the Pacific Crest Trail?

📷Map of the Pacific Crest Trail

The Pacific Crest Trail is a border to border trail that starts at the Mexican border and travels through California, Oregon, and Washington to the Canadian border. The trail is 2,650 miles long, and it is open to both hikers and equestrians.

There are only a handful of completed equestrian thru-rides that are documented. I am sure there are a few more that have gone unmentioned online, but to be honest, it is much more likely for people to plan a thru-hike along the Pacific Crest Trail. Us thru-riders are very few.

For those who may not know, a thru-hike or thru-ride is a long distance trail that is completed in one go (typically one season) – from one end of the trail to other end. This differs from section hiking where one may just complete small sections of the trail instead of the entire length. Though, what a thru-hike or thru-ride is for one person may differ slightly for another. Sometimes trail conditions during a certain year results in hikers or riders having to alter the original path on the trail to detour things like a fire or trail closure. But this does not take away from the fact that the trail was completed if they reach the end. As they say, hike your own hike, or in this situation – ride your own ride.

On the note of section hiking and riding, the Pacific Crest Trail is also a very popular option for those looking to just complete certain sections. According to the Pacific Crest Trail Association (PCTA), there are a total of 29 sections: 18 sections in California, 6 sections in Oregon, and 5 in Washington.

Elevation ranges greatly throughout the entire trail, along with a vast variety of terrain. The Pacific Crest Trail travels over many mountain passes and through many wilderness areas, national forests and parks.

More information can be found on the PCTA official website.

The Difficulties of Planning a Thru-Ride

Taking on a thru ride comes with a lot of its own types of challenges that hikers will not have to face. Adding in one or two horses on trail adds its own difficulty especially when it comes to the logistics.

As I am researching the trail, I am trying to answer questions such as: How are the water sources in this section? Where can I camp? Are there any grazing restrictions? Any trail concerns?

How will I resupply? Where are some places I may be able to pull the horses off trail to rest them? Who will be my emergency contacts? And the list goes on.

I cannot really plan too far ahead with any set plans, but one of my biggest obstacles will be the snow. Trail conditions can change daily, and I have no idea how the winter is going to look at this moment. Because of the length of the trail, some decisions will not be made until I am on trail. I expect many unplanned things to happen. That is just the way it is, and that is why the focus right now is to study and learn the trail as much as I can.

📷Photo of Makani from our 2017 ride on the Colorado Trail.

Why the Pacific Crest Trail?

It was 2013 when I first heard about the Pacific Crest Trail. I was actually scrolling through Facebook when I came across a post in an equestrian Facebook group where a few people were talking about long distance trails. The main topic was riding horses from coast to coast ,but then the Pacific Crest Trail was brought up in the discussion. It was the first time I had heard of an established border to border trail. I was very interested and after a few quick searches online, I quickly became obsessed with this trail and the idea of completing a border to border trail horseback.

Though, I knew I was not ready at that time to take on such a big adventure. I kept the idea stored away in my mind. It would sneak back into my thoughts every so often. When it did, I would spend hours researching this trail and looking for any information I could find for equestrians. I told myself that one day… one day, I would ride the Pacific Crest Trail.

It wasn’t until 2015, when I decided to reach out to some people about the trail. I talked with Gillian Larson, who had completed the trail horseback in 2014. She has been a big inspiration to me and to many others. Over the years, she has now completed the Pacific Crest Trail two times horseback. She has also completed the 800 mile Arizona Trail, the 500 mile Colorado Trail, and the 3,100 mile Continental Divide Trail, which is another border to border trail. (Seriously, check out her Instagram. Her photos and videos of the trails are absolutely breathtaking!)

I also spoke with Ben Masters of Unbranded who encouraged me to get out and “just do it.”

This is when I started to think about friends who may be interested in riding with me. Initially, I reached out to Devan Horn about riding a border to border trail. Devan was the first person I ever thought of to even contact about a thru-ride. She is adventurous and possibly the only person I knew at the time who would have been up for such a challenge. I mentioned to her that I was interested specifically in riding the Pacific Crest Trail. We talked briefly about a long distance trek, and we told each other that we would keep in touch.

A few months passed, when Ragan Kelly reached out to me about a long distance trail. She had spoken with Devan who had mentioned my name to her. Ragan knew a few more people interested in a thru-ride, and that is how Limitless began.

Now, the Pacific Crest Trail is a much longer trail than what my friends and I rode in 2017 with the Colorado Trail. But as I mentioned, the Limitless team originally started with the goal of riding a border to border trail together.

Our exact plans were to ride a shorter trail, the Colorado Trail, in 2017. Then, we wanted to ride a border to border trail, the Pacific Crest Trail, in 2020. But since the start of Limitless in 2015, a lot of things have changed.

When we completed the Colorado Trail, we could all agree it was a once in a lifetime opportunity. Out of the group, I was honestly one who did not see myself fully committing to another thru-ride anytime soon. My end of the ride on the Colorado Trail was not what I wanted. Also, what they do not warn you much about long distance trails is that life continues on in the “real world.”

Life. Work. School. Other hobbies and interests. New goals and new opportunities.

There was nothing negative that happened within the team. We are all really good friends and forever will be. I love each and every one of them wholeheartedly. Though, we do not get the chance to see each other often, we will forever hold onto the memories that we created together on the Colorado Trail.

So wait… you are doing this trek solo?

Yes, that is correct. Solo. I am riding the trail alone with my two horses.

I will be honest. This was never my plan. Originally, I was unsure of a solo trek. I did not want to ride this trail alone.

When plans for a 2021 trek started, this thru-ride was going to be made for two riders. But plans changed yet again, and I had to make a decision to either hold off riding the trail or to just go after my dreams.

I know the pros and cons of going by myself, and I know the pros and cons with riding with others. I have heard the recommendations. I have heard the concerns. And with that said, I will continue on with planning this trek solo. This will allow me to put all of my focus on my horses’ needs to get them safely through the trail.

Though, I do hope to have a few friends join in here and there for sections.

How long will this trail take?

This trail will approximately take five to six months to complete. The horses and I will average 20-25 miles per day. I am also factoring in plenty of rest days for the horses. We are starting early enough to get through the hotter, dryer Southern California sections, but we will very likely have to skip around and circle back to some parts of the trail because of snow. In order to complete the full trail in one season, we need to be done sometime in September before the snow starts back up in Washington.

So What is Next?

I have a little over half a year left to get ready for this trek. I am looking forward to sharing our progress leading up to the trail and sharing the adventures that are to come.

[anti-porn-unicorn]

I’m a girl (18 now) who got exposed/addicted to pornography at a really young age, and I wanted to share my specific story on this blog so that the platform can get it out there.

Under the cut is my full story, and it’s a little long winded, so if you don’t want to read the whole thing, I bolded in purple the general topic/idea of that section. Just look for whichever of those interests you and the section will be about that. The first and last paragraph are good for context and end goal, though.

Thank you.

I don't fully remember my first exposure to porn. I know I was in third grade (6-7 yrs old, I had skipped a grade). The reason I had wanted to share my story, in fact, is because I don't see many stories with circumstances similar to mine. Most I see have at least one of the following 'modifiers', for want of a better word. Most I see have at least one of the following 'modifiers', for want of a better word. Most I see have at least one of the following 'modifiers', for want of a better word. 1. The person is a victim of CSA/grooming. 2. The person was at a generally pubescent age (~11-14). And/or 3. The person experienced porn as a quick disturbance. To be clear, these stories are as valid and important as mine, and I simply think more perspectives make evidence of the effects of porn more airtight. I've never been the victim of SA, harassment, or grooming, ever in my life. My story shows the effects of exclusively porn.

The first memory I can recall about this was actually the first time I got caught. I was 6 yrs old, and very into video games,so on this day, I was playing a 3D porn game on my crappy hand-me-down laptop. I kind of knew that what I was doing wasn't acceptable, so I was sitting in my room in the corner as far from my door as possible. My mom walked in so I just slammed the laptop shut because I wasn't that good at hiding things. My mom obviously asked what I was doing, and I tried to keep her from looking, but it was right there when she reopened it. This is where the battle of it begins.

From ages 6-14 I don't have a good timeline of events but a few pop out that exemplify the severity of the issue. These are very probably out of order.

I got an iPod Touch for Christmas (~6-7), and every night I would watch porn on it until they caught on. I literally still remember some names of the sites, most that don't even exist anymore. My parents have always been amazingly caring. I couldn't ask for more. During the earlier ages (~6-8) I was put with a child therapist for fear of a deeper issue. My parents started either taking technology away in the night and/or setting restrictions on the internet. Unfortunately, between my slight tech-savvy, and my crazed addiction at this point, this wasn't a solution.

The addiction got DEEP. It warped my brain. When I had no technology, I used everything I could find.

Whenever I had access to less restricted internet, I used it. Once I asked my older cousin to use her iPod and watched it on there.(she noticed and told my mom. I remember my mom had asked me "Is there anything you need to tell me?", and I knew what she meant, but I just said "nope!" and walked away. At one point my dad's work provided him with a Blackberry, and I asked him could I play one of the built in little games. Once I had it, I watched porn. (when I gave it back to him he pressed the "back" button, and I was caught.)

I used Youtube. This was when YouTube was way less moderated (back when the app was a little old timey TV). I learned I could look up "striptease" and "nip-slip" and other stuff like that, finding more soft-core videos that could suffice when the internet in general was locked down.

I straight-up found out ways to disable the restrictions. Once I found out my mom's PIN for the controls, I went and disabled them, but changed the PIN so it would look like they were still on, and so that she couldn’t access and re-enable them. (I made it 7399. Spells "sexy". My mind was a mess.)

My parents bought a book called "The Classical Tradition". I'm just learning now as I'm looking it up that it was a Harvard Reference Library book (probably why it was so damn thick) about ancient Greek and Roman culture. I didn't know that. I had realized that sprinkled throughout the book there were pages that were more glossy than the rest, which you could see from the sides of the pages (the book was HUGE). These were the photo paper, which had the classical paintings and sculptures. And because these had nudity (Think "The Birth of Venus" type) I would regularly flip through this book when I needed a "fix". Absurd.

My parents got me an American Girl book that was made to ease worries about the developmental years. The pages on breast development / the anatomy of the vagina were what I looked at the most. When my parents had gotten me the child therapist, there was the logical fear that I might have been molested. The therapist gave me a book where there was a page with two cartoon mice, a boy and a girl. They were wearing swimwear/underwear and the point of that was "anywhere the clothing is covering is somewhere that adults can't touch you without telling.” They might as well have been stick figures, there was NO detail. But since they were in ‘underwear’ I'd always look at that page a lot. Anything barely vaguely sexual.

During this part of my life, I got no real pleasure out of this, I was just obsessed. For the first year I even watched it on mute out of fear of being caught. The lowest point during this period was when I very unfortunately filmed a video of me touching myself. I got nothing out of it and had no intent on ever sending or posting it. I was just emulating what I had been seeing. I deleted it the next day. I was 9 then.

From puberty until now (11-18) is when my sexuality was shaped by it. The addiction was far more controllable, I could spend a couple weeks to a couple months without it, but I'd always come back. Because it was now tied to my body. And while my need for it to be constant was gone, now I had to deal with the tolerance issue.

Over time what I watched became more and more depraved. I had the personal preference of hating anything amateur, because of the low quality, so I managed to avoid anything obviously non-consensual or involving visibly underaged girls, but that doesn't really mean much with the stuff the studios were putting out. During the middle points it got REALLY violent and disturbing. Bordering on torture (extreme kink) and even bodily deformation. As a young woman, I couldn't really tolerate any of the role based Kinks (father-daughter, babysitter, schoolgirl), so more extreme for me meant more extreme acts. Just absolute destruction of women's bodies for the purposes of sex. I moved away from that when tumblr banned porn and I started using reddit for it, and also during that time I was realizing how fucked up of an addiction that this was, even before I found feminism/anti-porn. I actively started trying to quit it, for good. But I always went back.

One big effect is heavy confusion with my sexual orientation. A lot of people face this, but the addition of porn for me really throws things off. Like: Am I bi, and a form of comphet/denial/inexperience keeps me from seeing women in a romantic way? Is it a mix of that and porn? (relatively likely) Or am I just straight, and the porn has completley shaped my mind (likely). 90% of the time I watched solo female content or lesbian content, and could only stand to watch certain specific forms if it included men at all. In real life I find a fair amount of men attractive but their bodies in a sexual sense are tolerable at best, but usually cringe inducing. l've never been attracted to a woman romantically, but exclusively women's bodies are sexual to me. It feels like everything in my brain that I would have been able to use in order to figure myself out has been permanently overwritten with incorrect information. Because of porn.

I've still got it bad. Every once in a while, I’ll read something vaguely sexual, or see a woman in a risque photo, and then the seed is planted. I'll always say "I'm not going to do it, I always feel disgusting after, it’s not even really enjoyable at this point, I can do better than this”. I always give in the end of the night. I'm 7 days off of it. I've been on this earth for 18 years. 12 of those years I've been cripplingly addicted to pornography. Two thirds of my life, and for as long as I can remember. I can never undo it. Just like an alcoholic will always be an alcoholic, only able to achieve remission, I will always be a porn addict. I have to be careful. But I have to hope for the future. And with finding the community that is speaking the truth about this, I'm heartened to do better. To no longer be held down by an addiction to consuming my own oppression.

[jiminwreckedme]

Unfamiliar. (m)

Yoongi doesn’t feel so unfamiliar anymore, now that you feel things you haven’t before.

Genre - Smut, little angst if you peek, fuckbuddy Au (not so pwp, the characters have a bit of a backstory?) Word Count - 12K Pairing - (Bartender!) Yoongi x (Doctor!) Reader Warnings -  bit of PDA (touching, making out), dirty talk of sorts, fingering, oral (male and female receiving), penetrative sex, unprotected sex (Remember folks, No glove, no love), rough sex (maybe slight choking? and restriction too) Music - High for this, Pillowtalk

You don’t know, what’s in store, but you know what you’re here for.

“What can I get you?”

You blink at him with absolute disbelief etched across your face.

“Are you serious?”

“I’m serious.”

What a killjoy.  

“Fine.” You give in and lean, resting your elbows on the cold granite stone of the counter. “Surprise me.”

Close your eyes, lay yourself beside me

He stares at you intently for a moment, a very brief moment before he replies.

“Do you have any preferences? What kind of alcohol do you usually get?”

He knows the answer to that.

“Hard liquor.”

Hold tight for this ride. We don’t need no protection

“How do you feel about gin?” He points at a bottle on the shelf behind him. “We have a fine bottle of Copper & Kings, the History of lovers.”

You look at it and cross your arms, eyebrows arched up. Really?

“Or scotch maybe? Lagavulin, 16 years old, has a bit of a savory taste if that’s what you like?”

He knows the answer to that as well.

You don’t reply, looking at him pointedly but he waits, ever so ignorantly for you to use your words.

Come alone, We don’t need attention.

You give up and roll your eyes before answering him. “Remy martin.”

“Sure, how would you like it? Neat, on the rocks, straight up?-”

“Now you’ve got to be kidding me-”

“This isn’t a place to joke around Y/n,” His voice is threateningly low, yet you hear it above all that music. “You are in my workplace.”

Open your hand, take a glass. Don’t be scared, I’m right here.

“If you don’t want me to fix you a drink, I have other customers to handle, excuse me.”

Before you can even answer the question he walks away, grabbing the jigger, artfully spinning it with his fingers.

You stare at him shamelessly, oblivious to everything else, mouth going dry. Of course he was hot, Oh Min Yoongi was hot, but there was something about him standing behind that counter that was unbelievably attractive.

Even though you don’t roll. Trust me girl, you’ll wanna be high for this.

Maybe it was because he was dressed in that spotless see-through white shirt, his sleeves rolled up to his elbows, all those veins stark against his skin every time he gripped something. Maybe because he had ditched his signature style of those blonde fringes falling into his eyes and had them pushed back, out of his face. Maybe because he was doing his job, hands working fast as though they had a brain of their own, fixing all those drinks with incredible artistic skill. Or maybe because you hadn’t been laid in about three weeks now.

For whatever reason, you were tempted to just pull him by the collar over the counter and kiss the fuck out of him.

But he walks past about 4 times without looking at you even once.

You know because you sit arms crossed, your eyes following his every action. He knows you’re looking at him. You know he knows. Because almost 15 minutes later, he brings two bottles, setting them on the work space right before you, a little less gently than you would have expected, speaking to you in the same tone as earlier, but with a hint of annoyance.  

“What do you want?”

“Would it kill you to talk to me normally for a minute Yoongi? Like I’m not a customer but someone who you-”

“Watch your mouth,” He shuts you up knowing very well what you were going to say next. “This is not just any place Y/n, I work here. You can’t just turn up here like this.”  

“You come to my workplace all the time.”

“You work at a hospital, it’s not the same.”

“How is it not the same?”

Yoongi gives up and he returns his momentary undivided attention towards you back to the drinks in his hands.

“Because people go to your workplace to get treated, like I do.” Your eyes are fixed on the way his hands move. So artistic. “People come to my workplace to drink, and you’ve come here to-”

You look up, meeting his eyes to find him already looking at you.  

“-to fuck.”

No I did not.

What, it was okay for him to say that? Although the music was louder now than before, and with no one within an earshot of you, there’s no way anyone but you could have heard him.

“You know, it’s not like I’d say no if you came to the hospital for sex.” You mutter stupidly under your breath. Please tell me you didn’t hear that.

“Not now Y/n,” Ok, he didn’t hear that. “I’m in the middle of work.”

And he walks away again, grabbing a bottle, fixing the pourer onto it.

You watch, as he slowly spills the drink over the back of a spoon into an already half full shot glass before setting it carefully on the counter. Spinning a lighter on his finger, he clicks it and lights the surface on fire, earning the many many squeals of what looked like a bachelorette party. Though he resumes working, wiping a few glasses, he is watching the supposed bride from he corner of his eye as she downs her shot within seconds amidst all the cheering and slams the glass down, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand, satisfied. The edges of his lips curl into a faint smile, the contentment evident on his face despite his attempts to not to make it obvious. He was proud of his work. When he looks away from them, he sees you again and simply sighs, walking away once more to the other side of the station.

It’s a whole ten minutes before he has work in the area you are sitting, ever so patiently. You take your chance to ask him.

“You didn’t mention when your working hours were going to end?”

“When the bar closes.” He begins to wipe the water near the ice bar and doesn’t even look up when he answers. “Two, two-thirty.”

“Fine, I’ll wait then.”

That’s what gets his attention, making him stop and meet your eye.

“It’s half past 11 Y/n.”

“I know.”

“That’s almost 3 hours.”

“I know.”

He raises an eyebrow. “For sex?”

With you. “For a conversation.”

Bending down, he grabs what looks like a bottle from below the counter and slams the mouth of it on the edge of the surface, knocking the cap off, before handing it to you. “Go home Y/n, It’s not worth it.”

“You don’t get to decide that for me.” You point at the beer bottle he’s put in front of you. “And this is not what I ordered.”

“You live far from here. Best not to get you too tipsy or drunk so you can go back safe.”

You look at him exasperated. “Yoongi-”

“What are you doing here in the first place?” He frowns at you. “Aren’t you supposed to be at work?”

“I had the shift off for working overtime last week.”

“And you’re here? Instead of staying at home?”

Valid and rhetoric question. You did love staying at home, he knew you enough to know that. Turning up at a bar on your day off was quite uncharacteristic of you. Days off meant more time curled up in your bed, more documentaries to watch and just get lazy. If you weren’t someone who took every opportunity to stay at home you would never even have met Yoongi.

He was your brother’s tutor.

In a family full of doctors and scientists, your 16 year old brother was the only person insistent on becoming a fashion designer. You had assumed his passion was limited to collecting and maintaining a few catalogues and sketching designs for his blog. It was only when he was almost half way through his high school that he revealed his sincerity towards it. He was so determined, he even managed to contact some designer in Korea to intern under after he was done studying. But that meant he had to learn at least basic Korean and that’s how Yoongi came into picture. Your parents thought finding a Korean tutor in Amsterdam would be nearly impossible and frankly so did you. Until a few days later, when you got the fright of your life.

You had gotten off work early and returned home with your then boyfriend, the both of you giggling and walking in, thinking you were all alone. As the two of you sat on the couch, impatiently making out, it was then that Yoongi walked in on both of you with a simple “Could you please keep it down?” And walked back into the house.

That was the first time you saw him.

About 6 months from that day, you were in your bed grabbing the sheets as he covered your mouth with one hand and made you come with his other.

It still boggled your mind, how you went from being embarrassed whenever you saw him to sleeping with him every time you had the chance to.

It started maybe 2 days after your asshole of a boyfriend dumped you.

You were moping around the house that day after refusing to attend the baby shower of some acquaintance with the rest of your family. It was just as you were about to crawl into bed and get comfy that the bell rang and you opened the door to find Yoongi standing there. Apparently your brother hadn’t informed him about his new plans and so Yoongi turned up for the lesson as per schedule.

That’s when things started spiraling out of hand.

When he told you he would just wait on the porch for his friend to pick him up, you shouldn’t have invited him into the house you were in all alone. When he came inside and sat on the couch, you shouldn’t have told him to find you if he needed anything (even though you said it for formality’s sake). When you knew he was in the house, just one floor below you, you shouldn’t have tried to get yourself off in your room.

If you hadn’t done any of that you wouldn’t have found yourself with your fingers deep inside you, back arching off the bed when Min Yoongi knocked on your door and opened it before you could even tell him not to.

At that moment time went very strangely. It was as though he was standing at the door frame for unbelievably long, giving you all the time in the world to pull out your fingers, shut your legs close, sit up and then think of a hundred different things to say without even saying one word.

And then time sped up all of a sudden, because you have no idea how, you didn’t remember at all, but somehow Yoongi was by your bed leaning over you, planting his hand into the mattress right beside your head (Weren’t you sitting? When did you even lie down?) and then his fingers slipped into you.

That feeling of his fingers replacing yours? It was so unfamiliar but so good. They were so much longer, shaking much less, the pace so consistent - the sensation was wild. With a few thrusts he had managed to figure out how and where exactly to curl his fingers to draw that long moan out of you. And as you got louder, he got faster, not stopping for anything. Not even when he heard the car pull up in your driveway. Not even when he heard the front door opening. Not even when he clearly heard the voices of your family.

When you tried to warn him, instead of pulling them out, he covered your mouth with his hand and whispered, curling his fingers just the way you needed him to. “Shh, be a good girl and come for me Y/n.”

And you did, almost instantly, giving yourself just enough time to (1), ride the high on his fingers before (2), he pulled them out and calmly hid himself, standing against the wall right by the door while (3), you pulled the sheets over your half bare body - all just in time, before your father opened the door of your room to check up on you.

After you assured him you were fine, he left, closing the door behind him, slowly revealing Yoongi who stood there calmly, simply watching you propped up on your elbows looking at him as he slipped both his fingers into his mouth, sucking your arousal clean off his fingers before he left, a smirk dancing on his face. And as you fell back into your bed staring at the ceiling in absolutely disbelief, you heard him making his way down the stairs, updating your family on everything right up to the part where he stood by your bedroom door.

And that’s how your first orgasm with Yoongi happened.

And though you knew it was not right to let a man you barely knew do that to you again, a part of you knew that was definitely not your last orgasm with him.

The next time you saw him, about two days later, he was absolutely normal, behaving with you like he always did, like all that did not even happen. Even when you found him alone for a minute in the dining room and told him you had to talk to him, all he said was “Not now, I’m in the middle of work.” Almost an hour later, he approached you while you were strolling outside, in the backyard, surfing through your phone. When you saw him out there, your first reaction for some reason was to panic and try to hide him away from the eyes of anyone who might see you together. Yoongi was clearly confused the whole time, especially when you climbed the dog kernel right under your bedroom window, and sneaked into your own room in broad daylight, ( similar to your teenage days when you came back home late at night). But he calmly just followed you.

When you found him in your room alone once again, that was when you finally spoke to him.

“We haven’t spoken about….that incident.”

“What about it?”

“You- I mean I- that was a one time thing Yoongi, you understand?”

“This is what you wanted to talk about?”

“Yes.”

“Are you done?”

“Y-Yes?”

“So I can go now?”

You look at him surprised. “Do you have nothing to say?”

“No. If you don’t want this, then there’s nothing left to say.”

“If I wanted more then?”

“Then I’d say, I thought so.”

“W-what?”

“I have never had one time encounters Y/n, I don’t do them and never will.”

“Why is that?”

“Isn’t it obvious?”

Of course, it was. The way you felt when you got off his fingers? Who wouldn’t want to ride that high again? Women probably crawled back to him all the time, and he probably couldn’t have one time encounters even if he wanted to.

“I don’t like to.” He shrugs very simply. “I like to work on the basis of…..you can call it an agreement.”

“What kind of agreement?”

“Just two rules.”

Rules?

“First, while this is going on, I won’t sleep with anyone else and you shouldn’t either.” He gives a pause letting you take in that information before he continues. “Second, If either of us should want to end it, for whatever reason, then we tell the other person and we’re done. No justifications, no explanations needed. When one person says no, it ends, as simple as that.”

You stared at him, not knowing what to say.

“I am only going to proceed if you are okay with that Y/n. All you have to do is ask.” He takes a step closer to you. “Ask me and I’ll give it to you.”

At that moment you really didn’t think it through when you said yes. You just wanted him. And that day after you made sure you locked the door this time, Min Yoongi made you come with his tongue not once but twice.

It had been going on since that day.

Though quite frankly, you didn’t know what to call yourselves. This was exclusive after all and a sort of commitment as well but nowhere even close to a relationship. He wasn’t exactly a booty call either. You couldn’t just text or call him every time you were horny, Yoongi wasn’t a man who entertained those kinds of requests. Sex, hence only happened in certain conditions and that was whenever came to your house.

So Min Yoongi who used to come to your house every weekend to tutor your brother began staying for an extra hour to ‘tutor’ you as well. When you told your parents you wanted to learn Korean, it was a miracle they didn’t question it. Maybe because Yoongi didn’t charge extra for teaching you (“I’m not going to charge to fuck you Y/n, that’s not how this works.”) or maybe because your extremely social parents were barely at home during the weekends and didn’t really care much about what their adult daughter did. Much like your brother who spent most of his time holed up in the basement working on his own thing. That left you and Yoongi all alone in your room for an hour twice a week. Yes, sex with him was technically pre-scheduled. So he was far from a booty call.

Could you call yourselves fuck buddies then? Initially you didn’t know if you could, you both were not even close to what you would consider ‘buddies’ - you barely spoke. Every time you and Yoongi found yourselves together, you only ever had sex. You could barely remember an incident or two when you didn’t actually fuck upon finding yourselves alone. Once when he saw a scar on your body and asked you what it was. You remember telling him, showing him the other scars too, telling the stories behind each of them and he did the same when you asked him. You didn’t remember sleeping with him that day. Or on that day when Yoongi turned up in animated pizza printed underwear and you couldn’t stop laughing. That day you didn’t have sex either. Instead you showed him all your printed underwear as a peace offering.

But that was about it. There were no other instances as far as you could remember. But if you really did have to give the relationship between you two a name, you preferred to call yourselves fuck buddies. You don’t know what Yoongi thought of that, you always just referred to it as ‘the agreement’.

And the agreement was going like it was for the last one year - just fine, till about three weeks ago, when your brother told Yoongi he didn’t need to be tutored anymore.

You were wondering what that meant for you and Yoongi. Because if he wasn’t going to come home for your brother anymore, it made no sense coming home for just you. You had no idea how you were going to continue this arrangement of yours now and only hoped that Yoongi had some alternative in mind. You tried calling him about it but he didn’t pick up. You dropped him a bunch of texts but he didn’t reply to any. Was he busy? Was he ignoring you? You didn’t know.

Your last ray of hope was that weekend. Your parents and brother had planned to go to Korea for a week to attend the new collection launch of the designer your brother was in contact with. You could have gone too, expect you had to go to work. That’s what you told yourself but deep down you knew that meeting Yoongi was also a part of your agenda. For all you knew, that weekend could have been your last time with him. So you sent him a message that you were all alone at home this weekend and just sat with your fingers crossed, hoping he would turn up.

He didn’t show up on Saturday.

And didn’t show up on Sunday either.

Another week passed by like that and then another. With you calling him only to reach voicemail, with you sending him texts only to be replied with silence. It was starting to reach the point where you actually began worrying about whether he was even okay or not because, was it really normal to ignore someone for so long? And you didn’t even know how to meet him at least to make sure he was at least alright. You had no idea where he lived, where else he worked, what other jobs he did, nothing. You knew nothing about him.

Except that he was some sort of expert when it came to alcohol. You were surprised when you came across some of his papers on which he had scribbled, in the messiest handwriting possible, some recipes for cocktails. Back then you didn’t think about why he had such stuff written down, rather you were more fascinated by all those interesting concoctions and so you excitedly asked him about each of them while he calmly answered them. (Oh. That was another day you didn’t have sex with him.)

That night though, you had thought about it, why he might’ve known so much. It was one thing to have an opinion on different kinds of alcohol but to know things such as what kind of ice and what kind of strainer to use? That was definitely not general knowledge, he undoubtedly was a professional of some sort. You had made a mental note to ask him the next time you saw him but you couldn’t. Not when his dick was thrusted deep inside you, his mouth hot on your neck.

A few days ago, when you took a closer look at his profile picture as you sat for the hundredth time wondering why he wasn’t getting back to you, in the background you saw the neon letters spelling out the name of a bar (Truck You) you had only heard about quite often. Putting two and two together, you began wondering if Min Yoongi might actually be a bartender of some sorts and if that was his workplace. There was only one way to find out and that was to personally go there and see for yourself but you were swarmed with night shifts at the hospital and heading to a bar was out of question.

Till today, when you finally got a day off because your friend offered to take your shift to repay a favor last week. And the moment you got free your first thought drifted towards looking out for Yoongi. Even though you knew it could be pointless - he might go there often or he might even have just been there once - and there was no guarantee you’d find him there today, this was your shot in the dark. You had one chance to try and one place you could do so at. So you took it.

And it paid off because the minute you walked in, your eyes fell on Yoongi behind the counter. At that moment there was just a wave of mixed emotions. You were happy he was fine, you were proud of yourself for finding him, you were mad that he was absolutely okay and just ignored you for three weeks, you were so turned on seeing him dressed like that - so many things at once. But you squashed all those feelings in and just sat on the bar stool waiting for him to react when he spots you. It had been so long since you saw him, you had to first make sure this was not a dream. And when he finally did see you a few minutes later, his eyes widened for barely a second (so this was real) before he resumed looking completely indifferent.

And he still looked so unbothered as he worked that cocktail shaker effortlessly. It was as though you didn’t even exist and you couldn’t do anything about it. All that could be done now was wait.

And you do, boredly squirming, tapping your finger on the surface, occasionally sipping on the beer which had gone pretty flat, looking at him whip up all those drinks for what seemed excruciatingly long. You did that till you heard a voice.

“The bar is about to close.”

Your eyes fly open and find a man dressed much like Yoongi, standing right before you with a name tag that read ‘Hoseok.’ When did you even fall asleep and for how long? Your first instinct is to look for Yoongi.

He wasn’t there.

“Where’s Yoongi?”

“It’s my turn to clean up today so I guess he’s done for the day?”

“He left?”

“I didn’t see him leave the bar though. He might still be changing?”

“Where?”

Hoseok scratches the back of his head. “I’m not sure you can go there though, it’s for staff only.”

You sigh, really tired of everything. “Please.”

Hoseok looks at you with what seemed like pity in his eyes. “Are you Y/n?”

“H-How do you know?”

“There.” He points, but you don’t look. “The room next to the back door.”

“But how do you know my-”

“He’s leaving.”

You turn to see Yoongi far across the crowd on the dance floor, stepping out of the room in his usual simple tee and ripped jeans outfit. Hurriedly thanking Hoseok you rushed through the crowd “sorry, sorry.” till you finally reached the blonde man and grab him by the wrist to his absolute surprise and drag him away from the music out of the back door.

When you step out, the first thing that hits you is the smell of the trash from all the trash cans nearby, but you don’t care.

You let go of Yoongi and cross your arms but he beats you to the conversation.

“I was going to come talk to you.”

You cut it, straight to the point. “Why did not talk to me all these days?”

“Y/n,” He sighs, “I’ve just been busy.”

“How busy do you have to be to not find the time to type two words?” You unlock the phone in your hand and hold up your chat over the days, forcing him to see it.  

You : Yoongi, are you okay? You : Please say something, I’m getting scared. You : Just say you’re okay and I can be at peace. You : Where are you Yoongi? You : Why are you doing this? You : Please, please just tell me once that you’re fine.

“I’m fine.” You put your phone down sighing. “That’s all you had to say to all this, that you’re fine. Do you know how worried I was?”

“Why?”

“What do you mean why? It’s been 3 weeks and I haven’t heard a word from you, I was scared something happened-”

“To our agreement?”

What? That’s what he thought you were worried about? Sex? Yeah of course, for a day, maybe two but after that you had been worried for his life. Wasn’t it basic humanity to? To worry and care for people you were associated with? Would he have not felt the same if he was in your place? Or were you the one thinking about this more than you needed to?

“Yes.” You lie. “You said our agreement would end only if we tell each other we wanted it to end. Ghosting me for three weeks was not mentioned-”

“I don’t want it to end.” He says it instantly and so earnestly. “That’s why I didn’t say anything.”

He didn’t want to end things?

Deep down, this was your biggest fear, something you didn’t even admit to yourself. Being worried for Yoongi’s general well-being helped suppress every other reason for panic but with him standing in front of you and knowing that he was okay, there was only one thing left to be scared of. That he wanted to end things. That if Yoongi said he didn’t want this agreement anymore you’d have to stop seeing each other. You didn’t want to stop.

“So you…..you don’t want to end things.”

Yoongi shakes his head.

“You don’t want to end things, you won’t reply to me, you won’t sleep with me and I can’t sleep with anyone else either, do you know how frustr-”

“Do you want to sleep with anyone else?”

His question throws you off. Out of all the things you had listed that’s what he catches? If he wasn’t ignoring you because he was planning on ending the agreement then….Is it because that’s what’s bothering him?

“Wait Yoongi, this isn’t one of those ‘I’m catching feelings for you’ kind of situations right?”

He blinks for a bit and then lets out a short laugh. “Are you mad?”

“Then….then what’s the problem?”

“I told you, I was busy.”

“With what Yoongi? What were you so busy with that you send me a message-”

“I lost my scholarship.” He confesses, taking you aback. “I have one term left to finish my degree in English Language. They cut my grants off because of some new rules and now I have to pay full tuition payment for a term and……I don’t think I can afford it.”

“Oh.” You stutter, completely thrown off by the information. “I-I’m so sorry Yoongi, I didn’t know that.”

“You don’t know anything.”

That was unfair.

“How would I?” You whisper softly. “It’s not like you told me-”

“I don’t need to Y/n.” He smiles sadly. “We don’t mean enough to each other to share so much.”

As much as those words were true they still made you feel strangely disappointed.

“Can….can I ask you what you’re going to do about it now?” You immediately add. “You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to.”

“I’m not eligible to get a decent loan with the earnings of a bartender. The only way to do this is…..to earn the money myself.” He reveals. “I’ve been trying to get a job over the last few weeks. I applied to couple of places and last week I got an offer, to teach Korean in this tuition center, over the weekends.”

“That’s great!” You smile, deeply relieved on the inside. “I’m so happy for you…How has it been working there?”

“I haven’t accepted their offer yet though.”

“What?” You’re washed over by a wave of shock. “Why not?”

“I’ve been considering dropping out instead,” He slips his hands into his pocket. “I want to follow my dream over what I think my dream should be.”

You know exactly what he means. It hits home. You always thought your dream was should be being a doctor, you grew up with the idea, you were brought up with the idea, you convinced yourself that it was your dream. But all those posters in your house stuck inside your cupboards, those stages, those costumes, those routines. That should have been your dream. Being a dancer should have been your dream.

“What is your dream?”

“To be my own boss.” He smiles. “Open my own bar one day. Maybe a chain. Serve the best kind of alcohol in the whole city. Have crazy Friday nights with packed tables and happy people. That’s my dream.”

“Then why….”

“It’s not a small investment, something like that. Even if I work 7 days of the week, save almost every cent of what I earn, it will be years before I can make enough money to do something like that. I thought the more practical approach to life then was to just change the dream”

He sighs, chest rising then falling.

“But whenever I look at the tuition fee I have to pay to finish this degree? It doesn’t make any sense to me. If I really had to churn up so much money, I figured I might as well put it where it makes me happy instead.”

“So you mean you want to drop out and…then what?”

“Kick start my dream by writing a book.” A book? “More of guide to be honest, for bartenders, it’ll have tips and techniques, how to actually use equipment, recipes, things of that sort. You’d be surprised how many people out there call themselves professional without knowing basic things like what ice to use-”

“Ice that’s not cloudy.” You state confidently, catching Yoongi off guard and shrug. “You told me this once. Ice is to a bartender what fire is to a chef.”

So that’s what all those notes had been about.

“Yeah.” He looks impressed. “But that means I have to experiment a lot, invest too much time and money, I don’t think I can do that with two jobs and continuing a degree. I have to decide what to hold on to and what to let go.”

Did you choose to let go us?

“Is that….is this why you’ve been so- I mean, is this why you couldn’t reply to me?”

“I need to sort things in my life first Y/n, and our agreement…… I didn’t think I should prioritize it at this point.”

“Of course not.” You shake your head. “I’m the stupid one, I should’ve understood you had your own problems, I’m so sorry, I just….I was being an idiot, I guess I was just so used to you being a constant the last one year, it was strange cutting off everything all of a sudden. I probably” You let out a short stupid laugh, “Probably even missed you-”

“Probably?” He chuckles. “I for one, definitely missed you.”

“Yeah sure.” You mock him, trying to lighten the mood even more, now that he was smiling again. “You wouldn’t have been able to stand so far away if you really did-”

He takes two quick strides and the rest of you words are lost against his mouth as he kisses you, trapping you between his hands against the wall. There’s a mix of urgency and gentleness in the way he moves, as though he badly wanted this but also wanted to take his time. You didn’t take his word for it, but it almost seems like he really did miss you. You take his face in your hands, gaining control, easing your lips against his, savoring the moment, not wanting to rush it through. Yoongi groans softly, low in his throat pulling your hands down with his, pinning them above you, against the wall kissing your neck as he whispered. “It was so hard to resist the urge to do this the moment I saw you.”

Your breathing becomes more audible as you arch off the wall, baring more of your throat to him, spiraling, getting lost in the sensation, before you finally manage to find the voice to ask him to stop.

“I’m….I’m not going to have sex with you near the trash cans Yoongi.”

He pulls back, face so close to yours as he grinned. “It’s been three weeks, I thought you might be desperate enough to.” There he was.

“You give yourself too much credit.” You wriggle your hands making him loosen his grip. You wanted him so badly, it had really had been way too long but the smell of the trash? You couldn’t bear it. “I just can’t here, the smell kinda ruins the mood.”

“Yeah we should get out of here.” Yoongi let’s your hand go, taking a step back. Where to though? “Let me grab my things.”

You nod and walk into the bar as Yoongi holds the door open for you.

Maybe because it’s much later at night but the lights were dimmer and the crowd was much lesser and the music was a lot slower and a lot sexier than you remembered it. You can feel your body automatically swaying to the music, forgetting the world around you. You didn’t even notice when Yoongi stepped in behind you and walked into the changing rooms.

Climb on board, We’ll go slow and high tempo

Letting the music lead you, you walk in, to the edge of the dance floor and let  your body move the way it feels its right. It felt so good to dance again. You’re so lost in your own private bubble, it takes a while before you notice Yoongi standing in his leather jacket, backpack slung over one shoulder, just staring at you.  

You beckon him towards you with a smile and he complies but he doesn’t take your hand when you hold it out, shaking his head instead.

“I don’t dance.”

You laugh and reach for his wrists instead, pulling him closer, wrapping them around your waist.  

Light and dark. Hold me hard and mellow

“What a pity, women find a man who can dance attractive.”

“That’s a personal preference.”

“It’s a scientific fact.”

Yoongi chuckles. “As far as I remember, when you entered the club, you walked past all those ‘dancing men’ and sat right there for 3 hours” He points at the stool on the other side of the floor with a tilt of his head, that cocky look on his face. “What does that tell you?”

You shrug, continuing to play with the metal of the chain resting on his chest, as though you didn’t know the answer to that.

I’m seeing the pain, seeing the pleasure. Nobody but you, ‘body but me. ‘Body but us, bodies together.

“Those men may move their bodies however they like, but a woman likes a man who knows her body.” His voice is so fucking deep. “Like I know yours.”

“Do you now?” You run your finger along the line of his jaw. “It’s been so long since you’ve even touched me-”

“Doesn’t matter.” He presses himself onto you and you can feel it. How incredibly hard he’s gotten. “No one knows you like I do, I can promise you that.”

Your lips curl into a smile as you run your hand from his chest to all the way down there, rubbing him ever so slightly over the material of his jeans. “I could say the same”

I love to hold you close, tonight and always. I love to wake up next to you.

You want to see a warning flash in his eyes or some sort of reaction to your actions, but all he does is let out a breath. “It’s been three weeks, I didn’t think you would be in the state to tease.”

“I figured if you could leave me like that for so long, a few minutes shouldn’t hurt you-”

“3 hours.” Yoongi stares at you with an intensity you’ve never seen in his eyes before. “Ever since you walked into the bar and sat there.”

I love to hold you close, tonight and always. I love to wake up next to you.

“Nonsense.” You put your arms around his neck, laughing. He was being ridiculous after all. “You barely looked at me the whole time.”

“I didn’t need to. Not when all I could think of was having you bent over that counter with your panties around your ankles.”

So we’ll piss off the neighbors.

You almost gasp, eyes widening, feeling that throbbing sensation in your core. Yoongi never speaks like this outside your bedroom.

“I just couldn’t stop thinking about it.”

“About w-what?”

He turns you around, your back against his erection pressing into you, his lips on the skin of your shoulder making their way up. He’s holding you in place with just one arm across your waist, his other hand is drawing circles on the skin your extremely short dress was exposing.

In the place that feels the tears. The place to lose your fears.

“Your moans” He’s not even whispering, he’s making sure he’s heard. “The way you sound when I’m fucking you, when you say my name.”

“The way your hands run down my back and how it feels to be inside you, so tight,” Its like he knows you clenched your walls at that exact moment. “fuck so tight all time, its like I’ve not been there a hundred times already.”

Reckless behavior.

“Yoongi-”

“And how you smell, that scent of you drives me crazy,” His voice suddenly goes so low, you unwillingly feel yourself swallow nothing. “and I can smell it right now. Is that how wet you are already?” You still can’t move. “I’m sure I can easily slide in two fingers. Maybe even three? You’re a good girl, I know you can take it.”

A place that is so pure, so dirty and raw.

It’s so hard for words to leave you. “I-I know something better you can put inside me Min Yoongi.”

He chuckles, “I offered to earlier today, you said I give myself too much credit.”

“Did you really take my word for it?” You turn to him, pressing your hips into his.

He lets out a small laugh. “Have you always been this easy to please?” There was so much pride in his voice. But he deserved to feel that. You were practically a puddle in his hands. “I can’t remember”

“Fuck me and you will.” You can’t hear or think of anything else, your hands finding that tiny cold metal of his pants and they start to unzip it already, forcing Yoongi to hold your wrist and stop you.

“I’m not sure this is the right place for it-”

“I take it back, I don’t mind doing it near the backdoor, trash cans or not.”

Yoongi smirks at your desperation. “We’ve been waiting for 3 hours, I think we both deserve more than that.”

“Yoongi…..” You whine, desperate. “Where do you want to go then? My parents will be home now.”

“I know….” He trails off for a bit. “I know a place nearby we can go to, about 10 minutes away. Would that be okay with you?”

After all these months was Yoongi finally taking you to his house?

“10 minutes is all you get.”

“Perfect.” He steps back flashing his gummy smile, holding his hand out. “Let’s go.”

The moment he leads you into the darkness of his house and shuts the door behind you, you don’t waste time and press him up against it, hooking you fingers in his belt loops, slamming your lips onto his. And he responds by letting his backpack slip from his shoulder onto the floor before he takes your face in his hand, slipping his tongue into your mouth, eliciting that soft whimper from you. His hands don’t wait there, wandering down, caressing your neck before he pushes his jacket that you had borrowed during the bike ride here off your shoulders, making you quickly reach behind and drag the sleeves down your arms before crumpling it unbothered and throwing it, however far your arm could extend.

“Careful!” Yoongi abruptly pulls back, making you almost bite your own lip as he cautions you, pointing at the silhouette of a vase you nearly knocked down with the jacket. “I have no idea how expensive anything is here. We don’t want to fall into any kind of trouble.”

You freeze.

All that excitement, the awe, the thrill, everything in you extinguishes in a second, the moment you hear that statement.

“Yoongi. This-this isn’t your house?”

“I wish.” He chuckles, hand searching the wall for the switches and flipping them on upon finding them. “My house isn’t even a quarter the size of this.”

When your eyes adjust to the brightness and you are finally able to see something other than shadows, you’re awestruck because the place is, well, absolutely beautiful. The white and blue tones of the walls, the slightly antique looking furniture, all those books racked up in bookshelves and those paintings on the walls - none of it looked even close to what you would imagine his place to look like.

“Oh my god, this isn’t your house.”

Yoongi shakes his head as if it’s that simple.  

“A friend’s house?”

He shakes his head again.

“Do you even know who lives here?”

“For someone who was eager enough to do it by the trashcans you are having an awful lot of questions now.”

“Yoongi, just answer.”

He picks up his jacket and backpack from the floor and walks in casually to dump it on the couch.

“No, I don’t really know who lives here.”

You freeze. “Oh my god, what are we doing here?!”

He shrugs. “You said you couldn’t wait.”

“What?!” Your voice leaves you as angry whispers. “Yoongi, that doesn’t mean we trespass into someone’s private-”

“Relax Y/n. I have the keys.” He fishes them out from his back pocket, jiggling them at you before he throws them onto the couch as well. “ I have permission, this is far from illegal. My housing agent suggested this space.”

You slowly walk into the house, the fear subsiding with each step.

“The owner lives in Sydney, so I was free to come over and check it out whenever I wanted to. Though the agent did ask him to let him know when I do….” He grins. “Guess I just forgot. “

“I can’t believe you Yoongi.” You shake your head in disbelief, fighting back a smile. “So technically, we are breaking in?”

“Not technically-”

“Yoongi, you just brought me to some random persons house to have sex.”

“Should I be scared that you don’t sound disappointed saying that?”

“Hmm, I like it.” You smile slowly, walking up to him, a glint of mischief in your eyes “I’m so tired of us always having to do it in my bedroom, keeping it down, trying not to get caught. That had its own thrill but here,” Pressing your body against his you tiptoe, weaving your fingers into the back of his head, whispering in his ear. “Here you can make me scream.”

Yoongi lets out a short laugh, his hands finding the curves of your hips, walking you back till you feel the edge of the breakfast bar behind, and kissing you in a way that dragged out those desperate moans. When he pulls back letting you breath and whispering, “Trust me, I’m dying to.”, you look at him chest heaving, biting your lip that was already missing his mouth. His eyes are darken with a mix of desire and something you couldn’t quite tell as he began littering kisses along your collarbone and you attempt to pull your hair into a ponytail, the way he likes it, thank god for the hair tie on your wrist. His hands grip your thighs as he stands between them and his mouth feels so good but you want so much more.

“Are you just going to kiss me all night?” Your voice shakes as he makes a trail up your neck.“I can think of better places you can put your mouth.”

“Such impatience.” He chuckles, sliding the straps of your dress off your shoulders and down your arms, his long fingers brushing them excruciatingly slowly. Of course, Min Yoongi’s recipe for mind blowing sex - foreplay, teasing, edging. But you were not in the mood for any of that today.

“You ditched me for 3 weeks,” You work faster than him, almost swatting his hands aside and pulling the dress down to bunch up at your waist, “I think I’ve been patient enough.” You unhook the clasp of your bra, and slide it off, discarding it somewhere on the floor, unbothered. Yoongi’s expression darkens as your fingers find the zip of his jeans, and unzip it without hesitation.

“Come on Yoongi, how much more do you want me to ask?”

He smirks but complies nevertheless, dragging his hands under your dress and up your thigh, pushing the material of your panties aside, running his finger between your folds.

“You’re so wet, fuck.” There is something about the way his voice goes so low and deep when he’s aroused that makes you clench your walls harder. “I could slip in there so easily, fill you up so good. Would you like that?”

Fuck yes Min Yoongi. That’s what you want to say. But you can’t. Not when he doesn’t even wait before he slides two fingers inside you, and all you can do is let out a soft moan, your body instantly reacting to the familiar feeling of his long digits thrusted inside you. But before you can fully savor that sensation, he pulls them out completely, much to your disappointment.

“Lift your hips for me.”

And you obey pulling away from the edge of the counter letting him tug that tight dress down your legs, throwing it somewhere. He pulls out the bar stool from behind you, guiding you to sit on it.

“Turn.”

You frown, not understanding as he swiftly spins the apparently rotatable stool half a round, pressing himself against your back. As you open your mouth to complain about not being about to see him, his hand slides from behind, over your waist, down there and this time, when he plunges his fingers into your heat again, “Oh fuck yes.” the feeling is wild.

His hand finds your breast as you feel yourself arch off against him, whimpers spilling from you mouth. He doesn’t let you grind against his hand, and picks up the pace instead knowing that’s what you want, as he thrusted his fingers in and out of you, months of experience telling him just how deep you liked it and just how fast. His hand switches between your breasts, mouth hot on your neck as you tip your head back, quickening the pleasure building up inside, your breaths getting louder, shorter. It’s been so long since you’ve even been touched, with him pumping his digits into you like that, it doesn’t take long for you to edge.

“Fuck, I’m going to come, Yoongi, stop.” You weakly attempt to hold his wrist but of course you are not successful, not when you feel him run his tongue up your neck. “Fuck, I want you inside me when I come, please, just stop-”

“Cute.” He lightly sinks his teeth into the soft skin of your shoulder, whispering against it. “What makes you think you’re only going to come once tonight?”

You bite back a moan, stuttering “Fuck, yes, yes, yes, right there”, incoherently and it takes just the slight pressure of his thumb on your clit and you fall apart instantly, breathing heavily.

When he feels you finish riding your high and relax around his fingers, he slowly pulls them out, and you turn to face him, finally gaining the ability to address his cockiness. “Make me come more than once today? Don’t you have a lot of confidence Min Yoongi?”

“I think I’m allowed to have it.” He sucks on his fingers, smirking proudly around them. “Delicious.”

Fuck.

The effect he had on you. Every time. Every time he managed to make such a panting mess of you all while remaining so calm, so composed and today, fully clothed moreover, with just his zip down. You look at the bulge in his pants, and you can tell he is not at his most comfortable, yet he waited for you to make the move.

You grab the edge of his shirt and pull it up, over his head, dropping it the moment he’s free of it, and run your hands against the pale skin of his torso as he watches you patiently. Oh but today you had the upper hand. You were satisfied by his fingers already while here he was, an erection still in his boxers. If you wanted you could give him a taste of his lesson, tease the life out of him, but there was something you were holding onto all these days, something you wanted to tell him for quite a few weeks now.

“Do you have a condom?”

He nods, reaching for his back pocket to take out his tattered wallet as you palm him over the material of his boxers before sliding your hand in to and griping his erection, drawing a very soft but audible groan from his throat.

“You’re going to have to take my cock out if you want to use this sweetheart,” He holds the foil pointedly.

“Or not.” You mutter unsure as you take the foil from him and put it on the surface next to you. “We don’t really have to use it you know.”

What did that expression mean?

When Yoongi doesn’t reply to that, you don’t know what to do but continue.

“I’ve uh,” Why you are so hesitant? “I’ve started taking the pill.” You bite your lower lip, muttering. “So if you are okay with it…..we can do this without protection.”

It’s a while before Yoongi stops just blinking at you and replies. “You’re saying,” He looks away momentarily, letting out a struggled breath. “You’re saying it’s ok if I fuck you raw-”

“I’m saying I want you to.” You look him straight in the eye, dead serious. “Fuck me raw.” Then quickly add, “If you want to, that is.”

Yoongi actually takes a few steps back instead. “The first time we slept together, you said without a condom, it felt too intimate.”

“Oh,” You scoff. “That was my nice way of saying ‘god knows what nasties you are carrying’.”

You roll your eyes when he looks at you confused. “STDs Yoongi.”

“I was clean then, clean now. You knew that.”

“Only because you said so.” You point out. “But I have medical proof now because I might have looked up your test results on our hospital records…?” You trail off, voice softening a bit in embarrassment. You weren’t prepared to answer all these details, it was a simple yes or no question.

“Really?”

“Yeah well,” You shrug. “I’m a resident, I have access to all kinds of records-”

“No, about this.” He straightens out, standing upright. “You really want to? You-you’re serious about….this.”

“Oh.” You nod. “Yeah, I mean, I am clean but I don’t have any evidence right now-”

“I’ll take your word for it.”

You swallow on nothing, surprised by his trust in you.

“Uh and unless you’ve slept with someone the last few weeks-”

He scoffs, “You think?”

With just two strides, he’s right before you once more, kissing you with a ferocity that was new to you but you kissed him back just as intensely, biting, running your tongue over his lips, over where they meet, just inside of them, tracing their outline with the tip of your tongue. You slide your hand into his boxer, gripping his erection, attempting to free it, and he helps you, pulling both his boxers and his pants halfway down his thighs.

“Take them off.” You whisper and he obeys taking a step back and swiftly pulling off the last of his clothes as you push aside your drenched panties and stick your fingers inside you, feeling all that wetness, gathering it. Yoongi’s eyes follow your digits as you pull them out, your arousal slick between your fingers and he looks up to your mouth, as though he expected you to slip them in there. Instead, you gesture him to come closer with them and when he does you wrap your hand around his erection, the wetness of your fingers letting you stroke it with a little ease as you feel his breath get heavier.

“Can’t wait to put this in my mouth.” You coo into his ear, attempting to slide off the stool but he pins you by your thighs, not letting you move.

“Not tonight.” Yoongi refusing a blow job? He groans as you run your thumb over his tip. “I want to fuck you right now-”

“Then fuck me.”

Holding you in place with his hands under your knees, he wastes no time - no teasing your slit with his tip, not even pushing himself in you slowly to allow you to adjust his thickness, not even bothering to fully remove your panties, he just pushes them aside and he thrusts himself in with one swift move and fuck, the feeling of his bare cock in you is so foreign but unbelievably gratifying. You can feel it inside you, down to the last detail, your walls clenching, aching for some movement. But Yoongi just wraps your legs around his waist and buries his face in the crook of your neck, hands digging into your thighs, surely bruising them.

“Yoongi, move.” You moan into his ear, entwining your arms around his neck. “Please.”

And he does, picking up the pace, giving it to you so hard, your nails find themselves raking his back. He kisses you along your shoulder, not letting you hear the soft grunts he couldn’t help but let out. You though, wince every time he thrusts into you, body sore from your fixed position.

“It hurts.” When he doesn’t stop, you slide your fingers into his hair, and tug his head back, letting him see you and realize you were hurting. You sense how it takes every bit of his energy to halt and mutter. “I’ve been sitting for far too long.”

“Bedroom?” He asks, almost short of breath. When you shake your head he swiftly pulls you down from the bar stool, giving you  immediate relief.

“Are you okay?” You nod but he doesn’t seem convinced. “We can find a bedroom-”

He goes speechless the moment you turn around, gripping the edges of the counter and slightly bend over. You just wanted a change in position, you weren’t really thinking about the effect it might have on him.

Not when all I could think of was having you bent over that counter with your panties around your ankles.

“Is this what you imagined?” You try to peer over your shoulder.  “In the bar earlier today?”

He’s still silent. You can’t really see him well but you know he’s watching as you touch yourself, eager for him to shove himself back in there.  

“No.” He murmurs.

You feel his hands on the elastic of your underwear, pulling it down to where he said he pictured it, before he makes his way back up, kissing and biting softly along the inside of your thigh, dropping one last kiss on the skin of your lower waist before he confesses in your ear in a low voice,

“This is so much better, you have no idea.”

Your proud smile falters the moment he digs his fingers into your hips definitely making bruises, and rams himself inside you, making your head dip down in pleasure as you bite back a moan.

“Don’t hold back.” He speedens his movements in and out, the new angle letting him snap his hips against yours faster and deeper. “I want to hear you.”

So you let him. Parting your lips you let him hear what he does to you, moaning his name and it drives him crazy because you feel him getting more aggressive, not hesitating at all. His hand wanders up, pressing into your skin wherever it could, grabbing your breast almost painfully before reaching your wrist, tapping it.

“Let go.” He growls, and the moment you obey he harshly pushes you forward, right up against the counter, till every bit of the skin of your upper body is against the cold surface, giving him the ability to pound into you harder almost as though he had no intentions of holding back.

“Shit,” You try to raise yourself but he leans over and pins you with his hand on the nape of your neck, restricting you against the surface, your cheek still against the coldness. “Fuck,” You moan shamelessly. “I forgot how good you fucked me Yoongi.”

No cocky response to that? It’s like he doesn’t care anymore, nothing but an occasional grunt or two leaving him unwittingly, his breath the most audible thing from him. You wish you could see him fucking you like this. Sex with Yoongi never was gentle love making but it also wasn’t this sort of rough fucking. You hated to admit how much you liked it. Even more so when he takes both your hands and holds them firmly against your lower back with his single hand, and starts to lose his rhythm, thrusts getting sloppy.

“Fuck, I’m going to come.” You feel his lips on your shoulder, trying not to sink his teeth into your skin. “Where do you want me to?”

Like you could respond to that with your mouth so dry and you were approaching your high too.

“Fucking hell Y/n, you need to tell me, shit I’m so close-”

“Inside, inside.” You whimper, breathlessly. “Come inside me Yoongi.”

And before you even finish your sentence he groans, shooting his load with a few thrusts, the warmth filling you up as you clench around him, desperate to hold on to the sensation of him inside you to tip over the edge once more.

“Stop. I’m going to get hard again if you do that.”

You sense him move back, slowly sliding out of you as you feel his cum leaking down, threatening to dribble down your thighs. Turning around you look at him, eyes savoring the sight of completely fucked out Yoongi before you as you get down on your knees slowly, taking his cum covered cock in your mouth, sucking him clean, that alluring taste of him making you want more and more. Yoongi lifts your chin with a finger under it, pulling you back as he looks down at you.

“If I get hard again, I can’t promise I won’t break you. So don’t try, Y/n.”

Fuck.

Normally you wouldn’t have laughed at that, but being deprived of your orgasm makes you gutsy.

You chuckle, standing up, licking your lips. “Speaking of promises, someone said I’ll be coming more than once tonight.”

His eyebrows furrow as the realization hits him and honestly, it surprised you just as much as it surprised him. Min Yoongi just fucked you with the most minimal foreplay, absolutely no teasing, and the man who had always made it his mission to make you orgasm first was standing here with his cum all up inside you before you had the chance to. It clearly hurts his ego because you can see the determination in his eyes to change things.

Pushing you back onto the stool, he gets on his knees instead and you gasp, seeing his head between your legs like that. Yoongi, who is so repelled by the idea of tasting himself that he wouldn’t even kiss you after you blow him was here, latching his mouth around your cum filled cunt, delving his tongue inside you. You are already so sensitive from his cock inside you earlier and it doesn’t help that he looks so hot buried between your legs like that, meeting your eyes, you can feel that tightening sensation rise in you again. Desperate, you catch yourself almost grinding against his tongue till he finds the need to stop you, taking one of your legs over his shoulder making you reach for support from the counter behind.

“Fuck y-yes.” You whimper, his mouth sucking on your cunt so hard and he brings his hand up to your clit, rubbing on it hard and fast and it takes less than a minute for you reach your orgasm, vision fading to black as you rake your fingers through his hair softly. He runs his tongue along the folds on last time and your look down at as he drops a kiss on the inside of your thigh.

As he stands up you slowly adjust yourself, rolling your neck to relieve yourself, pulling the hair tie, freeing your hair. Yeah furniture sex is great, but your body was surely going to hurt like a bitch in a few hours.

Yoongi holds you gently by the elbow, planting a brief kiss on your lips. “Are you okay?”

“You should ask me this question tomorrow because that is when I’ll know.” You laugh.

“I will.” He nods, picking your clothes from the floor handing it to you. You take it, trying to avoid his concerned gaze.

“Uh, I should go pee.” You hold your clothes against your chest, suddenly embarrassed about how much you were exposing to him.  

“The washroom is probably down the hall.”

He moves to the side giving you way and you leave with a small thankful smile, hurrying with small steps, eyes searching around the house. When you push the bathroom door upon finding it, you are greeted by a full size mirror making you jump reflexively. “Ah fuck….”

You’re a mess.

You knew you were probably looking like one, but you didn’t know to what extent. You bite your lip looking at the purple marks stark against your shoulders and the inside of your thigh. Yoongi doesn’t usually mark you. Simply because you didn’t allow him to, at least not the neck. You told him that was off limits because you worked at a hospital and you obviously couldn’t go to work looking like that, it wasn’t appropriate. You did say though, that you didn’t mind anywhere else but he never seemed interested in that proposition because he never even tried to. But today looking at those marks, the pride in your chest does a happy backflip. Yoongi really lost control today.

When you clean yourself up and come out, you don’t know why you are surprised to see him still there. Maybe because every time after the both of you slept together, either he had to rush or you had to, there was never an opportunity to so much as even look at each other, forget saying something.

But here he was, with just his pants back on, shirt still lying discarded on the floor as he makes himself busy cleaning the surface of the table with a wet tissue, much like how he was clearing his station a few hours ago.

You sink into the couch nearby and watch him take his time, running here and there, scrubbing the surface clean, once with a wet tissue, then with a dry tissue, scrounging around febreze, spraying it around the place, sniffing it carefully in the air. You smile at his antics, shaking your head.

“Alright, clean here.” He grabs his shirt from the floor and pulls it over his head. “Oh yeah, sanitizer.” Your habits really did grow onto him. You did not know why and what kind of role you played in Yoongi’s life but the last 3 weeks taught you something. For some reason, you don’t know what exactly but Yoongi was important to you.

As he approaches the couch, hand reaching out for his backpack next to you, you hold him by the wrist, stopping him.

“Don’t do that to me again.” You stare at how beautiful his hand looks in yours, like its meant to be. “The last three weeks were……difficult.”

“You think 21 days of not fucking you were easy for me?”  He scoffs. “The regular 5 days itself are ridiculously hard.”

“Difficult because I was worried, not because I was horny.” You laugh as Yoongi sinks into the couch next to you, rolling his head over, giving you his gummy smile.

This was the reason.

That’s when you finally, finally realize.

You realize that you laughed after almost 3 weeks now. After days of being upset and angry and irritable, just one night with Min Yoongi and you were normal again.

You were laughing ever since things cleared between the both of you.

You were laughing ever since you realized he was okay.

You were laughing because he was laughing.

You were laughing because of Min Yoongi.

Oh.

Oh no.

“I’m sorry though, I really am.” He looks away because he’s ashamed and you are relieved he can’t see the conflict you are going through. “I thought I’ll figure it all out and then talk to you about it but….I should have said something.”

You gulp air in the silence, not paying attention to his sincere apology, your realization evoking hundreds of thoughts in you head, the most important one being-

“What happens to us now?” You whisper.

“What do you mean?”

“My brother doesn’t need tutoring anymore, we can’t exactly…” This was the part of the night you were dreading, the part that decides it all. “How will we keep this going?”

“We’ll figure it out.” Yoongi nods slowly. His words, calm down your racing heart. “If you don’t want it to end then…..”

“Of course I don’t.” You answer certainly.

“Then we’ll find a way, I’m sure we can.” He then slowly smiles smugly, as though he realized something. “Maybe I can get my agent to find us a new house like this every week.”

You raise your eyebrow, letting out a laugh once again but slowly nod your head. “So we are going to continue breaking into houses like this?”

“It could be our thing.” He grins.

Our.

“Or would you rather the hospital instead? Like you suggested?”

It takes you a moment but when you remember it, you laugh. “Oh god, you heard that.”

“Mhmm.” Yoongi nods, “It made me think about doing it in my workplace.”

Not when all I could think of was having you bent over that counter with your panties around your ankles.

“Someday, when I have a place of my own, maybe after closing hours.” He smirks and you immediately find yourself picturing it already.

“Speaking of the bar,” You remember that man as you turn toward Yoongi, sitting sideways. “There was a bartender there who knew my name.”

“Who knew your name?” Yoongi frowns before realizing, “Hoseok?”

“I think that’s what his name tag read?”

“Probably him, I can’t think of anyone else who knows.”

“You told him about us?” Your eyes widen.

“What? No,” He adds slowly. “He saw your name flashing on my phone screen a couple of times.”

“Oh.” The panic ebbs a little. “Oh so you saved my contact as Y/n?”

“Yeah.” He nods like it was obvious before squinting at you. “Why? What did you save mine as?”

The Agreement.

“MYG” You lie confidently.

Why did you lie? Because you thought is might hurt his feelings? Why did that matter? You know why.

“Though…..” He speaks, still thinking. “Would that be such a bad idea? Telling people about us?”

You nervously laugh. "W-Why did you think of that all of a sudden?”

Why Yoongi?

“You were quite terrified when you thought I told Hoseok about us.”

“No I mean…..” You swallow not knowing what to say. “You said so yourself, we don’t mean enough to each other to share so much.”

“That’s not what I meant-”

“What will we even tell people? What are we Yoongi?” You smile sadly. “We are just an agreement. Something that started with two rules and that will end with one sentence.”

Say I’m wrong Yoongi. Say we could be more.

“You’re right, We are just an agreement. ” He nods. “What would we even tell people?”

You : That I am falling for this man. Yoongi : That I’ve long fallen for this woman.

But both things were left unsaid, only a strange silence in the space between you two, sad smiles exchanged in the place of those feelings.

[solesurvivorpaigeargot]

I absolutely LOVE Sketchy Saturdays and I always look forward to them!! As for my question(s)? What made you decide to start doing it(I'm glad you do but I was just curious!)?

Hoooo boi the Sketchy Saturday Origin Story: I suppose there's two versions.

The short version reads " Moving stress, deployment depression, and isolation VS. my utter determination to DO SOMETHING whilst trapped in my home " -- Sketchy Saturday was the result of that title fight, so I guess the fandom won in the end? XD

The long version, however... Well, buckle up, cause this is gonna be a ride.

It may surprise y'all to know that two years I was eyeballs-deep in the South Park fandom. The blog still exists; my mainblog, JustCallMeButtlord, built to interact with the audience of my fanfictions-- the New Kid Stories, called NKS for short [gonna be porting those to Ao3 soon, just gotta figure out what robo-reader I'm gonna use to make a quick n dirty podfic out of the series as well as help me hunt down typos my eyes galze over]. The first 'season' of stories had ended, 8 completed fics, and I was puttering about with a bonus holiday story that was several months out of season. Not that I CARED because I was on GUAM where seasons don't exist and my time blindness gets even worse becasue without seasons changing it feels like time never progrsses even after being on the island for three cocksucking years.

I don't hate Guam, I am just not built for constant heat. I am a snow creature; I like below-freezing temperatures so I can layer up in fuzzy, fluffy things and drink hot drinks and cuddle loved ones and/or furry animals. It's a lovely island, I adored my first week there... I just wasn't made to live there.

HIlariously, NKS started out of the stress of moving to Guam. Two years and 8 fics later, the place we were renting was no longer within our price range and my hubby and I were forced to move onto base. Under the leader whom I refuse to name, military pay was given a precentage raise... but it was ripped out of bonuses and OCONUS pay. OCONUS is what a military member is paid when they're stationed Outisde the CONtinental United States. This usually means overseas bases like Japan, but it also means Hawaii, aaaaaand... GUAM. So that percentage pay increase for the military at large meant belt-tightening for every service member abroad, and we were forced to move onto base.

In case y'all haven't noticed by now, I'm a raging socialist with some issued with authority. I DO NOT LIKE EXISTING ON BASE. I do not like existing in a place where the national anthem plays twice a day, every day, at 6 AM and then again whenever the hell sundown is that day. And there's an unspoken rule no one tells you that when it plays you're supposed to stop what you're doing, face the nearest set of speakers playing the song, and stare in that direction with your hand over your heart until its over. That, if you're driving, you have to put on your emergency flashers and pull over. No one tells you this. NO ONE TELLS YOU THIS.

And then, before we had secured a place on base but we had set a move out date for the rental house, the Pandemic happened. While we were between homes. The base is talking full lockdown, Guam authorities want to shut down the island but businesses are terrified of not getting the tourist season business, we don't even know if we'll be allowed to move on to base.

Surprise, I stopped writing for a while... but I picked Fallout 4 back up again. I had been forced into the series years earlier by a toxic relationship, but the game itself hadn't been bad-- just the way I'd been forced to play it by someone who was firmly not in my life anymore. When confronted with character creation, I wasn't sure whom I wanted to make... but decided to go back to an old character. A VERY old character, whom I hadn't thought of since I'd finished ME3 at least 4 years prior, and a character I first conceived of when I was 14-ish... which is now about 15 years ago.

Paige.

I've talked before about how well Paige's story maps onto Fo4, but this was before I knew that. I knew the opening, her losing her kid, and that fit with her-- but something clicked while I was playing and the part of my brain that likes to create started wandering off. Soon enough I've got a couple chapters of a ficlet that I'm TOTALLY just writing as a personal one-shot to de-stress, no way I'm publishing this, I don't wanna get distracted from NKS, I got a whole 'nother season to write! Who cares if no one is reading it anymore because South Park Fandom doesn't like continuous plots.... right?

I was burnt out as hell, the move was looming, the Pandemic was getting worse and everything was getting scarier.

Then the news came through that hubby would be deploying again.

He wasn't supposed to, but the Navy decided the safest place for their sailors was the middle of the ocean, so if you WERENT in quarantine you were going on the boat and you were living there. Didn't matter if your spouse would be alone, unpacking a whole home by themselves.

I had a friend on base. We hung out. I met with my DND group on weekends; we all lived on base now, so we could meet up in like five minutes... and then restrictions tightened. You could be fined up to 5 grand for gathering in groups greater than 5, even outdoors, and detained if suspected of going to a home that wasn't yours. I still met 2 of my friends once a week for walks; get outside, be active, talk to other humans, but besides that? I was locked up alone in a new house in a place that I did NOT like existing in.... with a fresh new hyperfixation developing.

I think it was about a week into the new house that I made the new blog. At first I tried to run it side by side with the South Park stuff, but it wasn't long before all my attention was here... aaaand it also wasn't long before I was confronted with a lot of my own despair; of lockdown, of isolation, of watching a broken system crumble and not being able to DO anything about it, and I started to kinda lose my shit. I fuss-- I can't leave things alone, and I couldn't leave this feeling alone; of being fully and entirely helpless and hopeless.

And then I sketched a thing for a friend, and it made them happy. They were having a rough time, too, and I put something together because I couldn't think of anything else. And it helped. It lifted them up, and it lifted me up, too. Someone else had recently reblogged one of those pallet challenges that floats around Tumblr, and I decided FUCK IT LET'S DO THIS THING AND CALL IT SKETCHY SATURDAY!

Little secret, the very first Sketchy Saturday request? Was me. I was so scared no one would noticed the event, I sent myself the very first request, back when the event still took anons. Soon as that first picture was up:

BANG, suddenly four more; some people off anon. I met people that day, talked to them after the very first Sketchy weekend was over, chatted about the games and characters and art and writing and just... felt human for the first time in a really long while.

I figured I'd hold on to Sketchy Saturday until the deployment was over-- once hubby was back, I'd decide whether I was keeping it or not... but he came back, and I was still super into it, and he was supportive, sooooo I kept going! And then we did Sketchy Secret Santa, and people loved it, and my volunteers are excited about being Sketchy Elves and Secret Helpers and just OH MY GOD I DID A THING GUYS. I DID A THING-- that was just me all December and January long lmafo.

AND JANUARY! Because AH HECK, WE MOVING AGAIN! Because hubby finally got orders, and OH MY GOD we're going back to WA... but it's still a move half-way around the globe, and I was SURE I'd have to shut down the event for a month while we got our shit in order and NOPE, because here come the volunteers from Sketchy Secret Santa, and they wanna fill in all month long! Like... I didn't even ask for that shit, guys. They offered it so the event wouldn't have to take a gap.

Jesus I'm getting teary just remembering it.

So yeah. Sketchy Saturday is here because I got really lonely and stressed out while Fallout 4 provided me with some... catharsis for my situation, and then a pandemic happened.

And then y'all happened, and I'm still here. :D

[makeyourdeanabi]

Finale Reaction- 2 months later

In the wee hours after the Supernatural Finale, after tossing and turning in my bed, I got up and wrote this... this was before I was actually active on Tumblr and I never thought I would share this because I was too self conscious.  I deleted it shortly after I wrote it because it brought me so much pain to relive it.  I have since watched the Finale again and have come to terms with it and I felt it was a good time to share my thoughts. I hope that my words may bring other people comfort who feel the same way.  Thanks for reading :)

Alisha

P.S. Sorry so long, I was feeling things and the words just kept coming and coming  ___________________________________________

I don’t blog.  Never in my life have I sat down to tell the world about my feelings in such a manner.  I may contribute on message boards and social media comments, but I never thought anything was worth my time to spill my guts into the ether when I am near certain that not a soul will read them.  But here I am.  I have to write because if I don’t get these thoughts out of my head, I am going to go full on insane.

That ending was bad. It was a disservice to the 15 years of an incredible show that was not only genre bending it was cultural norms bending.

I could mention the various tropes that this ending (and the previous episodes) invoked, but I am not well versed in them and would never want to do anyone a disservice with a comparison that wasn’t apt.

The buildup up of each character arc and then the glaring lack of conclusion for said character arc was laughable.

To say I am disappointed is an understatement.

To say I am heartbroken is an understatement.

I am destroyed.  

I am destroyed that the two men who have been with this franchise since day 1 wrote and directed an episode that they thought was the perfect ending. They thought this is what their devoted fandom wanted.  

I am destroyed that the lead actors signed off on this script and went so far as to call it their favorite.  I realize Jared was the only one calling it his favorite episode. Jensen admitted he had reservations about the episode and needed the wise words of creator Erik Kripke to accept it. I do have to say that taking the word of a man who left the show 10 seasons ago and hasn’t been involved in all the plot lines and inner workings since season 5 is probably not the best idea. I could be mistaken about the extent of Kripke’s involvement, but I am fairly certain that I am right in my assumptions.  

Dean spent 15 years (probably more) of his life feeling unloved, unworthy, self-conscious and convinced that his life had but one purpose and that purpose would ultimately be the death of him, and he had made peace with that.

He is given a best friend, potential love interest, who helps him to see that he is more than that, so much more than that.  He is selfless, he is caring, he is a lover, not a killer. His friend’s soulmate’s sacrifice is the catalyst for him believing that all these things are true. He even takes the step of admitting out loud that he knows he has changed.  He knows that his life is worth living to the fullest and appreciating what he has every day and honoring those they have “lost along the way.”  

To then kill him during a routine hunting trip in which the boys are up against a vampire nest they could take down in their sleep.  What could possibly have been the purpose for that?  To show that once they were no longer God’s little play toys their lives were expendable?  WHY?

Dean, arguably the greatest hunter in the SPN universe, was taken out by a fucking rusty piece of rebar, and instead of trying to call for help and get the man to a hospital (not sure it would have helped) he has his final monologue, the one he has been due for the latter half all of Season 15.  He died scared, in pain, and sad.

Dean goes to heaven, and its not the heaven we have been told of in the past where you are living in your memories.  Its truly life after death and its wonderful. He meets Bobby again and told that various people in Dean’s and Bobby’s life are close by.  His parents live down the road.  His father, who was never confirmed to be but was most likely an abusive bastard, lives just down the road with his mother.  Wonderful. (WTF?) He gets confirmation that Cas is out of the empty and he smiles, nothing more.  He sees baby and goes for a drive, not to find Cas and thank him for his ultimate sacrifice, but to just drive.  I like this part because we see a happy, content Dean, and we finally get to hear Kansas’s “Carry on Wayward Son” (DONT GET ME STARTED ON THE LACK OF THE ROAD SO FAR AT THE BEGINNING OF THE EPISODE). I just wish Dean’s path to heaven had been a little easier on him.

Dean deserved better.

Castiel, the selfless angel who just wanted to find purpose in his life and ultimately found it in death. He dies never being told that he is loved, after countless times of professing his love to his found family. The angel who sacrificed himself to the Empty, a horrible place of unspeakable torture, to protect the man he loves.  A man who, mere days later (in my mind anyway), arrives in heaven after being killed in a gruesome accident, rather than fulfilling his destiny that Cas fought so hard to protect.  Some sacrifice. It turns out that Cas is saved by the Empty from Jack, but we don’t get to see his joyful reunion with Dean, the man he loves.  

Cas deserved better.

Sam is left to live this life without his brother, and potentially the love of his life because the writers couldn’t be bothered to confirm Eileen’s re-existence after Chuck’s rapture.  He has a family, and he grows old (mind you with REALLY bad makeup in a show that is known for their incredible makeup/special effects departments).

He seems to be happy, but you can tell something is missing.  We come to see that he raised his son to be a hunter.  He raised his son in a life that, at the outset of this show, he was desperate to get out of and live a normal life.  Perhaps he no longer believes that anyone can live a normal life knowing what is out there. *EDIT* Looking back I don’t believe he raised his son to be a hunter, just gave him the tattoo in case.

He names his son Dean, because of course he does. He has a wife who we see from a distance and is never given the clarity if it is Eileen or not.  He finally dies after what looks like a slow and painful illness and is sent to heaven.

In heaven he meets up with Dean.  This was lovely.  The two of them meeting again after so long, for Sam, that is. Dean only had to seemingly wait for a few hours.

Sam deserved better.

For a show that had the potential to go out on a historically significant high, this is disappointing, to say the least.  The story had the potential to end with 2 brothers who have sacrificed so much and saved so many people, find a happy ending.  Not only that but find a happy ending with a deaf partner and a gay angel. If that isn’t breaking barriers and bending norms, I don’t know what is.  I really would like to know what prevented this from happening.  Be it the CW from restricting them or maybe the absolute lack of originality from the writers, I am curious as to their reasoning. Maybe it was COVID.  Maybe because they couldn’t have those two actors physically on set due to protocols, they didn’t want to shortchange them by having them appear otherwise: disembodied voice, phone call (DONT TOUCH ME) or even a flashback… hell STOCK FOOTAGE! I don’t know and I clearly can’t imagine the reason.

I realize that there is nothing that can be done about this episode now and that accepting it and moving on is really the only way forward.  But the legacy this show has left, and its lasting impact on me and my life, cannot be ignored.  I was looking forward to indulging in past episodes of this show for the rest of my life. It is going to be a long time before I can watch an episode without anger and resentment towards what I know to be their eventual end.  That, to me, is unforgiveable.  

I don’t expect anyone to actually read this because I do not have any followers. I have never blogged in my entire life and was only recently introduced to the online fandom, but I needed to write this.  I needed to share the impact that this episode had on me.  I do hope that it does reach those in the fandom that may have similar feelings and are able to use my words to help express how they are feeling.  We can move on, and we will move on, but we need to do it together.

I know that there are people who, if they read this, would shake their head in disbelief that I became so emotionally invested in this show that watching a bad ending would take such a toll on my mental health.  

To them I say, imagine this… The Pittsburgh Steelers (my favorite team, they can imagine their own) have an incredible season.  A season where they saw a myriad of highs and lows. Veteran players making incredible comebacks, rookie players coming in to their own.  Season ending injuries that lead to the next man stepping up and contributing in ways they weren’t sure possible.  Now imagine they make it to the Superbowl and after 3 tough quarters, in which they played their best, getting better with each quarter, they lose it in the final minutes.  All that blood, sweat, and tears for nothing.  Now imagine that was their last season and the Pittsburgh Steelers are no longer an NFL team.  They are done.  No “we’ll get ‘em next season.”  No “it’s just a game and there is always another one”.  Just done.  Their entire franchise, for a brief moment in time, reduced to those final minutes where they failed to win.  Devastating. Of course, in the long run that is not what they will be remembered for.  I mean, after all, they have won 6 Lombardi trophies, and no one is taking that away from them.  But the sting will remain for a while. *EDIT* This was as close to prophecy as I will ever get, the Steelers did all of the above until the playoffs, but THANK GOD, there will be another season.

If I can’t make you understand with a sports metaphor than I will never make you understand.  

I love this show and this loss is devastating.  I do hope that it is remembered for more than their last-minute loss.  I hope it is remembered for the joy and acceptance that their fandom felt with each episode, for the laugher on set and the gag reels. I hope it is remembered for the individual players who gave it their all. I know it will be, but for me personally, this sting is going to last for a while.  

[majesticnerdynerd]

Reichenbach Falls Recap 2020

Hello! Since it is December 31st of this tomfuckery of a year, I decided to make a post about something that brightened my days since the 25th of May, my fic Reichenbach Falls that keeps me company every day which I love very much. Never ever would I have thought I’d come up with a 300-chapter a.k.a. 3 works in 1 fanfic. And yet here we are! 

I wanted to reflect on how the initial writing process went, then the posting, and how it evolved until today. 

So, Reichenbach Falls. It is a Gravity Falls Sherlock AU, but as I plotted more and more, it evolved into the monstrosity of SuperWhoLock. 2012 called that they want their Holy Trinity back, but guess what? I may be late to the party but I still groove! It will mostly be SuperLock once it really gets off in further episodes later on, but the SuperWhoLock episodes? Y’all won’t see the crazy stuff coming.

Now: the origins. As I mentioned above, the 25th of May 2020 is when I speed-wrote episode 1 of RF. The original document was 13k words long and mere 3 chapters, and I have a policy of writing on and on until it is needed to start reviewing. Upon said reviewing in the last week of August. It was a lot of work; since then I had decided to have each episode be split into 5 chapters, so I had to add 2 and review the new stuff. Today, episode 1 - Pixie Cut is the longest I have so far with 30k words. However, that may be soon overcome by episode 8 or 9 or even 10 - I noticed that episodes down the line are quite elaborate as I write them, which I suppose is good? I mean, it gives us more lore and interactions!

After writing all summer on speeds similar to those of Mr Krabs on methamphetamine (and my friends Bee @jasombee​ and Dee @ipromiseimnotaspy​ can attest to that), I suddenly found myself facing September 1st. The day I published Introduction to the characters and chapter 1 of ep. 1. And guys, the reception and feedback I got at the beginning? Still mindblowing to this day! 

And I am incredibly grateful for everyone who clicked, gave kudo, commented, or subscribed to the fic, because I honestly didn’t think that a Sherlock AU that is taking on its own life and consuming mine would get much attention. But it did! And it’s all the more exciting to be able to share the story of John, Irene, Sherlock, Greg, and Mrs Hudson with anyone who joins the ride!

But the special thanks belong to Bee and Dee whom I mnetioned above as well. Bee took her time to bless Reichenbach Falls with fanart of the Colour Wheel, and Mary, John, Irene, and Sherlock. And there will be more for some other important peeps, too, eventually! And her art is gorgeous, so she definitely also deserves some serious love. Dee took her time to read the episodes I put in front of her and gave me first-feel feedback as a reader, which I value so much! She also prohibited me from spoiling her the plot twists, so she’s a bit of my lab rat to see her reactions, while Bee is my sounding board and helped me flesh out the overarching plot across the full 3 works and she also graciously helps me smooth out details regarding the crossover bits. Oh, and Dee also made moodboards for Sherlock and Irene! Thank you girls, I don’t know what I’d do without you.

We also got a SuperLock episode, which actually took a lot longer than I liked to write in July. It was the first passing introduction of the Winchester brothers, and I have to say that I’m satisfied with it. The original episode was 22k words long, the present posted one stands at 25.888 words. The Winchester brothers will be vital to the plot and very relevant as the story progresses, so it’s definitely not the last time we saw them in ep2 Gloria Scott! And I mean it, did I mention there’s a lot of lore? :)

This fic has its own memes in my gallery, because me and my friends couldn’t help it, and somehow, a twisted impostor spirit of Niclas Cage and ghoul Freddie Mercury ended up as parts of the plot in their respective episodes. What can I say, this fic is full of surprises even for me as I write :D and there’s a lot more to come as we unravel the many mysteries of Reichenbach Falls and its origins!

Honestly, it’s such a blast to write this. I never thought I’d set out to write a project this big. I have a shcedule I try to keep to, posting on every fifth day of the month. Season 1, Deja Vu, is roughly plotted out, but I’ve discussed this on my secondary blog where I had a nice chat with Iris. Season 2, name of which I won’t disclose yet because that is 1 year in the future in terms of being posted, is also plotted out roughly, but I give myself enough free leeway so as not to feel restricted or suffocated by my own expectations. Which works out, because I always improvise on the whim as I write, and it’s all the more fun!

And the people who reached out, even those who didn’t or lurk, I love you. You’ve made this experience of posting fanfiction all the more exciting and I can’t wait to show you all there is. Thank you <3

The primary ship is, of course, Johnlock, but I don’t stop there either ;) but other ships are a surprise for now!

Also, here’s something I find quite funny: almost 4 full months of Reichenbach Falls being posted and it reached a beautiful number of hits.

Do you see that?

Oh yes. It’s all coming together. What a way to end 2020. Crowley shall enjoy the ride as well, because we’re on our highway to hell! (wow it rhymes)

Seriously, though. Thank you for tagging along. 

I’ll see you on January 5th with episode 6

Happy New Year!

-Vee

[yiannalianos]

MY STORY

It’s been a long time coming since I’ve wanted to create my own personal blog. I guess I should start by introducing myself. I’m Yianna. Since the age of 16 (I’m not 24, turning 25 in a month), I have dedicated my entire life to fitness, working out, eating ‘clean’, and losing weight. It all started back in high school when people would call me the ‘chunky one’ of my group of friends. I knew I was bigger than most of the girls in my circle, but I didn’t think I was fat until people spoke it into existence. From that moment I promised myself I would get a gym membership and start exercising, eating ‘clean’, and dieting. I wish I knew then, what I know now. Years and years of dieting, restricting, counting macros, putting my body through agony in the gym, hours and hours of cardio, getting lean, suffering from an eating disorder, and getting complimented on my disordered behaviors, has lead me to where I am today. 

The first summer of lockdown (corona virus), I used all of my free time to get to an extremely unsustainable body size that required me to be insanely rigid with my eating habits (weighing and measuring everything I ate to the GRAM- even vegetables.... I mean WHAT?!) and working out for 2-3 hours everyday. After 7 years of that, you’d think someone who finally be SICK of living a life like that, right? Wrong. I was so wrapped up in my apperance and thrived off of the compliments I got on my crazy 6 pack, work ethic, willpower, and motivation. This is what’s wrong with society praising people (especially women) for weight loss. The compliments feed the disordered behaviors. They reinsure to women that being thin and skinny is IDEAL. When in reality, it’s fucking NOT. Oh and before you continue on, you’ll be hearing way more FUCK’S from me, because quite frankly that’s just how I speak. Like it or leave it AM I RIGHT? 

ANYWAYS, back to my extremely disordered (past) self. The amount of energy, time, and brain space required to look a certain way, the way that was praised by everyone around me, just truy became an unsustainable, unhealthy obsession with fitness AND health. Here’s the thing about ‘fitspos’ and ‘fitness influencers’... they only show you what it looks like to be them on the outside. But, if I could bet you a million dollars right now, most of those women who make money off of flaunting their shredded 6 pack, big glutes, and meal plans are living incredibly unfulfilled lives. I mean, I’VE BEEN THERE, DONE THAT! When I was my smallest, it didn’t only leave my body feeling weak, small, tired, and incredibly hungry... but my entire world was shrinking around me. When you’re a Type A person like me, and when you have goals to reach, you don’t let anything get in the way of stopping you from achieving those goals. So, my time was spent only on counting calories, exercising, and worrying about what my body looked like. I honestly think I could gain a year of my life back for the amount of times I checked out my 6-pack in the mirror. How shallow, but also, how SAD. I really thought my worth as a woman was defined by the lines and veins in my body, and the number on the scale. Silly, silly me. As I’ve said it before... I wish I knew then, what I know now. 

[thejosh1980]

(Seems like) Years since yesterday...

Today, 1 year ago, is a special day...

One year ago today was the last time I bought myself a new guitar... I always wanted a Guild, and as I had been touring a lot with The Cashbags I figured I could now afford it. It's blonde, with P90s and as close as I could get to one of my idols, Dave G from The Paladins.

I bought it second hand via “Ebay Kleinanzeigen”, right before a show with The Cashbags. The guy came to the venue, before sound check and I tried it out. I was in love... I bought it there and then...

I played it that night at The Cashbags show too. This was the only show I played my own guitar during all my years touring with the band. Usually I would use the band gear, as it best suited the look the band wanted (and it was easy for me, I didn't have to carry my guitar and amp to and from shows)...

It's also the only show I have so far played with this guitar...

Why?

Well that's cause of that damn pandemic.

You see, that show in Langenselbold was to become the last one The Cashbags would play with me...

I knew I was leaving the band at the end of the tour, which was at the end of April, but COVID had a different plan. It's kinda hard to explain how it felt driving to the show, a good 6 hours, with 1 or 2 date cancellations happening along the way... However, by the the next morning hotel breakfast, the rest of the tour was cancelled.

We lost 6 solid weeks of shows...

But how naive I was. I thought we'd be back at it pretty soon; dates rescheduled, last minute shows would be booked... you know the deal. But in the end, I didn't share the stage with the band again, I didn't get to say goodbye to half the band members before leaving Germany either.

Alex and I had only been married 10 days when restrictions started to begin in Germany. The full lockdown was a week or two later, wasn't it? I don't know, it's all a bit of a blur.

I was lucky, at the time, I had my studio which was all mine, so I could get out of the apartment, walk the dog and play guitar, loud... The new guitar got some action, behind closed doors of course.

You know the story, we started selling up, packing up and, eventually, moved down under...

It feels surreal to think how, at the time, we had no idea how this was going to affect us. It's quite clear the pandemic has brought out the best (and worst) in people.

I think for me, during my time in Dresden's restrictions, everything felt, well, OK. It didn't feel too bad, but I had a lot to focus on. The “goodbyes” to everyone was the hardest thing. I don't remember being under the weather, depressed or sick. I may have been, but whatever negative thoughts and feelings there were, they weren't strong during that time.

I was lucky to be one of the earlier guests on the Blue Note live stream in March, which encouraged me to do my own live streams in April and May. As unprepared as I was to learn so many new songs, it was a good focus, until it got too much.

In July we had “The Josh Fest” which was too much for my emotions. Dresden, I feel the love. I'm so thankful (and lucky) so many friends could come out for one last party. Reuniting old bands, new bands and old friends on stage, it'll go down as one of the best shows in my life. One that ended with me in tears...

When we had the first cancelled flight and rescheduled flights in mid July, I don't remember feeling too bad about it all either. I didn't like it, but our delay was only a week or two. And we had a roof over our head and Alex's family there to support us.

But once the 3rd or 4th rescheduled flight happened it started to get scary and worrying. I remember some really bad days in Meine. I had lost all hope of getting home. We were in limbo, and had little control over the situation. Our health insurances had expired, we were no longer registered in Germany and were worried constantly if the next flight would let us on. So many last minute cancellations, wears one down. I spent quite a bit of my time frustrated, depressed and helpless during those 2 months.

Once we took control, used some savings and bought ourselves new flights, we made it to Adelaide. I definitely felt better by taking action. However, another set of challenges arise, quarantine isn't fun. We were lucky with our hotel, room and food, but it's still tough... Very tough... And I sympathize with everyone who's had to go through it, especially those who are doing it under hardship.

In late September we made it mum's. We finally made it... I'd been waiting for this moment for a year (longer than originally planned of course). I made the decision to move in September/October 2019. I had achieved a lot in Europe, so many amazing adventures (good and challening) that I'll have enough memories to last a life time (if I can remember them!).

I wanted to come back and take care of my family.

When we arrived at mum's, it hit me... I was back! I didn't feel the excitement I thought I would. I felt bad for Mum. Like, shouldn't I have been crying? Shouldn't I have been screaming! “I'm baaaaaaack!!!” In the end I think it was just relief... We'd arrived almost 3 months later than expected. We needed to settle in.

I think settling in took a while. Is it still happening? Even the smell of the fresh salt air knocks you out! Lots of new things to get used to. Integration had begun. Usually I returned home for a holiday, now it was a return for good. This is a full time permanent position.

I did enjoy October through to January. Alex wasn't working, we had time to do stuff, relax... Enjoy the local scene. I don't surf every day, but definitely as often as conditions allow. I did some work, which I previously blogged about. Alex started working in December, and she loves her job... Things were pretty good...

I was, I still am, trying to get over saying goodbye to my puppy, my friends and wondering why I had little motivation to pick up the guitar...

In mid January Mijo, my little kitten, came into my life. Thanks to my wonderful wife, she knew full well I wouldn't decide to get a pet on my own, and on the responsibility to bring some fur into our lives. Damn I'm lucky.

In fact, Alex's intuition is amazing... She always seems to know know when to ask questions, when to listen, when to take action and when to bring coffee. Bless her cotton socks...

However come February I'd hit the wall. I don't know what it is, what it was.... But it's been a little while coming, and hasn't gone away. It did leave me in bed for 3 days, and don't ask me the reason, cause I can't tell you.

I've had a lot of motivation issues... I just don't feel like getting up... I have to, because I gotta drive mum to work and pick her up. Once back home, usually I drink coffee and force myself to do something, anything... I've used the excuse of “training Mijo” that I visit friends with him, but really my heart hasn't been in it. I just know I'd feel guilty if I didn't do anything...

I've had a lot of paperwork to fill out since getting home. Bank accounts and all that kind of stuff... Alex's visa (which is still on going for another 18 months or so). Also local government bureaucratic stuff I have to deal with. Taxes! I'm planning to start studying in April, but to enroll the process comes with a lot of documentation, questions and answers...

So... Lately...

I have distanced myself from everyone lately. Except for a few moments, I haven't picked up the guitar in almost 12 months. I barely do anything. Writing this blog today, has taken a lot of energy and focus to start. If it wasn't for the “anniversary” today, I wouldn't have even begun to type.

To help you understand the hole I was (and still am) in... I have been blessed with a roof over my head, food every day, a loving wife, a beautiful kitten, a loving mum (and family and friends), the beach, the sounds of birds waking me up and (mostly) great weather... But I'm still unhappy...

How could that be? Why is that?

I know I wrote a few times before, that writing has helped me process my feelings. So I figured I'd better try it. Practice what I preach!... But don't ask me how I feel, I just don't know... and it can change in a heart beat.

I got out of bed today, and I did some office work... First time in over a week... Stuff I've been putting off... I'll need to make a few calls this afternoon too... But in between I think I'll rest... Relax...

Usually, I push myself too much... I have pushed myself to the edge (again)... I've been feeling desperate, unmotivated, hopeless, helpless and, well, just plain shit... I know I gotta get out of it, but these days I'm trying a new approach: pull back, relax, rethink, rest and figure out the right balance... So far I am somewhere in the middle....

At least I think I feel better than when I was constantly powering through and not acknowledging my feelings.

I'm my worst critic, and I feel guilty if I don't “do” every day... I gotta “do” this or that... But sometimes you gotta take care of yourself... That is also a “do”... isn't it? Self care. Self love. Listening to your body.

So it's been one of the roughest years in a long time for us... hasn't it??

Damn...

Please don't do what I do and ignore the stress and pressure... What I mean is, there's been so many new things for all of us, so many new challenges, we forget how far we've come. We forget we are still here.

We have achieved so much, even if it's the fact we got out of bed today!!!

We need to be kind to each other, but more importantly to ourselves. I wouldn't treat my pet, my friends or my family as badly as I do myself, so why am I doing that?? It's gotta stop.

I gotta listen to myself when I don't feel up to it, and forgive myself for putting myself first... Rest... Reflection... Relaxing... Recuperation... Maybe then I can begin the next chore... Like filling out this damn paperwork just to get into college...

https://youtu.be/-rkq9ffBpWY - The Paladins - Years Since Yesterday

Thanks for reading,

Josh

[lgcmanager]

PRODUCER MISSION 004

SCHEDULE TYPE: TRIMESTER SCHEDULE RESTRICTIONS: Cannot be paired with another trimester schedule, unless stated otherwise

on JANUARY 18, REO KANGDAE has summoned all the CURRENT PRODUCERS, old and new. in this early in the morning, the meeting with kangdae is still as informal as ever. the man has even brought pastries, coffee, tea and hot chocolate to each preferences. “hey guys, nice to see you.” he says, a friendly smile on his face “we have some new faces with us, so here’s a tl;dr about me; i am the head manager of LGC CREATIVES, i oversee pretty much everything creatively wise within the company. i’ve been spending a lot of times on future dreams and project origin lately” he confides.“anyway, one of my assistant managers is assigned to this team, called the junior producer team. you have your own office as a team, with desks for each one of you. there are a couple of recording studios in the new building, so no worries, you’ll just have to reserve them when you’re ready to work, there shouldn’t be any overlapping issues.” he makes sure that no one has questions before continuing. “you’re going to have to bear with me, because we have a lot more to discuss.”

DORMS

“for our new producers; those who are confirmed to leave can do so now, and the rest can move in the dorm.” he take a sip of coffee. “as i told the others before, since you’ve taken the producer path, we’re going to be a bit more lenient with you guys, but keep in mind that you are still artists under legacy entertainment and if you ever wish to dip in other path, you better watch yourselves. if we hear of bad behaviors, rules breaking or anything that could tarnish legacy’s image, unfortunately it won’t go unpunished. so don’t disappoint me and break a trusting bond, please.” he’s obviously not to please to have to talk about possible disciplinary measures.

SNS

“all the rules that we stated previously about having a PUBLIC INDIVIDUAL INSTAGRAM ACCOUNT haven’t changed. once you have completed a full trimester in this path and have at least 6 posts on the legacy entertainment account, you’ll be allowed to have one. we just want to make sure that you can be trusted, but you already know how it is. be smart. don’t make us take it away from you, got it? now, there are a few of you who are eligible for this new ... privilege,” he chuckles to himself, “anyway, the information will be provided to you separately. for the rest of you, better luck next time.”

DEBUT CONTRACT

“for the new producers, you must sign your NEW CONTRACT. don’t forget to read the fine print, that’s where they get you, of course, and once you’re good with it, sign it and bring it back, hm?”

( this is just an ic note, there is no need to submit this ooc )

PRODUCER MISSION 001: FUTURE DREAMS 3

“for those who where here last trimester, you know how draining future dreams has been on our resources. well, they gave us a sudden impossible task.” kangdae sighs. “i guess i’m to blame for proposing new songs.” he adds softly, almost as if talking just to himself. “anyway, we need new songs recorded for... yesterday. quite literally.” he announces. “and imagine that there are 24 of them and not that many of you. so we’ll need your help with this one; each of you will be in charge of the recording session of 2 members of future dreams !”

PRODUCER MISSION 002: MORE?

“some of you have been here for a couple of months now and starting to show promise.” kangdae continues. “however, i did say that this path would support you in future endeavors you’d like to take on. so during the trimester, i’ll be meeting you all one by one to know what you would like to do besides being a producer. be prepared, because i don’t want a vague idea, but a proper plan.”

PRODUCER MISSION: PRODUCER NAME

“quick news; i got some of your official producer names approved. Allie; we keep it simple, it’s Allie. Jiyeon; Yeony. Gitaek; ohboi. for the others, with your public debut coming soon, we’ll request you to submit THREE name ideas that you will use as a producer”

** ADMIN NOTE: please submit your choices through the lgcmanager account **

REQUIREMENTS

make sure to use the hashtag lgc:producermission for everything related to this event. you have until APRIL 3, 2021, 11:59PM EDT to complete the following requirements:

FUTURE DREAMS 3: write a 300+ words solo or a 4 replies (minimum 8 lines) thread with a partner about anything related to this event  +4 POINTS TO DISTRIBUTE ANYWHERE and +4 NOTORIETY ! ** this can be claimed 2 times, one requirement MUST be with a future dreams boy **

MORE: write a 300+ words solo about your meeting with kangdae for +8 POINTS TO DISTRIBUTE ANYWHERE.

SOLO PROJECT: this trimester, producers are given time to work on their own projects. you may claim ONE TITLE TRACK released after January 2019. write a 300+ words solo or a 4 replies (minimum 8 lines) thread with a partner about the process for +8 POINTS TO DISTRIBUTE ANYWHERE

to validate your skill points and collect your notoriety points, please submit the following form ONCE on the points blog before APRIL 3, 2020, 11:59EDT.

TITLE: MUSE NAME ∙ PRODUCER MISSION 004

FD3: +4 (skill points distribution) +4 notoriety [ LINK ]

FD3 +4 (skill points distribution) +4 notoriety [ LINK ]

MORE: +8 (skill points distribution) [ LINK ]

SOLO PROJECT:  +8 (skill points distribution ) [ LINK ]

[eliza-meh]

So I guess we're coming to the end of the year.... And I guess we'll all start seeing them "what a year posts" , "can't wait for next year" "my goals for next year are...."

The sometimes irritating look how much I have achieved posts when all you've done (well I've done) is just survive.

But let's face it 2020 has been just pure shite. But still a year, i guess we could call it the year we all paused..... Hmmm imagine if that was the film title really not appealing, the year the earth stood still.... I'm sure that's a film already....... Just simple covid 19 in 2020, nah we wouldn't have to see that we all know what happens in that movie....... Hmmmm suppose title pending.

So if your wondering if this is going to be one of those look at what I've achieved, my reflection on the year, looking forward to next year posts..... Well yeah I guess it is.

This year we've all spent times away from our loved ones, some more than others but for all of us as social creatures that's hard. We've all lost people or know of people who have passed, fluffy ones and all. We may have gained or re-ignited a relationship or lost one.... I'm still including fluffy ones in this too.

We've all seen and been through the frustration of the covid restrictions and witnessed the effects of it, the strain of it, the impact of it on living our lives, achieving our goals and our mental health.

I'm sure we've all said we could have done a miles better job or given suggestions on how to run this country better. Yep... Guilty!! You know what we probably could.......and we all have our views. But we've got through it and you've done an awesome job so far.

So what have we achieved this year......

I feel like probs many people out there, that I have achieved nothing... Nothing I've wanted to and that's frustrated me. But On reflection alot has been achieved. And a lot has been learnt.... And I bet you've done alot too.

So here is what I have learnt and achieved:

1. I made it through the year and so have you, So let me first congratulate you on making it this far and surving this roller-coaster 2020(thats the title). This is a massive achievement. And if this is all You've done, doesn't matter your here and that's all that matters.

2. I've watched a lot of series on Netflix and realised if I've done nothing it's fine sometimes I need to rest.

3. Life is not a competition about who has the more stuff, more money or the shittest life.... its about supporting them because you never know when your going to need the help in return.

4. Respecting others:I feel like this has left the majority of people and something we all need to learn to do.... Or do more often.

5. Social media can be the devil

6. Find a good skin care routine: it's generally changed my skin and I will be blogging about this in the new year.

7. I've got to be comfortable and happy before I can help others be happy.

8. Every little thing helps: even if it's just getting dressed in the morning or doing the washing up, or making your bed. You've achieved something for the day.

9. Control the things you can control, I get tied up in things I cannot control and get anxious about it. I've learnt it's pointless doing this.

10. When the bowls full it's full:by meaning I cannot do everything something has to wait to get done.

11. Live each day, because everyday could be my last.

12. I love all the people in my life. And your all fantastic and I have totally underestimated how much you make my life bearable to. Live.

13.People will find an excuse for anything not trying, failing. People will use anything as an excuse. You get no where using excuses and if you really want to do something you will always find a way.

14.reflection, doesn't harm to tell yourself what the f*** have you done, buts also good to think how you could of done better or the things you have done well.

15. Let go of the things that don't matter. You wouldnt waste 1 million pound trying to get the 10 pound back you lost, so you wouldn't waste a day fretting over something that doesn't matter.

So Id just like to say.... If you feel like you've achieved /learnt nothing or gone no where this year.... Chances are you've done more than you think. So...

Cheers and here's to 2021, I'd set some goals but let's face it who knows what's going to happen. probs get taken over by a pack of man eating monkies, hope not, but moving on this is my mantra for next year.......

-live each day to the best I can

-don't make excuses, find a way.

-talk more and respect others

-think about the things only I can control and not about the things I can't.

-Reflect on your day, week, or month and set small achievable goals.

-not worry about the things that don't matter.

-smile more..... I'm nearly 30 and I feel like I've not yet developed my laughter lines yet.

2020 it's time to eff off step aside and let 2021 take the stage.... 2021 let's see what you've got!!

All the best

Take care

We can do this!!

[keywestlou]

MORNING STEW #48

I have not done a Morning stew since early December. My aching body has caused me to miss a day or two. This blog is catch up time. I am going to spell out items in the order they appear in my notes.

Enjoy.

The IRS will begin forwarding the $1,400 stimulus checks this weekend. Some already have arrived. Direct deposit will be first to receive.

Question: If culture wars are over, why is Dr. Seuss all over FOX News.

Most Republican Congressional persons are complaining the stimulus is too big. They forget the crisis is big too!

I have had one vaccine shot. My second the 27th. Vaccine distribution has been a problem in Florida. In addition to availability overall.

Spoke with a person yesterday who said he was in a chain drug store locally to pick up a few things. An employee asked him if he would like a vaccine shot saying that the vaccine would “spoil” if not used. The man got his shot. In fact, he has already had both.

Interestingly, he is not close yet to qualifying off an eligibility list. Including age limits.

I was unaware the vaccine could spoil. Did a little home work. They can.

Pfizer advises its vaccine has a life of 120 hours (5 days). If vaccine is older, Pfizer recommends the manufacturer be called for guidance.

The CDC maintains a COVID-19 Expiration Date Tracking Pool to follow the age of the vaccine at different levels.

What continues to bother me is that we have insufficient vaccine supply in various parts of Florida. Never the less, vaccine is apparently getting old/stale and may have to be disposed of without use. A disgrace.

The entire vaccine situation is in disarray. Not just in Florida. All over the U.S.

Harry Truman loved Key West and Key west loves Harry Truman.

Truman arrived in Key West on 3/12/1950 for a one month vacation.

Biden has ordered the deployment of 4,000 active duty military to help reach vaccine targets. Biden is handling the problem well. It is a war!

The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops reveals a “near obsession” with abortion in its opposition to the Johnson and Johnson vaccine.

Spring Breakers are arriving. Key West beaches filling up. Many more expected.

The largest influx of college students is expected to hit Miami and Fort Lauderdale. Many believe a significant number will be unhappy with those two cities and move down to Key West.

Miami and Fort Lauderdale still have restrictions in place. The kids will not be happy.

For example, Miami has a midnight to 6 am curfew. Alcohol is prohibited on beaches.

Key West has been touted as an “open town.” Hordes will arrive.

Key West police are ready. Even horseback police officers will be involved.

St. Patrick’s Day is around the corner. The problem will be the same.

The virus will be around longer than it should because many deviate from the restrictions. Merchants as well as college guests and other visitors.

It is proper to disrespect someone who does not perform properly. Even those who lack the capacity to do good.

I speak of Florida’s Governor DeSantis. A horses ass no mater how you view him. You can’t make good out of bad.

This past week DeSantis issued an order for fines persons and businesses have paid or might have to pay for charges already made be withdrawn. Included are mask violations.

Query: How are safety rules to be enforced during Spring Break?

The “ass” is considered Pesidential timber for 2024. Amazing!

Note this is the same individual who “arranged” for vaccine to be provided to  two affluent communities in Florida because they represented some of his heavy financial supporters.

Trump has said many times that DeSantis is the best governor in the U.S. Understandable. Trump was DeSantis’ Pied Piper. He did everything Trump wanted. Bad guys. Sinful under the skin.

While everyone has suspected Trump’s financial problems n New York City would bring him down, it now appears Georgia may do it first. He is being examined down to his underwear for issues involving ballot counting durnig the Presidential election.

If such occurs, and I suspect it will, Donald’s own recorded words will do him in.

A new restaurant in Key West. The Southernmost Fish Company Restaurant. Recently opened where Michael’s did business for many years. I wish Southernmost good luck! Can’t wait for my quarantine time to be over so I can try it.

Syracuse, my Syracuse! What a lousy basketball season!

One week ago, Syracuse was off the bubble. Then Syracuse beat North Carolina State 89-68. Back on the bubble!

Two days later, Syracuse played Virginia. A better team. The game was tied. Virginia dropped in a 3 pointer at the buzzer.

Syracuse now off the bubble? Maybe not. Virginia a much better team and yet Syracuse almost defeated them. The word now is that Syracuse is an if.”

If Syracuse makes it, it is anticipated it will be as #68, the last team invited to play in the big tournament.

We will know tomorrow when the tournament choices and rankings are announced.

Merrick Garland was confirmed by the Senate Judiciary Committee this past week for the post of Attorney General. The Senate will confirm him, if it has not already done so.

Garland has been touted as “best” for the job for two reasons.

First, he headed the Oklahoma investigation 25 years ago. Second, he has been a respected federal judge for more than 20 years.

Both experiences qualifying on their face. However, I question such.

Twenty five years is a long time ago. No one can tell whether he is as good investigatory wise today as he was then. A good judge does not necessarily make a good prosecutor. Especially after 20 years as a judge. The mind changes. In some instances, the drive also.

I hope Garland does well and I wish him well. However, he causes me concern.

What does Joe Manchin really want? I think he wants his ass kissed. He wants to be considered a big guy in Washington circles. He  fortuitously has been placed in that position.

It bothers me.

Biden has a tremendous opportunity to accomplish much. The stimulus bill evidence of the ability he has. To move on, Biden needs Manchin’s support. More succinctly, his Senate vote.

He is the fly in the ointment.

The vaccine. Demand exceeds supply in many parts of the country. Florida, especially.

DeSantis this past week dropped the eligibility age from 65 to 60. He could drop it to 40. Would make no difference. There is not enough vaccine for the people already eligible.

Proof of the pudding are Miami, Florida City and Tampa. Lines long waiting for shots. Get to the head of the line and told there is no more vaccine. All out!

Many of these people waited hours.

“Promises made, promises kept” was a joke when it came to Trump. The only “promise” he ever kept was the tax cut for the wealthy which kept millions of dollars in their pockets.

DeSantis no better. Makes a promise. Cannot deliver. Not because he is devious. Rather he does not check facts out before he speaks.

Anyone recall Katherine Houghton? She was the lovely young daughter who planned to marry Sidney Poitier in Guess Who’s Coming To Dinner. Spencer Tracy and Katherine Hepburn played her parents.

A terrific movie. I can’t see it enough.

Katherine is now 75 years old. Hard to believe!

An interesting fact which many may not be aware. Katherine Hepburn was Katherine Houghton’s aunt. Hepburn was instrumental in helping Houghton launch her career.

Done!

Enjoy your day!

MORNING STEW #48 was originally published on Key West Lou