#Five drinks to get to know me

[carlos-in-glasses]

Five drinks to get to know me…

Thank you for the tag @bonheur-cafe

(I have done this in the style of an American British Gothic as a little writing exercise.)

She watches the steam of the kettle rise and fog the pint glasses on the shelf above. Heavy night-time rain hits the kitchen window that is cracked from where a pigeon struck weeks before. Some cracks you have to live with. Silver rivers obscure the view of the wheelie bins in the car park in a way that seems deliberate. Rain has always been there for her. Green waits in the rain. It is nearly spring. She opens a fresh box of Yorkshire Tea and breathes in.

They dance at the Silver Bullet in Finsbury Park. The club will close down two years later. Everybody stares. They are in a chalk circle. The ritual is their own making. Devils get fed up and leave. A DJ mixes Baker Street by Gerry Rafferty with Moloko’s The Time is Now. How this is possible, nobody can say. Gin and tonic used to be the drink of old ladies with lavender rinses at the British Legion. Now it is the drink of them. One friend throws up in the street; five Irish girls on a hen party form another circle of protection. London is full of mayhem and love.

July heatwave. Air like a fever. The girls at the sleepover are thirteen, nearly fourteen. At 2 a.m. they go downstairs and make hot chocolate in silence and take it into the garden. On the grass, they sit on the Twister mat and drink, gazing at the only stars that are visible this close to London. Vega is blue. Arcturus is orange. Over the next ten years these girls will speak less and less. Impossible to imagine. In some ways, there will never be another bond like this.

Box wine for the parents who see the school play. In the years before the global recession, the school over-buys. One boy sneaks a box into the drama room unnoticed. Twenty theatre kids drink red from the same chipped mug. One girl spills wine on her costume. She is playing an angel. Two other girls grab her and take her into the toilets. Soap does little help, but they’re laughing, bending her beneath the retro hand drier that stutters on and off. The school corridors are strange without people in them. The wine-stained angel flies down these empty corridors to get to the stage.

The old woman dies in the year 2000. Her son finds a bottle of brandy from 1983 in the back of a cupboard. Years later he will give it to his son who does not yet open it. On New Years’ Eve 2020, a global pandemic has crawled across all lives and a couple who are isolating have run out of booze. The man remembers the brandy of his grandmother’s. The first sip is decadent. It is honeyed, warm. The couple Googles the exact brandy so they can obtain another bottle in the future. Here, they find they could have sold it for over £300. There is no going back.

I know this has been floating around for a bit and I'm not sure who has been tagged or not/who hasn't done this yet - so tagging @actuallysara @howlingsaturn and @thisbuildinghasfeelings if you haven't done it and want to?!

[scienter]

Five Drinks To Get To Know Me

Thanks for the tag, @pragmatic-optimist!

Water. It's my favorite drink because it quenches thirst better than anything else.

Coffee. I love both hot coffee and iced coffee. I start every day with coffee because I need that hit of dopamine in the morning.

Lemonade. I love freshly squeezed lemonade. Pulp or no pulp - it doesn't matter as long as it's real and fresh. I don't like canned lemonade (e.g. Minute Maid) or any powdery mixes. I want the real stuff.

Dr. Pepper. Dr. Pepper is my favorite soda / carbonated beverage.

Jack on the Rocks. I don't drink very often, but when I do my go-to is Jack Daniels. Jameson is good too, but I prefer Jack.

Tagging: @knives-and-lint @besosquecreanadiccion @do-you-think-im-spoopy @thetimble @andremichaux @sahtinekryze

[grundyscribbling]

Five drinks to get to know me

I wagged by @ettelene for this one. Thank you!

1. Water. Go-to drink of choice. Usually ice, but sometimes in winter just cool.

2. Tea. I keep a variety of them on hand, but it was a revelation to me that if you have picked the right tea in the first place, you shouldn’t need to smother it with milk and/or sugar.

3. Fruit juices. In summer mostly berry juices or watermelon. (With or without ice.) In autumn and early winter, apple cider, sometimes hot and mulled. I get mine from a local orchard. Nothing else like it, including the pasteurized varieties in the supermarket.

4. Chocolate martini.

5. Milkshake. I have a blender for a reason.

I tag @nimium-amatrix-ingenii-sui, @elesianne, @jane-ways, @hrymfaxe, and @naryaflame if they care to play.

[ejzah]

Five Drinks to Get to Know Me

Thanks for tagging me @chicgeekgirl89!

1. Coffee with cream - Don’t even think of serving me black coffee. I might cry. Sadly, I drink mostly decaf now since caffeine tends to make me feel like dying most of the time.

2. Sparkling Ice or Olli Pop - I really hate myself for the second one because it’s stupidly expensive. I like that they don’t have as much sugar and I don’t feel like I might die after drinking them.

3. Vanilla Coke - I only drink it occasionally, because again, caffeine.

4. Do milkshakes count? - Despite my issues with dairy (yes, I’m a mess), I love a mint, chocolate, or chocolate malt shake.

5. Iced shaken espresso or vanilla cream cold brew - I used to love Starbucks caramel Frappuccinos, but can’t hack it any more. A shaken espresso with milk and sugar or the cold brew are just sweet enough without killing me. I also like the brown sugar oat milk shaken espresso, but only when they have the Oatly brand of oat milk.

Tagging @glenncoco4, @psyched1328, @agentblyeanddeeks.

[thebibliosphere]

Tw: restricted medical diet, missing hunger cues, death, general food and chronic illness stuff. (It's a good post tho)

Being able to eat cereal again has unlocked something actually feral in me. I'm so used to not being able to grab a quick little snack that won't have Medical Consequences later that I've pretty much gotten used to just... turning my hunger cues off and running at a deficit of calories.

It takes me literal hours to eat a bag of crisps because if I don't eke it out, my body will reject it. I can't have most fruits because my body will reject them. Raw vegetables will send me to the ER. All the foods I can eat require labor, either past or present, and when you're already running on a deficit of energy from chronic pain and constant hunger, well, that's easier said than done.

But being able to do something as simple as eating cornflakes, either with or without milk, and not have my body go into an anaphylactic meltdown is... This is game-changing.

When I say it has awoken something feral in me, I'm being literal. It's hunger. I'm feeling hunger, and for the first time in literal years, I'm able to sate it without having to burn up precious energy to do it.

And it's just so achingly normal that it feels like it shouldn't be a big deal. It feels ridiculous to feel tearful over a thing like cornflakes. But when I consider the fact that in 2019, I almost died from malnutrition because my nervous system was shutting down, and I couldn't eat anything because my MCAS was so advanced everything was sending me into anaphylaxis I, I just. Yeah.

Crying over cornflakes on a Monday night.

Just MCAS 'remission' things... ✌

[sammygender]

i’ve never been as angry on behalf of a character as i am for sam winchester

[todayisafridaynight]

plane scene is so funny cause why is mine a sleeper agent that wakes up whenever daigo is mentioned

can’t wait to see it in dragon engine :3

mine has been the winner for Funniest Character Imaginable for 15 consecutive years and i have yet to see anyone come close i fear

[scoriarose]

Hi!! I’ve never had a pet snake so this might be a dumb question but is it harder for snakes to see when they’re in blue?

It's not dumb, snake eyesight is different from our own so we can't assume they see exactly how or what we do. For the longest time people believed they couldn't see red, and used red lights to light their enclosures at night- that's bad for them. Please do not light your snake like a rotisserie chicken, they can see it.  Red light can be detrimental to reptiles because it can make it difficult for them to perceive depth, which can lead to mental distress. Red light bulbs can mess with your pet's ability to tell if it is day or night, since a light is always on, and that can cause stress and health and long term sight issues too.

But back to your original question, yes, snakes have difficulty seeing when they are in blue. Many will stay buried and hidden, not even eating until they've completely shed. That is the norm, and if a snake wants to be left alone, they should be. Sakura will hide most of the time, but I'll sometimes see the tip of her nose near a burrow hole, and I'll dangle something tasty in front of it and she'll eat it- but I won't dig her up if she's having alone time. Scoria will hide unless I'm around- they both know my voice and scent, and Scoria has complete trust in me so much that even when blind she knows I'll keep her safe.

She allowed me to take her out and feed her today, and then asked for pets. This behavior is unique to her, and if she were not specifically asking to be pet I would not do it after feeding (any other snake might throw up). I'd stop petting her and she'd ask again and again like, "Nope! Need more, come back and pet me." I really don't mind, she's found a way to tell me she enjoys being pet, and that's amazing- and also makes me happy. After many many pets (I guess we had a few days to make up for, I've been leaving her alone for the most part, only saw she was in blue, and then it was food day and saw her looking at me from her mossy hide) she buried herself underground in her bioactive area.

Perhaps some day Sakura will trust me to touch her while she's in blue too- but if not that's just fine. Sometimes we all need a few days to ourselves.

Oh, and don't feel bad asking snake blogs questions. It makes us happy when we get nonbot or spam asks! I imagine most of us love sharing about our snakes! And if sharing what I've learned helps lead a snake and their caretaker to a better life or bond then they would have had before, that's such a win for everyone!

[thasorns-moved]

It’s probably years since I saw my last crush and since I saw him at the festival all my feelings came back, my crush on him came back. It took me a long time to forget him or not to think about him but as soon as I saw him, he pops up in my head at random times (now and again)… I hate having a crush

[forgotten-daydreamer]

vent moment but my health is a bit worse than i let on, which is weird ik since it seems like complain about it all the time here, and apparently i also look sick, because two separate people in their 40s or 50s asked me, 24, if i needed their seat on the bus. kind of them. but humiliating nonetheless.

[sharkneto]

Why don’t you want five in school?

Oh, I've ranted about it before in the tags of THIS POST but in general it makes me wildly uncomfortable. As an adult, the thought of hypothetically being forced back to high school is the fucking pits, you could not pay me enough to do it - and I even had a good time in high school! Five is almost 60 years old and they're going to force him to go to classes and hang out with teens? That feels bad from every angle! It forces Five to act in a way he'd only do under great duress and fucks his agency and autonomy as an adult so badly. There are better, more interesting ways to play with the consequences of his physical vs actual age than sending him to goddamn high school. There's other, less dominating options for the "he looks like a kid and never actually graduated" problem.

You do you if that's your jam, don't let a random dude on the internet yuck your yum, but Five in high school is a squick for me.

[girlthativealwaysbeen]

sometimes my bestfriend is like an angel in disguise istg

[isdalinarhot]

personally i think its kind of insane that ash and taln get books. fucking lirin has more povs than taln.

[blujayonthewing]

found out boba is super easy to make at home oh god oh fuck

[britneyshakespeare]

heav'nly donuts doesn't get the same new england icon status as dunkin' donuts and i know why but i don't know why. first of all, it's not like their products are at all inferior. they have a wide variety of coffee and other hot/frozen drink options that regular customers do as a matter of fact go crazy about. their staple breakfast options come to play just as hard as dunks. in fact everything about heav'nly kind of is like dunkin but just trying way harder. and mostly succeeding. their donuts are all much larger than dunkin's. and they're also a new england-based franchise founded in massachusetts, only 25 years younger (dunkin opened in 1950 and heav'nly in 1975—but both of these are significantly younger than my grandparents). but heav'nly, despite its cult status among consumers, despite people KNOWIN what's up and that their products are on par if not superior, remains far less ubiquitous although still definitely not struggling. what is it about the dunkin franchise that allowed it to succeed and grow at an unbelievable rate? to the point of them being national competition to starbucks? how DID it come to be that there's a such a ridiculous density of dunkin donuts shops in the greater boston area? to the point where, if you live in this part of the country, you'll probably have to go out of your way if you prefer to get coffee at a starbucks, or some other franchise, instead? how did america come to run no dundun? and considering that, isn't it amazing that heav'nly has managed to be so strong a franchise in the deep dunkin donuts woods?

[glimpsesofeuterpe]

note to future-ish self: do not drink booze without eating something as well