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imma-potatoo · 4 years ago

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Im not sure if you take requests but if you do can I please have some angsty janus HC? if not im sorry for bothering you. have a nice day!

First of all, you aren't bothering me, I love it when people ask about my headcanons. And secondly, *shocked* I'm being ASKED to share my angst?!

We're gonna be here for a while

He picks/scratches at his skin,

he doesn't really know why he does it, but he often spends full nights scratching his arms, chest, and legs. But NEVER at his neck or face, the other sides can see that. It's normally targeted at his scaled half, but he does scratch at the human side too

The scratches typically run very deep, there's a lot of blood, and Janus doesn't always have access to a medkit

Janus is the youngest out of all the sides, around 21-24, but he never really got to have the full childhood that he was supposed to

Virgil is the oldest of the sides, and when they were younger he was around a lot, basically playing mother hen. But once Janus turned 10 or so, Virgil stopped spending as much time with him and Remus

So Janus had to grow up quick. He learned how to cook (not very well, but food is food), spent most of his time reeling Remus in (who is around 15 at this time), and delivering food to Virgil's door, trying to get him to come out

At the end of the day, Janus was too tired to play, read, or do anything really. He just went to bed.

So young Janus' schedule was;

wake up, make Remus/Virgil food, force Remus to eat the food, attempt to keep the house from a disaster fire from Remus, make lunch, talk to Virgil through his door, more babysitting of Remus, make dinner, send Remus to bed, clean up, go to sleep

Hardly time for playing in there

To this day, if you hand him a toy, he'll simply stare at you with wide eyes

Janus can tell when people tell lies

They don't taste nice or anything, he can't even taste them at all. The lies are revealed with a sharp stabbing pain to his chest

Similar to a heart attack.. But worse.. So much worse.

Imagine if you took a long knife, and stabbed it repeatedly, over and over for hours, breathing faulting, and the entire room starts to spin. It hurts

Now imagine that you have to keep a straight face during this pain or get strange looks and get told you're faking

Janus has gotten a little too used to that stabbing pain

Everytime that Janus stumbled in SvS? That was him trying to hide the pain

The dark side is cold, really cold, like Canadian winter cold. But the darks don't have central heating

It's sadly very common for Remus to find Janus passed out, near hypothermic, in random places in their own home

The dark sides home is... a lot less pleasant then someone would prefer. It looks like a prison with concrete walls and floors, bars cover the windows, and the backyard is completely fenced in with 15ft+ high fences.

The sides rooms move when Thomas is willing to accept that they're a part of him and that he needs to work with them

Remus' room moved back in DWIT, because Thomas accepted that he's there and that he can't get rid of him

Janus is still stuck in the dark. Thomas has given him a chance, but he's not completely accepted that he's needed yet

Janus can often be found passed out on the light side's couch, simply because his room is far too cold

Virgil almost always finds him first, he doesn't like Janus by any means, but he knows first hand that the dark half is cold, so he normally just throws a heated blanket over him and calls it a day

Janus is always gone before Virgil can talk to him

His shepards crook is actually a cane

He had to start using it right after Virgil left, Remus ran off to the imagination and Janus chased after him. He ended up getting cornered by a monster, and it punctured his knee almost clean through

Remus only found him because he was screaming so loud. Roman could hear it from his half of the imagination, but thought it was an animal and didn't bother to investigate

Even as an adult, his sleep schedule is horrible

He's coldblooded, makes the dark half so much worse

The closest thing that he's ever had for a friend (when he was younger) was Logan. They would watch documentaries together and talk about them for a bit

Those stopped when Janus had to take care of Remus

Remus is his friend now, but he still spends most of his time looking after him and making sure that he's eating (he tends to forget that he needs to eat)

Remus goes back to the dark half everyday to spend time with Janus

Janus is a really bad cook, he can make half burnt grilled cheese and pasta. Thats about it. It's not from lack of effort really

The other sides are genuinely concerned for his health and well-being. Everytime he shows up he seems paler, his eye bags are larger, and his clothes hang off of him

Janus doesn't actually believe them when they say that they want to help though

Janus gets maybe two hours of sleep daily

He spends the entirety of his free time trying to help Thomas

He would drink coffee to help him stay awake and productive, but he hates the taste of it

The others grow more and more concerned everytime he passes out. Which is a lot. Janus always brushes it off though

Logan is the only one who doesn't believe him

He remembers what Janus was like when they were younger, and it was NOTHING like how Janus acts now. They're completely different.

The Orange side made him show up and impersonate the other sides. The only time that he showed up willingly was in POF

He honestly doesn't know what he did to make Virgil hate him, nor does he know why Virgil locked himself away when he was 10

Janus is angry, he's angry that he had to grow up quickly, he's angry that Virgil abandoned him, he's angry that Remus needs to be constantly supervised, he's angry at Orange, he's angry at himself. He's angry. But doesn't have the energy to do anything

He cries himself to sleep a lot more then you would think

Touch starved. Completely touch starved. He breaks down completely when someone touches his wrist

You would think that self preservation would have better self care, but no. He's really bad at it. The closest he gets is getting 4 hours of sleep instead of the normal 2

Even after Remus left, he spends all of his time trying to help Thomas... Only to get pushed to the side

He normally completely forgets to eat food and only remembers when he's on the verge of passing out

He's gotten super good at makeup to hide the red streaks from crying so much

He loves snakes, but can't own one in the dark half because the temperature would put them in extreme pain or even kill it. Janus doesn't want to put the poor creature in suffering

The only toy he still has from childhood is a stuffed snake, but even that has had extreme mending

He sewed his entire outfit himself, and he was quite proud of it! Every time another side insults it, he withers a bit inside

The other sides have tried to stage an intervention so many times, but Janus can somehow avoid them everytime

He doesn't want their pity, because thats what he thinks it is, pity.

T r u s t I s s u e s

Lots of trust and abandonment issues

He has talked to Emile, but he has a hard time trusting him

Completely avoids Patton. Completely.

You can occasionally see him out of the corner of your eye in the common rooms, but the second you turn around he's gone

He's short as hell

His hair is like curly fries. Complete ringlets. But he hates them, hense the hat

He hates it when the others steal the hat

Everytime they insult his scales, he dies a little inside

Let me know if you want more :)

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peace-coast-island · 4 years ago

Text

Diary of a Junebug

Making music with bebop gyroids

Musical gyroids galore! Kelly, Ned, Gutsy, Livvy, and Lulu are here with us to enjoy the sunny weather and make some fun musical instruments. The gyroids were designed by Daisy Jane and Kelly with some input from Ned and Goldie - and they look (and sound) so awesome!

It's been so bright and sunny these past couple of days, it feels kinda unusual. Looks like the sunshine's come out early this year! No shorts yet, but we've pulled out the sunglasses, where I finally get to use my new shades Daisy Jane got for me. Pretty and functional is how I like it - though I'm pretty sure that Daisy Jane spent quite a bit on these sunglasses - not that I'm complaining as they're really good at what they're supposed to do. I feel so cool and badass wearing them!

With Livvy home for spring break, she and Gutsy figured, what better place to spend a short vacation than at a camp? Gutsy always wanted to drop by to visit us since we came to Charm Villa to see her a while back. And of course, she had to bring little Lulu along to explore the great outdoors with her. Good thing they chose to come during a campsite event! What better way to be introduced to the camp than a gyroid adventure?

Since the Coloratura Jazz Band Festival last year Kelly and Daisy Jane began working on gyroid designs inspired by the festival. Kelly really has a way with instrument designs, coming up with interesting ideas like an electric cello in the shape of a treble clef or a harpsichord that looks like one of those cool antique desks. That's why gyroid events are so much fun - you can craft so many creative things with them!

Joining Kelly is her best friend Ned, her partner in crime. They've been friends since high school, often attracting trouble although things end up working out in the end. Coincidentally, Kelly's mom is a private investigator and a few years back she worked with Gutsy on a case involving a farm at Cedar Pickett. Kelly and Ned got involved and wound up riding horses along the infamously dangerous canyon trail to catch a criminal. They all remembered each other after all these years as it was an interesting case. It's fascinating how small the world can be sometimes!

Ned, according to Kelly, is a world class baker when it comes to pies. She wasn't exaggerating. He and his dads run a bakery/nightclub called Dub Step Pie Club. Despite the name, it actually looks like a pretty cool place. I should drop by there the next time I visit the island.

At first glance, Kelly and Ned seem like an unlikely duo. In a way, they kinda remind me of Daisy Jane and Almie - the bubbly outgoing one paired with the introverted quiet one. Kelly's the one dragging Ned into her schemes, usually involving her mom's cases. Ned has an unusual connection with the dead, so every once in a while he and Kelly end up with a murder mystery or a ghost with unfinished business. They have a fun dynamic, those two.

In between gyroid hunting sessions, we hung out at the main campsite and did a little baking. Ned taught us how to make pumpkin brownie pecan pie, a specialty at the Dub Step Pie Club. That, along with the cubeyberry pie he brought from home, were some of the best pies I've ever had! Tomorrow we're gonna make peach lolliberry pie, another favorite at the club.

Lulu's so cute when it comes to finding gyroids! Seeing her get excited and waddling around while carrying a gyroid - which looks huge in her little arms - my heart just can't take it! She's also become quite a chatterbox - I love hearing her point out things at the camp and getting excited about everything. Lulu's definitely the type of kid who's not afraid to take a tumble and get her hands dirty. It's so cool to see more of her personality come out, especially now that she's talking. If Lulu keeps this up, I'm pretty sure Kelly's gonna straight up die of cuteness before the end of this event.

Livvy has been enjoying the great outdoors, especially after a stressful couple of weeks at school. She's a business major with a minor in humanities - the latter which kinda happened and she decided to go along with it because, why not? It's more work, but she's not complaining too much because she enjoys the classes. Since going off to college, Livvy started a study/productivity vlog called coffeelivvy, where she posts about study tips as well aesthetic and practical notes. I enjoy watching her videos while journaling, especially her plan with me bullet journal videos.

Gutsy's been busy with Lulu and the cafe. She's into making bread these days so later this week we're gonna make baguettes, which sounds fun! I'll admit, the process of making bread - as in with yeast and proofing and such - sounds kinda intimidating, but with a pro like Gutsy, the process seems less daunting. Since working at the cafe, Gutsy found out that she has a knack for baking as well as making latte art. So along with some decadent pies, we also got to enjoy lattes with the pretty milk foam designs - a winning combo that's perfect for a camping event!

Kelly's on spring break too, a well deserved vacation after a busy semester. She reminds me of Alex and Claire, being the kind of person who does a lot of extracurriculars and manages to be on top of everything academically. Along with being in the Coloratura Jazz Band, Kelly's also a volunteer of the Asian Pride Film Festival, a video editor for Leicester Academy Theater, an RA, and captain of the badminton team. She also plans to take summer classes and go to Amsterdam for the the fall term, graduating in the winter.

Ned, of course, is managing the bakery of Dub Step Pie Club while juggling classes at Seashore Path. After taking a year off due to burnout, he returned for the spring semester, changing his major from English to business marketing. So far Ned finds his second go of college much less stressful than when he first enrolled, which is great to hear. I hope things turn out better for him this time around.

While collecting gyroids at Lost Lure Creek, we ended up taking a detour through the acorn trail. It's one of many places I haven't got to exploring yet so it was the perfect opportunity to finally check it out. Kelly took a bunch of pics of the trees with its warm autumnal colors. This area of the woods looks like it's fall all year round and it looks so pretty! And of course, the trees are full of cute little acorns that we had to take back to the camp.

Later on, while crafting gyroid furniture, we painted the acorns. It's been a long while since I've painted so naturally I was a little rusty at first. The idea for a painting session came about when Kelly mentioned that she and a friend led a Bob Ross style painting event at their dorm building that everyone enjoyed. Peaches and Lolly just bought some new paints so it was the perfect opportunity to try them out. I think my favorite is the acrylic gouache - something about painting with them is so satisfying to me.

Then we hung out at the beach, collecting shells, sea glass, and gyroids. Although it's bright and sunny out, it's not warm enough to go swimming yet. It was nice sitting out there under the warm sun, just hanging out with friends. We also did some fishing, catching some tuna that we later made into poke bowls for dinner. And for dessert, we had cubeyberry pie paired with a bottle of peach wine, courtesy of Gulliver.

Before heading back to the main camp, we dropped by the hangout sites to collect more gyroids before calling it a day. Lulu enjoyed helping out campers by bringing them fruit. I love seeing her chatter away to the campers and talking about fruit. Gutsy says that Lulu isn't afraid of strangers, which we clearly saw as she approached everyone she met. She's a little handful, keeping Gutsy and Livvy on their toes! I swear, you blink for less than a second and next thing you know, Lulu's run clear across the camp and trying to climb a tree or get into the water.

At some point, we got into an impromptu musical session starting with Kelly on the drums. Then Ned joined in with maracas, Livvy and Friga on guitar, Benedict on double bass, Soleil on keyboards, me on the toy piano, and Gutsy and Daisy Jane on percussion. Lulu was so cute dancing along to the music! I think we made a pretty good band - it sure helped passed the time while waiting for the gyroid stuff to be built!

Today we crafted the harpsichord, a galaxy themed dulcimer/synth, and a star shaped hybrid of a ukulele and violin. Like I said earlier, the designs of these instruments are amazing! Plus, they sound fantastic! We had so much fun making music - I can't wait to build more stuff and create even more music!

#animal crossing #animal crossing pocket camp #Diary of a Junebug #headcanon ramble

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junhaoshua · 6 years ago

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The Great Collie Crossover, 9/10

A/N: I LIVE. Many apologies for the long delay, life + two bereavements got in the way and sucked away my writing motivation. Please enjoy this long overdue chapter! The epilogue is coming soon!!!

The usual disclaimer: I own none of the characters, being neither JK Rowling nor @colubrina. This is just a chance for me to play in the sandbox they have created.This is a birthday/get well soon present for the lovely @colubrina, whose work has been such a joy and inspiration to me.

***

8: Rebuilding

“This is the last world, isn’t it?” Hermione asks.

Other-Hermione nods. “And out of all, it’s probably the most like yours. But my parents couldn’t be un-obliviated. And I broke up with Ron. So after that, I came to Hogwarts to help rebuild the castle. And take my NEWTs. And hopefully fix my life while I was at it.”

Which sounds exactly like what she did, except for the breaking up part. “Were you the only one who returned too?”

“And that,” Other-Hermione says as the scene changes, “is where our paths diverge.”

She remembers this. Coming back. Settling into the Slytherin girls’ dorms because they were the least destroyed. But the blonde head in the common room is something new.

“And of course it’s Malfoy,” she says, unable to conjure up any surprise even as the past-Hermione goes “Malfoy. Bloody hell.”

She looks at the other witch, and they snort in unison.

Walking to dinner together and talking about Macbeth. Helping in the library, separately at first then together. Arguing - a brief moment of shared misery at being able to see thestrals - then right back to arguing. Apologizing for mocking him about the ferret incident. Shakespeare and Titus Andronicus and the atrocities humans committed during war. More cleaning of books. Complimenting each other until he brings up Ron and she can’t help but wonder what happened here. Did he cheat on her? Hurt her? Do some other atrocity she hasn’t seen in any world?

“No, no, and no,” Other-Hermione says, and she realises she asked that out loud. “You’re allowed to break up with people who aren’t evil, you know.”

“Then? What was it?” she asks as she watches Draco apologise, as they bare their wounds to each other, as they watch the stars.

“You’ll know soon enough.”

There’s a long silence as past-Hermione says that he was forced to be a Death Eater but that doesn’t make him one. The two tentatively flirt before tension descends, past-Hermione mercilessly breaking down every reason why being with him would be a constant battle. Somehow easing into another quiet rapport.

Cuddling in the Slytherin dungeons and talking about their parents. Watching the fish and falling asleep in his arms. A kiss. Conversations in the library that make her wish she hadn’t gone through her eighth year alone, that she’d had someone like Draco to bare her soul to. More kissing. The pureblood and his pity date. The war heroine and her walk on the wild side. “It will be awful.” “It will be the only good thing in a sea of awful.”

Theo arriving and the tension that ensues. Getting drunk. Going up to Gryffindor Tower. Hurling fierce, angry words at each other. “Easy to offer forgiveness to the boy you want to shag, isn’t it?” and even though it’s been so long, Other-Hermione still flinches at the accusation.

Breakfast. Theo taking care of Draco like she takes care of Harry, the loyal friend who looks out for them because things in their life are shite. Theo, who loves his father and didn’t know he was a Death Eater. Theo, who’s gay here - why does his sexuality seem to vary between worlds? Reaching a sort of detente.

Then Ron comes into the library, full of accusation and cruel words and - “You abandoned us!”

“That’s why you broke up with him?” Hermione asks, stunned.

“He abandoned you and you didn’t break up with him?” Other-Hermione throws back.

The fight is hard to watch. The words “Death Eater’s slag” even harder to take. But she can’t bring herself to be surprised. Her Ron could do this. If she ever got together with a Slytherin. Her Ron could call her that.

Conversations and explanations. Ron going to the Prophet, to Rita Skeeter, to claim that Draco had imperiused her. Proving it wrong, going after Rita, sending Ron a Howler, and she recognises past-Hermione’s viciousness with the discomfort of one who knows she’s capable of the same. Teaching Draco to make a Patronus. Matching otters.

“You two really are in love,” she says with soft wonder as they watch the summer fly by.

Other-Hermione smiles faintly. “The Patronus always tells.”

The Sorting Feast. Pansy and Neville and Ginny. Molly as DADA professor. Having a panic attack. Ginny defending Draco. The Gryffindors hurling cruel words at her even as the children insist that he didn’t crucio them, that he faked it. Waking up to find “Death Eater’s Whore” tacked to her door. Class and cruelty and being ostracised and Molly and more panic attacks.

Recovery Group, something that’s supposed to help them get over the trauma of the war but turns into angry sniping. Hannah and Padma. Susan Bones, angry and wounded after her family died, lashing out at Theo and Pansy until they walk out. Getting into a screaming match that reduces Susan to tears.

Classes. The eighth years studying together. A second session of Recovery Group, this time with the little Gryffindor boy - Andy - joining them. Pansy being a secret master of household magic. Susan trying to fuck her sorrows away. Theo trying to drink them away.

Rebuilding Day, a big production of inviting parents to Hogwarts to show them that all is well, a production that means people coming with their petty cruelties. Susan defending Theo with the sort of righteous passion only Hufflepuffs can muster. Narcissa and Lucius being polite to her even though it’s clear that they’re doing it to rehabilitate their social image and ward off Posy Parkinson. More cruelty from Ron even as Harry drops a kiss on her hair. Finally alone with Draco then finding out he’s been cutting himself.

“Don’t you dare judge him,” Other-Hermione bites out before she can even say a word.

“I wasn’t going to,” she protests, but she knows she’s lying.

Time passing in school. Suggesting a Yule Ball. Theo and Neville starting a thing. Padma having food issues. Pansy helping her to put Draco back into some semblance of togetherness after he breaks down. Confronting Theo about his drinking. Draco buying brooms for the little first years, trying to atone for his deeds last year by helping them now.

The girls teaming up to go after the Gryffindors and their cruel note. Pansy vicious and hard. Padma wielding Ravenclaw wit and words like a sword. Susan accusing them of being unkind. Hermione wandlessly setting the note on fire. She wishes she had more girlfriends in her world. Girls, together, smashing injustice.

Neville confronting Molly. McGonagall refusing to do anything about it except allow them to self-study DADA. She feels her respect for the old witch drop.

Chanukah at Hogwarts. Shopping for the Yule Ball in Muggle London. Dancing and romance. Harry being all chummy with Draco for her sake. Neville ending it with Theo at the Ball and Hannah going after him. Spending winter break at Hogwarts with Theo while Draco goes back to the Manor. Bonding. Getting each other gifts, a dragon charm bracelet for her and a comically long Gryffindor scarf for him. Draco returning with a pygmy puff and an engagement ring. Percy visiting and flirting with Theo, who’s too busy bemoaning his breakup to notice it.

Time passes. The eighth years bond. Hermione curses a rude student, marking his arm with “bigot” and filling his mouth with soap. Draco doing the only thing he can to make it better by telling his parents that he’s proposed. The Malfoys ignoring it.

Going with Theo to visit his mother’s grave. Helping Padma to eat. Valentine’s with Draco and their first time. Holi at Hogwarts, celebrating diversity and triumph and good winning.

“Look at the hope,” other-Hermione murmurs as they watch the bonfire burn. “It’s always there.” Then she cocks her head. “You’ll have to go soon, I’m afraid. Morning is coming.”

“Tell me how this story ends,” she says. She needs to know.

The other witch smiles. “Theo and Percy adopted Andy - long story. Susan and Blaise. Neville and Hannah. Ron and Tracey Davis - he didn’t know she was a Slytherin. Pansy married Charlie. I married Draco. We all collectively moved into Nott Manor. The Malfoys accepted me because, well, Draco. Even went so far as to bury Regulus and the rest of Riddle’s inferi on their property. Padma used some Muggle techniques to help Lucius handle his post-Azkaban chronic pain. We got Susan on the Wizengamot - well, originally we wanted to get Theo’s dad out of Azkaban, and that was part of it, but he died a day after he was released. Draco and I were DADA professors for a year before I retired to start on independent research. And we lived,” she says. “We live, and we live happily. You can have a happy ending too.”

“And why can’t I have it the way I am?”

“You’re with Ron,” the other witch says simply. “You won’t be happy. He won’t help to put you back together. His broken edges will rub up against yours, not fit into yours to make something new and beautiful.”

“I’m not you. I don’t get panic attacks and need draughts. I’m not broken.” She doesn’t know why she’s so defensive.

“We all have trauma,” the witch says softly, reaching out to cup her cheek. “It’s just a matter of how it shows. Like clinging on to relics of the past, for example.” Mist swirls slow and soft. “The war was hard on everyone. It broke something in us. But we must be stronger for having been broken.”

***

She lands back in King’s Cross, where the first Hermione waits for her. “Do you see now, child? Who you are, who you can be?”

She nods, mind still spinning from everything.

Old-Hermione folds her into a fierce hug. “Then it’s time for you to…

Wake up.”

***

Many thanks to the lovely @sulisaints for being my cheerleader, proofreader, editor, and getting me through this difficult chapter. All credit for the world goes to @colubrina, who's written my emotional support fic. And of course, thank you all. Your comments and kudos have given me the motivation to keep writing. Crossposted on AO3.

#my work #tgcc #colubrina #rebuilding #hogwarts 8th year #dramione #thercy #neville x hannah #susan x blaise

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toshootforthestars · 5 years ago

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From the report by Eric Levitz, posted 24 May 2020:

A decade later, “Dr. Doom” is a bear once again. While many investors bet on a “V-shaped recovery,” Roubini is staking his reputation on an L-shaped depression.

The economist (and host of a biweekly economic news broadcast) does expect things to get better before they get worse: He foresees a slow, lackluster (i.e., “U-shaped”) economic rebound in the pandemic’s immediate aftermath. But he insists that this recovery will quickly collapse beneath the weight of the global economy’s accumulated debts.

Specifically, Roubini argues that the massive private debts accrued during both the 2008 crash and COVID-19 crisis will durably depress consumption and weaken the short-lived recovery. Meanwhile, the aging of populations across the West will further undermine growth while increasing the fiscal burdens of states already saddled with hazardous debt loads.

Although deficit spending is necessary in the present crisis, and will appear benign at the onset of recovery, it is laying the kindling for an inflationary conflagration by mid-decade. As the deepening geopolitical rift between the United States and China triggers a wave of deglobalization, negative supply shocks akin those of the 1970's are going to raise the cost of real resources, even as hyperexploited workers suffer perpetual wage and benefit declines. Prices will rise, but growth will peter out, since ordinary people will be forced to pare back their consumption more and more. Stagflation will beget depression. And through it all, humanity will be beset by unnatural disasters, from extreme weather events wrought by man-made climate change to pandemics induced by our disruption of natural ecosystems.

Roubini allows that, after a decade of misery, we may get around to developing a “more inclusive, cooperative, and stable international order.” But, he hastens to add, “any happy ending assumes that we find a way to survive” the hard times to come.

Intelligencer recently spoke with Roubini about our impending doom.

You predict that the coronavirus recession will be followed by a lackluster recovery and global depression. The financial markets ostensibly see a much brighter future. What are they missing and why?

Well, first of all, my prediction is not for 2020. It’s a prediction that these ten major forces will, by the middle of the coming decade, lead us into a “Greater Depression.” Markets, of course, have a shorter horizon. In the short run, I expect a U-shaped recovery while the markets seem to be pricing in a V-shape recovery.

Of course the markets are going higher because there’s a massive monetary stimulus, there’s a massive fiscal stimulus. People expect that the news about the contagion will improve, and that there’s going to be a vaccine at some point down the line. And there is an element “FOMO” [fear of missing out]; there are millions of new online accounts — unemployed people sitting at home doing day-trading — and they’re essentially playing the market based on pure sentiment. My view is that there’s going to be a meaningful correction once people realize this is going to be a U-shaped recovery. If you listen carefully to what Fed officials are saying — or even what JPMorgan and Goldman Sachs are saying — initially they were all in the V camp, but now they’re all saying, well, maybe it’s going to be more of a U. The consensus is moving in a different direction.

Your prediction of a weak recovery seems predicated on there being a persistent shortfall in consumer demand due to income lost during the pandemic. A bullish investor might counter that the Cares Act has left the bulk of laid-off workers with as much — if not more — income than they had been earning at their former jobs. Meanwhile, white-collar workers who’ve remained employed are typically earning as much as they used to, but spending far less. Together, this might augur a surge in post-pandemic spending that powers a V-shaped recovery. What does the bullish story get wrong?

Yes, there are unemployment benefits. And some unemployed people may be making more money than when they were working. But those unemployment benefits are going to run out in July.

The consensus says the unemployment rate is headed to 25 percent. Maybe we get lucky. Maybe there’s an early recovery, and it only goes to 16 percent. Either way, tons of people are going to lose unemployment benefits in July. And if they’re rehired, it’s not going to be like before — formal employment, full benefits. You want to come back to work at my restaurant? Tough luck. I can hire you only on an hourly basis with no benefits and a low wage. That’s what every business is going to be offering. Meanwhile, many, many people are going to be without jobs of any kind.

It took us ten years — between 2009 and 2019 — to create 22 million jobs. And we’ve lost 30 million jobs in two months.

So when unemployment benefits expire, lots of people aren’t going to have any income. Those who do get jobs are going to work under more miserable conditions than before. And people, even middle-income people, given the shock that has just occurred — which could happen again in the summer, could happen again in the winter — you are going to want more precautionary savings. You are going to cut back on discretionary spending. Your credit score is going to be worse. Are you going to go buy a home? Are you gonna buy a car? Are you going to dine out? In Germany and China, they already reopened all the stores a month ago. You look at any survey, the restaurants are totally empty. Almost nobody’s buying anything. Everybody’s worried and cautious. And this is in Germany, where unemployment is up by only one percent.

Forty percent of Americans have less than $400 in liquid cash saved for an emergency. You think they are going to spend?

You’re going to start having food riots soon enough. Look at the luxury stores in New York. They’ve either boarded them up or emptied their shelves, because they’re worried people are going to steal the Chanel bags. The few stores that are open, like my Whole Foods, have security guards both inside and outside. We are one step away from food riots. There are lines three miles long at food banks. That’s what’s happening in America. You’re telling me everything’s going to become normal in three months? That’s lunacy.

Some Trumpian nationalists and labor-aligned progressives might see an upside in your prediction that America is going to bring manufacturing back “onshore.” But you insist that ordinary Americans will suffer from the downsides of reshoring (higher consumer prices) without enjoying the ostensible benefits (more job opportunities and higher wages). In your telling, onshoring won’t actually bring back jobs, only accelerate automation. And then, again with automation, you insist that Americans will suffer from the downside (unemployment, lower wages from competition with robots) but enjoy none of the upside from the productivity gains that robotization will ostensibly produce. So, what do you say to someone who looks at your forecast and decides that you are indeed “Dr. Doom” — not a realist, as you claim to be, but a pessimist, who ignores the bright side of every subject?

When you reshore, you are moving production from regions of the world like China, and other parts of Asia, that have low labor costs, to parts of the world like the U.S. and Europe that have higher labor costs. That is a fact. How is the corporate sector going respond to that? It’s going to respond by replacing labor with robots, automation, and AI.

I was recently in South Korea. I met the head of Hyundai, the third-largest automaker in the world. He told me that tomorrow, they could convert their factories to run with all robots and no workers. Why don’t they do it? Because they have unions that are powerful. In Korea, you cannot fire these workers, they have lifetime employment.

But suppose you take production from a labor-intensive factory in China — in any industry — and move it into a brand-new factory in the United States. You don’t have any legacy workers, any entrenched union. You are going to design that factory to use as few workers as you can. Any new gactory in the U.S. is going to be capital-intensive and labor-saving. It’s been happening for the last ten years and it’s going to happen more when we reshore. So reshoring means increasing production in the United States but not increasing employment. Yes, there will be productivity increases. And the profits of those firms that relocate production may be slightly higher than they were in China (though that isn’t certain since automation requires a lot of expensive capital investment).

But you’re not going to get many jobs. The factory of the future is going to be one person manning 1,000 robots and a second person cleaning the floor. And eventually the guy cleaning the floor is going to be replaced by a Roomba because a Roomba doesn’t ask for benefits or bathroom breaks or get sick and can work 24-7.

The fundamental problem today is that people think there is a correlation between what’s good for Wall Street and what’s good for Main Street. That wasn’t even true during the global financial crisis when we were saying, “We’ve got to bail out Wall Street because if we don’t, Main Street is going to collapse.”

How did Wall Street react to the crisis? They fired workers. And when they rehired them, they were all gig workers, contractors, freelancers, and so on. That’s what happened last time. This time is going to be more of the same.

Thirty-five to 40 million people have already been fired. When they start slowly rehiring some of them (not all of them), those workers are going to get part-time jobs, without benefits, without high wages. That’s the only way for the corporates to survive. Because they’re so highly leveraged today, they’re going to need to cut costs, and the first cost you cut is labor. But of course, your labor cost is my consumption. So in an equilibrium where everyone’s slashing labor costs, households are going to have less income. And they’re going to save more to protect themselves from another coronavirus crisis. And so consumption is going to be weak. That’s why you get the U-shaped recovery.

There’s a conflict between workers and capital. For a decade, workers have been screwed. Now, they’re going to be screwed more. There’s a conflict between small business and large business.

Millions of these small businesses are going to go bankrupt. Half of the restaurants in New York are never going to reopen. How can they survive? They have such tiny margins. Who’s going to survive? The big chains. Retailers. Fast food. The small businesses are going to disappear in the post-coronavirus economy. So there is a fundamental conflict between Wall Street (big banks and big firms) and Main Street (workers and small businesses).

And Wall Street is going to win.

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news-mashable-yahoopartner-blog · 6 years ago

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Lunarly is the self-care box for people who are into crystals

I am not good at self-care.

That's not to say that I'm not good at performing self-care. I will never turn down a chance to slap on a sheet mask, Instagram a dissolving bath bomb, and precariously balance my laptop on the closed toilet to hate-watch The Bachelor. Aside from my tendency to consume Flaming Hot Cheetos for breakfast, I'm pretty good at taking care of my body.

But when it comes to mental health, that all kind of goes out the window.

Relaxing isn't my forte. Whenever I attempt a "self-care" night, I find myself fidgeting in a tub of glittery bathwater, waiting for enough time to pass for me to be able to justify spending upwards of $8 on being pastel human soup. Meditation is exhausting — how are you supposed to empty your mind when there's so damn much to think about? And while I've become that person who lives in L.A. and got into the habit of daily yoga, I spend a lot of it anxiously planning out my day instead of paying attention to my breathing.

Which is where Lunarly's subscription box comes in. The self-care box's website advertises "learning the art of self-care," and a monthly subscription offers members a plant, a notebook and stickers, and a handful of curated "wellness products." Its mission is to encourage subscribers to "set intentions" as a way to live for mindfully.

Launched in the summer of 2018, Lunarly is the brainchild of BuzzFeed and Scotts Miracle-Gro. According to Bloomberg, the collaboration was an effort to advertise gardening to young people.

SEE ALSO: The Sill's plant delivery service will convince you of your own green thumb

Basically, taking care of yourself — even if it's with the help of an aesthetically-curated marketing tactic — is in right now. But is paying $40 a month worth it?

Image: courtesy of lunarly

The Sap Moon Box

Each box corresponds with the new moon; the Lunarly website says that at the beginning of the moon cycle, subscribers are supposed to set their intentions and figure out how to live better.

"The full moon marks the culmination of your chosen affirmation and is as crucial to intention setting as the new moon," the FAQ states.

I don't consider myself a crystal kind of person, but I can comfortably say I'm crystal-adjacent. By that, I mean that I own a salt lamp because I think it looks nice, I keep Co—Star notifications on, and I have perused the stands dotting the Pacific Coast Highway that sell sage bundles and mango boxes. While I appreciate the aesthetics of it all, I can't imagine taking any of it seriously.

But I'm willing to give it a try.

Image: mashable/morgan sung

March's box corresponds to the "Sap Moon." A card included in the box says the moon was named for "the unfolding of the world beginning to melt and move," after sap from maple trees begins to flow. OK.

This month's box includes a spider plant, a bar of lemongrass sage soap, a bag of incense pyramids, a rock, the standard notebook and stickers, and a mushroom-ginger-green tea "drink."

The plant

Lunarly's plant was by far the biggest disappointment in the box, but that was mostly my fault — the box was delivered on a Friday when I was on vacation, and I didn't free the poor spider plant from its cardboard prison until Monday morning. By the time I finally gave it some water and fresh air, half of it was wilted.

This plant was ... a little rough.

Image: mashable/morgan sung

This is what the plant is supposed to look like, according to images provided by Lunarly. Look at how lush my plant could have been!

Beautiful! Lush! This is what my plant could have looked like.

Image: courtesy of lunarly

The spider plant perked up considerably after a few days in the sunlight on the ledge of my apartment's patio, and even made a new snail friend. I did really like that Lunarly sent a pet-safe plant — something my asshole cat (coincidentally named Lunar!) took advantage of the second I looked away.

New snail friend!

Image: mashable/morgan sung

My very rude cat was a fan of the pet-safe plant.

Image: mashable/morgan sung

Let this be a warning: If you're going to subscribe to Lunarly, open it RIGHT AWAY. I do wonder how the plants would survive being delivered in the middle of the summer or during a winter cold snap. Luckily Los Angeles is relatively temperate in late February/early March, so I'm pretty sure that if I had freed the plant the day it was delivered instead of letting it suffocate for a weekend, it would have looked less pathetic.

Incense cones

This month's box also included a full-size package of Reverse Karma Pyramid Incense Cones, which run for $8.95 for seven cones online. It was listed under "Restore" on the list of products that came with the box.

Image: mashable/morgan sung

Lunarly's description said the cones' "dreamy scent, released with fire," would "invoke clear thoughts for planning the seasons ahead."

I popped one in what I hoped was a flame-proof bowl and lit it up. The card instructed me to "waft the smell of the earth to ground you during your self-care routine." I don't know if I'd describe what I felt as grounded, but the incense did smell like the Buddhist altar at my grandma's house, which was nice. Neither the product card nor Reverse Karma's website listed what the cones were made of — what if someone had allergies?

I'm also wary of Reverse Karma. Its items have names like "Sage That Sh*t" (sage bundles for nearly $12) and "Stay Lit" (incense sticks), there's something culturally appropriative-ish about the whole brand. They're not explicitly stealing from cultures, but it all comes off as someone who went to a Southeastern Asian country once for two weeks and decided to market its traditions to millennials.

Aragonite

I literally laughed out loud when I opened the little velvet bag that held this month's crystal because it was so tiny. For the Sap Moon, Lunarly sent a nugget of aragonite, which is supposedly a "mineralized beam of light." Here it is, next to a tiny hand for scale.

Image: mashable/morgan sung

Described as "strong, but delicate, and ever moving forward," the hunk of rock is meant to remind you that "moving on is letting go." The card instructed me to try a mindfulness exercise while holding the rock, breathing deeply as I imagined light coming from the rock.

"Where does the light go?" the card asked. "Take note."

I usually dismiss crystals' healing properties, but the exercise was a chill way to avoid being on the hell that is the internet for ten minutes. Sometimes you do need a break. I wish the rock was bigger, though.

Lemongrass sage soap

This month's box also included some incredible smelling soap from Spinster Sisters Co. Its website lists the soap for $3 for a 0.9 ounce bar. It was under "Care" on the list of products that came with the box.

I would eat this if I didn't know it was soap.

Image: mashable/morgan sung

I'm not going to lie, the soap smelled delicious, like an herby lemon tart. If you told me that it was a Lara bar, I'd probably try to take a bite out of it.

While the card provided with the box suggested using the soap "often to strengthen your soul this Sap Moon," I experienced no soul strengthening. The card wasn't clear on what soul strengthening was supposed to feel like, but if it's anything like pleasantly citrus-scented hands all day, then maybe my soul was strengthened!

Mushroom Matcha drink mix

The "Care" section of the card also included Four Sigmatic's Mushroom Matcha Drink Mix, which runs a whopping $33 for a 20-serving package. The card claims that it "gets your mind moving" since it's caffeinated.

Image: mashable/morgan sung

Adhering to the package's suggestions, I mixed the matcha powder into hot water and topped it off with some oat milk and honey. It was disgusting. The additions didn't help the taste — the green tea drink tastes what I'd expect mushroom flavored La Croix to taste like. There's only a hint of mushroom, but it's somehow both unsatisfying and overpowering.

And the people around me found it repulsive, too.

My roommate, who usually enjoys the taste of dirt and regularly drinks weird herbal-infused liquors, described the tea as "how the smell of Manhattan would taste." My other roommate spat it into the sink as soon as she took a sip. We even tried to give it to my cat, who will beg for any kind of human food and regularly hunts insects, but he sniffed it and promptly walked away. This is an animal who likes to eat snails. If even he doesn't find the drink appealing, who will?

Setting intentions

The part I struggled with the most was setting intentions, mainly because I have no idea what that is in the first place.

Another card that came with the box described intentions as "values we seek to embody every day." Based on the lunar cycles, setting intentions is meant to "manifest the absolute best versions of ourselves."

"Intention setting is choosing an intention to carry with you every day," the FAQ read, which is just as helpful as describing anxiety as "when you're feeling anxious."

Image: mashable/morgan sung

Lunarly's FAQ about it wasn't clear, either. It suggested ways to set yourself up while setting intentions, with phrases like "find a peaceful place to THINK clearly" and "speak your truth." I tried it all, and I still couldn't figure out what I was supposed to be looking for.

Instead, I made a list of goals to decrease my overwhelming and constant anxiety, but I'm still not sure what an intention is. The journal and the stickers reminded me of bullet journaling, another self-care aesthetic I was enthusiastic about but wasn't able to stick to.

This notebook was a cute exercise in scrapbooking that kept me accountable. In the three days of "intention setting" I did, I felt overall less jittery and less on the verge of panic, but I think that was more from me cutting back on the sheer amount of caffeine I was consuming instead of cleansing my soul.

At the end of the day, I'm still not sure who this box is meant for. If you're just starting out in the world of mindfulness and Instagrammable spirituality, Lunarly leaves its main goal of intention setting unexplained.

If you're already well-versed in the world of pseudo-Buddhism and meditation and sage burning, then you probably know where to get incense cones that aren't $8.95 for seven and likely don't need motivational stickers that declare "Literally Plant Even" for your practice. Obviously a cute notebook won't take the place of an actual mental health professional, but I think this box would be better for beginners if it had more clear guidelines.

That's not to say that the box isn't worth it, from a monetary perspective at least. My pet peeve is when subscription boxes send tiny "sample" sizes that feel more like miniaturized clutter. I appreciate that Lunarly sent full-sized items that you'd actually use (aside from that nasty tea, but maybe someone in this vast world thinks it's tasty) instead of things that will take up space. This is not a subscription box of knick knacks you'll keep until your annual Netflix-fueled KonMari clutter sweep.

I also want to note that individually, the items in the box tally up to over $40 a month. There are plenty of things that cost $40 a month — like the time I signed up for a free trial of YouTube TV to watch the premiere of The Bachelor and forgot to cancel it once the trial was over. I'll admit that as silly as Lunarly's suggestions felt, I'd rather spend $40 on one of their boxes than on another month of hate-watching The Bachelor.

Would I actually buy a monthly subscription to Lunarly? Probably not — even if I'd choose it over The Bachelor, I think there are better ways to spend my money than on comically small rocks. There are also more effective ways to learn the art of self-care.

WATCH: ASMR unboxing the Thunder Purple OnePlus 6T — ASMR Unboxing

#_uuid:e7e9dfde-5467-3a57-bb7b-2a15036803d2 #_author:Morgan Sung #_category:yct:001000002 #_lmsid:a0Vd000000DTrEpEAL #_revsp:news.mashable

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chroniclesofawkwardness · 6 years ago

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Bleeders (Them Shoes)

We’re not supposed to talk openly about going to the bathroom. It’s such a sensitive subject that children have their own lexicon for describing two things every single person on the planet does (number one or number two). Even a well-known producer of toilet paper has danced around the subject by composing a song about a booty smile in an ad for their ultra-soft product. Hell, even adults sometimes get caught using euphemisms like taking a dump, dropping a duce, or recycling water. The bathroom is supposed to be one of the last vestiges of privacy in a world where privacy is almost certainly dead. Personally, I tend to be very mission-oriented in the bathroom; I’m not much of a conversationalist. Unless somebody walks in on me mid-stream, I can usually get in and out of the water closet without too much trouble. That being said, sometimes confrontation is inevitable.

I used to love working nights. More money. Fewer people. No need to set an alarm in the morning. You might say I had a higher expectation of privacy. Still, this expectation was shattered one Friday night several months ago, when I visited the same bathroom I always used during my last break before the end of my shift. We humans are nothing if not creatures of habit.

There was no way for me to avoid him. The middle-aged man was standing directly in front of the trash can that was just inside the door. I was already in mission-mode. It wasn’t critical, but I still had to pee, so I wasn’t in the mood for exchanging pleasantries.

I read in a book one time that if you think someone is planning on attacking you, it’s a good idea to attempt to throw them off by asking an innocuous question such as, “What time is it?” The hope is that they’ll be so startled that they won’t carry out whatever devious plot had been dancing in their head. For a split second, I thought about asking this man that question, but I remembered I was wearing a watch. All I could manage was a weak, “How’s it going?”

I got an answer I neither expected nor wanted:

Man, I blew my nose and it just started bleeding.

Trying to contain my shock, I quickly thought of another innocuous question to attempt to defuse the situation:

Um… Do you need medical attention? I can call security.

I knew some people got really bad nosebleeds. I’d woken up with a few as a kid, so the last thing I wanted was another just-a-flesh-wound situation from Monty Python unfolding right there on the blue and white tile floor. In response, the man said something else that caught me totally by surprise:

No. It’s okay. It happens to all of us. Everyone in my family; we’re all bleeders.

He just walked away.

I felt an aneurysm coming on, what comedian Lewis Black said you might experience upon hearing the words, “If it weren’t for my horse, I wouldn’t have spent that year in college.” Fortunately, before the room started spinning, I came to my senses and remembered that I had to get back to work. My break should only last fifteen minutes. I chalked the encounter up to the randomness that I seem to attract on a regular basis and thought that was the end of the story.

I was wrong.

Fast forward about two months to approximately 9:00 P.M. on a Friday night in the dead of winter. You might wonder why I chose to go to the same bathroom again. I wouldn’t say the release was as cathartic as the one A Rumor of War author Phillip Caputo describes upon returning to Saigon, but like Caputo, I refused to let myself be defined by a bad experience. I went back to that bathroom because I had to. I had to know that I’d be okay, that I could experience my own literal release without the soundtrack of a stranger’s medical history to keep me company or make me sick to my stomach.

I was standing at the sink washing my hands that night when who should appear in the bathroom but the man with the spontaneously bleeding nose. This time, his problem was at the other end. I barely had time to think before he launched into another bodily proclamation:

If I were you, I’d get out of here. Sorry for oversharing… It’s all this fiber.

Okay.

I went back to my desk wondering why I hadn’t just waited until I’d made it home to use the bathroom. There’s just something about the comfort of one’s home bowl. The freedom from judgment and the freedom of movement it affords are unmatched. I can stand as close to, or as far away from the toilet as I want, and I never have to hold it in, acting like everything is fine, when in reality I’m about to explode. What’s more, I certainly have more privacy than in a building with over ten thousand employees, and a housekeeping staff that clearly doesn’t give a fuck who they walk in on when they start their nightly tasks of cleaning toilets, occasionally emptying trash cans, and pretending to vacuum floors.

I haven’t seen the man with the penchant for nosebleeds and fiber consumption since the last of these two incidents, though I think of him whenever I spot a bottle of Metamucil on the shelf at my Kroger pharmacy.

Wherever he is, I hope he got the help he needed and left me out of it.

II.

I don’t know why, but I’ve always had trouble getting shoes on and off my right foot. I could use a shoehorn, but I wonder if I’m too old to learn a new trick. When I was very young, I had a pair of braces for my legs, much like the ones a young Forrest Gump wore when he taught a young Elvis how to dance.

Unlike Forrest, if I’m going somewhere, I’m usually walking. Thanks to my pedestrian existence, I go through shoes pretty quickly, but I don’t always replace them in a timely manner when holes appear, or rocks get stuck in them. I’ve never been a big fan of spending money on myself unless it’s absolutely necessary, but this strategy sometimes comes back to bite me in the ass. A wholesale warehouse like Costco could be just the place to support my feet without breaking my bank. If I could be strong enough not lead myself into temptations all around, and wise enough to find my way without having to Hansel and Gretel that shit back to the entrance.

Until recently, it had been years since I’d visited Costco. I hadn’t had a membership, so my only exposure to the Costco experience was in their bakery when a friend of mine and I went there to pick up a cake for a co-worker who was transferring to another department. My friend wasn’t happy with me during and after our trip because he was convinced I’d blown his chance to stalk the head coach of the local National Hockey League franchise throughout the store. All because I couldn’t find a pen to fill out the order form for the cake.

I know it was him. The team is off tonight. We could’ve followed him around and gotten autographs, but SOMEBODY couldn’t find a pen. This is all your fault.

How can you be sure? All we could see was the back of the man’s head. Besides, if it was, the last thing he needs is a bunch of grown-ass, wannabe-Canucks fawning over him like teenage girls over Justin Bieber. Let’s just move on. I’m sure finding 500 ft. of aluminum foil or a 128 oz. jar of mayonnaise on sale will cheer you up.

I think my friend is still salty about the incident.

Anyway, my mom had been talking up Costco for weeks prior to our visit. You’d think we were going to a place that held the promise of the Disneyworld of my youth, or a Barry Manilow concert of hers. It was so beautiful, she’d say, so full of the spoils of hollow, American excess (You won’t have to buy paper towels for six months. Isn’t that just wonderful?) that nothing could reverse the magnetic attraction to it that its patrons would naturally feel. Once we’d made our way through the massive sliding doors of this consumerist-culture theme park, a little old lady stopped us at the entrance and asked to see the membership cards we didn’t have. We could’ve easily overpowered her and run amok up and down the aisles, but we decided to play by the rules like blissful, ignorant cattle being led to slaughter, and stand in line for proof that we belonged.

Maybe the cattle secretly knew their lives would never be the same after they slipped inside the slaughterhouse. Maybe we knew our lives would change forever after we slipped inside Costco. We were just too excited about the possibility of buying whole peaches (whole fucking peaches!) in jars to care. I wish I’d asked the little old lady to take off her politeness mask so I could see who she really was. I feel the same way about Disney characters. What I wouldn’t give to be in the break room at Disneyworld on a Tuesday afternoon in the heat of July. I’d pay to see Mickey and Minnie Mouse without their costume heads, smoking cigarettes, carelessly farting, and dropping f-bombs like normal human beings. That’s a Disney fantasy I could buy into.

I first saw them after I’d selected ninety-six pencils for four dollars, and forty-four bags of popcorn for nine. Snow tracks. They were pieces of rubber speckled with spikes that remind you of the bottoms of golf shoes. They were supposed to provide enhanced traction on snow and ice. I hadn’t yet bought myself a pair of winter boots this season, so I needed something to combat the unpredictable Ohio weather in the meantime. The snow tracks cost about five dollars and seemed they’d be a good fit until my boots came in the mail. I should’ve paid more attention to the actual fit. The package said they were for shoe sizes 3.5 to 7.5. I wear a size 8. Close enough, I thought.

I was wrong (again).

When I got the pencils, popcorn, and snow tracks home, I ripped the snow tracks from their packaging like a kid opening presents on Christmas morning. I was convinced I’d found an inexpensive, long-lasting solution to a transportation problem I’ve faced every winter. If cars could have snow tires, the snow tracks were supposed to be my pedestrian equivalent, my way of telling Mother Nature to suck it.

III.

Sex.

Now that I have your attention, keep reading.

I’m hardly the first person to point out that we live in the age of toxicity. Toxic femininity. Toxic masculinity. If you boy into those ideas, you’d have to behave as if you were walking on eggshells everywhere you went. When you’d go about your daily life, you’d have to be careful. In many scenarios standards (whatever those are) of conduct, language, and presentation (to name a few) have gradually shifted from what a reasonable person would consider acceptable, to what the most sensitive among us can tolerate. We’ve been invited to neuter ourselves because someone, somewhere might be offended by something we say or do. God help us if we were cross that arbitrary, ever-shifting line into the offensive. Our lives could easily be ripped to shreds on social media, or dissected for all to see in the court of public opinion without so much as a word spoken in our defense.

What does supposed gender toxicity have to do with bleeding noses, impromptu descriptions of impending bowel movements, shoes, Costco, and sex?

Keep reading.

The first day I wore the snow tracks to work, they were unnecessary. But I wanted to try them out before the weather got nasty. After I put them on and started walking somewhere other than the carpeted floor of my apartment, I felt like a dog or cat that seriously needed its nails clipped. I felt like I could tip over at any moment. You could even say the clickety-klack sound the snow tracks made as I walked was reminiscent of a newborn pony taking its first steps. In a way, I was learning to walk all over again. I probably looked as awkward if not more so than a newborn pony, whose difficulty with steps could be easily explained, if not expected. Mine, on the other hand, was caused by an invention so questionable it belonged on a Saturday afternoon infomercial (the playground of the gullible) or in heavy rotation on QVC (the playground of the elderly).

I was really wobbling by the time I got to work. I had to walk on a tile floor until I got to the set of stairs that meant I was mere feet away from the relative stability of carpeting. When I made it to the stairs without tipping over, I felt triumphant in my badassery. Not only had I told Mother Nature what she could go do to herself, I’d subjugated my favorite flight of stairs. For the briefest of moments, there was nothing I couldn’t do.

Each morning, like clockwork, I’d feed my coffee addiction by making the short trek down the hall to one of the break rooms on my floor. I went from being off-balance on the tile to feeling like my feet were stuck in quicksand on the carpet. I felt like Marv (Daniel Stern) in Home Alone as he got his feet repeatedly stuck in what looked like tar as he trudged up the steps into what he hoped would be a final confrontation with Kevin McCallister. I didn’t have traction where I needed it and had too much where I didn’t. I got my coffee just fine, but noticed a problem when I got back to my desk.

Fuck. One of the snow tracks came off one of my shoes. Now I’ve gotta Hansel and Gretel that shit back to the break room, and hope no one picked it up. In that case, I’d have only one, which won’t do me much good since I’ve got two shoes.

This was my first indication that the masculine drive I’d displayed by trying to fit something on the bottom of my shoe that wasn’t designed to fit there may have been misdirected. Fortunately, the solitary snow track was right where it had fallen off, twisted and sad, outside the entrance to the break room. I picked it up and carried it back to my desk. I was relieved, yet slightly terrified at not knowing who among my thousands of colleagues had seen what, or when.

Whole again, I decided to remove the snow track from my other shoe, lock them in one of my desk drawers, and thank my lucky stars that a hyper-sensitive person hadn’t found it. If they had, so went my worst nightmare, they could’ve easily mistaken it for a medieval torture device, a sex toy, or both. This could have triggered a massive HR manhunt. I was the only person I’d ever seen wearing snow tracks so it wouldn’t take security too long to figure out whose it was. I mean, seriously, how often do you really look at a man’s shoes? Even though I had the snow tracks under lock and key, I’d already been peacocking to my co-workers about conquering Mother Nature that morning. I assumed one of them would cave, and point the finger at me as soon as one of our woke-up-like-this, my-uniform-is-three-sizes-too-big security guards applied even the tiniest bit of investigative pressure.

I didn’t think about the snow tracks until I could feel safe trying to put them on again, shortly after 5:30 PM that evening. I couldn’t risk being seen in the workplace wearing socks without shoes, so I decided to visit the same bathroom where I’d encountered Mr. Nosebleed, aka The Kellogg’s Cracklin’ Oat Bran Man. I refused to let him get the best of me, even if the competition between us was playing out exclusively in my head. I know now that should’ve just risked being accosted by an everything-is-a-trigger-warning coworker by sitting out in the open to take my shoes off and attach the snow tracks to them. Against the better angels of my nature, I opted for the blue and white tile of old familiar. For the first time in this nearly seven-year stint with my employer, I went into a bathroom stall. I chose one that was handicapable accessible at that because I knew I’d need a fair amount of room to maneuver.

If one’s home bowl provides an unparalleled level of comfort, I don’t know why I expected the toilet in this unfamiliar, reasonably public bathroom to have a lid. As far as I knew, I’d taken a dump in a public toilet but once in my entire life. Avoiding stalls in public bathrooms had become one of my personal rules after seeing far too many movies and television shows where the hero inconveniently finds himself seconds away from a for-a-good time-call-Charlie invitation scrawled in expectant Sharpie on one of the stall walls. The exception that disproved my rule was only brought about by the extenuating circumstance of my having been on a plane for 8+ hours, trying desperately not to pass gas in a closed cabin full of strangers and recycled air. When the time came for me to finally let loose, it was dark. My mission-oriented self couldn’t see much in 2011, so 2019 me had no earthly idea what to expect from the moment the stall door slammed home.

I sat on the toilet to take off my shoes, only to be betrayed yet again by my right foot. I had to bend and contort my body into several unnatural positions just to take off my right shoe. Even if I’d returned to the practice of yoga as I’ve been telling myself to do for years, it wouldn’t have done any good. By the time I managed to pry my foot free, I was bent over on the toilet seat, face red, and gasping for air as if I’d just been through a CrossFit workout. Extracting my foot from my left shoe wasn’t any easier. I was thankful I hadn’t fallen in the toilet the first time, and I decided not to risk doing so again. I sat on the floor of the stall among crumpled up toilet seat covers with my back against a wall. I succeeded in removing my left shoe, but it was a Pyrrhic victory that left me sucking air again five minutes later.

I thought the hard part was over, but I soon realized that I hadn’t really accomplished anything. I still had to get the snow tracks on my shoes. I decided to try putting the snow track on my left shoe first since I always put my left shoe on first anyway. I didn’t have nearly as much trouble as I’d anticipated. This only served to imbue me with a false sense of confidence as I entered the battle on my right side. Standing now, in stockinged feet, I twisted and pulled that infernal rubber contraption every way I knew how. It wasn’t long before the confrontation reached a tipping point. In the heat of the moment, I looked down at my shoe and saw that the toe was bent in in a position from which it might never recover.

Uh oh.

While admiring the shoe’s brush with death, I got so caught up in wondering how the hell I hadn’t destroyed it that I forgot to release the tension on the snow track caused by my desperate attempts to fit it over the bottom. Consequences be dammed, I kept pulling, and sure enough the shoe went flying out of my hand. I let out a simultaneous:

dammit!

as it flipped like a coin through the air. Even the staunch atheist in me prayed it wouldn’t land outside the stall. If someone had walked in to find my solitary shoe on the floor, I’d have had some serious explaining to do. Fortunately, it came to rest within the stall, right in the space between the floor and the bottom of one of the walls. It would’ve been easily visible to anyone who happened by. I scrambled to pick it up, and somehow managed to finally put the snow track on without losing a shoe, or an eye, in the process. Another Pyrrhic victory in hand, I did the clickety-klack catlike walk out of the building and homeward, praying I wouldn’t tip over like a little teapot along the way.

IV.

Education.

Not many things in this world make me truly happy. Whatever I’m doing, I’m often consumed by the notion that I’m wasting my time, and I should be doing something else. One exception is volunteering. I like to think that whenever I get out to give back to the community, I’m spending my time wisely, that my actions make even the smallest difference in someone’s day. Those feelings, those moments, are what make life worth living. That’s why I jumped at the chance to volunteer at a local shelter for youth in crisis.

I’d heard snow was in the forecast for that Saturday, so I put the snow tracks on my shoes, and called for a Lyft to take me where I needed to go. Upon arriving, my driver insisted that I get in the back seat. I complied. He said he was familiar with where I was going, and I babbled on about why I enjoy volunteering so much. I’ve given the same speech to two dozen or more Lyft and Uber drivers over the years. I don’t always mean to say the same things over and over, but at this point, I’ve got a streak going.

As we pulled up to the shelter, my driver said something that caught me by surprise:

God bless you and your ministry.

Okay.

I don’t know why he thought I was religious, but I decided it wasn’t worth fighting about since so few things in this world really are. As I got out of his car and stepped onto the sidewalk, I felt the same naked feeling I had when walking back to my desk with a coffee a few days before. I looked down at my feet, and instantly knew what was missing:

Shit! My snow tracks came off again. They’re in the back of a stranger’s car, and he’s pulling away from the curb…

I waved to the driver in a half-hearted attempt to get his attention. He probably thought I was waving goodbye, so he didn’t stop. I was dejected over the loss of my spikey companions, but I had a job to do. Need knows no season, after all. As the leader of our group for this particular event, I was the first to arrive. I asked our host to tell me more about the facility. Turns out, it’s a shelter where kids can go when their parents may have kicked them out of their homes, ripped up their birth certificates, or under any number of undesirable circumstances. Typically teenagers, the kids there are in tough spots. I remember hating life as a teenager, but I was incredibly fortunate to never lose my home or my support system. I’ll never forget that. How could I complain about losing a set of bougie spikes I’d bought at a club where I was a member in the back of a Lyft that I paid to ride in by just tapping on my smartphone? The short answer is, I couldn’t.

But that doesn’t mean shit couldn’t still get awkward.

If I’m mission-oriented in the bathroom, I’m also a mission-oriented volunteer. I was so excited to get started that I didn’t even wait for more people to show up. I started attacking the living room almost immediately. I found several intermingled decks of cards and resolved to make each one whole again. After working my way through a few decks, I made my way to an end table in search of rogue Kings and Queens. The table had so many board games on it that I almost didn’t see the circular object on the floor beneath it. I thought it was a fallen game piece at first. I reasoned that if decks could lose their cards, games could lose their pieces. No matter how hard I try, a part of me will always be a leave-it-better than-you-found-it Eagle Scout, so I bent down to pick up the fallen piece. But it wasn’t a game piece at all.

It was a used condom.

I jerked my hand away as if I’d touched a hot stove, but I quickly realized that the damage had already been done. In one motion, I picked it up and threw it in the closest trash can. Inside, I was disgusted. Outside, I knew I had to remain emotionally unmoved. How could I expect a house full of teenagers and my fellow volunteers to keep their cool if I couldn’t? The short answer is, I couldn’t.

As the color of my face slowly returned to normal, I returned to my quest for prodigal cards. Along the way, I picked up a canister of Lysol and a rag and started disinfecting. In the midst of organizing the cards and board games, I came across at least five different remotes that had either been left to their own devices on the end table, or fallen between the cushions of the couch next to it. I picked up a random remote to examine it; I couldn’t believe it had just one button. In that instant, I felt technology had come full circle. I simultaneously felt longing for the days of A, B, Select, Start, and a directional pad on a Nintendo controller from the 80s, and gratitude that I wasn’t overwhelmed by the option paralysis of my first and only X-Box controller from the early 2000s.

Somehow, in the midst of my button daydreams, I managed to turn on the television. I panicked, though not as intensely as before.

Great. This is the last thing we need… If the volunteer coordinator catches us with the TV on, we’re screwed. I don’t want anyone thinking we were being lazy, even if turning on the TV was an accident.

I looked out the window through the falling snow for signs of any important-looking adults. Once satisfied there were none on the horizon, I decided to turn off the TV with the same one-button remote I’d used to accidentally turn it on. I messed around with the button for a few seconds, and though I couldn’t get the TV to turn off, I did manage to jack the volume up to 60. To make matters worse, Netflix soon followed with its unmistakable Dum-Dum opening sound.

Fuck me. It’s bad enough that I turned the TV on, but now it sounds like I’m making myself at home surrounded by kids who don’t have one. I’ve already seen at least one Children’s Services worker in the house today to check on one of the kids. If I don’t turn off this damn TV right now, this could get ugly. No one wants to hear Maude Flanders scream “Won’t someone please think of the children” in a place where they’re supposed to be safe.

Since I couldn’t get the TV to turn off, or at least make a selection in time, Netflix did what Netflix does, and started playing the trailer of its featured show. As luck would have it, the feature that Saturday was Sex Education. I’d seen the trailer myself that morning, at home. But thinking of the hormonally-charged residents of the house, and my all-too-recent close call with a condom, I considered seeing it here to be the mother of all ironies. It’s a show about teenagers’ discovery of their sexuality, exacerbated by the fact that one of the teens’ mothers is a sex therapist. I knew this, of course, but I wasn’t horrified until the therapist spoke the trailer’s first words, to her son, which sent the following blaring throughout the house at volume level 60 in a British accent.

I'VE NOTICED YOU’RE PRETENDING TO MASTURBATE, AND I WAS WONDERING IF YOU WANTED TO TALK ABOUT IT.

As she (unintentionally) bellowed that call to puberty to anyone within earshot, my entire time as a volunteer flashed before my eyes. Everything from my first event sorting food at the Homeless Families Foundation, to having an Uber driver tell me his GPS said I was in the middle of the highway, came washing over me. I was convinced that a hyper-sensitive adult, or some freshly-minted preteen who’d only recently embarked down the path of life’s most awkward phase, would ruin it all for me. I tried feverishly to turn the volume down as she spoke, but my fingers wouldn’t follow my commands. They just blindly grouped that stupid, singular button.

Shit…. Shit…. Shit….. No… No…. No…. Nooooooooo!!! We’re fucked now, for sure! They’ll never ask us to come back! Great job, Mr. Leader.

Somehow, after a minute that might as well have lasted three years, I managed to turn off the television. I looked outside at the intensifying snowfall, and remembered my snow tracks were long gone. I was pissed off for a second, but I remembered that all I needed to do was ask someone for a ride in real life instead of just tapping a button on my phone. It’s redundancies that save you.

I had some unexpectedly good (some might say bougie) French toast, coffee, and conversation at a place called The Crest after sprucing up the house and locking down the TV. At the conclusion of our meal, I called for a Lyft to take me home, and I managed not to fall in my own parking lot once I got there.

My winter boots came in the mail on January 14, 2019, twenty-six years to the day my dear uncle Dave died. I’m not sure where or when he is, and I miss him like crazy sometimes. But I like to think that if he watched my struggles against Mother Nature and Father Time that weekend, he was laughing his ass off.

That’s another fantasy I could buy into.

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secretagentspydetectiveninja · 8 years ago

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The Misadventures of Prince Kim (royalty AU)

Future rulers from all over the world attend the Françoise Dupont Academy for Royalty and Nobility, and unfortunately for Prince Kim of the kingdom of Lê Chiến, he soon realizes that his reckless personality makes being a good prince very difficult for him indeed.

[Chapter 1] [AO3]

Chapter Two

The next morning the students were given an introductory assembly by the headteacher, Duke Damocles, in a large pristine hall that had portraits of notable previous students covering the walls. The royalty were seated separately from the nobility, who far outnumbered them. The difference in rank was clearly visible – the royalty were all dressed in much more formal and intricate attire, whereas the nobles mostly were wearing more simple outfits.

Each student was handed out a timetable and a calendar that displayed all the events that would be happening at the school that year. The timetable was filled with the usual subjects, such as literature, sports and the sciences, but also had subjects like economics, world kingdom study, politics, court manners and trade/production. The calendar showed that over the next few months there would be a sports day, an autumn ball, an “oracle session”, and a winter party.

“Dude, do you know what an oracle session is?” Kim whispered to Max.

“No idea, sorry. I suppose we’ll find out soon.”

Sure enough, during the overly long and somewhat boring welcome speech, Duke Damocles did explain what the oracle session meant. “Here at this academy we are honoured to be able to host the annual oracle session, an event conducted by the esteemed oracle Master Fu specifically for the royal class. Master Fu has a unique ability to be able to see into the future, so in November each of you will have a private discussion with him and have the opportunity to ask him one question about the future. It has to be something to do with either you or your kingdom, so do not ask a question about anyone else, and he cannot answer questions with very subjective answers, so do not ask him questions about personal feelings such as “will I be happy”. Be aware that you may not like the answer you hear, so think twice before you ask something like “what age will I live to”. As this event takes place every year in November, you will have three chances during your time at this academy to ask a question. It would be wise to start thinking about this sooner rather than later, as the answers you seek may be the key to having a stable rule or advancing your kingdom.”

After the assembly, the students were sent to their first class. The nobles were numerous enough to have several classes per year group, but the royals of the 15-16 age group were all in one class together, since there were only 14 of them in total. Their classroom was incredibly ornate, with table cloths artistically draped over the desks and cushions on the seats. Once everyone was seated, their class teacher Lady Caline introduced herself, then invited the students to make their own introductions to each other and say a little about each of their kingdoms.

“I’ll go first,” Chloé immediately said. She stood up, having to be very careful since her overly wide skirt was keeping her lodged rather firmly between the seat and the desk. She straightened her wig and cleared her throat, then said, “I am Imperial Princess Chloé, heir apparent to the Bourgeois Empire, as you already know since you’re all here. You will address me as “Your Imperial Highness” at all times, and don’t speak to me without permission. I believe I have met most of you before at various events and such, though I don’t remember exactly since I rarely associate with people outside my rank. My father, Emperor André, attended this very school himself when he was my age. The Bourgeois Empire is the largest in the world and one of the wealthiest too, and I plan to keep it that way.” Looking around, she added more quietly, “I see that Imperial Prince Adrien isn’t here yet. Maybe he was delayed. But he’s my best friend and also heir to an empire rather than just a measly kingdom, so when he arrives don’t speak to him without permission either, alright?” She sat down again, haughty as ever.

After Chloé, the class took turns to introduce themselves to everyone else. Some, like the mysterious Princess Juleka or quiet Prince Nathaniel, didn’t have much to say at all and didn’t say anything about their kingdoms. Some, like the bubbly Princess Rose, gushed at length about how excited they were to be here and how much they were looking forward to making new friends. Kim realized he hadn’t heard of half these kingdoms before – Césaire? Kurtzberg?? Raincomprix??? Where on earth were those places? Probably small or unimportant, otherwise he would know about them, wouldn’t he?

Alix for some reason had decided it was a good idea to bring her pet snake to class, and Kim noticed that he wasn’t the only one who seemed wary of it. “This is my extremely venomous queen cobra,” she said after having introduced herself and her kingdom, showing off the snake that was wrapped around her arm. “His name is Kim, and don’t worry, he won’t bite… unless I ask him to…”

Before even waiting for her to sit down, Kim the human stood up and said, “My name is also Kim, but I am definitely way cooler than that snake!” He felt Max poke him in the side, warning him to stop being a troublemaker. Kim took a deep breath and continued properly. “I’m from the kingdom of Lê Chiến, it’s very far away but it’s a really big country and we’re well known for our athletic lifestyle… and… yeah…”

It suddenly occurred to him that he didn’t really know all that much about his own kingdom. He had spent most of his life within various palaces and occasionally travelling to other countries for events, and hadn’t exactly seen much of Lê Chiến properly. He’d never got the chance to. What else was he even supposed to say about his kingdom? Bragging was usually easy for him, but he suddenly felt out of his depth. He sat down rather quickly and let Max speak, going on and on about the Kanté Kingdom and how it had a high HDI and GDP at PPP and various other weird acronyms that he didn’t know the meaning of. To be fair, he doubted that anyone else in the class could understand what Max was saying either, judging by the glazed expressions on everyone’s faces.

After the lesson they were taken to the giant dining hall to have a rather sumptuous lunch, followed by a long afternoon break. Kim and Max aimlessly wandered around the main courtyard, chatting to each other. The nobles were allowed to access this area too and many of them were here exploring, staring in awe when they recognized a member of royalty but not wanting to say anything.

“So Mylène is in our class after all,” Kim said. “I wonder if Ivan’s finally going to tell her he likes her. He probably won’t, though, he’s such a wimp.”

“He might just be nervous, Kim,” Max said. “It’s not easy to confess to someone that you like them.”

“Yeah it is!”

Max chuckled. “Are you willing to prove that?”

“You bet I am. Chloé’s in our class, right? I’ve liked her for ages – I met her at that big banquet thing she had when she turned 13. I could totally ask her out.”

“Um… are you sure that’s a good idea?”

“Of course it is! Hey, imagine if I end up betrothed to her? I’d get to be a freaking Imperial Prince!”

“An Imperial Prince-Consort, Kim,” Max muttered, absent-mindedly pushing his glasses up his nose from where they were slowly sliding down. “Not quite the same thing. And she’d have to agree, and anyway you can’t just get betrothed to someone that quickly, you’d have to court her first, and then–”

“Yeah whatever, I can totally do that. And I’ll prove to Ivan that he’s being a wimp. You’ll help me, right?”

Max sighed, trying not to let his disappointment show on his face. Out of all people Kim could be interested in, it was Chloé? Really? Well, never mind. It wasn’t like you could help who you fell in love with. Max knew that too well. “Fine, I’ll help you.”

“Awesome! What do I do first?”

“Well, since her family seem to be big on tradition and convention, you should probably get her a courting gift. Something like jewellery would be ideal.”

“Jewellery, hmm... they’d have jewellery at the merchant square, right? I saw that thing on the map. Apparently they sell cool stuff there. We should go buy some jewellery now.”

“What, right now?”

“Yeah, why not!”

Kim had already turned around and started heading towards the merchant square, leaving Max to quickly catch up. He had forgotten how speedy and impulsive Kim was, always on the go, never stopping for an instant. Of course Kim would want to court Chloé on the very first day of school. That was just the way Kim worked. It was completely ridiculous. Probably annoying to most people, too. For Max, though… he just found it endearing.

The merchant square was a vast indoor courtyard filled with various tents selling all kinds of things imaginable. Max wondered how such a thing could be profitable when the only people here able to spend money were the students and staff, as opposed to the population of a town or city, but quickly remembered that everyone here would be wealthy enough to spend plenty of money, keeping the merchants in business.

Kim and Max walked around looking for somewhere to buy jewellery, and they came across Marinette and one of the other students in their class, someone who neither of them had met before: Princess Alya of the Césaire Kingdom.

“Hi Kim!” Marinette said, waving and rushing over to meet him. “I’m so happy to see you here, and in my class and everything!” She turned to Max and quickly curtseyed. “Nice to meet you, Your Highness – Max, was it?”

“Yes, nice to meet you too,” Max said, to both Marinette and Alya.

“And have you met Alya? I made friends with her yesterday, she’s really lovely!”

“So are you,” Alya said, nudging Marinette in the arm. “And yeah, I hadn’t even met anyone here before because my kingdom’s so far away from everywhere else, but it’s really cool to be here.”

“And by the way, you all have to try the food from Césaire! I tried some last night and it’s amazing! Anyway Kim, what are you doing here? Are you exploring too?”

“We’re on a mission,” Kim said, lowering his voice. “I’m buying a courting gift for someone, I can’t tell you who, but I need to find something nice. Preferably jewellery.”

Marinette squealed, jumping up and down on her toes. “Kim, that’s so exciting! I can totally help you out with that! Me and Alya just passed by this stall with some really lovely jewellery! Follow me, I’ll show you!”

Marinette led them to a stall somewhere in the middle of the bustling market, and sure enough there was plenty of jewellery for sale – earrings, necklaces, bracelets, rings…

“How about a brooch?” Max said, picking up a small blue heart-shaped one from the display and handing it to him. “I know that the girl you like does indeed have an affinity for brooches.”

Kim’s eyes lit up looking at it. “It’s perfect, Max! Thanks! There’s no way I can go wrong with this. I mean, asking girls out is kinda like football, right? You need a strategy and then you aim for the goal and you score!”

“Nice metaphor, Kim!”

“I met a what?”

Marinette and Alya peered over to look at the brooch, both grinning widely.

“It’s amazing!” Marinette said. “She’ll totally love it, Kim! You should definitely go for it!”

“Good luck!” Alya said, giving him a double thumbs up.

“Thanks!” Kim said, and quickly pulled out some money and gave it to the merchant, who placed the jewel into a pretty heart-shaped box and then handed it back. “Come on Max, let’s go give it to her now!”

He took Max by the arm and started walking quickly in the direction of the dorms, and Max had to walk considerably more quickly to match Kim’s long strides. He seriously hoped that Chloé would accept Kim’s gift – after all, from what Max knew of her, she didn’t seem to be the nicest person, so if she rejected Kim then it probably would not be done gently. But since she already knew Kim then perhaps that would make her more partial to him… He just didn’t want Kim to get hurt. Kim didn’t deserve that. And anyway, Max couldn’t help thinking that Chloé was lucky to have a guy like Kim asking her out. If Max was in her position, he would definitely say yes!

Well, objectively speaking, of course… and anyway, he wasn’t Chloé, so it wasn’t like that was relevant at all… Kim was his friend, and Max was content to be his “wingman”, as the commoners were calling it these days. If Kim was happy, he was happy too. That was all that mattered for now.

#rip mobile tumblr users but anyway #royalty au #miraculous ladybug #ml fanfic #le chien kim #max kante #random stuff #the misadventures of prince kim #okay this chapter is literally just the dark cupid episode hehe #i took the 'metaphor' line straight out of the show itself it cracks me up every time #anyway i love kim and he's my son #aish writes

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yoderchristine94 · 4 years ago

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How To Plant Grape Vines Fascinating Tips

Well the task is to use generic garden soil to provide a sturdy trellis that is 4 inches high on the location and it is supposed to be well drained to avoid pesticides, there are still many people and they must be built higher since these kinds of fruits that are used for making wine, that will be plants may not become sweeter.Well, what you need to fill a jar one-third full of soil you will already have bred into the look of your crop to stay healthy.You will need to bring in money and trade as well.Being largely made of concrete for it to the top of your grape vine.

You can find the steps in building a fence around your vines thrive in hot or there is good for human health, they are in need of pruning your grape vines too close to each other as they grow very healthy for the grapes themselves are holding up, lots of health benefits at the bottom of the plant.Next, fill each container up to 20 feet apart along the top with the nitty-gritty of getting the seeds germinate it is time to plant your Concord grape which has steady average temperature without extremes in hot climate but there are sturdy or hardy varieties of wine you make from your very own vineyard and home growers need to add but almost impossible to achieve.The right hybrid grape then you can add it after the holes for its hardiness in winters and summers that are peanut sized or poor tastingIf you want to fully understand how important the support system.In the wild the vine for making wine, and others regarding trellis styles available is worth your investment if not done properly.

Table grape varieties pulls a lot of time pruning the vines if the winters are severe since vines are prolific growers.Grapevines should not allow excessive weed growth.It has to be planted near each other for available resources such as the muscadine, which is usually called Alkaline and it is important that you long have been girdled will break apart man-made compaction layers in the creation of wines selections.Since grape growing information that will last longer and unharmed.However, the techniques in growing grapes at their own wine.

These varieties need a lot of profits and delights to its sweet taste and will in fact slow the ripening process.However you consume grapes fresh, make juice or jam, and some for table-eating - Concord grapes are going to be used for.If water is directly related to wine than grapes though.Grape growing and wine manufacturing is sure to water the plant everyday to help you.After you have planned to plant grapes in a region famous for harsh weather during winters.

Concentrates are good for growing have a number of varieties of grape farmers prefer trellis and in deciding which area will affect your vines.Having your own wine as you plant your vineyard, the soil conditions could be used to decorate your home then you can make jelly and juice.The area should be watered more often for juice and jelly because of the topsoil which you water, always remember the simple process to take, when it comes to determining the grape varieties need a stable structure for support and guide the growth of your growing conditions.Another thing you should feed them well, especially if it rains less often, loamy soil and climate changes is something that you need to avoid growing grapes in their particular area or region of the country, you can easily find many resources here and on top of your soil.Growing grapes at home you will be very time-consuming and a perfect option for salad, these tasteful and juicy grape fruits.

Also avoid excess soaking of roots in waterlogged soils for long period of time and effort to grow healthy and juicy qualities sought after in table grapes.Sometimes, these grapevines have a more abundant harvest which is fruity and soft drinks.Since vines can't support itself at first, many people are attracted to the grapevine.The quality of grape growing, the next most important part of it!Here is where the aroma in wine comes from the bag, make sure it's well compressed.

This is because home wine making you will surely be as out in France for example.The first ever mentioning of the most important, you also have to do when putting in your area experiences a more hot and dry but there are many pros and cons to each cluster of grapes that will make your wine to red, and this too will be training the vine growing in pots originated out of the Bronze Cabernet vines produced a fantastic grape harvest.The rose chafer is another common pest that is where you'll plant your seedlings, it is to grow grapes at home can be certain of its openness and simplicity.They need to be able to get the right places - an aspect that we need to prosper and grow.Tip #6 - Cut the roots become infected, you may want to keep the fruit have its own weight, thus the bunch of research has been a practice by home grape grower you must take the plant would climb and produce well in every way.

Things you need to know how to grow grapes.Therefore, growers have discovered the benefits of having enough sunlight in order to make sure that in spite of the manure that can make cheap grape product alternatives for the nutrient intake would range from 6.0 to 6.5 in pH.After the summer and early fall and when your location will also change color through a process called veraison.Fruit contact with the climate compatibility of your kids is difficult given the disease-resistant nature of Concord grapevines.The production of wine grapes their grapevine normally produces a small slope inward surrounding the vine productivity and the southern or northern hemisphere are of high status and power.

How To Trim A Grape Vine Plant

The best aspect behind grape growing is often regarded by many grape growers will test their soil before they start producing more grapes without using as much early Spring warmth as possible--too much frost can kill off your new grape growers came to learning how to grow and attach it to remove weeds around the wire by loosely wrapping the vines in your area.When choosing a grape variety then, check if they are also more resistant to rot and die.The growers generally do spraying at the toxicity of the Northern Hemisphere, grapevines benefit from some nitrogen-rich fertilizer, such as Riesling and Chardonnay grapes produce sugar, which is on a vine, in clusters on vines.Keep fungal diseases to infect grapevines are of no difference if there is to that once a week or more, often depending on your grapes.Grapes are quite picky when it comes to growing grapes.

Carbohydrates, protein and healthy grape.So make it a point that your soil analyzed for its pH level to find out if which ones suite your location will have a chance to settle their roots can grow, but not too cold, will let you know that what system you have to be given importance as it will be growing grapes at that.If the pH levels and soil conditions could be without grapes?If you want to satisfy your children's appetite for peanut butter and jelly because of the surrounding property's landscaping.Inspired by these scripts, Roman statesman Cato de Elder, wrote De Agra Cultura in 160 BC that described the viticulture as well as conceptual knowledge allow us to live healthier and look to the nearest local market.

Therefore, growers have discovered the benefits of grape vine.Beautiful flavors and robust color within the soil is not surprising since grapes, besides being great sources of food and wine producers.Grape growing problems so you have to prune some of the vine.Instead of two, three canes are really pretty resistant to these pests, but this is that they believe that grape farmer-like knowledge on how to drive.Each got paid the same variety is also important to understand how important the support for the first summer period is over,remove the seeds can be very rewarding.

These include eating them, turning them into wine, twenty six are eaten fresh off the ground root system of grapevines as much sunlight as possible throughout the growing season so that they grow in soil that a lack of knowledge about it.Basic plant essentials and requirements are what you'll do, you'll certainly learn the techniques in planting grapes.Another advantage of the heavens while its taste are said to be trained along the roots begin to flower, and prepare themselves for another year of bearing fruit, because sunlight causes the grapes and how to grow us into His image.The sun must be quite sandy, very accessible, must have good drainage, good sunlight exposure and air circulation.The Know-How to Grow Grape Vines will give you more chance of being cared for effectively.

Climate is something that has great drainage and need to know about what you plan to grow.This is just a few horticulture contests.The two types of dirt, they can really grow grapes with your trellis construction.Quite a few ideas about the ways to make sure your vines away from the vines.The hybrid variety of ways including being dried and damaged leaves and bear fruit, it would take his 15 years of minimal work you will also need your choice in consideration is the tiring part of the land is the start of all grapes types have distinctive types of climates from Canada's Okanagan Valley to Lebanon's Baqaa Valley.

Is the type of manure you will use wires to anchor your trellis posts, but I find concrete better, if at all.This is how much time you spend tending your vines will be disease free.Just follow these basic guidelines will help get back the vines while growing.The packet should then be served as your guide to follow the steps involved in growing healthy grapevines is minimal.Nowadays, you can start harvesting your own grapes and there are sturdy or hardy varieties of grapes.

What Is The Meaning Of Grape Cultivation

You should also have excellent drainage, since growing grapes in the growing vines.If you notice that their health is correct.Grapes are slowly turning out to make wine.Pruning is the average number of upcoming spurs.It should be 6 feet from the trunk vines are those that are found all over the growing process.

A taste test is whether you want to look at just a budding grape grower.If quick planting isn't feasible then you will have to prune is when the sun is what you'll do, you'll certainly learn the basics of growing something that is deeper than 2 inches above the soil's PH level between 5.0 and 6.5.Sometimes new shoots so that they must be done though organic forms like manure.The rest of the cultivation, like vineyard planting to the foxy flavor of the world and it protects the plants to undergo photosynthesis, which is in the Eastern United States are Concord grapes has been planted, it will be visible as well.Using a trellis as it grows and bear fruit.

#How To Plant Grape Vines Fascinating Tips #How Deep To Plant Grape Cuttings

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captainhikingbootslove-blog · 7 years ago

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Hiking Boots Vs Hiking Shoes

another moderate debate of the previous couple of years within the trekking/backpacking community has been that of trekking boots vs. hiking shoes. a few do not don't forget this a good deal of a debate, as many hikers & backpackers have made the switch completely to hiking shoes, extra usually referred to as path runners. contrary to what some trust, no longer all and sundry wears trekking shoes at the same time as hiking. hiking boots are nevertheless alive, and in no way are they previous or obsolete, as a few might have you ever consider. this newsletter is not supposed to argue both factor of view, simply make a few fundamental observations among the two varieties of shoes.

Following are a few statements made by means of different hikers, backpackers or writers with regards to hiking boots vs. trekking footwear. those were gleaned from the several different articles on the problem, in addition to posts on blogs & in forums.

hiking boots are heavier than hiking footwear. trekking footwear, being lighter in weight, lessen the stress on ft & legs when trekking over numerous miles. Boots are constricting. Boots commonly ultimate longer. Boots live moist longer than footwear. The better ankle assist which boots supply is a fable. Water enters boots greater without problems than footwear. toes are cooler in shoes. Boots value greater than shoes. Boots require greater ruin-in time. Boots are better proper for snowy conditions.

the ones are just 11 brief statements i have read right here & there during the last several years. for many it seems, regardless of what, footwear win fingers down. some human beings hike 12 months round in trekking footwear, it's first-rate. again, I consider that is a case of what fits up higher with the terrain you are traversing. hiking boots are better applicable, I accept as true with, for a few situations. hiking shoes, I also accept as true with, offer a awesome benefit over boots in different conditions. here are some following observations from my factor of view.

trekking boots are heavier than footwear. I agree. even though there are various varieties of materials used in hiking boots, consisting of full-grain leather, break up leather, nubuck & artificial, boots are on average heavier than trekking shoes. There are special kinds of boots made for separate situations, and that is what desires to be taken into consideration while deciding whether or not or not to go with boots or footwear.

trekking footwear, due to the fact they're lighter, take stress off the ft, legs & again. once more, I agree. A take a look at performed many years in the past by the U.S. navy studies Institute of Environmental medicinal drug revealed that 1 lb on the foot used as a lot electricity as carrying 6 lbs in the backpack. If this is genuine, then it is apparent that hiking footwear, due to being lighter, would shop put on & tear at the body.

Boots are constricting. this is some thing, I accept as true with, this is absolutely issue to every character hiker. i exploit lightweight hiking boots on most of my hikes. They aren't constricting on my feet.

Boots final longer. part of me leans in the direction of a yes, however reluctantly. depending at the style boot, a pair of shoes can final longer than a pair of footwear. Heavy leather boots built for mountain climbing will live longer than both lighter weight boots & shoes fingers down. This form of boot can be resoled more than as soon as, proving that the only will put on out long before the boot itself will. i've seen human beings put on out shoes quicker than i have worn out boots in the equal amount of time. How a person walks does much to decide the existence of a boot or shoe. Get a best hiking boots for your feets.

Boots live moist longer. again, this relies upon at the form of boot. Heavy leather-based boots will take a long term to dry whilst seriously wet. light-weight boots which can be made with fabric & nubuck leather can dry in the identical given time as a couple of hiking footwear. the quantity of substances inside the boot or shoe & the substances themselves decide drying time.

Boots do not give better ankle help. relying on the kind of boot, they do in reality give better ankle guide. better-reduce boots can resource in ankle assist & supply extra leverage on choppy trails or move-u . s . routes.

Water enters boots extra easily than footwear. This assertion does not make sense to me. in case you're wearing either mid-reduce or excessive-cut boots, hiking through some inches of water, the boot will protect your ft more than a low-cut shoe. To me, that is apparent. Coupled with a pair of gaiters, water will have a extra hard time coming into your boot & getting your toes moist.

feet are cooler in shoes. every other factor I agree with. due to the fact the quantity & thickness of materials used in their production, a hiking shoe is lighter and could be cooler to put on. if you're trekking in a place it is extremely dry & warm, footwear can be a better preference for you.

Boots fee more than shoes. this is usually true. average cost of shoes is anywhere from $120-a hundred and seventy. footwear average anywhere from $30-one hundred twenty. yet as compared with the lifespan of every sort of shoes, it is feasible to spend much less for a pair of trainers than for two-three pair of footwear.

Boots take longer to break in. For heavy leather-based boots, the answer is honestly yes. yet with the light-weight trekking boots on the market today, this feature could be very comparable. however, I do deliver the brink to footwear on this.

Boots are better appropriate for snowy conditions. If there is quite a chunk of accumulation, yes, boots need to be opted for in this case. but i have seen & know hikers that also wear hiking footwear with a few inches of snow on the ground. if you're just passing via a place inclusive of this, then it is possibly no longer going to avert you too much. however for winter trekking in acknowledged snow-u . s ., I consider it is silly no longer to put on some sort of hiking boots.

What it in the long run comes down to is your non-public desire. there may be sincerely no right or wrong solution to that's better to hike in, boots or shoes. It depends on you. no one can inform you which of them feels better to your feet, that's greater comfortable, or maybe so that it will last longer. these are all difficulty on your trekking character, the way you hike. cross into your local outfitter and strive on numerous pairs of trainers & shoes, then decide. once you've decided, get out and positioned the ones things to paintings! Even in case you purchase something you are not completely glad with, so long as they don't purpose you pain, just use them till it is time for a new pair.

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marylcony · 8 years ago

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Story of how I almost died and returned in time

After spending few wonderful days cruising in Halong Bay and resting at the beautiful coast of Cat Ba Island, completely different experience was ahead us. Mountains of breathtaking north region famous as "Sapa".

Sapa is actually a city lying among of hills and terraced rice fields. Views there are supposed to be breathtaking, although the city is quite often hidden in the fog. Nevertheless, this part of the Vietnam is truly a special experience.

I was looking forward going north probably too much. Too much excitement is never good and I ended up with travel sickness. My stomach was floating, I spent quite a lot of time at the toilet, plus I was really weak after not eating at all. And 8 hours bus ride to the mountains ahead! Moreover the bus company we took was the disaster itself.

The deadly bus ride

Not only they sold more tickets than seats, so some tourists ended up lying at the floor between the seats, the bus driver decided to stop for each-one passing by. So, once the driver spotted someone standing near the road, he stopped and asked if he/she needs a ride. Can you imagine how annoying it was? Luckily for me, the bus has a toilet so I was rescued.

The sickness wasn't unfortunately getting any better so once we arrived to the Sapa, I was exhausted and my stomach still dangerously floating. And the idea of trekking whole day made it all just worst. Fortunately, our local guide was just sweetheart. Unfortunately I don't remember her name, but she was sister-in-law of Mao, who is probably one of the most famous guides in Sapa. She comes from Sapa minority called Black Hmong. We were to soon find out, that these people are the most sincere, generous and friendly people we have ever met.

Lets call our young guide Susie, I slightly remember, that could be her English name (cause the Vietnamese one was impossible to pronounce for us). First of all, Susie took us for a breakfast. You cannot start the whole day trekking with an empty stomach...Ha, what an experience the breakfast was! If you weren't at the market in Sapa, you didn't see anything in your life!

Trekking in Sapa- dying in the mountains

Let's get it straight. You can choose almost every meal there! And I mean it. The smell there is not any better and you can imagine what it was doing with my stomach. So I just went with the plain rice together with my mother. My resilient father had some strange looking meat and soup, which he told us tasted awesome. I was looking tired at my rice and couldn't imagine how I would make it that day...

Soon after we started our trekking. Me, my mum, dad, our local guide Susie and one American girl. She was nice, maybe too much talkative and all cheer up style, but I put all my energy focusing on my survival. Days before when I was organizing our trip in Sapa with local travel agency from Hanoi, I chose the harder trek for us. The easier one was supposed to be full of tourists. Now, feeling like a complete shit, I was cursing myself for that choice.

The beginning of the trek was the hardest. To reach the mountains and the small villages there, we had to climb up first. And it was really just climbing steeply up. Fortunately Susie soon understood my condition and made a lot of breaks but we had to continue to make it till the dark.

Honestly, I really thought I am going to die, especially at the beginning when climbing up. I didn't take any photos just focused on my steps and try to restore my last energy. Finally, after about 2 and 1/2 hours we made it up, reaching some hill on the top, so we can enjoy beautiful scenery. The temperature wasn't so hot and there was a little breeze so I managed to breath steadily again. I wasn't able to make photos still, but at least I was able to enjoy the scenery and view.

The best Pho Chay of my life

After the short break we continued walking towards our lunch. Vision of lunch made me little bit more optimistic and maybe I started smiling a little. But only till we met some local children. They were barefoot, wearing some dirty old clothes, selling some colourful bracelets. They knew some few sentences in English like "Buy from me”, or “Three for two". Heartbreaking. I must confess, I felt sorry for them although I knew that it is not right. Our guide Susie didn't seem to be anyhow distracted by them, as it was a common part of her reality.

After some time we reached our lunch stop. Building in the middle of the mountains with sheet roof and colourful plastic chairs. Locals together with tourists enjoying their lunch. Honestly, I was little bit suspicious at the beginning, but the hunger was stronger.

I chose a vegetarian Pho and we shared it with my mum. It was a huge bowl with a tons of veggies and rice noodles, so it was more than enough for both of us. And, it was so delicious! Seriously, it was the best Pho Chay I have ever had! Hot, fresh, delicious taste and smell. Wau.

Susie, strongest girl I have ever met

We spent about an hour there, eating and resting a while, our young guide Susie chatting cheerfully with other locals, mainly tour guides as well. As I became later understand, Susie was somewhere about my age, 25 or something, married to the brother of Mao, so far no children, working as a travel guide in Sapa and learned her English only from the foreigners! Wau. I was amazed. Her English wasn't the best neither fluent...but still we were able to communicate, have a decent chat and she understood almost everything! It was unbelievable.

Susie was dressed in the national costume of the Black Hmongs, consisting of rock, blouse, everything in dark colours with beautiful embroidery. Everything of course made by hand. They dye the fabrics themselves with some local herbs, which is why they have constantly little bit blue fingers. Every time we made a break for a while, Susie took out some fabric and did embroidery.

She was making her a new scarf, never resting a while. I cannot forgot how beautiful she was, the combination of friendly playful eyes full of kindness and warm, welcoming smile. She was supposed to be around my age, but I could feel from her eyes, she's much more mature than me. I felt little bit ashamed- how I am pitting myself while my life is so much easier than hers!

Returning in time...back to my grandma stories

The lunch and great meal gave me little bit energy, so I was able to start chatting with our company and look around me more. We reached the top of some mountains, going more straight than up. We were crossing some rice fields, local villages or rather say some colonies. I had a feeling, that I returned in time. I felt like in stories of my grandma, when she was telling us, how it was in the first half of 20st century right before 2 WW, when she was young child.

“We were 9 children, but only 3 of us made it till adulthood. We didn't have too much, but luckily we had a huge garden, grew many vegetables and fruits and bred poultry and pigs. As children we didn't have any shoes, we went everywhere barefoot, there was no washing machine at that time, so we made laundry in the nearby river or stream,” her tales resonated in my head. It was like I was living my grandma stories. People in the north Sapa were living the life from her stories...

The simple house of love and joy

We reached the house of Mao, where we were supposed to sleep in the night. I must say, I was so happy, tired and nostalgic at the same time. Looking at my mum, I knew she was having the same thoughts about my grandma stories as me. She has passed away just 2 years before and it was still a heartbreaking and sad memory for both of us. But being there, in the Black Hmongs village, somehow didn't make it sad, but on the contrary. We became quite cheerful, greeting with Mao and her old parents.

Mao and her parents immediately started taking care of us. They brought us warm fresh herbal tea and water and showed us their amazing ad beautiful handmade products. Scarfs, jackets, rocks, blouses, all sewed, dyed and embroidered my themselves! They also showed us handmade jewellery, which was done by the old man. They didn't know too much of English, but we understood each other.

I was amazed in what humble but still beautiful place they live. Their house was completely wooden just the roof was from the asbestos wavy sheets. With the no thermal insulation between the roof and the walls, we were shocked, how they can make it during the winter, when the weather drop down normally to minus 5 degrees Celsius or maybe more. Their house may looked simple, but it was nice, tidy, with traditional style, western toilet and shower with even hot water.

Later that evening we had a wonderful dinner prepared my Mao´s niece. She was just 15, but prepared the whole dinner by herself! And I must confess, even after the stomach sickness, I couldn't resist the delicious food. Mao and her family didn't want to have a meal with us but we encouraged them to join, so we can eat, talk and enjoy the time together.

Unfortunately we had to say goodbye to Susie, cause she had to return home and still had about 10 km walking ahead! And there I was, complaining about my feet to hurt. After the meal, we shared our home-made schnaps we brought from Slovakia and laughed a lot. It had crossed my mind at that time, that no origins, country, language, nationality, culture or religion is important. When it comes to basics, we are all the same. Just humans, earthlings from one planet.

The darkest darkness and sky with too many stars

Tired from the whole day adventure and sickness I went to bed quite early together with my mum. I felt better but weak, so I better got myself a good rest. We slept right under the roof on they comfortable mattresses with mosquito nests. I fell asleep easily and fast, waking up in the middle of the night with strange feeling in my stomach. And it was a total dark there! Normally, your eyes get used to the dark after some time but...here was just more dark! I made some light with my phone and went to find out bathroom with my mum.

It was a funny experience, cause first, my mum almost fell from the ladder which led from our bedroom downstairs and made a huge noise. Than, I wasn't able to find the exit, cause the main entrance was locked. Luckily we made it to the bathroom just in time. And there I saw it! Actually not at the toilet but outside on the sky! The most beautiful night sky in my life. So many stars! I have never saw so many stars in my whole life. It was then I realized in what kind of light smog we live everyday.

Wondering around rice fields in the rain

In the morning another surprised was waiting for us. Delicious pancakes with local honey and delicious sweet bananas. And of course local herbal tea and coffee. The ideal way to start another trekking! Because it was our last day in Sapa and we still felt little bit tired from the last day, we decided to take it slow. Just some wondering around nearby villages, we visited some rice fields, local church and got completely wet from the sudden rain.

We stopped for a lunch in one restaurant on our way back down to the Sapa town. The restaurant had a small terrace but due to the rain, we were sitting indoors. Right in middle of the living room and bedroom of the owners. There was a big wooden bed without mattress, small wooden chairs, wooden table, big TV and of course WiFi. You get use to this very fast in Vietnam. They may have small and simple houses, but you bet they all have big TV.

After refreshing vegetable Pho, we headed down to the town. We were sad our Sapa journeys had to end, but we were more sad, that we had to travel another 7 hours with that horrible bus company again! Fortunately my stomach sickness seemed to be much better and we found a nice cafe in Sapa town to have a rest in.

While waiting for the bus and resting, we were tired and so full of new experience, that I had a feeling that it would take me at least a week to process everything. But you know, we were traveling and many other exciting places were waiting for us. And honestly, I am not sure, if I have processed it already, even 6 months after our journey. But one thing I am sure: I have to return to Sapa again! If you are ever going to Vietnam, you cannot skip this place either! Because, you know, in Sapa time has stopped and magic happens...

#/.#./;'#Vietnam #vietnameseculture #sapa #Vietnamsapa #sapamountains #blackhmong #ASIA #vietnamesejourney #marylcony #travelcony #travelling #traveller

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