#a peanut m&m i think i would struggle like it would really be a test of strength n willpower . esp if u were the last one. sorry :(

[bylertruther]

this isn't a metaphor for anything, i just want to know if u would eat me if i was an m&m. any flavor n color btw. thank u <3

[takoyakitenchou]

our world

“Erina and Souma find out she is pregnant.” so i got this prompt thru ff.net and i had so much fun w it; this is just a oneshot but i’ll prob do another take on it in the multi-chapter fic i have in the works. i need title suggestions lol

Upon meeting Nakiri Erina, Yukihira Souma had had his fair share of speechless moments. More often than not these were due to her cooking or some wild Nakiri-istic statement she’d dropped on him.

But coming in after a quick lunch service to witness his wife crying and laughing and sitting on the hardwood floor of the kitchen amidst what had to be at least two years’ worth of Kleenex with a jar of pickles in front of her was a dimension of its own.

A lot of questions ran through his mind in the span of ten seconds, but he settled for, “Whatcha doing, Erina?”

Erina took one look at him and her lips stretched into a devilish grin that looked suspiciously like Alice’s a split second before she was about to ask Kurokiba to do something stupid for her.

“Souma,” she sang gleefully.

“Are you drunk?” 

Erina lifted an eyebrow and said in her typical deadpan, “No, I’m totally fine, Yukihira. Don’t make baseless assumptions.”

Oh, yes. The tissues suggested otherwise, but she was ok.

“I want you to bring me chocolate.”

“I can make you some; I bought cacao a few days ago. Maybe move over a little bit?”

Erina promptly started bawling, and Souma started drafting his obituary, because there was no way she’d let him live to see another (tequila) sunrise when she started crying like this. In a last ditch effort to save his soul, he kneeled in front of her, moving the damn pickles out of the way, and hugged his crazy wife.

“Did I do something wrong?”

“No, I just want chocolate.”

“Uh… I can fly out to Momo-senpai’s place and be back in two hours?”

At this point, Souma was struggling to hold down his panic. This was some weirdass shit if he ever did see it, and it was Nakiri Erina they were talking about. Other than her unmatchable cooking, pretty much all she did was weird shit (not that he’d ever say this aloud, by virtue of the fact that he’d probably get his head kicked to the promised land).

“No, no,” Erina said impatiently, still sitting on the kitchen floor. “I mean from that shack down the block you like so much.”

“You’re talking about the convenience store?”

“Yes, yes. Whatever it’s called. Please?”

Souma grinned nervously. It wasn’t like Erina’s majestic god tongue to desire hoi polloi junk, as she called it. “Sure thing, princess. What kind?”

“M&M’s. Peanut.” Then she furrowed her eyebrows. “Why the fuck do I want those again? They sound disgusting. Well, bring me them anyways.”

Souma blinked once. Twice. Twice again. “Erina, I’m no expert, but are you pregnant?”

Erina blanched. “The hell? Why would I be?”

“I’ll be back,” Souma said, and bolted from the condo.

-

Precisely ten minutes later he burst back into the kitchen, where Erina had continued to calmly eat pickles from the jar. Under normal circumstances, her god tongue would probably have short-circuited by now, and that was what confirmed it for Souma. But she needed to be convinced.

“Hi,” he wheezed, and dumped the contents of his grocery bag onto the floor in front of her. Among a diverse assortment of select chocolates (read as pretty much the entire store) was a small rectangular box.

“Do I need this?” Erina frowned, picking up the test and turning it over in her hands.

“Yes, Erina, you do. I’ll be waiting here.”

“Not a finger on my M&M’s.”

“Wouldn’t dare, princess.”

-

It was only when Souma gently kissed her between her eyebrows did it finally hit Erina that on top of the culinary empire they were already running overtime to manage, they were going to be… dare she say it…?

They stared at the two little lines and what it entailed; it would completely alter the course of their lives.

“This is really happening, isn’t it?” Erina asked, a little weakly.

Souma nodded. “You feeling ok?”

“I’m still processing the fact that you and I are going to be parents.”

With a chuckle, Souma joked, “You’re already judging me, aren’t you? You’re doing that eyebrow raise thing.”

Erina rolled her eyes. If nothing else, it seemed her husband knew as much, if not more than, about her as she did. “Well, at least you know I’m always judging you.”

“Why else do you think I love you?”

Those three words never failed to bring a blush to Erina’s cheeks, and this time around was no exception. “I don’t know, maybe because I’m your soulmate or whatever.”

“Damn straight, Nakiri.”

“So… how are we going to do this? We need a gameplan, right?”

Souma sighed. “Like I said, I’m no expert, but I’m pretty damn sure you’re not supposed to do that with our child.” Taking her hands in his, he said, “Let’s not force our kid to be a chef. We’ll take her around whenever we’re running our restaurants and have her experience everything but let’s leave her future all up to her, you know?”

As stupid as he was, he was pretty cognizant of the things that mattered most.

Erina leaned into the familiar space between his jaw and collarbone that had long since become her sanctuary in times of despondency — but this was different, because even if there was a seasoning of worry involved, it was all joy. Ecstasy, even, that she’d finally have the chance to provide everything for another that she had been deprived of as a child.

And who better to share this promise with than Yukihira Souma, who had been the one to close the hole left in her heart by her past, to give all his love to her with no restraints at all? (although she probably wouldn’t have minded too much if he cut down on his damn peanut butter and squid attempts, but that was another story)

“You’re right,” she agreed. “We’ll let her decide. And we’ll put her above our work, am I clear? I won’t ever sacrifice my child’s happiness for a client.”

Souma lifted an eyebrow in an imitation of Erina’s trademark expression. “I thought that was a given, princess. She’s going to be our whole world.”

Then he kissed her with puffed-out cheeks in the way that made her fall for him a little harder each time and grinned one of his genuine billion-watt smiles that made his eyes all squinty, and she knew that no matter what happened along the way, they’d be able to figure it out together.

[theroyalmile]

No Returns, No Exchanges

Disclaimer: I have debated for quite a while whether or not I should post this blog.  Social media is such a curated space for joy and happiness, it can feel oppressive at times.  There is so much life-changing positivity, from engagements to new jobs; and don’t get me wrong, that happiness is great to see.  But on the other hand, all of that positivity makes me feel like sharing any kind of negative information is attention-seeking and an immense overshare.  So let’s ask ourselves why I feel that way.  Why is happiness celebrated while the sad, sometimes harsh realities of life are thought to be oversharing?  More specifically, why do we feel like life-changing news can only be shared when it doesn’t make other people uncomfortable?  Our expressions of pain should not be regulated by the comfort levels of the people who surround us.  There comes a time when not sharing something begins to feel like hiding something, and hiding something turns to shame.  That is a feeling that I refuse to welcome into my life right now.  So here we go. 

It has been a while since I posted anything… a really long while.  It has been rare, these past few years, that I have even felt I had anything much to say let alone write anything, mostly because my life has been fairly normal, fairly unextraordinary, and I am rather blessed to be saying that during such a difficult time for so many. The few moments where I have felt like I had something to say have been fleeting, and after a good 2am word vomit on paper, I have filed these musings under “not to be seen by the light of day” which is probably for the best.

 Sometimes in the past I would find myself wishing I had something interesting going on in my life, something worthy of commentary… I don’t know, I was thinking like a cool hobby, an interesting skill, a kick-ass career, or a run in with Tom Hardy like I’d always dreamed of… something.  

 Well, to whoever is in charge, this is not what I meant, and I would like to request a refund. 

 Because as its final parting kick in the ass 2020 decided to gift me with breast cancer.  This isn’t a bad punch line, it’s just the truth.Let me give you a second to process that one.  I certainly needed a few.

 The thing is, a little itty bitty 3-centimeter tumor- that’s not something I can give back, as much as I might want to.  It’s not a too-large sweater you can return with a gift receipt, and it’s not a bad haircut you can complain about and get your money back (though it certainly will include one in a week or so!)

 A lot of you already know this story and frankly it’s not one I can tell with much finesse or humor, so I will keep it brief.  It was a dark and stormy 6pm when I found a lump in my breast in the shower back in November.  My initial thought was “you’re a crazy lady and a hypochondriac, let’s give it a few weeks since this is probably nothing.”   A few weeks, when my imaginary lump seemed to not actually be imaginary, I figured okay, it’s time to see my doctor, it’s probably nothing but we need to make sure.  I was in fact so unconcerned about it that I didn’t even see my regular doctor. I figured I just needed a medical professional to feel me up and let me know what to do next.  I didn’t even bother mentioning it to my parents. (For context of my laissez-faire, when I was 14 I found a lump in my breast that turned out, after little fanfare, to be a cyst which was unceremoniously drained on a cold metal table by a male doctor in a somewhat traumatizing but ultimately benign event.  That’s a longer story for later). 

 Cue a physical exam, confirming I was not crazy and there was a lump, but it was probably nothing; an utltrasound, confirming the lump was a shape that they did not like, but it was probably nothing; and an ultrasound guided biopsy, in which the probably nothing was sampled.  The week between Christmas and New Year’s was spent impatiently waiting for the news, increasingly feeling that my probably nothing was maybe, actually something.

 On December 28 around lunch time I received a phone call in the middle of the work day from the radiologist, who while very nice, was someone I had only met once while she shot a needle in and out of my boob.  She asked me how I was doing and then told me my test results were in.  “I’m sorry to say it’s not good news,” she said.

 And believe it or fucking not my immediate thought was “It’s not good news… it’s great news!” My brain supplied this as if on autopilot like some kind of 90s game show host, knowing fully well that I would not be so lucky because we are not living in a Brooklyn 99 episode.  It’s weird where your brain goes under duress.

 It was one of the most uncomfortable phone calls I have ever had, wherein I found myself trying to reassure a complete stranger that I was okay and I’m pretty sure I even said, “it is what it is.”  I was told a breast surgeon and oncologist from my provider network would be in contact and the call ended. Ultimately, I was diagnosed with Stage 1B Triple Negative Invasive Ductal and Lobular Carcinoma.  No returns, no exchanges.

 I am two months into my diagnosis, and 1/8 of my way through chemotherapy, the first part of a three series treatment (to be followed by surgery and then likely radiation.)  This Friday, after my second chemotherapy treatment, I will begin to lose my hair.  Anyone who knows me at all knows that the hair loss will be a pill likely far harder for me to swallow than the chemo itself.  And while the look may have worked for Demi Moore in GI Jane, I do not have her bone structure, nor her body.  I anticipate I will look more like the yellow peanut M&M, which while obviously the best M&M of the bunch, I think we can all agree is not a cute look for me.

 I do not say this to be melodramatic, I just say this because I am cynical and pragmatic by nature: I am not particularly surprised that I have cancer.  And this is for several reasons, some of which probably deserve a longer blog later.  To put it simply, I have been surrounded by cancer, both by choice and by cruel fate and happenstance, my entire life. 

 Cruel Fate and Happenstance: Having several relatives who have gone through cancer, and a mother with a BRCA 1 genetic mutation (which I had a 50% chance of inheriting, and in fact did) I always figured it would eventually happen to me.  The odds this condition dealt me? “About 13% of women in the general population will develop breast cancer sometime during their lives. By contrast, 55%–72% of women who inherit a harmful BRCA1 variant… will develop breast cancer by 70–80 years of age.”  That 55-72% is the kind of percentage you want winning the lottery, but the lottery this most certainly is not, and that much I understood. So, I always figured something like this would probably happen.  Did I think I would be 28? No. But I figure that just makes me an overachiever. 

 Choice: I volunteered at a cancer support non-profit from the time I was 12 to the time I was 22, and I wrote my college senior thesis in anthropology on women with ovarian cancer, the cancer that killed my aunt Lizzy when I was 4 years old.  I have likely read more books on cancer than your average newly diagnosed person, which I find to be both a blessing and a curse.  On one hand, I know some of what’s coming.  On the other hand, I know some of what’s coming.  Of course I don’t think any of these things gave me cancer but you might say I have been training for this my whole life.  I think this joke is far funnier than pretty much everyone I say it to except my immediate family, because the Tenney/Koss folk are very big on gallows humor, in which case this is hilarious.  Comedy is our family coping mechanism, and I am guilty of occasionally forgetting not everyone is wired like that.   

 So where are we right now? Taking it day by day.  Do I frequently find myself wallowing in self-pity these days? Sure.  But all the same I feel truly lucky.  This is a feeling I am trying to hold on to, because I think the other options might be truly unbearable.  Why? Well, I found this tumor.  I’m 28-years-old, which means I am hardly old enough for a regular mammogram and MRI.  My last yearly physical was a TeleHealth appointment (hence no actual physical) and I will be honest, I never made a habit of regularly checking myself like I should have.  But this tumor just presented itself casually during a shower.  Breast cancer, when caught early, is highly treatable and curable, and I am fairly confident, knock on wood, that is where this particular nightmare is headed.  The fact that it was caught early: pure luck. 

Another reason I feel lucky is for the most part, I feel like I actually have the stability to handle the oncoming struggle.  I have a large and wonderful support system, an incredible and supportive partner, a savings account with actual savings in it, and a job where I am cared about as a human.  If this had happened to me three years ago, almost none of these things would be true.  There will never be a good time to have cancer, but some times are apparently better than others.  Of course, the ongoing pandemic means I can’t have people go with me to chemo, or my wig fitting, or my surgery consultations, and alone a lot of this seems much more daunting and difficult than it might otherwise have been, but I am trying to make a habit of counting my blessings, and despite this terrible thing I’ve been given, my blessings are many.

 There isn’t a “right way” to have cancer, but I think there might be a “right way” for me.  I am a private person and I find sharing some of these details difficult and more than a little uncomfortable, but I am also intimately familiar with the healing nature of writing and comedy, so I am going to give it a shot.  

 And now that I think of it… the peanut M&M is going to make a really great Halloween costume. 

[badsext]

Sunshine and Possibilities: Diego x Reader x Klaus

This one is for @chipster-21 💜 Sorry it took me so long. I hope you like it. Special thank you to @moorehollandplz for helping me with plot stuff!!! 🤗

Author’s Note: Since the show takes place in a world without cellphones and internet, I thought it would be interesting to stay true to that for this fic. Reader has an old-timey phone and answering machine.

Warnings: Just fluff, a tiny bit of blood, and maybe a naughty word or two. ————————————————————

Your job at the pharmacy is good for people watching. You have the quirky old regulars coming in to pick up their blood pressure meds and insulin, couples buying cheap candy to sneak into the movie theater down the street, rushed people buying last minute gifts and greeting cards, anxious people buying condoms or pregnancy tests, and some just seeking something over the counter for their cold, flu, allergies, etc.

You are changing the receipt tape, a task that always takes a bit longer than you need it to, when someone steps into your peripheral vision.

“I’ll be with you in a second.”

“Ok, no problem. Take your time.”

You look up, closing the lid on the printer. He is really cute, hispanic, nice body, handsome face and a scar on the side of his head that looks like it just missed his ear. He is dressed all in black and his arms are filled with first aid supplies: peroxide, gauze and antibiotic ointment.

“Wow, look at all this. Did someone get shot or something?”

He is quiet, staring at you. It was only a joke. Maybe you offended him. You should have learned by now not to make embarrassing comments. Ugh, why can’t I keep my mouth shut, you think to yourself. That’s when you notice a drop of blood on the counter, then another. They appeared to be coming out of the man’s sleeve.

“Holy shit! Are you okay?”

“Oh!” He looks down and notices the blood for himself. “You got some paper towels back there?”

You tear several off the roll and hand them to him.

He wipes the blood off the counter, then holds the wad of towels up to the part of his sleeve that is dripping. “It’s just a scratch.” He can tell by your expression that he failed to convince you. “Occupational hazard. I’m fine with blood. It’s just needles I can’t stand.”

“Are you a cop?”

“Not exactly.”

“A criminal? Is that why you’re bandaging yourself?”

“You’re full of nosy questions.” He says with a grin. “Not a cop, not a criminal…I’m Diego. What’s your name?”

You respond in a daze, lost in his eyes for a moment.

“Nice to meet you, Y/N. How about you give me your number before I bleed out here.”

“Yeah. Okay.” You write it out on the back of his receipt.

“I’ll call you!” He kisses the receipt then flies out the door.

You can’t keep the smile off your face, even through the monotony of the next few hours, customers shuffling in and out: the diabetics, the candy smugglers, the gifters, and the snifflers, all like clockwork. Your mind keeps wandering back to Diego.

That’s why it catches you off guard, the strange man making a scene with the pharmacist. From what you can gather, he is trying to pass off a bogus prescription for pain meds. The pharmacist is trained to look for this. When you are caught it is best to go quietly, but this guy is being very dramatic about it.

“Fine, I’ll just have to take my business elsewhere!,” he exclaims. Then he turns with a flourish, his long coat flaring out around him. You are watching all this from the other end of the pharmacy. Then he starts walking toward you. The more he comes into focus the more you realize how attractive he is.

He begins lining his pockets with candy and snacks, looking deviously in your direction. He teases you with each item he plans to steal, bringing a finger to his lips to keep you quiet. You struggle to hold back your laughter. He winks and heads out the door with his coat bulging and making crinkling noises. Your manager runs up to the register a few seconds too late. When he asks you if you saw anything you just shrug.

That was a very odd chain of events, you think as you drive home. Your roommate will, of course, be staying at her boyfriend’s place again so you have the apartment to yourself. You order lo mein from your favorite Chinese takeout and play your voicemail as soon as you get home just in case. There are no messages from Diego, but it’s just as well. He probably doesn’t want to sound too eager. You have a few drinks and fall asleep in front of the TV.

———–Meanwhile, at the Hargreeves Mansion———–

“You gotta just do it. Rip it off like a band-aid.” Klaus mimes the action for emphasis.

“You know I’m not good on the phone. Sh-sh-she’ll hear m-m-my stutter. I wish I’d asked her out right then and there.” Diego tilts his head back in frustration.

“Well, man you’re gonna just have to relax. Do you want some weed?”

“No, man. I don’t put that shit in my body.”

“Chamomile tea? Guided meditation? Aromatherapy?” Diego’s face remains skeptical with each suggestion. “Okay, what do you do to relax?”

Diego thinks for a moment. “I hit stuff.”

Klaus grabs a pillow from Diego’s bed and holds it flat against his stomach. “Punch me in the gut.”

“No, man.”

“Come on, tough guy. Show me what you got.” Diego rolls his eyes and hits him square in the middle of the pillow. Klaus staggers back. “Damn, Diego.”

“You ready to call now?”

“Yeah, actually. I think I am. Thanks, man.”

Klaus tosses the pillow and groans. He leaves the room clutching his stomach. “Yeah, don’t mention it.”

————-Back at your apartment—————

The phone wakes you out of a dream. “Hello?”

“Hey, Y/N. This is Diego. We met at the pharmacy yesterday.”

You block the receiver to clear the sleep out of your throat. “Oh, yeah. What’s up? How’s your arm?”

“The arm is…fine. How do you feel about a date…with me?”

You block the receiver again, this time to temper your excitement. “Sure. When were you thinking?”

“Wanna get some coffee on Saturday at 11:00? I know a doughnut place with decent coffee.”

“Griddy’s. Yeah, I know the place. I’ll meet you there.”

“So, it’s a date?”

“It’s a date.”

It fells good to have something official, something to justify your optimism. You go back to bed with sweet dreams. Tomorrow will be Thursday. Only two more days until your date with sexy and mysterious Diego.

For the next few days it’s hard to focus at work. It’s April and all the flowers and bunnies and bright, happy imagery only highlight your good mood. You are restocking all the shelves where that wacko shoplifted a third of the stores peanut butter cups and cheese curls. Suddenly, you feel a presence behind you. It’s him. The wacko. Gone is his long black coat. He wears a colorful sleeveless shirt. He is surprisingly fit with arms tattooed. In his hand he holds one of those chocolate roses from aisle four.

You look at him quizzically. “You’re back.”

“Yep. I forgot something…Y/N.” He says, reading your name tag.

“You forgot to steal that chocolate rose?”

“No. I’ve got cash.” He reaches into his pocket for two wadded up bills. You ring him up for the purchase. He is staring at you. His green eyes sparkle.

“You need a bag?”

“Nope.” You try to hand him the rose. A few seconds pass and he hasn’t moved.

“So what was it you forgot?”

“Sorry, you’re so cute, I lost my train of thought. I came back to see if you’d like to hang out. My name’s Klaus. He leans forward and kisses your hand. "And that’s for you.” He motions to the rose in your hand. You smile and blush at the gesture.

“Yeah, okay. I’d like to…hang out.”

“Saturday…early…Say 11:00?”

“Sure.”

“You like doughnuts?”

“Yeah.”

“Saturday - 11:00 - Griddy’s doughnuts!” Then in a flash, just as before, he is gone.

The bell on the door brings you back to reality. ‘Saturday 11:00 at Griddy’s’ - Why did that sound so familiar? “Oh, fuck!,” you realize aloud. Then you peel the red foil off the chocolate rose, snatching the whole thing off the plastic stem in one giant bite.

That night you can’t sleep. You think of calling one them to cancel, but it is impossible to choose and even if you could, you didn’t get either of their numbers, not even a last name to look them up. You’ll just have to face the music in the morning.

You dress for the best case scenario, wearing your favorite sundress, the blue one with tiny white flowers on it. You put your hair up so you can let it down at some point in the date…assuming there is going to be a date. It’s your secret weapon, guaranteed to kick things up a notch.

When you arrive, your eyes find Diego sitting alone at a table, flagging you down. He gets up to greet you. Klaus walks in the door a split second later. Oh, God! Oh, God! Oh, God!

“Y/N. It’s good to see you.” Diego comes near. You watch his expression change as he spots Klaus over your shoulder.

“What are you doing here?” The boys shout simultaneously.

“She’s my date.” Diego confirms.

“Wait, you guys know each other?”

“He’s my brother.” They grumble in unison. Suddenly aware of the scene you are making, you shush them and get them to sit down.

The waitress comes over to your table. “Hi, I’m Agnes, can I get your -”

“Wait, sorry, Agnes.” Diego turns to Klaus. “Is this the girl you were calling Wednesday night?” Klaus is incredulous.

“I’ll just give you folks a few minutes to decide.” Agnes says, walking away.

“Yes, we met at the pharmacy. I went to get first aid supplies for my arm. Tell him, Y/N.”

“That’s right.” You reply awkwardly.

“Wait a minute.” Klaus looks at you. WE met at the pharmacy on…I’m not great at remembering what day it is, but I think it was Wednesday.“

"Yep.” You cringe.

All eyes are on you now. Your cheeks are red with embarrassment.

“You met both of us on the same day.” Diego throws up his hands.

“When did Klaus ask you out?”

“Yes…ter…day - but that’s really not relevant here.” You hate the idea of them fighting. They both look so disappointed. And honestly, you don’t know who you like better, they are both so different. Then a risky thought suddenly pops into your head. Now is no time to be shy, you have two gorgeous boys vying for your company.

You get up, take a deep breath, and let your hair down. “It’s a beautiful day out there, boys! Let’s not waste it.” Klaus and Diego look at each other and after some consideration, stand up and follow you out the door. You hook arms with Klaus on one side and Diego on the other. The three of you walk off into the sunshine and a world of possibilities.

@moorehollandplz @bubblyani @helena-way07 @bi-satanist @dandycandy75 @renegadesheehan @bitch4bagels @zombiedixon89 @zoemassingale @renegadesheehan @yeetskeetbuddy @klaushollandyoung @diegoh4rgreeves @elliethesuperfruitlover @marvelnerd18 @punknatch @siriuslynore @deadlynyghtshayde @vinawyatt @klaus-hargreeves-energy

[izzy-b-hands]

You Send Me: Chapter Six

Tag List: @xmxisxforxmaybe

10 hour road trip with the boys time! New Haven to Detroit, if I have my locations correct (and god I hope I do, I spent a lot of time trying to make sure I had the most accurate tour listing from ‘78 lol.) No time to yourselves, but you and Freddie can make it work regardless, right? We get NSFW again in this bit, just a warning!

Also, Scrabble! (The reason you’re all really reading this, I’m sure lol.) 

My love to all who read/like/reblog!

At least until you got on the van. Then, it was ‘hurry up and wait.’ 

“Makes sense,” John muttered as you all loaded up into the van, after a quick shower and retrieving your things from the hotel. “We had some extra time for once, so now the rest of the tour we’ll constantly be nearly late.”

“We’ll catch up,” Roger said patiently, staring down the Scrabble board. “Don’t worry.”

“I’m not worrying, I”m just saying,” John protested. “No sense in pretending it isn’t true.” 

“Which is not what I’m doing,” Roger said, glaring down his letters as if that would magically make them change. “What I am doing is beating our dear Mr. Mercury here at Scrabble.”

“You have to actually play another word for the game to progress, and for you to do that, Rog,” Freddie smirked. “In case you’ve forgotten how to play.” 

“Oh I know, and I’m playing,” Roger said, then proceeded to not put down a word, but frown again at the board. 

“You want help?” Brian offered, and Roger and Freddie both hissed. “Jesus, sorry. Be careful, Y/N. They’re like angry cats when they get into it.” 

“And you aren’t?” Freddie asked. 

“No, I am too, but I’m not playing right now, so I’m not the concern,” Brian replied. “And there’s literally a spot, right there, Roger, come on!” 

“I don’t see it yet, just give me a minute!” 

“This is unbearable,” Brian muttered. 

“Oh shut it,” Roger spat. “Or I’ll make you play against me next, and I’ll beat you too.” 

“Anything but that,” Brian said sarcastically, rolling his eyes. “I could beat you in my sleep.” 

“Is that so?” 

“Lord help us,” John muttered and shot you a look as if to say ‘I’m so sorry for all this.’ 

But you were oddly loving it. It was something most people didn’t get to see, the brotherly spats and all that. And that was exactly what this struck you as, a bunch of brothers stuck on a road trip, already getting on each other’s nerves while barely a mile from home. 

“I could play whoever wins,” you murmured. “Granted, I’ve only ever managed to beat my family members at Scrabble which isn’t saying much, but if you want a wild card...” 

All four of them looked up at you and smiled. 

“I like it,” Roger said. “Though I’ll apologize in advance for winning over both Freddie and you.” 

“Might be a little premature, don’t you think?” you asked, and they cackled. 

“He’s called your bluff!” Freddie crowed. “Come on, put something down, we’ve only got nine hours in this tin can.” 

“It isn’t that bad,” John fussed, and you couldn’t blame him. As Queen’s main financial officer, he had helped the crew pick out the van for this tour, and was understandably miffed whenever anyone made a comment about it. 

“No, it isn’t,” Freddie admitted. “Just a long drive, and that would be hell in anything. No harm meant, John.” 

John nodded, and stood to peek at Roger’s letters. “Oh, there’s no way he can win. You’ve got this.” 

“Would you stop making it harder for me to concentrate?” Roger gasped. “Jesus, all a man is trying to do is play Scrabble, and the ruddy peanut gallery can’t keep it down...” 

“Give it your all, Rog,” Crystal called from where he was laying down on some of the seats. 

“Thank you! Finally, someone believes in me,” Roger said. “That said...I don’t think I can find anything, these letters are absolute shit.” 

Everyone hit the roof at that, laughter echoing throughout the van. 

“All that talk,” Freddie shook his head. “You’ll get me next time.” 

“Yes, yes, I will,” Roger agreed. “Besides, this is more fun for me now. We get to watch you play your new boyfriend.” 

“That is a hell of a test on a relationship,” Brian said. “You sure about this, Y/N?” 

You nodded, and traded seats with Roger as Freddie cleared the board and let John take over handing out the letter tiles. “I don’t think I’ll win anyway, and this one had better not let me.” 

“I would never,” Freddie teased. “Only honorable victories and losses in this van.” 

“Good,” you smiled, and tossed down the first word you saw in your letters. 

“For fuck’s sake,” Brian laughed. “Is that the theme of this match?” 

“Not the strongest first word,” John remarked as he took down your score from the C, O, C, and K you had laid down. “But not terrible either. I’d be interested to see if you could keep this match on theme too.” 

Freddie smirked, then grinned at the shared laughter over his word. 

“Freddie, honestly,” Roger shook his head. “Cunt is almost too short a word, you two will never finish this game in ten hours if you keep up like that.” 

“Let them play,” John hushed him. 

You set down TITS and watched as they broke into laughter again. 

“What?” you asked. “Smaller than the ones I used to have, that isn’t anything ridiculous.” 

Freddie shook his head. “You’re really going to keep it on theme, aren’t you?” 

“If you will, then I will,” you replied with a smile. 

It was an odd turn on, Scrabble, and you fully realized it maybe wasn’t the game itself so much as just flexing intellectually with Freddie that was doing it, but it made it hard to sit still, to focus on the game. 

You figured Freddie was in a similar boat as he kept trying to tangle one of his legs with yours under the table, and you had a feeling you would have been in his lap had the table not been in the way, the Scrabble board tossed aside. 

“Get out, stretch your legs,” Brian said as you finally stopped at what appeared to be a completely abandoned truck stop, your game with Freddie only half over. “We’ll get back on the road in half an hour. Long enough to try and get food out of these vending machines, use the bathroom, and feel less like sardines in a can.” 

“Hey!” John cried, and you listened to him and Brian mutter on about the van as Freddie took your hand and led you into the truck stop. 

It was nicer than you’d expected from a truck stop, with individual, walled off showering sections with locking doors. You had just a moment to admire them as Freddie pulled you into one, locked the door behind you, and damn near tackled you with a kiss. 

“God that was unbearable,” Freddie muttered in between kisses. “I was praying we’d finally stop.” 

You wanted to tell him ‘me too’ but instead nipped at his neck gently, making him gasp and whine. 

“What if they come in here?” you managed after a moment, as Freddie’s hand undid the button and zipper on your jeans and slipped into your underwear. 

“Then we tell them to either enjoy the show or get out,” Freddie replied with a smirk, before doing his magic again with his fingers. One inside of you, while his thumb gently worked at your clit, grown bigger from the testosterone. Maybe it was just that it was him, or that his fingers were wonderfully long and talented in general, but the combination left you struggling to stand upright against the wall of the shower. 

Being quiet while he worked was also nearly impossible, and you pressed your mouth against his shoulder so you could moan and be relatively unheard, at least in theory. He seemed to like that even more, rutting his hard cock, still trapped in his trousers, against your hip, moving in time with how he moved his hand against you and inside. 

You could feel all that lithe muscle you’d admired before working to hold you up as you came and your knees buckled underneath you. You tried to keep yourself upright, only to finally let yourself fall, grateful he’d already slipped his hand back out of your underwear. 

“No, what are you doing, get up,” he whispered, hands reaching to help you up. 

You shook your head, and popped open your mouth instead, tongue stuck out, and waited to see if he’d get the message. 

“That is absolutely obscene,” he breathed softly. “Are you sure, I mean, you don’t have to-” 

You nodded, and reached for the zipper of his trousers. “I want to. I mean, I’ve never actually done this before, so forgive me any mistakes, and give me feedback; I at least know you don’t use teeth-” 

He interrupted you with a barely cut off laugh as he covered his mouth. “Christ. Not that you haven’t done it before, that’s not why I’m laughing. The teeth bit, that was it, but at the same time, I’m glad you know that.” 

You giggled despite your nerves, and started to reach for his underwear, only for him to stop your hand. 

“We should be doing this somewhere nicer. For your first time, I mean,” he said. “With more time. I don’t want you to have to rush and hate doing this as a result or something, I mean your first time sets the standard.” 

He pulled you to your feet, then pulled you close to him by your hips, and kissed you softly. 

“Well, we’re not leaving here if you don’t get to come too,” you murmured in between his kisses. “What a concert hold up announcement that would be.” 

He only smiled, and didn’t stop you as your hand moved to his cock, stroking him gently through his underwear. 

“Is that okay?” you asked. “For here, at least. For now.” 

He nodded, letting his head drop onto your shoulder, his hips rutting up to meet your hand as you palmed his cock, your thumb moving over the head slowly. 

You could hear Brian shouting something outside, and realized you were running out of time, if you weren’t out completely already. 

“If this is too much, or bad or whatever, just say, and I’ll stop,” you whispered into Freddie’s ear, stroking more vigorously, letting your own hips move against his. His last reaction to your teeth at his neck had been good, and this one was even better, as you nipped just hard enough to make him hiss in your ear at the sensation. 

Before you could nip again, you felt his cock pulse, and it was your turn to hold him up as he came, groaning into your neck as he did. 

“For fuck’s sake, wherever you two are, hurry up! We can’t leave you behind, but we can threaten to!” Brian’s voice echoed into the showers. 

Freddie raised his head, only for the two of you to break into giggles. 

“We’re in trouble,” he laughed. 

“I think we are,” you agreed. “We pissed off Dad. Two kids, out running around, making out in public-” 

“Little bit more than that,” Freddie interrupted with a smile and a kiss. 

“True,” you said. “Are you okay to go back out there? I mean, we didn’t really think this through in terms of your trousers.” 

“It’s dark,” he said. “It’ll be fine. And even if they do see...they probably guessed where we were, what we were up to. So let them see, because they won’t give a fuck, so why should we?” 

If anyone did give a fuck, they didn’t say it as you and Freddie joined them back in the van, settling onto one of the back seats, lounging against each other, content and tired. 

The Scrabble game had been forgotten, but you didn’t mind. There were plenty of cities yet, and more than enough time to start another. In the meantime, you were happy to lay in Freddie’s lap, watching with him as Brian and Roger swore at each other over a match. 

There were still at least six hours, and you hoped there might be another truck stop along the way. 

[coffeecomicsgalore]

25 Days of Adrien (+6 of Marinette)

Tom and Adrien bake cookies together.

Part of the MLHolidays2k19 prompts.

Ao3

Chapter 12 – Cookies

Adrien’s fencing class had ended but he was not in the mood to go home. He was finally able to meet with his father and announce that he would be moving out before the summer ended. Adrien knew it wouldn’t go that great, but he didn’t realize it would prompt a very disgruntled Gabriel speaking in a more colorful language than Adrien was used to. Marinette’s parents, on the other hand, were much more ecstatic over the news. It only made his decision in leaving so much easier.  

Adrien took his time getting himself ready to leave. Marinette had class representative duties that would keep her for a few hours longer, but she had told Adrien to head over to the bakery and wait for her there.  

Tom and Sabine were both smiling to see Adrien walking through the door.  

“Adrien, son!” Tom beamed. “Marinette told us you would be coming by. We are in the process of making a variety of cookies. Would you like to help us? You get to eat all the ones that don’t make the cut.”

Adrien smiled excitedly. Getting to help bake was one of his favorite things to do. It was a stress reliever for him and he loved to spend time with her parents. It would also make the time move faster before Marinette came home. Plus, getting to eat all the cookies he wanted? Sign him up.

He grabbed an apron, ready to do whatever Tom instructed him to do.

“We will be making 12 varieties of cookies.”

Adrien went wide eyed. “Wow, twelve?”  He was still not used to the busyness of the bakery during the Christmas season.

“Ha!” Tom slapped his large hand against Adrien’s back. “This is a small order compared to normal. You just walked in on a slow day!”

Adrien let out a nervous chuckle. He never knew how Tom and Sabine could work the bakery with just the two of them alone. They are one of the best bakeries in Paris, and the love Tom puts into his baking really shows through.

“Adrien, go on and grab that large bag of flour.” Tom pointed in the direction of the bags. “Bring it over to the large mixer over there and measure out 10 cups of flour. Remember to level out the scoops before placing it in the bowl. Baking is precise measurements. If you put too much, the cookies will come out doughy. Put too little, and the cookies will be thin.”

“I’ll take care of it, M. Dupain.” Adrien grabbed the heavy bag with ease. His strength from being a superhero really helped in situations like this. He was able to pick up heavier items without much of a struggle. He plopped the bag onto the table, forgetting that doing so would create a dust cloud of powder in the air, most of which covered his face.

He pursed his lips at the unfortunate event, letting out small coughs from the dust. Tom only looked over and chuckled at the boy.  

Before long, Adrien had dusted himself off and measured out the 10 cups of flour. As he finished the first set, Tom had asked Adrien to measure out another few cups for the macaroons.

“M. Dupain? What kinds of cookies are we making?”

“The first batch you measured for will be chocolate chip, white chocolate chip, white chocolate macadamia nut, and peanut butter chip. For the batch you are working on right now will be for the strawberry macaroons with vanilla buttercream filling, chocolate macaroons with chocolate mousse filling, and pistachio macaroons with vanilla bean filling. Once those are all measured out, we will then start on the sugar cookies, cinnamon sugar cookies, gingersnaps, and gingerbread cookies. The last will be triple chocolate brownie cookies.”

Adrien could feel his mouth watering. So many delicious flavors that he couldn’t wait to try when he had the chance. His father would have an aneurysm if he knew how indulgent Adrien became when the sweets passed his hands. Gabriel or Nathalie could never truly know how many sweets he really ate when he was here. If it wasn’t for running around chasing akumas all the time, he would be spending all his days at the gym.

Tom really enjoyed Adrien’s company. It was nice to have another man in the kitchen laughing and making puns alongside him. Adrien enjoyed it too. His puns made Tom laugh harder than Ladybug ever had (and she had admitted to loving them a few years ago as long as he didn’t do it during battles). Marinette was used to it by this point, but Tom's boisterous laughs always made the joke ten times better.

When all the cookies had completed the mixing stage, Tom taught Adrien how to scoop and form the cookies. It isn’t just tossing the cookies onto the sheet pan and hoping for the best. There was a trick to getting it just right and placing it in the oven in the correct direction. Even the timing was exact. Cooking was a science, and science was Adrien’s favorite subject.

Maybe that’s why Adrien enjoyed baking so much. Everything working together in harmony, chemical components with baking powder and liquids allowing certain cookies to rise (or fall if the measurements weren’t precise), and even the way the baking had to be done had to be exact. Tom had to hypothesis, trial, and test every product he placed on his menu. He was a glorified baking scientist.

In between the baking, Tom had Adrien sample new flavors he was working on for the new year. “How do you make time to create these ideas when you’re so busy?” Adrien asked while licking the spoon.  

Tom kneaded the dough while thinking of his response. “Baking is fun. But sometime my creativity gets the best of me. I may be busy with many orders at a time, but experimenting is what makes my days so much better.” He flips the dough over. “Experimenting takes days at a time. One day, I could be baking a pie and the idea will hit me. I will write down the idea and go back to work. The next time I work with one of the specific flavors in the idea, I will put some aside and play around with the flavors in between baking and cleaning.”

Adrien watched Tom with curiosity. “No wonder Marinette has such passion in her designs. Every time an idea pops into her head, she has to go write it down. She spends so many hours working on her designs. And yet she always has time to stop and create new designs. She is definitely your daughter.” Adrien lets out a chuckle. “But I still don’t know how you do it. Both you and Mdm. Cheng are always so busy.”

“Most days are not as busy as others. We have our days and times that we work harder than others. We know what kinds and how many pastries we need to keep on hand at all times. Like the croissants. They are our best sellers so we make sure they are all out in the display cases at all times. There are certain pastries we only make during the holidays. Time is valuable, Adrien. You just need to know how to use your time wisely and make the most of it.”  

Adrien nodded his head in agreement. Tom was extremely passionate in his work. You could see it in the way he talked.  

-----xoxox-----

Marinette walked into the bakery in a flustered mess. The meeting went longer than it needed to, and a lot of items on her list had to be compromised in one way or another. She was just glad it was over.  

She could hear laughing coming from the kitchen and sauntered through the door.  A smile pressed upon her lips when she saw Adrien rolling out dough for the next batch of croissants. He was covered in flour from head-to-toe but his bright smile really shown through. Tom and Adrien were competing against each other on who had the best puns.

She leaned against the doorway, the men still unaware of her presence.  

“All you knead is love!” Adrien announced and he molded the dough, getting a laugh from Tom.

Tom grabbed a tray of hot cookies from the oven. “I won’t drop it like it’s hot!” Adrien laughed a little harder.

“And muffin compares to you.” Marinette punched in, causing a roar of laughter from the gentlemen. She grabs an apron, ready to knead some dough to release the stress from her body. “Having a pun-tastic time?”

“Now that you added your puns to the mix?” He wiggles his eyebrows at the pun. “We couldn’t have asked for a better weirdough.”

She giggled. “I love you two dorks.”

Tom and Adrien looked at each other before turning to her. They both grinned widely before saying in unison, “your dorks!”

[1-800-444-tune]

I have cancer ...PLEASE DONATE !!😫😪😔😞

HOME

This is my main blog, I mostly do Tarot and other divination services on here, and most often it is for FREE. Which, this is NOT fair to me, but none of ya 'll know about my struggle.. bug it is real hear me out, yo.

ABOUT ME

I am nearly 30 years old now and I was actually first off diagnosed with Ovarian cysts at the age as young as 14 yrs old, yes, I was 16 by the time it went untreated and had spread all through my ovaries and to all the fallopian tubes and my uterus... then untreated still another couple years (because of poor health care in my smaller rural communities including my hometown) then at 19 my whole entire uterine lining was xomething of a mess, the doctors said basically all there woukd have been to prevent it from dpreading the cancer elsewhere would have been a full out take of my sexual organs , i believe the term is a hysterectomy....but on my paperwork i see here that it says that I was to undergo something else... + + The removal of an ovary together with the Fallopian tube is called salpingo-oophorectomy or unilateral salpingo-oophorectomy (USO). When both ovaries and both Fallopian tubes are removed.

But that did not happdn due to complications. So now, its spread to my other organs as youd guess, spleen, liver, kidneys, etc...it is a shitttSHOW I knowe.

This is why I would appreciate it if some one, any one would stand up for me ..just have a say in whether I eat today or not, or whether I stay in this residence without having to move this winter, I mean, Winter, its settling in.,,

I do not always feel totally blessed to be me; But ai I cannot complain when the bills is caught up and I gots good food at home(and the fight food, I am on a special expensive diet)

Cancer is expensive…AF!  If you have cancer, this is no news to you. But until cancer happened to me, I had no idea how expensive it truly was.  I think it’s safe to say that that seeing how much it will cost to undergo treatment is almost as frightening as getting the actual cancer diagnosis.  My diagnosis has definitely opened my eyes to the shocking reality of the financial burden that cancer causes for an individual and their family.  The astronomical expenses that accrue from treatments, tests, surgeries, scans, integrative therapies, etc are outrageous! While there are both public and private health insurance that defray medical and drug costs, huge out-of-pocket costs can be devastating to patients and force major changes in their lives. I’ve had to make several changes and my life has been affected indefinitely due to the financial burden that cancer has caused. The financial stress it causes for people during treatment until remission alone is hard, but imagine living with cancer where the treatments, doctor visits, tests and lifestyle adjustments are ever enduring, like when you have metastatic cancer.  It’s life altering… to say the least.

HOW MUCH DOES CANCER TREATMENT ACTUALLY COST?

This is an impossible question to answer. The cost of treatment obviously varies from individual to individual based on their diagnosis, the type of treatment they will require and the longevity of the treatment.  However, the “typical” cost of breast cancer looks a little something like this according to recent studies.

“For patients covered by health insurance, out-of-pocket costs for breast cancer treatment typically consist of doctor visit, lab and prescription drug copays as well as coinsurance of 10%-50% for surgery and other procedures, which can easily reach the yearly out-of-pocket maximum. Breast cancer treatment typically is covered by health insurance, although some plans might not cover individual drugs or treatments. For patients not covered by health insurance, breast cancer treatment typically costs $15,000-$50,000 or more for a mastectomy or $17,000 to $35,000 or more for a lumpectomy followed by radiation.”

New cancer drugs are being approved at a fast pace.  Numerous are approved each year and new drugs are constantly in trial and in the pipeline to be FDA approved. In the past, these drugs might cost around $10,000 for a year’s treatment. But newer studies have found that newly-approved cancer drugs carry price tags between $120,000 and $170,000!  One of the drugs I take as part of my daily cocktail, is a newly FDA approved drug called Ibrance… for heavily pretreated ER+ metastatic patients.  It has worked wonders for me but a month supply of this drug is over $12,000.  I am blessed to have good coverage, but not all people are as fortunate.

“Depending on the individual case and the type and number of treatments needed, the total cost of breast cancer treatment, on average, can reach $100,000 — or, in advanced cases, $300,000 or more. This includes the cost of the chemotherapy drugs, additional drugs to help manage side effects, administration of the drugs and medical care for chemotherapy-related complications.”

And again, if you are anything like myself and are living with a metastatic diagnosis, treatments and care is endless with no foreseeable light at the end of the tunnel.

😔😫😫🎗🎗🎗🎗🎗🎗🎗🎗🎗🎗🎗🎗🎗🎗🎗🎗🎗🎗🎗😔😔😫

WHY IS IT SO EXPENSIVE???

The never ending list of cancer expenses looks a little something like this:

 🎗Frequent doctor visits with surgeon, radiologist, oncologist.  I personally see my oncologist once every 3 weeks and check in with my surgeon every couple of months.

🎗Lab Tests.  This includes blood tests, urine tests and more. I get my labs done every few weeks when I see my oncologist to check my levels and tumor markers.

🎗Clinic visits for treatments. When I was on IV treatment I would be in the treatment center every few weeks.  Currently I take an oral chemo and only have to be in the treatment clinic once every few months for my Lupron injection. But many people are in the treatment clinic, daily or weekly to get their infusions and injections.

🎗Procedures for diagnosis or treatment. Such procedures can include biopsies, room charges, equipment..  I’ve had a few biopsies and had to get lung taps done frequently when I had lung mets.

🎗Imaging Tests. These tests include X-rays, CT scans, MRIs and PET scans which may mean separate bills for radiologist fees, equipment and any medicines used for the test.  These tests are extremely costly too…yikes!  I get PET/CT scans every 3 months, consistently for the past 6 years now.

🎗Radiation Treatment  (implants, external radiation, or both) I have never had radiology but as we know, it’s a very common treatment for most cancers.

Drug🎗 Costs. (inpatient, outpatient, prescription, non-prescription and procedure-related) The cost of chemotherapy drugs is crazy!

🎗In-Home Nurse Care (if you need it, and I do actually, yes) and its freaking insane how much these so called "nurses aids -assistants" want an hour!!

Hospital 🎗Stays. This can encompass many types of costs such as drugs, tests and procedures as well as nursing care, doctor visits and consults with specialists. I have been admitted twice, each time for a week stay for cancer related issues.

🎗Surgery. Costs can accrue from surgeon, anesthesiologist, pathologist, operating room fees, equipment, medicines…  I have had 3 lumpectomies and 2 other surgical procedures related to my cancer diagnosis.

🎗Fertility.  If you are blindsided and diagnosed in your 20’s or 30’s with a cancer diagnosis and want to have a family, freezing your eggs is an option, but a costly one.  You will be required to pay for tests, and medications leading up to the surgical procedure to remove your eggs.  I paid about $10K out of pocket to cover the cost of freezing my eggs.

While these are examples of the clinical costs associated with cancer, there are other adjustments you may want to make that will also prove to be costly.  I personally changed my diet and started to eat all organic foods and sought integrative therapies to add to my clinical regime.  You can read more about the therapies I have incorporated here.  All of these expenses add up and certainly are a financial strain.

🎗🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟And of course we need to pay... Rent, heat/hydro, car/transportation/ambulance bills , always bills bills bills billsssss.....and wifi/internet/television/mobile phone znd/or tablet or computer and gaming systems... camera.....im z girl so clothes..makeup,(I'm thrifty ricky tho) and always last, maybe maybe get sweets healthwise branded cookies or some type of peanuts(unsalted).

I never get go, go nowhere, do anything, get a coffee from a coffee shop, i can't afford to do just about anything a normal individual such as yourself yourself would do, i just cannot do it its not in my budget ... I currently own ONE lipgloss, and one broken eye liner , that is my makeup beauty kit, who the heck wants to even go out or take pictures thenn? Ugh....

Www.paypal.me/believeitxxnot is the link to the Cancer Fundraiser🎗the email for it is believeitornot.ripley.tv@gmail.com

Anyways, do not feel bad for me. I am here to service YOU for ever I know this . TY so much ily guys , please please if you will not donate to my awfully painfully really urgent cause then PLEASE SHARE POST ..... BOOOST POOOOST !! PLZ !! XOXO

I need the supporters !! Yo yo ! DOOOONAAAATEEEEE!!

A n y t h i n g h e l p s m e r i g h t n o w , p l e a s e ! ?

[wykart]

Fix Her

Chapter 2 of a fic about Five and Vanya and all the tragedy surrounding them (chapter 1)

Chapter Summary: The night of Five’s disappearance has Vanya on edge – she can’t sleep – so she decides to make him a snack for when he returns.

 read here on ao3 or continue chapter 2 under the cut

There was nothing else for it, she had to do something. She wondered if Five was lost somewhere, if he was trying to find his way back. The house got dark at night, what if he couldn’t find his way? He hadn’t touched his dinner that evening, hadn’t eaten since noon that day. It was past midnight. He would be starving. She thought about trying to find him at the old donut place that they often frequented together – but she doubted she could escape from the academy without his help. She couldn’t teleport, after all, in fact, she couldn’t do anything. Gingerly, she rose from her bed and placed her bare feet on the old floorboards – they creaked and groaned in the night with a clarity unachievable among the chaos and voices of her siblings during the day. They would all be sound asleep, training began at five-o’clock, running laps around the courtyard. Not her. Father would let her sleep in as long as she wanted, only because he didn’t care if she was awake or asleep anyhow. As long as she was out of the way, her sleep schedule didn’t matter.

She pushed the door open – just a crack at first. Finding no obstructions, she continued out into the hall. She crept past her sibling’s bedroom doors, one by one. All of their rooms were larger than her’s, all of them equipped with all manner of objects and trinkets and decorative items. Luther’s weights, Diego’s dart boards, Allison’s posters, Klaus’ prints, Five’s textbooks, Ben’s novels – all of them had something that made them happy in the few precious hours that their father allowed them to whittle away in solitude. Vanya had nothing but bare walls and a sparse vanity – even the bedsheets were dull. Sometimes she felt like that room – hollowed out and boring beyond belief. All she had was her violin, and even that had been her Father’s, locked in a case and kept out of sight.

All of them were sleeping soundly – even Klaus, who had been sleeping more and more soundly of late. When they were younger, she’d had to pull her pillow over her ears to muffle the sounds that strayed through their shared wall. His whimpers and whispers, sometimes his screams. It was times like that when Vanya was almost glad she didn’t have a power. Almost.

She pattered out of the corridor and into the main hall. At night, the place was an expansive cathedral. With the chandelier extinguished, the ceiling lay beyond a cloud of dark mist that marked the edge of what the eye could see. The moonlight through the long stained-glass windows cast the space in a chirascuric dichotomy of harsh light and shadow. The light glazed the oiled canvas of the family portrait. In the dark, one couldn’t even notice that Vanya was missing. During the day, this room was the centre of the house, almost cozy – as cozy as life at the academy could get. The reds and golds and warm chirping voices – and their father’s, sharp as a knife that cut it them all, leaving behind an inexplicable cold. He inspired a certain fearful admiration in his children. One and all would do anything to please him, even Vanya. Even though it was scary, this place at night, it felt more like Vanya’s home in the silence and abandon.

She headed to the kitchen across the way, careful to be quiet in her approach as she spied her mother sitting up on the first landing, eyes glowing blue. She pulled a loaf of bread from the tin and started making Five’s favourite snack – a peanut butter and marshmallow sandwich. Soon after he’d introduced the combination to her, it had become her favourite snack as well, but Vanya wasn’t hungry. She felt sick just thinking of Five out there all alone, even though she knew he could handle himself. Maybe that was what worried her most of all, that he could take care of himself just fine, and he’d simply decided to make his escape without her. She didn’t think he would leave her… or hoped that he wouldn’t. Even now, she was beginning to have doubts. Perhaps he’d finally seen in her what all the other’s seemed to see, a boring girl that only brought boredom along with her. It had taken him a while, if that was the case.

She was worrying herself again. Hurriedly, she stuffed a hand into her pyjama pocket and pulled out a zip-lock bag where she kept her emergency capsules. Five was the only one who seemed to be able to calm her down when she was like this. She didn’t know what she would do without them. She feared the day that she’d be stuck without any medication and she’d feel that strange pull of vertigo twisting in her gut, the drowning, pressing feeling that threatened to drag her under. It made her fingers twitch and her eyes sting, like she was wide awake and burning away all at the same time.

She was holding the capsule in her quivering hand, pressing it to her lips, when the kitchen light flicked on. She nearly jumped out of her skin, and sent the tablet clattering down onto the kitchen tiles.

“Number Seven!” She gasped, a cold shiver running through her. Her breath caught in her throat, jittering. Of course he found her, she was so clumsy, so stupid. “What do you think you’re doing up at this hour?”

Her lip trembled, and she couldn’t stop her voice from stammering along, near a whisper. “I – I”m sorry father, I just –“

“Speak up, girl, stop your mumbling,” so curt, so cold. Ever since she’d known him, always towering above them all, a crisp suit, a stare off into the distance, never in the eyes, barking orders like a sergeant to his troops.

She struggled out a response. “I was making something, for Five, sir – I thought that, when he came back, he might be hungry. He missed supper.” She couldn’t bring herself to meet his eyes, but she could feel the way his were looking at her. Bearing down, piercing, mouth drawn tight into a scowl. He didn’t answer, so she ventured forth. “It’s just, I know you said that time travel was dangerous, so what if he’s lost and trying to get back home?” Staring, staring, so she kept her eyes on those chequered tiles, letting her hair fall lank over her eyes. “What if we put the lights on, just for tonight, so he can find his way home. It gets cold out there at night.” Before she knew it she was pleading, an act her father had little respect or regard for. He was hard on them, he had to be, but this wasn’t one of his tests. If Five was really in danger, he would help, he had to.

He only sighed. “Your pity is misplaced, Number Seven,” as if even deigning to speak to her, to indulge her childish whims, was a cruel waste of his time. “Number Five knew the risks, and yet he disobeyed me. He will face the consequences, wherever he is in time. If the boy is as useless as I fear, then I doubt he will ever find his way back to us.” How could he say that? It had only been a few hours, he was just lost. He would come back. “He was an impulsive creature, Number Seven, self-important,” he spat, “arrogant, a mere shadow of what he could have become, if he had just listened.” He would come back. "A disobedient thing like that is of no asset to the academy, I do not mourn him, and so should you cast away any weak, grovelling affections you held for your brother.” Shut up, shut up, shut up. “I trust that you and your siblings will learn from his mistake.”

“Shut up.” She muttered, before she could stop herself. Tears stung her eyes, her mouth stretched into that same scowl that so often adorned her father’s face. The one that held no mercy, that was bitter and old and powerful enough to send his children into a frenzied attention.

It was a long and terrifying moment before he spoke. “I beg you pardon, Number Seven,” though he knew exactly what she’d said. He was daring her to say it again.

“That’s not my name!” She cried, staring up at him. “How could you say those things about Five! He’s the best of all of them, he used to admire you too, but you just wanted to use him like you’re using all of them!” She couldn’t stop, everything she’d even felt was coming up like bile in her throat, burning acidic. She lowered her voice, thinking about him, her only friend. “He was the only one smart enough to see it,” Sir Reginald didn’t even react, that same stern face, expressionless. It was infuriating. “He’s the only one that’s even been nice to me, treated me like I belong here even when I know I don’t, I’m not an idiot!” She was running out of breath. “You can’t just give up on him, he’s out there, I know it, he’s coming back.”

Another pause. He cleared his throat, still staring on past her, just another disappointment in a long line, just another stupid child he’d failed to reel in. “Are you quite finished, Number Seven. You’d do best to let go of these petty attachments, if you have any aspirations to become strong.” He brought his hands up into a crisp clap – twice together – a sound that tore through the still night air and raged through her ears. “Now, to bed. I’ll not hear another word of it, Number Seven.”

She’d couldn’t stand it anymore. “That’s not my name!” she screamed. She had one for a reason, she was a person, she was more than what her father thought of her – Five had shown her that. That was the very reason that he clung to his number with such pride, not – as their father suspected – out of some fierce loyalty to him and his best efforts to desensitise them all from what made them human beings – but out of spite. If his father was to number them, to take away everything they were, then the best he could do was cling to that label, make it his own, and form himself around the very thing that was meant to seperate him from everything. Vanya wasn’t so brave, so vainglorious, she had precious little to remind her of who she was – and her name was one of them.

Her father furrowed his brows deeper still, a level of disapproval and disgust that was difficult to bring forth. “Number Seven!” he barked, leaning forwards a little, and bringing his hands together in yet another resounding clap. The sound made her jump. “Go, now!”

She couldn’t move. The brisk sound cut through all the turmoil that had been racing through her mind. Her worries for Five, her anger at her father, her resentment towards her siblings, all of it fell away and was replaced by the humming of the night. The rustling of trees outside, the muffled sounds of car horns blaring as is they were sounding in this very room, the chandelier swaying in the light breeze, crystals clinking and clattering over the sound of her pounding heart. The light flickered, and she felt a draft shoot through the kitchen, parting her hair from her eyes.

Her father must have seen something in them because he froze on the spot – and was that fear on her father’s face? He swallowed, steadying his breathing. Clasping his eyes shut, as if the very word brought a bitter taste to his mouth. “Vanya.” He’d never called any of them by their names before. Perhaps he was so fed up with her that he’d say anything to get her out of the way. Typical. She felt wide awake, brimming with burning energy. He crouched down and picked up the capsule from the floor by her feet, dusting it off lightly. “You don’t seem to be feeling well, have you taken your medicine?”

She cast her mind back, and of course, she hadn’t. With all the commotion at dinner she’d forgotten to take it with her meal, she’d been so worried about Five. Earlier that day, at breakfast, she’d been up in the attic with him, hiding away. Not wanting to be found out, she’d skipped her morning dose as well. She’d been so worried, so angry, so scared, no wonder she was getting herself so worked up. No wonder the world sounded as if it were about to drown her out. She took a deep, rattling breath, and took the capsule from her father’s hand. He backed away, watching her closely.

It was a while before either of them spoke. “Sir, is it okay if I finish making a sandwich for Five, just in case?” Her voice was meek, unsure. She was so sure that he would yell, but instead, he simply turned and walked away, the sound of his dress shoes echoing through the empty house. She took the opportunity to finish, even though she knew he’d think she was weak for doing it. She didn’t much care what he thought anymore. She placed the marshmallows – cut in halves, evenly spaced in a circle, just the way he liked it – onto a generous swath of peanut butter, and finally completed the sandwich. She placed it just beyond the threshold in the marble entrance hall, the great oaken doors, emblazoned with the umbrella insignia, firmly shut against the night. She stopped for a moment and listened, hoping to hear him walk up the front steps. He would thank her for the sandwich, she might even start crying, and he wouldn’t think she was weak or stupid for it, he’d just reassure her of the one fact it had taken her so long to believe was true – that he cared about her. She decided to sit by the door and wait. That way, she would be the first to greet him when he came home.

[throughaddieseyes]

Hi, it’s me again Addie M Abel. So I guess I have decided to give this another try. I think yesterday got away from me, or at least my mind did. As usually I used a lot of words to say very little. I find my brain can often get in the way of what I’m actually trying to say, so more often then not I find myself faced with the same old dilemma how do I say what I mean and mean what I say. I was blatantly honest when I said this would be painful to read. Which I suppose goes without saying but I will anyway, I told you so. Yet once again here I am and I’m not starting out very well were only about a paragraph in and I’ve still said absolutely nothing. 

Perhaps there really is something to the avoidance issues that people keep telling me I have. I like to think if I just stick my head in the sand it will just all work itself out. I have tested this theory repeatedly and I can tell you beyond a shadow of a doubt it absolutely, positively, fantastically does not work. Isn’t that how the old say goes doing the same thing over and over again and expecting the same result is the very definition of inanity, but lets face it we all have are own crazy I think you need a little bit of that to get through this shit show we like to call life. 

.Now that I have said my version of hello in probably the most long winded version possible I feel it prudent that I move on. Today was a long day but the sad truth is everyday is a long day. I am a slave to the clock every moment of my life planed and scheduled. I suppose it could be worse I could actually have free time, i could actually have to wake up in the morning and say I have no idea what I’m going to do today. Lucky for me that will never be a problem cause who would want that freedom, I mean do people actually like that, I guess I’ll never know. For now I will have live vicariously through all those individuals who have more room for flexibility in their lives (I’m not bitter I promise).

I work 40 hours a week in a meaningless job for minimum wage, Don’t get me wrong it pays the bills and leaves me with just enough left over that I can buy myself exactly two cups of coffee. which believe you me is the highlight of my week (you have no idea that’s twice a week I have one less dish to wash).  I often think to myself monkeys could do this job. As a matter of fact I am certain if they train monkeys to do our job we would all be out of work because lets face it they would literally work for peanuts. They could give them a bonus once a month of bananas, and as far as know monkeys don’t form unions so really we would all be screwed. 

I know I probably shouldn’t complain so many people are so less fortunate then my self but this is about me so for once in my life I’m doing it, screw it, reality sucks. Every day is a struggle to stay the path all I want is to have a little more than something any mammal with apposable thumbs can do. Mabey it’s purpose and passion I lack, but facts are facts and I am me and that is all I can be. So I guess all I can do for now is put one foot in front of the other and hope I stay upright and that will have to be good enough.

This has been utterly exhausting, how on earth does todays youth do this sharing their every waking thought, vomiting their feeling endlessly. I need a nap I am entirely wiped out. I don’t know is this worth any thing will I wake up tomorrow and feel just a little bit better. Is this the magical cure all that some how make everything just a little bit clearer. Will I have gained a new perspective on life. I guess I wont know till I know. So for now see you soon, or maybe not.

[cosmosogler]

hi guys it is 10:46. i was busy until literally right now. rest in spaghetti, zero regretti. well, maybe some regretti.

anyway, nonsense aside, i woke up kinda late... i didn’t want to get up when my alarm went off. i went to bed kinda late last night due to my feelings adventure. 

i guess i had a dream where i was kind of struggling with gender and maybe the kind of family i would have wanted to have. i didn’t like being a boy at all as usual. looking at myself was like “nope. no good.” 

i can’t quiiite remember enough about the actual plot to say why it was about the family i would have wanted to have as a kid. i just have a strong feeling. and nothing to say about it. ha ha, joke’s on you! you don’t have to read five extra paragraphs.

anyway i lounged around at home for a long time. i had woken up at 8 but i didn’t leave for the department until 10:15 ish. i got there at 10:30 even though i had been riding my bike in a skirt and that was awkward. 

i was wearing shorts underneath so that wasn’t a problem, i just felt like something was going to snag on the wheel i guess.

i sat at my desk and worked until 11-ish when keegan showed up. he looked kinda weird today... not sure how to describe it. he collected most of us to head over to the homecoming parade. it was a “fun group activity” he had put a lot of effort into planning. by which i mean he asked in the groupme last night and soham was like “yes count me in” and then a couple others were all “yeah ok.” 

suzanne said it was friday and she was having a game night with her family so she’d have to work all day. i forgot it was friday. it feels like saturday part 1.

so we went to the parade! i had a lot of fun. we were there for like two hours though and when we finally got moving again to go back to the department my knees and ankles were stiff and swollen. 

turns out keegan wanted to go to the parade to see his girlfriend march and just didn’t want to go alone because that would be weird. we ran into his girlfriend’s parents there too. they seemed to like us a lot. they seem like very pleasant people.

when the fire brigade passed by i shouted “yeah, fire rescue!!!” and clapped and my classmates turned to stare at me. jennica had her hand over her mouth. 

“what?” i said.

“that sounded... REALLY sarcastic,” jennica finally said. 

so i did that every time something cool passed by. eventually they stopped flinching. after like seven instances.

also at one point during the conversation jennica got all up in my face and i kind of laughed unhappily and then harrison did it and i punched him in the face. i didn’t tolerate it any more.

not hard. but i told him i’d sock him for real next time. 

anyway after that soham and jennica and harrison and keegan and i went to the student union for some lunch. yannis (it is his nickname. it is pronounced the same way as his formal name.) went to get his backpack from home. then soham and jennica left when we got to the union even though soham was the one who wanted to go there. then keegan and harrison changed their minds but went inside with me. i was the only one who got food. i got a peanut butter smoothie.

then after that i got back to work! it was about 2:30. i got all the way through the classical homework except for the second half of the last problem. and i did a quantum problem, and i arranged to talk with adamya and suzanne about e&m later after we’ve spent some more time studying. adamya is an upper classman but he was helping suzanne out with grad e&m. 

i talked out a classical problem with suzanne that jennica actually figured out later. i had the right idea but couldn’t figure out the right combination of substitutions. jennica realized that the professor had replaced the mass in his equation with a derivative, which is... not... the usual thing to do? we couldn’t figure out why the professor did that in his solution. she kind of had to reverse engineer it. suzanne said that the solutions aren’t really solutions so much as using confusing unexplained techniques to get an answer very quickly. 

at... 6:40? i came home. i took out the trash and tried to cool off. it was almost 90 today all day. 

i was going to make dinner at 7:20 but gilbert wanted to talk about politics and despair a little bit so i didn’t cook anything until 7:45. i had wanted to make tempeh chili or maybe mac and cheese but i didn’t wash my dishes!!!!!!!!!!!! so i had to make one of my microwave meals.

i screwed around until 9:10 or so, after i usually check for comic updates. then i got to business. i dug up suzanne’s class notes, which we had finally gotten to me in a readable format, and caught up on the class stuff... one of the lectures was actually exactly what i had needed in the quantum problem i did today and i would have figured it out a lot faster if i had the notes beforehand haha. oh well. good to see it twice at least.

then i organized my schedule and identified 5 important urgent tasks i need to complete tomorrow and then a bunch of optional important ones i can knock out on sunday. i don’t anticipate having any time tomorrow for anything but the five things after i get my groceries and stuff. i’d like to wash my bedding but i don’t think that will happen unless i’m super quick about it first thing in the morning.

and then i made some notes on stuff i need to tell the psychiatrist when i see her on thursday. she wants to know basically my life story... so i tried to put everything i should talk about in order so i can give a coherent continuous story instead of jumping around as i think of things. it’ll be quicker and easier that way. i might have a little more time to study for the e&m test on friday.

i dropped everything on my to-do list that isn’t either completely necessary or something that the grad coordinator highly recommended i do as soon as possible. like revisit basic calculus and get a solid idea in my head of the purpose of each operation to make it easier to derive or inspect equations i need when i get confused during tests.

i also read and revised my notes in classical... i had to kind of bite the bullet and ask harrison for help on a really basic question. i understood it a lot better after i articulated to him exactly what it was i didn’t get about the concept. because when i just asked “what does this mean” he crossed out the like terms and looked at me like it was a fraction problem when it was not about fractions. when he described it as a matrix though i caught on pretty fast.

learning how different classmates describe concepts and figuring out who to go to for which help and how to ask each of them for that help is a long process.

so now it is 11:15, which is not obnoxiously late, but it is later than i’d like to continue staying up night after night. 

i think i’ve got a handle on tomorrow... it’ll be busy but i just gotta try not to screw around in the morning. i want to wash my bedsheets, and swim for a little bit, and make a solid breakfast, and then clean snoopy’s water bowl, and then get the groceries, and then put everything away and get over to campus maybe right after lunchtime to work on homework and studying. and hopefully a little grading... i’ve been avoiding it. it’s stressing me out. the lab reports are so heavy this time. they are twice as long as anything i’ve graded so far. i keep thinking if i start i’ll have to pull an all nighter... but really if i DON’T start i’ll have to pull an all nighter the night before my midterm. 

jennica said she was behind on grading though so maybe i will get some forgiveness if i don’t quite have it done this week. that will leave me with even more grading to do though and my quantum midterm is the week after next... 

no. gotta stay on top of it.

ok something positive about me. i did get all the way through my classical problem for the day, so i only have half a problem to do tomorrow instead of the whole 15-hour assignment. and i know how to do that problem! and i did a quantum problem, so that is on schedule. AND i even had the energy to study for an hour somewhere in there! and i had fun at the parade, which let me be outside for two and a half hours. i only got really tired and burnt out in the last 15 minutes we were there and when i asked to leave everyone agreed. so that was nice.

so i guess... the thing today was asking for help and getting it? between the parade and adamya and harrison i got a lot of things i wanted. and by things i mean “rest” and “questions answered.” as long as i hold on to the knowledge that it’s better to ask dumb questions you genuinely don’t get than to not ask them it might be easier to do that kind of thing every day instead of just when i feel kind of panicked. and friday was a way better time to ask a basic question than, like, monday night. 

oh and taylor asked how to log in to the classical solutions server and i cut in with an answer before soham. then i said “i got the fastest draw in the west soham there ain’t enough room in this chat for the both of us.” i got a couple likes for that.

i think... i think i did pretty good today. i also have to do good tomorrow. hopefully that will leave sunday and monday to be more cleanup days than cramming days.

[victakestaipei]

WEEK 2 RECAP: “Gua Bao?” More like “Gua BOMB.”

So I have come to realize that during the weeks, my blog posts about my classes are going to be pretty repetitive. So to save you the few minutes of your life you’ll spend reading, I’ll just shorten it a bit...and skip to the food. We always do the same things in class. We take quizzes, read the text book, practice writing characters, and talk alot about a wide array of topics... (we actually get off topic alot... In one of the classes this week I ended up playing the song “Mr. Roboto” on my iphone because I made a reference about it... we have a new classmate and he’s from Japan and everyone wanted to hear the “Domo Arigato” part... ugh.. it’s a long story.)

Anyway, let’s start from Tuesday I suppose:

So in class we had another one of those written dialogue quizzes, I got an A ((of course HEH)) and on the test from last week, I got a 94%! Feelin’ good. In the gym it was leg day, and I’m starting to incorporate more cardio daily, so I’ve been running on the treadmill at the end of my workouts. I want to drop weight and tone up while I’m out here so I figured this will help give me the extra kick that I need. I ran a mile in 7 minutes and 30 seconds... Or so I thought. I was super happy about the amount of time it took and how it didn’t even feel hard and how my knee actually wasn’t hurting for once in my life. BUT, I soon realized that I am a headass. I didn’t realize until later in the week that everything here is in kilometers, not miles. Meaning, that I didn’t actually run a mile in 7 minutes and 30 seconds, I ran 1 kilometer. Which is less than a mile... it’s actually 0.62 miles to be exact. What A BUZZ KILL!!!! I was on this “high” the whole rest of the day because I thought I was really wrecking shit, but really I’m just an idiot. A slow running idiot. lol. 

For dinner Bunny and I went to this popular joint that she had heard about from a friend. I actually have heard of this place too, but didn’t realize it until after we had arrived and ordered our food. We went to this small hole-in-the-wall restaurant in the Gongguan night market where they serve the “Traditional Taiwanese Snack.” It’s called “Gua Bao.” It’s basically a pulled pork hamburger with veggies, pickles, grated peanuts in a peanut sauce, and cilantro... all in a steamed bun... you hold it and eat it like a hamburger, and it’s delicious!! It was only 55 NT (about $1.80 US). You could choose between lean meat, fatty meat, or a mix of the two. I went with the lean meat, and I’m glad that I did. The restaurant also offered an array of soups, but a lot of them featured pork intestines, and that's not really my type of party. 

Wednesday:

I did back day at the gym today and ran another “mile”... SMH. That still gets me man. Stupid. Stupid. Stupid.

For lunch, Jeannie, Bunny and I went to this potsticker place right across the street from campus. We’ve been there before and it was really good the first time, with each potsticker being 5 NT! (or about 17 cents). We each ordered 10 potstickers and a bowl of warm noodles, totalling to only 90 NT ($3 US). I chose 5 curry potstickers and 5 garden vegetable. The Curry flavored potstickers were by far the best potstickers I’ve had since I’ve been here (and that’s saying something). And for dinner, Bunny and I went BACK to the Gua Bao place (it was that good) but this time brought Nick along! We had a good time.

Thursday:

I had another dictation quiz and got another low A. Today was leg day yet again. Starting to see a pattern here? I’m proud to say that I’ve kept the routine/schedule that I talked about in my recap blog post from last week..

For our post-gym lunch, Bunny, Jeannie and I went to this Soy Sauce-Braised place. I can’t remember the name. *eyeroll*. But basically it’s a food stand on the street market by our university, and they lay out all the meats, and veggies and noodles on display, and you choose which ones you want, and they mix them all together and cook them in this super hot soy sauce soup... It’s pretty good. I was super excited about this food stand because they actually had VEGETABLES!!! You know how often I see vegetables here in Taiwan??? Never. I don’t think I’ve had a vegetarian semi-healthy meal since I’ve been here. And I’ve looked!!!!! Anyway, for my dish, I chose tofu, broccoli, cabbage, mushrooms, and udon noodles. I paid about $7.50 US which is a bit steeper than my usual meal, but I think that’s because I doubled up on the tofu. (hehe). Either way though that’s still what I spend on average at Cane’s back in the US, and it’s wayyyyy more food. I do have to say that I went a bit over the top. My food was a MOUNTAIN!!!! We also bought this watermelon slush drink to share that came in an actual watermelon! Presentation get’s an A+, and it was pretty refreshing. 

After we ate we went to this store called “Jin Xin Fa” and bought tons of stationary (everything here is so cute and I desperately wanted to buy some cute planners for the upcoming school year). I also bought an extra long ethernet cord so that I could use my laptop in bed and have better internet, as well as a new phone charger... 

For dinner I ended up cooking (reheating) left over lunch... but I made rice and added scrambled egg to it... As it turns out, my $7.50 lunch fed me and Bunny for dinner. As I mentioned in my blog post about my dorm a few weeks ago, we have a small kitchen area at the end of the hall. Bunny and I wanted to use the rice cooker, and we struggled at first. We had to put water between the bowl where the rice goes and the outer bowl?? Strange. Either way thought the rice came out perfectly. Bomb.com.

Friday: 

For lunch, the three of us tried this Malaysian Curry place on the street market. It was on the second floor, and the interior looked like someone's home at first... My dish was 100 NT ( around 3-4$), and I ordered the Malaysian chicken curry and rice. It’s basically a filleted chicken cutlet fried in batter and served with a mound of rice, both covered in curry. And topped with potato wedges... THIS PLACE WAS SUPER GOOD I WILL BE BACK EVERY WEEK OH MY GOD. There is only one lady who works here, and she cooks all the dishes. I also think she lives here...? Not so sure. We spoke to her a bit after finishing our food, and she told us how 22 years ago she came to Taiwan, and she asked us where we're from and told us she's been to both Florida and New York before. She also showed us pictures of her 8 month old grandson who lives in Florida. Her daughter was born in Malaysia and currently lives in America as she's married to an American guy. She was the sweetest lady ever, gushing about her grandson and showing us all these videos. Such a lovely lady.

After lunch we did some shopping in the street market (clothing), I bought a shirt... and not much else because everything looked so small. When shopping one lady didn't let Jeannie use the dressing room to try on this outfit.... it seemed odd, and the lady didn’t seem to have a reason to not let her use the dressing room which was clearly there with the open curtain and no one inside. I think the lady who worked there was just a bitch. She was rude, and possibly racist?? I can’t tell you how many times I would walk into a shop (during the hour or so that we were walking around) and the ladies who work there would hover over me constantly. *eyeroll*. Figures.

We went home and I took a shower and relaxed before heading to Shilin Night market. I’ve been here before and posted a video, but in case you all forgot, it’s the biggest night market in Taipei and is pretty poppin on the weekends. Jeannie and I love to shop, so we had a ball!! Four of us went, it was Ada, Jeannie, Bunny and I. We spent a few hours shopping and walking around and eating the street food. I ate this pork bun sandwich, some French fries with a bunch of sauces on them (like mustard sauce, salt, pepper, etc), and tried the popular chicken fried steak. 

squid on a stick^

We stayed at Shilin a few hours before parting ways... Jeannie and I went to meet up with some others at a bar and Bunny and Ada went home. This is around maybe 11:15pm... Jeannie and I met up with Nick at this open patio bar/hookah lounge. It was $20 (US) all you can drink. The bar was called K House and was located smack dab in the middle of the gay district off of Ximen station. Ximen station is also a very popular shopping area for the younger crowd, with a 5 story H&M and other popular stores. It took a while for Jeannie and I to find the bar, we put it in google maps and it took us to a completely different location. By the time we found it a lot of the people we were meeting up with were loose off the goose. Which makes sense since it was all you can drink and they'd been there a few hours already. We left the bar around 1, and headed to 7/11 and walked around town a bit after that. I was pretty lit. I slammed about 5 drinks in 30 minutes and was just chillen after that. I had two jack/cokes, 1 vodka/sprite, and 3 peach flavored drinks but I don't know what alcohol was in those..?? They were super good though!! My favorite, definitely. We were walking to another bar when I got super tired and decided to take an Uber home with Jeannie and another guy we met that night, his name is Collin. Collin goes to school at Carnegie Melon *ooooooooo snap*. I got into my dorm around 2:30-3am, and went to bed around 3:30. When Jeannie and I were walking with the group, Collin was telling us about how he had plans to go snorkeling the next day and he invited us to join the group on Facebook. I knocked out after showering when I got home, since I had to be up by 7:15 to make it to the meeting spot at 8am to go snorkel. I was exhAUSTED. Snorkeling should be worth the lack of sleep though.

[gobigorgohome2016]

Training Cycle Recap

I made it!  

Truthfully, I think everyone’s “A” goal for any race should be to make it through the training cycle - and to the starting line - healthy, happy, and emotionally prepared to race.  We put so much emphasis on time goals that we rarely see the big picture:  just getting to the starting line is a feat within itself.  

Without a doubt, this training cycle has been my best since when I hit my OTQ.  When I look at the big picture, that is. In October, I didn’t really have the US half champs on my radar as being my *big* race.  I thought it was going to be cross country, and I put the 15k and half champs on schedule figuring if I had a good race at xc and subsequently ran at worlds, I would cross those two off my list.  

But, if I look back I see now how Houston, xc champs, and the 15k were all key components in making this entire training cycle something really special for me.  I have learned so much about myself, my needs, my strengths, and my weaknesses that I would be content to say this has been my most successful cycle yet.  

Mileage Consistent, high mileage is kind of my jam.  But, consistent high mileage without quality does not a great runner make.  I topped out this training cycle with a few 95/96 mile weeks while balancing high-quality track work.  My highest mileage week ever is 115, so it was a little on the “low” end for me, but I think it was important for helping me develop consistent leg speed in the 4:40 - 5:10 speed range.  

I looked at the last 6 months (this training cycle started at the end of October), and I have run just over 2,000 miles.  Even though I thought this was a period of “low” mileage, it’s only ~70 fewer miles total than during the 6 months leading up to the Houston half in 2016, where I ran my PR.  A big difference between that cycle and this cycle is that I now incorporate strength work, core, and track work, whereas before I was exclusively doing marathon pace and 10k effort.  

Since the end of November I have been above 75 mpw, and with only a few exceptions, I have completed a 20 mile long run every weekend since December 11th.  This cycle has definitely balanced my strengths (high mileage, 20 mile long runs) with my weaknesses (being comfortable at top-end speed) quite well.  

Best/Worst Workouts It seems like cheating to say that a tempo was one of my best workouts of the cycle, since tempos are my bread and butter, but I would definitely say that my 5 mile tempo the Thursday after the 15k champs was one of my best of the cycle.  I was TIRED but I still cranked out 5:27 pace for 5 miles on crushed gravel, on a moderately windy day, to run 27:14. 

My best non-tempo workout was probably my final 400 m or mile repeat workout.  A few weeks ago I did 6 x mile on crushed gravel in 5:12, 5:09, 5:12, 5:09, 5:09, 5:07.  That was definitely out of my comfort zone.  I also did 10 x 400 m in 72, 72, 72,72, 72, 72, 72, 72, 71, 70 on a stupidly windy day.  Actually, all of my track work has been in 12 - 20 mph wind, and I’m kind of ready to never do a track workout in wind again.  

My “worst” workout was 5 x mile on the track on a windy day.  I couldn’t get under 5:25 to save my life, and i think my slowest repeat was 5:35.  It definitely made me question whether some of my other workouts had been a fluke, but later that week I ran a great fartlek so I got over it.  

Lessons So many.  

I’m still learning how to balance my life in the best way possible.  A lot of people wonder why I just don’t get a “real” job now, take some time away from high level training, and come back full speed right before the trials. 

For me, this period in between qualification windows is the “off-season.”  I am nowhere near as good as I want to be, but I know that the only way to get there is to train as if I already am.  I might lose this opportunity tomorrow.  Everyday I hear about friends who are diagnosed with terrible diseases, who one day wake up and decide they no longer want to run, or for who life just simply got in the way.  Of course there have been times where I have questioned what I am doing, and why, but ultimately this training cycle was a good one for reminding me that I have been given an incredible opportunity and I don’t want to waste a single day.  

I also learned an important lesson that I never in a million years thought would have applied to me:  I don’t eat enough to sustain my training. 

I think my low point, in terms of energy and recovery, came right around the xc champs.  I didn’t feel great at that race, but i think it’s safe to say that no one did.  I recovered terribly.  I had to take two weeks of no workouts because my legs just couldn’t handle it.  I didn’t get my period that month. 

Also during that time I went into post-big race mode and Dave and I ate out quite a bit.  Every time I ate more than normal, I would have a great run the next day.  I started putting the pieces together that I needed to reevaluate my needs.  I began tracking my calories and macro/micro nutrients and realized I was severely under-fueling.  This was by no means purposeful, but when you’re working out 2 - 3 times per day and have dietary restrictions it’s just going to be tough.  

With a few adjustments I started feeling better than ever before.  Initially I gained weight, which, truth be told, freaked me out a little bit.  However, I value performance far more than a number on a scale, and the best workouts of my life came at my highest weights.  My period also got back on a 28 day cycle.  

Another lesson is that I drink too much caffeine.  As much as I want coffee to be part of my pre-race routine, it simply cannot be.  I perform MUCH better when I drink green tea.  I have found that when I drink coffee, I can’t get my heart rate up.  I think this is actually perfect for long runs, but not so good for when I’m trying to run an all-out effort.  

About 3 weeks ago I was struggling again with inflammation.  The scale was creeping up every day, and I had gained ~4 lbs in a week and my body/legs felt lousy.  I couldn’t figure out what I was doing differently.  Then, I thought about my daily routine:  no water, just black tea, green tea, or coffee ALL DAY.  In a typical day, I have 4 cups of coffee or ~8 - 10 cups of tea.  I stop drinking caffeine around 7 or 8 PM.  I decided to see what would happen if I drank just one cup of caffeine in the morning, and then only drank water the rest of the day.  Within 3 days I was back to my normal weight and feeling a lot better.  I later read that there are compounds in coffee and black tea (catechins, I think?) that, while healthy, still require ~1 gallon of  water to flush entirely from your liver and kidneys.  I kind of wonder if I was overdoing it with the tea/coffee to the point I was dehydrating myself.  Fortunately, I didn’t have any caffeine withdrawals, and honestly don’t feel like I *need* caffeine to get my day going. 

I tried to nap more during April, but realized that napping just doesn’t work for me anymore.  If I nap during the day, I can’t fall asleep at night and wind up going to bed after midnight and waking up at 9 or 10.  If I don’t nap, I fall soundly asleep at 10:30 and am up at 7:30, which I much prefer.  I used to nap a lot before I took my food sensitivity test, but the changes in my diet have either caused me to be less tired (fatigue is a sign of food sensitivities), or the timing just correlated with me being better able to handle my training/work load.  

Races I race quite a bit, and this training cycle definitely was a reflection of that.  

November - Turkey Trot 10k, 35:35, 1st place, 5:43 pace I was bummed because the year prior I had run 35:20, but that’s kind of a dumb thing to worry about, in retrospect.  It was a good rust buster. 

December - Resolution Run 5k, 17:19, 1st place, 3rd OA, 5:34 pace I really wanted to break 17:00 but it wasn’t in the cards on a super cold/windy day.

January - Houston Half, 1:16:43, 18th place, 5:51 pace I was irrationally bummed that on a day with 96% humidity and strong winds I didn’t run faster.  Again, hindsight is 20/20. 

February - XC Championships, 38:06, 20th place, 6:07 pace I was disappointed.  Lots of travel for what felt like a missed opportunity.  Had I run ~12 seconds faster I would have qualified for a championship race in FL. But, this race sparked a turning point for my season.  

March - 15k Championships, 52:49, 17th place, 5:39 pace  I went into this race with a different plan:  go out hard and hold on.  I went through 5k in a PR (16:58), and 10k in a PR (34:42), and held on the final 5k.

April - Spring Into Fitness 10k, 34:26, 1st place OA, 5:33 pace This was my final tempo of the training cycle.  Very happy with this, especially considering the huge hills (my 5th mile was 5:55 due to one climb!)

I noted that I thought xc was a turning point for me.  After this race, I met with my coach and we talked training.  He helped me identify a few adjustments that needed to be made:

-no less than 4 hours between runs (I was especially bad about this when daylight was scarce) -more top-end speed work -more balance in my training plan

I also identified a few areas of my own that needed adjustment, particularly a sense of guilt I had been feeling towards my training.  I had fallen into a rut of doing things that left me feeling guilty at the end of the day.  For instance, deciding not to do my 2nd run of the day, eating half a tray of peanut butter bars that I knew for a fact were made with soy, not getting enough sleep, etc.  I would justify these things as, “if this ONE instance derails my training, then I’m doing something wrong” but, to be honest, all of those “one” instances were starting to add up.  One week of 5 less miles isn’t going to make or break me.  But, when I was doing it 3 weeks in a row and suddenly I’ve lost 15 miles of training, that does matter over time.  The peanut butter bars aren’t a big deal, except when I can’t finish my run because my stomach cramps are too bad and I know there isn’t a bathroom nearby, because Indy has no public restrooms (a topic for another day).  Happens once?  whatever.  But it was becoming a habit that I needed to break.  

I decided no more guilt.  I'm not going to lie and say “no more guilt” meant that I broke free of mental constrains and blah blah blah.  But no, no more guilt meant I woman’d up and just stopped behaviors that I knew were detrimental.  I feel like many people will want to read something like, “I worked out less, ate more sweets, and saw the best results ever” but that wasn’t my reality.  

Injuries/Illnesses Part of what made this training cycle so successful was a relative lack of setbacks.  Since October, I have  taken 9 total days off:  2 because I was sick, 2 for travel to/from Oregon, 2 for an Achilles issue in December, 2 for a plantar issue in March, and the other was when my mileage was low and I didn’t need the extra training day.  

My achilles issue was promptly taken care of by my massage therapist. 

My foot issue was a little more stubborn.  I was actually pretty concerned I had a neuroma or a stress reaction, but again my massage therapist saved the day and it turned out to be some tightness in my plantar that was causing pain near my 2nd metatarsal.  This issue affected me for about 2 weeks before and after the 15k championships.  My foot actually went numb with about 2 miles left in that race, which had me convinced I had a nerve issue.  Ultimately, I think I wore a pair of running shoes about a week too long.  

In contrast, my last training cycle probably went a week too long.  I stood on the starting line at the 10 miler with a really bad back, and that course beat me up.  Prior to that was the trials, where I was in massive denial about the things my body was experiencing, particularly in my entire right leg.  I’m even healthier than I was before the Twin Cities marathon, when I had a slight hamstring and IT band issue.  

Taper My taper for this race has been going really well.  In high school we didn’t call it taper, we called it “peaking,” which I much prefer.  I don’t drastically cut my mileage.  I ran 96 miles two weeks ago, last week I ran a total of 79, and this week will be ~60 with the race and nothing on Sunday.  The majority of my “taper” comes from less volume on workout and long run days.  Otherwise, I still run the same, just maybe a mile or two less.  

Goals My goal is to PR on Saturday (sub-74:03).  I am ready.  When things get tough in the race I want to remind myself to be a gritty bitch and to run as if I’ve already achieved my ultimate goal, which is to break 2:30:00 in the marathon.  

What’s Next? Remember how I’m actually a marathoner?  Well, I will be making a return to the marathon in December!  CIM is hosting the US Marathon Championships, so that will be my first 26.2 since the trials.  I also plan to race the 20k and 10 mile championships in the fall, and will do the Monumental half as my tune up.  I am not-so-secretly hoping to dip under 73 minutes at Monumental so that I can just knock my trials qualifier out of the way.  My goal at CIM will be to go under the (yet unannounced) A standard.  

In the immediate future, I’m looking forward to a bit of a break.  I have been grinding since last May without more than a week off from training, which I took in October after the 10 miler.  I will take two weeks completely off, and so far we have the following things planned:

-short vacation post-race on Saturday/Sunday.  Dave and I are trying to make a memory in each of Indiana’s 92 counties, so we are going to knock off 5 this weekend with casino visits, lunches/dinners at new restaurants, and a trip to Clify Falls.  Other things include: -bike ride to Graeter’s for ice cream -Fogo de Chao for lunch -coffee festival -no nutrient tracking, going to bed early, limiting caffeine, or eating kale -deep clean our house (this only happens during breaks) -eat all the pastries at the farmer’s market -drink all the beer that has been in my fridge for months -go to Burger Haus -eat the JB burger at Big Woods -start my container garden -binge watch Golden Girls

My vacation starts today and I am excited.  I am nervous, in that way you get nervous when you know you’re about to do something hard but you also know once it is over you will feel the most amazing sense of satisfaction.  I am excited to see what my body is capable of.  I am excited to be faced with that opportunity during a race to either give in or push, and see what all of the training I have done outside of my comfort zone allows me to do.  I know that I am on the brink of a breakthrough, and while there are no guarantees that the breakthroughs happen on the day that you want, I know that I have trained to the point that even a bad day will be better than a previous bad day.  I am going to stand on the starting line on Saturday with no watch, no real race plan, and no expectations, other than knowing that my legs and my competitive fire will not let me down.  

[joshuazev]

On Carpel Tunnel, No-Vision, Shortened Hamstrings, Candy-Eating, Zero Discipline, Credit Card Swiping, Thursdays:

I think my generation should start doing some wrist exercises and certainly some neck exercises and should probably get involved in Pilates.  All I can do is speak for myself but my eyes have been unhealthily glued to the computer the past 96 hours or so.  I wouldn’t say I’m in a state of panic, but I’m beginning to notice some tightness in my fingers and some spasming in my wrists and some plumpness and my thumbs and some cracking in my ligaments.  The last part of my work shift I was stretching my arms and getting some wrist mobility put into action because what the emailing doctors don’t tell you is that if you send enough messages you’re bound to look like a t-rex.  

I think I saw a meme one time of the evolution of man but with a focus on posture.  So it started with the ape and slowly became a man walking and then after the developments in technology there was a man down the road who looked like a hunchback with his phone safely glued to his hands.  I always think of the scene in Spike Jonze’s “Her.”  Joaquin Phoenix’s character is roaming around in a nouveau style future and everyone is talking on the phone.  I suppose it makes our current reality a little different, but I’m more alluding to the fact that one day each one of us will have a day where we are looking up observing the world and we will notice that everyone else is hunched over (drooling on the inside) face deep in an alternate reality.  The posture of mine is beginning to become dated, but I guess I’m thankful for those special moments during my interminable smartphone tangents when the voice inside me is telling me to “get off your motherfucking phone and straighten up goddamit!!!”  Shoutout to my friend “the voice” for keeping my health in high regard.  It just sucks when I realize that I hear him less and less.  

Carrots were always a fundamental part of my diet in Seattle living at my Mom’s house.  I used to love a good carrot.  I still do.  I also used to relish getting eye tests when I was younger because my little shit self would revel in the ability to see even the smallest symbols perfectly.  I always wondered if there was something better than 20/20 vision.  Somewhere down the line there was the urban legend that if you ate too many carrots your skin would begin to turn orange and, because I was eating a carrot a day, I thought I would certainly be affected by this frightening disease.  Luckily, I avoided it.  Since then I’ve been looking for things to blame for my worsening eye sight.  It’s not shitty by any means, but it definitely isn’t what it once was and I’m over here thinking that I always heard eyesight was supposed to go with old age not just with age.  My Mom and Dad always made sure that I had a reading light when I was younger because I used to have the nasty habit of reading in the dark.  “It’s not good for your eyes” they say.  (I’m beginning to think that I remember every lesson they tried to teach me, whether I allowed myself to be educated or not.  Still, it’s nice to now that there words are still fresh in my head 3,000 miles away).  The eyesight thing is weird though.  I’m hoping that it’s a simple correlation to not getting enough sleep because that can be fixed.  If it isn’t then I might be in trouble.  Lately I’ve been leaving my apartment in the morning with dazed hazy eyes looking at street signs to see if I can read them legibly at various distances.  I think by habit of seeing them I’m successful, but in foreign neighborhoods I struggle a little bit more.  On the way back from Boston a few weeks ago I was looking outside my bus window and couldn’t see too well off in the distance.  I gotta get some carrots in my life, doggone it.  

The gym has been a friend to me lately.  Even though I don’t love being there with my combined working and working out times I still like the privilege of working out in a nice gym.  Someone told me the other day that I was squatting wrong.  The whole “ass to grass” concept isn’t the best because apparently it shortens your hamstrings.  I freaked out for a moment because I’ve been “ass to grassing” since beginning to squat and I couldn’t help envision a future self where I have no hamstrings.  Couple this with a man who has become a hunchback from smartphone overdose and you got a sad case of the “millennial middle age super itis” an non-exotic ugly depressing example of a human being.

The no-pop diet has been a part of the regimen for a while now, but one addition that has been nearly impossible to remove has been the no-candy diet.  I used to think that pop was around all the time until it wasn’t and candy seemed to take its place.  Nothing sucks the life out of the spare dollars in your wallet like a Butterfinger or a Kit-Kat or some goddamn peanut M&M’s, which, so help me, got to be the hardest candies to say no to.  As you can see it’s not even a candy issue.  It’s a freaking chocolate issue.  It’s really effing hard to say no to chocolate completely.  Anyone got any ideas?  I certainly don’t.  Come to think of it I think I see some peanut M&M’s.  

When your on Instagram nowadays you’re bound to see some people showing off their fancy tupperware laid out all nice and formal and you’re even more likely to see a week’s worth of meal prep sitting in every size of container.  I used to scoff at meal prep with a light touch of disdain.  “Meal prep…pfffft…who has the time to do that?   Do you even save money?  Has all the zest in spontaneity gone out the window?”  That came full circle today when I realized I had just used my card to buy my second straight dinner at work.  Oddly enough, the more unhealthy option between meal prepping and spending money is swiping the credit card so carelessly.  Does anyone else feel like they eat the same shit all the time?  Does this change at all once you start to meal prepping or do you begin to feel so good about yourself because you spent a Sunday making food in advance that you begin not to care?  This is a real question damas y caballeros.

Thursdays.  During the days back at UW they used to call them “Thirsty Thursdays” because it was celebrated across the college as the night to drink.  (A lot of students didn’t have classes on Friday).  I remember one Thirsty Thursday in which I was considerably Thirsty and my roommates and I all went to A mart on the Ave in the University District.  It was one of those nights where you start light and begin to go dark (both literally and figuratively) and I think there’s a video that was taken of me slumped over on the sidewalk looking like I was lifeless in the face and could barely open my eyes.  This of course was outdone by the video of me later that night in which I was slumped over, pants down on the toilet, asleep and snoring.  Save that image for rainy day.  

Somewhere in the backseat of my mind I’m fighting the Dos Equis guy after removing his teleprompter.  In his old age he has forgotten his motto and needs to see his famous catch phrase in order to remember, so I’m thinking that if i scramble his words he’ll mess up, which will prevent thousands of susceptible young men like myself from getting lost in the whirlpool of wine and spirits, leading him to spazz out and change his company’s slogan alongside four fully clothed women wearing glasses and book bags to:

“Stay hydrated, my friends.”  

[lpdwillwrite4coffee]

BLOODY SUNRISE CHAPTER SIX

“I can’t believe you won’t let us hot wire a car.”

Booker stopped, looking over his shoulder at her. His face was mottled with shifting shadows of leaves and tree branches.

“I don’t know what direction that gun squad went,” he said. “Last thing we need is to cross paths with them in a noisy vehicle that might not even have enough gas to outrun them.”

Caitlin brushed a lock of hair off her sweaty forehead. “And the reason we’re hiking uphill further into the forest is…?”

“The trees give us cover,” he said, starting to walk again. “And this is the fastest way to the nearest township that might be both military free and have supplies and a car.”

Adjusting the strap of her backpack, Caitlin sighed, following him. “Fastest for who…” She muttered.

Booker chuckled. “C’mon Meadows, I’ve seen you run. This should be nothin’ for ya.”

“Yes, running for my life. Running on flat ground. Not hiking uphill for hours, carrying a shit ton of supplies and—”

She snagged her toe on a tree root, nearly toppling face first. She staggered, dropped a bag of water bottles, and yelped.

“You tryin’ to ring the dinner bell for nearby groaners?” Booker doubled back, picking up plastic bottles.

“Oh yes, because I’m the only one making noise here.” Unloading her armful of bags from the day before, she planted her feet. “I’m taking a break.”

“It ain’t even noon yet.”

“I don’t care what time it is, Booker. I’m taking my ten.”

He tilted his head up to look at her. “You in a union now?”

“Yep. The union of Caitlin. Got a problem with it, talk to my rep.”

He shook his head, but she didn’t miss the slight curve of his mouth.

“You’re somethin’, Meadows,” he mumbled, tossing the last water bottle into the bag.

“I can tell you’re mocking me, but I don’t care.” She bent to grab the same water bottle he’d just put away and opened it.

In the quiet, she surveyed their surroundings. Most of the trees were sturdy but not many had low branches good for getting a strong foothold, so climbing them would be difficult. She’d shimmied up a few before, and it wasn’t the hardest thing in the world, but she’d had time to practice. She’d never done it with a Geek chasing after her. And the woods only seemed to get denser the further they went, so outrunning a Geek or escaping into a better area didn’t seem like an option either.

Sliding her pack off, she crouched down to rummage through it.

“Don’t go unpackin’ everything now,” Booker chided. She ignored him. “Meadows—”

“How’s your upper body strength?”

Her question caught him by surprise. “Uhh… You askin’ if I can bench press a car, or…”

She pulled out her collection of ropes and bungee cords. “Did you ever have to do those rope climbing courses in basic training?”

“Yeah, why?”

She nodded and started digging for her makeshift weights. “The trees around here don’t have good climbing branches, but the ones higher up look okay. If we get caught in a tight spot, we need an escape method.”

Booker stared at her a moment, frowning. “I think ya lost me.”

“If a Geek is coming for us—”

“I’ve got my knife.”

“Okay, let me rephrase. If a bunch of Geeks are coming for us, and you’ve dropped your knife, we need a plan. I’ve done this a couple times, but only to get to a good sleeping spot, not under pressure of getting eaten.” Pulling out her cloth bag of rocks, she started the routine she’d relied on for two weeks. Rope through the cloth tie, knot it. Double wrap, knot it again, yank.

“What’re you doin’?”

“Making us each a rope swing.” She paused, thinking it over. “Well, I guess it’s more of a rope ladder, but I called it a swing ‘cause… it swings. You swing it.”

“I might need more of an explanation than that.”

She finished tying the foothold knot and stood up to show him.

“This is how I used to get up into trees that were tall but didn’t have lower branches to climb up. They were great for sleeping in but getting up them was nearly impossible. So, I figured out how to make my own rope ladder. A weight at one end to swing over the branch—and you have to make sure it makes it over the branch a couple times, so you have to throw it hard. And then a knot half way up to grab and then use as a foot hold.”

Booker just stared at her, squinting a little. She sighed and rolled her eyes.

“I’m not crazy, it really works.”

He shook his head, taking a step forward. “No, I wasn’t… I’m impressed. Keep goin’.”

Caitlin blinked at him. “You… really?”

“Can you show me?” He gestured to the nearest tree. “Lemme see how you do it so I can try’n replicate it.”

More than a little stunned, she nodded. “Okay, well…” Taking a few steps back, she picked out her branch and started swinging the weight by her side.

It was all about putting enough strength behind the right angle, keeping the arc high but not so high it overshot it and just fell to the ground.

She swung the rope up and over and it wrapped twice, just like she needed it to. The perfect first throw.

Climbing the rope was always less graceful, but she didn’t care. She launched at it, grabbing the middle knot and pulling herself up. Using her feet, she pushed and pulled and in a matter of seconds she was climbing into the crook of the tree branch, letting her legs dangle freely.

“Did you catch all that?”

Booker looked up at her, grinning. “You put Tarzan and Jane to shame, darlin’.”

She laughed softly, gazing out at the forest around them. It was peaceful up there, where the only thing she had to worry about was keeping her balance and not pissing off any squirrels.

It was the closest she felt to safe. Tucked away in the branches and leaves, listening to the birds around her.

Inhaling the scent of bark and moss, she tried to file that away as a pleasant memory for later. When she’d wake up gasping, crying, reliving the horrors she’d seen… This moment would bring her some semblance of comfort.

Carefully pushing herself over the branch, she reached for the rope and shimmed down to the ground. With another fling of her wrist, she tossed the rope over and then it was free and in her hands.

“Your turn,” she said, handing it over.

“Y’might have to help me get the hang of it,” Booker said, lining up his toss.

And she definitely did. Booker was less than a natural, struggling with the right force to curve ratio for over twenty minutes. Frustrated, he handed the rope back over.

“I don’t think this is my specialty.”

Caitlin shook her head, standing up from where she’d sat with her back against a tree trunk.

“You’re just not giving it enough finesse. It’s not all about the strength behind the throw, you’ve got to guide it.”

“I am!”

“C’mon Booker, one more time. Gentle to aim, swing it around wide, and let it fly. Smooth as silk, don’t hesitate.”

He adjusted his hold on the rope and cocked his head, smirking. “You flirtin’ with me?”

“Will it help your aim if I am?”

“Dunno, how about you give it a go.”

“How about you shut up and throw the rope?”

His laugh was deep as he turned. “Can’t fault a man for tryin’.”

She pretended the flush creeping up her cheeks was from the noonday heat, and nothing else.

Booker finally got the rope over the branch perfectly. To test it, he climbed up, and only managed to slip once.

And she certainly wasn’t staring as he shimmied down either.

Absolutely not.

                                                               ***

About a mile from the town that held their hope of transportation, the land started to even out, tree line thinning. But before relief could wash over either of them…

“Shit,” Booker hissed, pulling up short.

Caitlin nearly bumped into him, he’d stopped so suddenly. “What?”

Several yards away, shuffling aimlessly, was a herd of Geeks that outnumbered either of their capabilities. That wasn’t the most troubling part however.

“Is that…”

“Fencing,” Booker finished, looking over his shoulder at her. “Someone penned them in there.”

She glanced around, trying to see if there was an entry point. All she saw was chain link and barbed wire.

“Booker… I think this might go all the way around.”

“All the way ‘round what?”

She swallowed. “The town.”

“Someone fenced off a town… filled with groaners.”

She took a cautious step forward. “Maybe that’s why they built the fence. To keep them all in there.”

Booker shook his head. “I think you’re only about half right, Meadows.”

Realization dawned on her as she stared up at him. “Someone… trapped people in there.”

“Or maybe the town did it to protect themselves. Didn’t realize they were puttin’ themselves at risk.” He backed away, careful not to draw attention to them. “Caged in like animals. One person turns, the whole town gets overrun before they can escape.”

“That’s…” Her gaze followed a young, skinny man—Geek—as he shuffled along the fence line. “Heartbreaking.”

Booker’s expression was grim as he said, “C’mon. Guess we’re goin’ the long way.”

                                                               ***

Night fell, and they made some semblance of a camp, staying at least half a mile away from the fence perimeter. No fire so as not to attract any unwanted attention from humans or undead creatures alike, but that didn’t bother Caitlin. She hadn’t had a fire at night in over a month.

Hunkered down by the oak they’d planned to sleep in, they ate peanut butter and pretzel sticks and washed it down with Gatorade. Neither spoke much, too tired for conversation and too busy mulling over a Plan B for the morning.

“Here,” Booker murmured, holding something out to her in the dark. “I’m done.”

It was the last of his pretzels.

“What, like you’re full?” She snarked. Full wasn’t something anyone had felt in a very long time.

“Take ‘em,” he said, standing up.

“You should eat them, you’ll need your strength.”

“I’m good.” It was an unusually sincere response from a man who seemed to make snappy banter his second and third languages.

Caitlin took the bag from him, watching his silhouette move. “Are you… okay?”

“’M fine, Meadows. Just thinkin’ I’d better start trying to climb this tree now or I’ll be here ‘til midnight.”

“I only have enough bungee cord for one loop around the trunk, so we’ll have to tie ourselves together.”

His soft chuckle sent a sudden shiver up her arms. “Kinda reckoned we’d already done that.”

“I meant literally, not just metaphorically.”

“I know.” Leaves crunched under his boots. “I can get up there first and you can toss some of that cord up; I’ll get us started.”

It took them a few minutes to figure out how to work together in the dark. A lot of misunderstandings, dropped rope and cord, and cursing. Finally though, they were both on the same page.

It felt like a bigger victory than it was, and Caitlin didn’t have the energy to figure out why.

Nestled in the crook of a branch, back firmly pressed against the trunk, she finished fastening the cord at her waist and made sure it was hooked at Booker’s end.

“Good?” She asked, tilting her head.

“Snug as a bug,” he replied, and the cord wiggled as he settled in.

An owl cried in the distance and Caitlin smiled. Peace was returning to her, little by little, the longer she was up in the trees.

“So, does this mean I should call you Katniss now?”

She rolled her eyes. “Not if you ever want me to speak to you again.”

“Mhm, that’s a quandary.”

“I should unhook you in your sleep and let the ground wake you.”

“Ain’t got it in ya,” he said, voice rumbling.

“How can you be so sure?” She turned her head, but still unable to see him clearly through the darkness. “Maybe I’m an opportunistic sociopath.”

The cord wiggled again as he shifted. “Nah, that ain’t you. Otherwise you really would’ve tripped me yesterday and left me for the groaners.”

Caitlin closed her eyes, smirking. “Maybe next time.”

“Sure, Meadows.”

She was asleep before the grin fell from her lips.

[hviral]

Why parents are turning to a controversial treatment for food allergies

For families with food allergies, micro-managing daily life to avoid accidentally consuming the wrong food can be a huge burden. They scour labels. They avoid restaurants. They ban their kids from birthday parties, or refuse to enter sports stadiums, worrying that peanut shells littering the ground could trigger life-ending anaphylaxis.

The resulting angst has driven some families and physicians to try a therapy that has done well in early studies but has unclear long-term effects and is not yet approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). The controversial treatment is called oral immunotherapy (OIT).

Conceptually, the method works like allergy shots, which for 100 years have reliably treated pollen and other environmental allergies by desensitizing the immune response to these triggers.

Instead of injecting allergens through the skin, OIT involves consuming a bit of the forbidden food each day, at gradually increasing doses, so the immune system can learn to put up less of a fight.

Over the past decade, the number of OIT providers has grown from just a handful of doctors nationwide to a small, influential cohort of more than a hundred today. Thousands of food allergy patients who have tried oral immunotherapy in the United States and abroad swear by the treatment, often calling the results life-changing. And with an FDA decision expected by early 2020 for Aimmune Therapeutics’ “peanut capsules,” OIT could soon go mainstream.

But at the moment, allergists remain deeply divided over the treatment, which doesn’t work for everyone and carries uncertain risks. In contrast, the traditional approach — avoidance of the trigger food — achieves safety for the vast majority of individuals. In fact, someone with a food allergy has a greater chance of being murdered than dying from an allergic reaction. And yet that fact belies the hidden stress and fear that grips many of the estimated 32 million Americans with food allergies. For them, the possibility of a life-ending reaction looms large, and many are eager to see the FDA approve a drug that advocates say could put those fears to rest.

But with many researchers dismissing the science as thin and the treatment unnecessary, the schism over oral immunotherapy — among both physicians and food allergy families — may not easily resolve. “This is a very weird field,” said allergist Kari Nadeau of Stanford University School of Medicine. “I’ve been in oncology. I’ve been in autoimmune disease. And just over the past 13 years I’ve been in allergy.” There are lot of different physicians with varying levels of training, Nadeau said. “It’s a little strange to have such a divergent climate.”

Though OIT is relatively new, the science behind desensitization therapy dates back more than a century, when the term “allergy” had barely entered the medical vocabulary. In 1905, a German doctor described treating “milk idiosyncrasy” in infants by feeding incrementally increasing drops of milk. Three years later, a London physician reported giving daily doses of egg to calm a teen boy’s “egg poisoning.” By 1940, clinicians had published a total of nine papers describing the use of similar methods to treat dozens of people with allergies to milk, wheat, egg, orange, tomato, and cocoa.

In the mid-1960s, scientists discovered the molecular culprit: immune-system antibodies called immunoglobulin E (IgE). Each IgE recognizes a specific allergen — ragweed, say, or peanut. When the allergen gloms on, IgE travels to other immune cells, leading them to unleash histamine and other chemicals that set off an allergic reaction in the nose, lungs, throat, or skin.

Beyond these isolated advances, food allergy research got little attention for decades. This was, in part, due to the low prevalence rate. As recently as the early 1980s, less than 1 percent of people in the United States were thought to have a food allergy. “For a long time, the easy answer was just to avoid the food if you were allergic,” said Christina Ciaccio, a pediatric allergist at the University of Chicago Medicine who has consulted and helped run studies for companies developing peanut allergy treatments.

If a reaction did escalate to something more serious, such as full-body hives, throat tightness or trouble breathing, a shot of epinephrine — FDA approved as an auto-injector under the name EpiPen in 1987 — could start to bring relief within minutes. As manufacturing practices changed, Ciaccio said, people started eating more processed foods, and it became increasingly difficult to avoid accidental allergen exposures.

In the late 1980s, initial reports of anaphylactic deaths due to peanuts trickled into the medical literature. In 1992, Denver physicians published a small study in which they treated food allergy patients with skin injections, the approach routinely used for environmental allergens. But the study came to a halt when a formulation error caused a subject in the placebo group to die of anaphylaxis. “That slowed food allergy research for over a decade,” said Ciaccio.

While research stagnated, media stories brought the terror of food allergies into the public consciousness. In 1995, The Wall Street Journal ran the headline “Peanut Allergies Have Put Sufferers on Constant Alert.” Later that year, a British daily tabloid newspaper published a story titled “Nut Allergy Girl’s Terror; Girl Almost Dies from Peanut Allergy.”

In the years that followed, for reasons not well understood, food allergies became more common among U.S. children. Between 1997 and 2008, peanut allergies more than tripled. In 2002, as part of the first state guidelines for managing food allergies in schools, Massachusetts called for peanut-free lunch tables. In a span of about 15 years, peanut allergies had risen from a virtually unknown medical condition to what some might call a public health emergency. Today, food allergies affect 8 percent of kids in the U.S. and more than 10 percent of adults.

In 2005, five research centers received a National Institutes of Health grant to form a consortium to conduct basic research toward developing food allergy treatments, and to run clinical trials to test them. “We were scared to do peanut,” said A. Wesley Burks, a pediatric allergist at the University of North Carolina School of Medicine and one of the consortium’s lead investigators. Evidence suggests that the vast majority of life-ending food allergic reactions are caused by peanuts or tree nuts.

So as a proof of concept, the consortium’s first oral immunotherapy studies were done with egg. Burks and colleagues conducted a study showing that daily doses of powdered egg white could help people with egg allergy. The method was not a cure. But when the study ended, most participants could tolerate enough egg protein to withstand accidental exposures. In other words, they became bite-proof.

The team then enrolled 39 people in a peanut OIT study using a similar protocol. Those who made it past the initial day consumed store-bought peanut flour — which was pre-measured and sterilized in the lab, then mixed at home into applesauce or pudding or other foods. Dosing started at 50 milligrams and went up 25 milligrams every two weeks. (A few participants had to start at a lower dose and had their increases adjusted accordingly.) Once participants could tolerate 300 milligrams of peanut protein — a little more than one peanut — they began a maintenance phase, steadily increasing their daily OIT dose up to 1800 mg over the next few years.

Nearly a quarter of the original participants ended up withdrawing from the study. Four dropped out because of allergic reactions to the therapy, and gastrointestinal or asthma symptoms. The rest withdrew for other reasons, including transportation issues, parental anxiety, and failure to perform home dosing. But among the 29 participants who finished, 27 successfully passed an oral food challenge with 3.9 grams of peanut protein (about 16 peanuts).

As that initial wave of OIT publications came out, a smattering of private-practice allergists saw an opportunity. They recognized the principles and basic procedures as similar to the allergy shots they routinely administered for airborne antigens. “Any trained allergist would know how to recognize and respond to a reaction,” said Richard Wasserman of Allergy Partners of North Texas. Whether triggered by peanut or pollen, “an allergic reaction is an allergic reaction.”

Chatting with an El Paso colleague who was among the nation’s first allergists to administer private-practice OIT, Wasserman was inspired to develop protocols for his own clinic. Wasserman started treating patients in July 2009 and he and the colleague presented their early OIT experiences in a 15-minute oral poster session at a national immunology meeting a few years later.

“The room was overflowing out the door,” Wasserman recalled. His results were eye-opening and would soon be backed up by published studies. Among individuals who try OIT, about 80 percent become bite-proof.

In such reports of preliminary results, many parents saw a potential escape from daily struggles characterized by fear, isolation, and invisibility.

Shea Tritt discovered her son’s peanut allergy when he was 13 months old. Moments after licking peanut butter off her finger, he broke out in hives, his eyes and face swelled, and his tongue got “so big he couldn’t close his mouth,” she said. From that point, “I was just so petrified of reliving that moment that I just cut off anything new,” said Tritt, a gymnastics coach in Abingdon, Virginia. Her son has never tasted an orange. “I think he kinda learned, this is what I eat, and we stayed in that really small box.”

Alicia Bales’ son is allergic to dairy, egg, some tree nuts, and some seeds. She worries about an allergic reaction, she said, but her son’s condition has affected their family in other ways, too. Last Thanksgiving, she made a batch of her grandmother’s special egg noodles with her daughter. Her son, Ethan, wanted to play with the dough. “I couldn’t let him,” said Bales. Since Ethan’s diagnosis, some foods now signal danger rather than safety, illness instead of nourishment, fear rather than comfort, Bales explained. “There’s a source of love from my past that I can’t pass on to my son.”

Families dealing with food allergies also report feeling misunderstood because people tend to lump their life-threatening condition in with a slew of other diets, health concerns, and ethical reasons for restricting certain foods. To help others understand, food allergy patients may stress that they have a “life-threatening” food allergy, Ciaccio said. “These individuals then get unfairly called out for hyperbolizing.”

Sometimes the most painful misunderstandings occur within extended families. “They’re navigating aunts and uncles, sometimes even grandparents, who don’t get it — or they get it and choose not to respect the guidelines. And so that’s another source of potential anxiety,” said Tamara Hubbard, a licensed counselor in the Chicago area who works with food allergy families and maintains a website that includes a directory of nationwide food allergy counselors.

Bales often has to remind her father-in-law about her son’s allergies, sometimes multiple times a day — explaining that dairy is found in ice cream and many baked goods, and often in chocolate. She doesn’t blame him, she said, because he didn’t grow up around food allergies. When her son first got diagnosed, Bales said, she felt as though he was playing at the edge of a cliff: “No one could see the edge except for me.”

For some, oral immunotherapy offers a sense of control. Parents want “to do something about it right now,” Bales said — even when a treatment carries a high risk of unpleasant side effects.

They hear stories and read medical reports about success with oral immunotherapy and “then they start questioning their allergist or physician: Why can’t I take it?” said Thomas Casale, chief medical advisor for operations at Food Allergy Research & Education (FARE), a non-profit that helped launch Aimmune.

The answer differs vastly, depending on the physician. Some insist that OIT is still experimental and needs further study to ensure it works consistently and safely. Others contend they have enough experience treating environmental allergens to configure an approach for desensitization to foods. “Those are the two different arguments, Casale said. “There’s merit with both.”

Over the years, these two camps have grown more vocal. In 2010, researchers in the NIH-funded consortium published a commentary titled “Peanut Oral Immunotherapy (OIT) is Not Ready for Clinical Use.” On multiple occasions consortium investigators and Wasserman have taken the stage at national meetings, debating OIT’s pros and cons.

Because food allergy rates have risen dramatically in just a few decades, the divide is in part generational. “I think some people are guarding the old,” said Nadeau, who directs the Sean N. Parker Center for Allergy and Asthma Research at Stanford University, which has helped conduct trials of food allergy products being developed by Aimmune and DBV Technologies.

Yet OIT does carry risks. An analysis of 12 clinical trials involving Aimmune capsules or store-bought peanut flour found that people on treatment were three times as likely to go into anaphylaxis compared to those on placebo or avoidance. Some experts interpret these findings, published in The Lancet in April, to suggest OIT is more dangerous than avoiding the food. “It’s one thing to say you’re willing to take risks for a treatment that’s going to offer a cure or complete resolution of the disease,” said Corinne Keet, a pediatric allergist at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. “But, right now, it’s pretty clear that for most people, at least in the short term, oral immunotherapy doesn’t lead to a cure. It leads to a temporary desensitization that still carries with it a risk of ongoing reactions.”

Other doctors point to a tradeoff. When consuming a “food you’re allergic to, you’re going to have some side effects along the way. We know that. Ninety-five percent of people have side effects,” said Nadeau. But “at the end of the game, if you reach that endpoint, you can start eating food and not be worried about an accidental ingestion.”

Although oral immunotherapy can cause more frequent allergic reactions, Keet said, some families may prefer the predictability over the rarer surprise reactions that happen with avoidance.

Many experts do not consider OIT medically necessary, and very few allergists offer it. The therapy is not yet FDA approved, and has no insurance billing code, said Brian Schroer, who directs allergy and immunology at Akron Children’s Hospital in Ohio. Some allergists who offer OIT have billed it as related procedures such as an oral food challenge or a drug/venom desensitization procedure.

Plus, based on a recent analysis by the Institute for Clinical and Economic Review, it remains unclear if OIT is cost-effective compared with avoidance. “That sort of creates the ‘haves’ versus the ‘have nots,’” said Stacey Sturner, a Chicago food allergy mom whose son completed peanut OIT as a 5-year-old in 2017. Not surprisingly, the “haves” tend to be higher-income families. “OIT has ignored large segments of the patient population who have food allergy — particularly those who are poorer or ethnic minorities,” said Keet, who sees many low-income families.

Beyond cost, there’s also time and emotional burden. A treatment that requires strict compliance and many clinic visits is a significant undertaking, “especially with two working parents and multiple kids in the house,” said Edwin Kim, a father of two food-allergic children who works as an allergist-immunologist at the University of North Carolina School of Medicine. Such considerations can add to the frustration many families face when they hear about OIT. On the one hand, the treatment offers hope. But for some, it is inconvenient or even inaccessible. And it doesn’t work for everyone.

But on social media, these drawbacks are sometimes overlooked. Using the #OITWorks hashtag, some families post photos of smiling kids with OIT completion certificates and bags of peanuts, or eating birthday cake for the first time. Sturner, who started the Facebook group Food Allergy Treatment Talk, said that these voices have gotten louder over time. “That loudness really turned off a lot of people,” she said, “because it felt like shouting.”

Some parents say that doctors and journalists unwittingly fuel the shouting when they use terms like “graduation” and “failure” to describe OIT outcomes. Jaelithe Judy’s son started peanut OIT two years ago at age 13 but had to stop six months later after he was diagnosed with an OIT-triggered inflammatory disease called eosinophilic esophagitis. “I make a point myself never to say that my son ‘failed’ OIT,” said the St. Louis, Missouri, mother. Rather, she frames it as the treatment failing him. Judy said she is not alone on this point. Other families that have not benefitted from the treatment also “find this ‘failure’ language troubling and discouraging to their kids.”

Much rarer than OIT successes are food allergy deaths, which also get shared heavily on Facebook and Twitter. This creates “a false illusion of extreme circumstances,” said David Stukus, a pediatric allergist at Nationwide Children’s Hospital in Columbus, Ohio, who joined Twitter in 2013 to fight misconceptions by disseminating evidence-based information. “People read a headline and now they think that their risk has changed.”

If there were a true balance of stories, Stukus said, for each tragic death that occurs and every story shared, “we would literally have a million other stories demonstrating that someone who has peanut allergy went to school that day, went to a ballpark, or flew on an airline without any problems at all.”

Still, food allergy sufferers can find themselves in dangerous situations if needed medication isn’t available. Since last year, EpiPens have been in short supply and are not always carried by airlines — something advocates are now pushing to change.

With rising pharmaceutical interest in developing food allergy products — two of which are heading toward an FDA decision — Kim worries that a single catastrophe with off-label OIT could set back the field.

The number of providers in the United States who currently offer off-label oral immunotherapy is estimated to be around 2 percent of board-certified allergists. It’s not easy for clinics to offer a highly individualized treatment that requires considerable time, clinical space, and nursing support, Schroer said. An even bigger obstacle, he noted, is the need to produce food-based products “to essentially pharmaceutical-grade levels.” Most allergists are waiting for an FDA-approved food allergy treatment before offering the therapy in their clinics. And in the case of peanut OIT, years ago leading experts believed that securing FDA approval would require measuring peanut flour into standardized capsules so each holds precise amounts of peanut protein. Aimmune Therapeutics launched in 2011 with that mission.

“The allergists who offered OIT early on were the pioneers, who had to blaze their own trails. Aimmune is working to lay the railroad and make the journey much easier and more reliable for everyone involved,” said Alison Marquiss, a former spokesperson for the Bay Area company.

Last November the New England Journal of Medicine published results of a clinical trial of AR101, Aimmune’s investigational peanut-containing drug. According to a company press release, it is the largest phase 3 peanut allergy oral immunotherapy trial to date, with 551 participants at 66 sites in North America and Europe. (Outside of research, private practice allergists in the United States have treated more than 7,800 patients with commercial food products.)

At the end of the Aimmune study, about two-thirds of the treated group were able to tolerate peanut protein equivalent to a dose of about two peanuts. Based on those results, the company submitted a licensing application. The FDA has said it will review the application in September and make a decision by January 2020. France-based DBV Technologies is developing a different type of immunotherapy called Viaskin Peanut, which delivers peanut proteins through a skin patch, and is headed for FDA review.

Outside of clinical trials, OIT has generally only been offered by private practice allergists. But as more data have come out, academic centers have begun to explore the possibility of offering the therapy as a service to patients. Some are already doing so.

“Especially as a public institution, we have the responsibility to translate what we’ve learned from trials to best practices,” said allergist Rita Kachru of the University of California, Los Angeles, which has served as a site for DBV and Aimmune trials.

Her team still considers the treatment investigational. “We are just starting to understand the risks, the benefits, the efficacy,” Kachru said.

“If we’re writing a novel,” she added, “we’re maybe at chapter 2. But I think we’re getting a better understanding, definitely more than a few years ago.”

At any given moment, OIT conversation on Food Allergy Treatment Talk, the Facebook group Sturner started, might highlight successes, discuss challenges, or raise questions. “It’s complicated. Because the human immune system is complicated. So are our emotions,” wrote Sturner on a Friday in March when a discussion about the risks and benefits of OIT became heated. “Read the threads. Absorb the info. Do your research. Most importantly, don’t panic.”

The post Why parents are turning to a controversial treatment for food allergies appeared first on HviRAL.

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