#aka. were missing a fuckton of whatevers.

[autism-corner]

makes sense

[clumsyclifford]

2, 5, 6, 8, 15 please -hazel

hiya hazel !!! <3

2. How many fics are in your WIP folder? i was afraid of this question. i don't have a wip folder. i am going to count manually. give me a moment please. okay i guess it kinda depends what you count as a WIP. by my count, i have 21 fics that i consider myself actively intending to finish. i have a great deal more that are simmering on the back burner, that i have plans to become motivated to work on someday but am in no rush to complete. and then i have a fuckton of, you know, snippets and ideas that aren't really anything yet but hopefully will be. short answer: So Many.

5. Show me your favorite under-appreciated fic; why do you wish it got more attention? uhhhhhh ive seen people doing this for their own fics or for others so i'll do one of each i guess!

of my own i think my favorite underappreciated fic is my waves meet your shore ever and evermore, aka the jalex breakup fic. i understand why this one got significantly less traffic (heavy angst, kinda lengthy, jalex which is a less popular pairing compared to any 5sos ones, etc). regardless i'm super proud of it. i'm not hurt or anything but if i could zap any one of my fics to make it be more popular than it is i'd probably do that one because i worked on it for a long time and put a lotta heart and soul and tears into it lmao and i am a big fan of it. also it's one of the longest fics i have on my ao3!! third longest maybe? which is neat

i guess it's kind of hard for me to gauge exactly how "underappreciated" a fic is when i'm not the one keeping track of how many comments and how much interaction it gets (i mean i don't even really keep track of interaction on my own fics outside of comments so lmao) ooh okay i was just scrolling my bookmarks and i have a contractual obligation to mention this one: We Dance Along by miss @ashtcnirwin, a fic based on change my mind by 1d because i wanted one. i have no idea if this fic is underrated or whatever but i love it and it's kind of short which means there's a good chance it is because short fics are easily overlooked but we dance along is sooooo mmmmmm it's just soooooooo mmmmmm i love it. i love it

6. What fic is on your back burner, waiting to be written when you feel your skill matches its potential? well. now you see. a couple of days ago i probably would've said frat cake. i am not sure i'm allowed to say that anymore. there are a lot of fics that i started writing, hit a wall, and then decided to abandon until my brain felt like i could write them again. post apocalyptic au, for example. or the vegas fic. i don't know if i'll ever finish the vegas fic. i'd really like to but it's HARD i don't even. yeah. we'll see.

8. What do you find appealing or unappealing about askbox fic prompts? appealing: the pressure is WAYYY off, which is always a relief. i feel like when i'm writing my own fics i get caught up in trying to build a world around the characters, and i suck at worldbuilding and i hate it. with askbox prompts nobody is expecting a detailed universe. you can just throw four guys into a car and say they're on a road trip but since you're only writing ~1.5k of their trip you don't have to say where they're going or where they're coming from. i love that. you don't have to include any defining details, which is awesome. ALSO another great thing about askbox prompts, they encourage me to think outside the box, because a lot of the time i'll either (1) get prompts multiple times and have to figure out different ways to use them so the fics aren't identical, or (2) get a prompt that clearly is supposed to have one kind of vibe, in which case i like to try and see if i can deliberately subvert whatever vibe the prompt is supposed to have. i like a challenge.

what is NOT appealing about askbox prompts is that i have so fucking many of them. and also that once i get out of the askbox prompts mindset (of not worldbuilding) (and instead getting caught in creating a Universe that is Very Good) it's hard for me to get back into it. and i have so fucking many. So Many Of Them. although to be perfectly fair what i have aren't really askbox prompts so much as prompts that were sent to my askbox. i like ones that are just lines of dialogue, those are a lot of fun and typically not that difficult.

15. What are some of your favorite tropes to write? Do they match the ones you read? i don't know! i have no idea what the answer is to this question. i don't even know how to define or identify a trope. i love friendship and i'm working on writing more fics that are just friendship fics cos honestly i think it's absurd how much i talk about friendship for someone who's posted a grand total of two friendship fics. i guess like two and a half or something. but the point is i should write more of them. i like college aus when they're written by people who understand how college works. friends with benefits when the fic doesn't include smut. anything involving kitchens obviously. the tropes i tend to write and even ones i prefer to read also change with my emotional/mental state lol like i was writing a fair amount of kinda bittersweet/angsty/ambiguous ending stuff for a few weeks this summer and i really could not tell you why i was just in that state of mind but straight fluff just felt too Much for me. now i'm into it again. it really depends.

writing asks

[benoitblanc]

hi arwen!! this is so late so it’s ok if you don’t get to it ahhah. i’m very very anxious 😃 but i have school so ig that’s a distraction? i hope you and everyone reading this are doing okay, ily 💙💙. if you’re still doing the sleepover, 🦋+📘! any book is ok, i want to get back into reading, i’ve kind of fallen out of it this year:)

MAYA!!! i’m so sorry this is so late but! hopefully you aren’t anxious anymore because WE WON! i’m going to give you a fuckton of fantasy and mystery book recs just because i can and hopefully because there’s something there that piques your fancy! so see under the cut :)

but in terms of 🦋... petronella osgood vibes :)

book recs below- i love you so much and hope you find something you like!

FANTASY:

six of crows by leigh bardugo. you may have already read these because they’re rightfully super popular, but if you haven’t, i would recommend them over everything else on this list. six teenage con artists band together to pull off an impossible heist. also, there’s magic involved

the house in the cerulean sea by tj klune. this is possibly the most wholesome and underrated book in the world. shy social worker linus baker (think non-magical aziraphale) is sent to go evaluate the residents of an orphanage for magical children. hilarity and heartwarming ensues

the night circus by erin morgenstern. some of the most beautiful prose i’ve ever read describes a competition between two young magicians set among the backdrop of an enchanted circus in victorian boston, london, and paris. what’s not to love

leviathan by scott westerfeld. in an alternate wwi where the allies rely on genetically engineered beasts and the axes on war machines (think the walkers from star wars), two teenagers are thrown together on an airship. except they’re both hiding secrets- he’s the heir to the austrian throne and she’s an underage girl masquerading as a boy in the british air force. the first one is a little slow but i PROMISE it’s worth it

MYSTERY/THRILLER:

murder on the orient express by agatha christie. you can’t beat the classics. fifteen passengers are snowbound on a train to france when they pass through a blizzard in the alps- and then one of them turns up dead. good thing there’s a famous detective on board

gone girl by gillian flynn. i remember you liking woman in the window or whatever that was called (i still haven’t read it i’m sorry!!!) so i think you’d get a kick out of this one, although it is quite mature. a woman goes missing on her anniversary, leaving everyone to wonder if her husband did it. absolutely nothing is how it seems in this book 

if we were villains by ml rio. as a theatre kid, this one holds a special place in my heart. seven college students at a performing arts conservatory are studying shakespeare when one of them turns up dead at the cast party for their latest production. the blend of traditional murder mystery, psych thriller, and dark academia in this novel is absolutely unparalleled. secret history could NEVER

the seven deaths of evelyn hardcastle by stuart turton, aka the most fiendishly plotted book known to mankind. in this sci-fi murder mystery, the detective is trapped in a time loop, reliving the day of evelyn hardcastle’s murder over and over unless he can find a way to solve it. to make things even more complicated, every day he wakes as a different guest. and he’s not alone in the loop...

[kihyunswrath]

Ah knets. I've seen them tear someone down so bad to the point of no return but they never learn. Some do but it's like their past time, digging someone's past then revealing it so they can feel better about themselves. Thing is, a lot of countries are like this but I've never seen this kind of dedication from anyone else (except UK ig)

My understanding of this is that Koreans have this strong sense of communal control that justifies people punishing each other even before actual law enforcement has anything to say about the matter. Koreans don’t trust their own law enforcement much, but seem to place their own understanding of morals, social norms and etiquette above that. That creates this “masses know best” effect, which in turn makes it possible for them to start protesting against something rather seamlessly - aka. if they think something threatens their common interests. So they’re good at defending themselves against common enemy, but their biggest threat comes from within their group, from individuals who defy the norms of the group and therefore disturb their peace and unity. It seems to be the biggest possible crime you can think of: breaking the implicitly agreed social standards and norms in a very public way. See Wonho’s example: everybody was fine with him having a “shady” past (or whatever) as long as it wasn’t ever explicitly talked about. They were totally cool with him doing a bit of this and that as a teenager, but becoming a public role model and then being exposed to the last detail, years after? Considering the reactions of Koreans it was almost like he fucking murdered someone, and it was suddenly everybody’s literal civic duty to express their utter disdain, shock, mock and disbelief, even though everything he was accused of just made me... scratch the back of my head, at most, because of how meaningless it literally was.

Like honestly just a few days ago I had a knetizen waltz into my inbox (I literally don’t know how they even found my blog and how deeply involved with uselessness they had to be to find it) and used like literally the strongest possible wording to imply that Wonho absolutely cannot come back ever “ 근데 니네 오빠 절대 못 돌아올꺼야 “ and I was like... why the hell do these Koreans have to be so dramatic over something so insignificant we might literally be talking about ass hairs at this point. But no, to them it’s a communal rule being very visibly broken and they’re now flipping tables and seat mats and bowls of bibimbap and yeah, well you get the point. 

And the stupidest thing about that whole phenomenon is that it’s not about anyone actually breaking any rules. The accusation is enough, because that alone brings up disturbance of peace. Allegations are enough of a dealbreaker, because according to this logic, conformity, unity and upholding the status quo is the only thing that truly matters. “If you had been good enough, no one would accuse you of anything anyway, right?” No smoke without fire kind of logic. Except that there might have been no smoke, either, just one one-sided confession that had questionable motives.

And I mean? I wouldn’t mind if Wonho had been accused of something... well, actually criminal. I’m ready to take the potential victim’s side if it’s about rape, murder, sexual harassment or other serious assaults, because catching the real perpetrator in that case is more important than trying to maintain an individual’s reputation. But there was just a weird controversial statement about singular weed use and then false rumors on top of that? Allegations that apparently had been waiting for six convenient years to be brought up, now that all the proof had for certain disappeared? Lord miss me with that bullshit.  

But obviously this is also about a bunch of sasaengs showing twisted and childish solidarity to their own favourite groups. Like. Obviously undereducated teenagers who have paid fuckton of money to support their own oppas and eonnis are going to literally pee their pants from happiness if a powerful group like Monsta X is removed from their way and they can continue to try to... well what ever they’re even trying to achieve. Like yeah, kpop groups are trying to beat each other in the same exact game, overpower each other in the same  music genre, trying to win the same exact prizes, find concert venues in a very limited list of suitable places... so their anti fans would love to create scandals and crises so that their own morally pure group could then shine in stead and rise over all the others. 

But I mean, that shit is going to hit their own group at some point, too, so it just proves they’re very short-sighted, instant-gratification-seeking childish twats. Also? It’s very, very Korean to think only the most, most popular groups ever even deserve to exist. Most less popular groups have a relatively steady fanbase internationally, but they are not at all visible in Korea, because Koreans only count those who can constantly break records and become number ones in literally everything. Which, yeah, stems from their general culture, where everything and everyone is ranked. Universities are ranked, students are ranked, restaurants, stores, skincare products... and it’s embarrassing to admit you’re not getting A+ scores in your every single exams you’ve ever done. It’s embarrassing to not be graduating from SKY universities. It’s embarrassing to not be the first in everything, because only number ones can ever be celebrated or praised. The entire culture is encouraging everyone to be extremely competitive and gamble through their entire lives in order to gain social currency (hence those silly little games in every variety show or fucking trying-to-decide-where-to-eat videos idols release). 

So... as a foreigner, it just feels stupid, awkward and unnecessary, because obviously the game is going to become more and more intense and serious the more players are in it and the longer it continues, which then means the smallest flaws and mistakes in the game can suddenly gain such enormous proportions. And here I am thinking I literally do not give a single fuck whether my own fav group becomes as popular as BTS because there’s only one number one but billions of competitors and it’s a waste of time, money and effort if only one position in the entire planet is enough to satisfy you. 

Then again? If knetz literally choose to make their own life paths as hard and unforgiving as possible, there’s nothing I can do about that. It’s going to hurt them the worst at some point, and I can’t say I’d necessarily run out of my way to help them when it’s their time to take in all the hits. 

[prouxvaire]

Drinking Beer & Building Shit: Donkey Shelters

First, a warning: Sad farm shit ahead. 

About this time last year, I walked out to the barn one morning and found the older of my two donkeys, Doc, laying unresponsive on the ground. He was alive, but barely. The vet lives just down the road and was able to make it out to us quickly–so I didn’t have to wait long for help and a diagnosis–but it wasn’t good news. Doc had some kind of stroke or other neurological event in the early hours of the morning. He was blind, unable to stand up, not responsive to outside stimuli, and very clearly suffering. 

I’m not a person who puts down an animal easily or lightly, but in this case, there was no question about whether or not it was the right decision. And it still really sucked. 

My only consolation is that it was the best case scenario in a shitty situation. If the stroke happened in the middle of the night and I came out to find a dead donkey in the barn in the morning, I never would have known what caused it (and then would have been in a full-on panic about whether or not he got into something toxic, or if there was some kind of electrical hazard, or all of the million other scenarios I would blame myself for.) Or if the symptoms had been less severe, I might have held on longer than I should have and he would have suffered needlessly. 

And he was, in fact, an old donkey. An old donkey who had a good life here causing trouble and escaping fences, and generally giving me a run for my money in the “who can be the grumpiest old man on the farm” contest. 

So, losing him was fucking sad. 

It was two hours of pure crisis, adrenaline, sorrow, and then, when it was over and the vet was driving away, I turned back to the barn and realized… it was not actually over. Because there was a 300lb dead donkey in the barn. In December (When the ground is typically frozen… i.e not ideal for farm burials.) 

Let me say again, for the record, how fucking sad this was. And, also, a completely different set of logistics than when, say, a beloved family pet like a dog or cat dies. 

Anyway, my mom showed up with a case of beer and we got the thing done, but, let me just say… not the most fun part of farm life. (Possibly related note: I own a set of bucket forks and have access to a backhoe tractor attachment now.) 

So, that is the very sad part of this story. 

It’s also relevant to note that at this point in time I was just maxed the fuck out on “tasks”. There was almost a whole year of life there that just felt like a neverending set of tasks that sucked the life out of me and brought me no joy or energy. (Probably worth analyzing, but not in this post.) Finding a new donkey to integrate into the farm was an endeavour fraught with tasks, when my tank was already running on empty. 

At the same time, donkeys are social animals (you can’t just have a single donkey in a pasture by itself… that’s torture.) 

So–ignoring everything else going on in the world in early 2020–even just on the farm, both Parker and I were struggling. 

Initially the way we handled this was just by opening the gates to the pasture and letting Parks hang out wherever he pleased… 

When it was Parker and Doc together, the pasture escapes invariably ended up with me chasing both of them back from down the road like a crazy person (and, on one memorable occasion, getting dragged through a field by a donkey on the run, true story) … but Parker alone just wanted to hang out and be closer to the “action”. (i.e. whatever I had going on) 

(In another life I would definitely have a pasture closer to the house and more integrated with the back yard. Donkeys like being a part of stuff.) 

But, come summer, I couldn’t ignore that Parker needed more donkey friends (and that getting him donkey friends was going to mean a lot more work for me.) 

One of my good (human) friends found a donkey rescue about an hour away, and the director of that donkey rescue convinced me to adopt 3 new bonded donkeys. 

That’s a mom (Marianne), her boyfriend (Guy), and her daughter (Zoey.) 

Parker was super excited to meet them at first. But they had been spending most of their time in a pasture with 20 other donkeys, so they were actually more excited for wide open spaces and grass, than to hang out with Parker.  

Also, Parker took a liking to Marianne, and Guy took exception to a dude hitting on his girlfriend… and I had a regular donkey love triangle on my hands. 

It became clear, quickly, that all of them could not share a pasture. Also, there was a fencing shortage in 2020 because… reasons. I guess everyone was building fences and using a lot of toilet paper in quarantine? 

I rigged up two different versions of a “fence” that the donkeys basically just laughed at and jumped over about 30 seconds after I thought I was done. (Did not know donkeys were jumpers before this… fun fact for me.) Then my mom took over with the help of my neighbor and rigged up, well, this thing… 

And I’m going to say it was 67% effective, because one third of the donkeys figured out how to do this… 

You really have to watch that thing to the end… it is astounding.

(If this post is starting to feel like an epic saga, imagine what it was like to live the thing.) 

Anyway, efficacy of the fence notwithstanding, I needed another shelter (aka run-in) for the donkeys, since they all couldn’t share space in the barn without a lot of aggression. Which meant this mess had to go… 

I built this addition/annex to the chicken run back in 2017 when my chickens were being mysteriously killed. (By, it turned out, a dog that lives down the road, and was slipping the fence when the batteries on his electric collar went out.)It looked a lot better then. 

For the most part, since the dog was secured, the chicken run (and annex) have only been used periodically. And, in the meantime, have collected a lot of weeds. So… 

Goodbye chicken run annex. 

So many “helpers” on the farm.

There’s some old barn foundation in this area so I used tapcons and the sheer force of my will to hold the posts in place for this build. Then tied it in to the existing barn “framing”. (I use that term loosely because that barn is older than all of us.) 

Still holds up though. 

The roofing I used on the chicken run was basically corrugated asphalt, which I know, sounds weird…but it’s cheap, easy to install, and good for scrappy farm structures. For these purposes I want general shelter, but nothing needs to be weatherproof obviously. 

Not going to lie, it takes a soft (and accurate) touch with a hammer to install this stuff, because if you miss the nail it’s super easy to put a hole in.)  Perhaps best installed sans beer? I wouldn’t know. 

Fun fact about corrugated asphalt roofing… I guess it’s delicious? 

I wouldn’t know, BUT THE DONKEYS WOULD. 

Generally I have no complaints about this roofing except for one thing… between the time I built the chicken run and the time I built the addition, they changed the size of their sheets from 4×6 to 3×6 (and also were straight out of the color gray this summer.) So I ended up short a panel and also now I have a multi-colored barn roof. 

Normally this shit would drive me nuts, but honestly… 2020 was exhausting. 

This run-in has one wall open to the north, and the west side was finished off with pine planks. 

While the intent was to provide shade and shelter in late summer and fall, it’s not appropriate for an all-season shelter in Michigan. 

So while that was a good weekend project last summer, I also had to do some modifications in the barn to have a split stall. 

This was the existing set-up: 

Although just for reference, this was the setup back in 2013 when I first decided to adopt donkeys: 

So, marked improvement. 

But it was not enough space for ALL the donkeys, particularly ALL the donkeys that did not get along. So. 

The back wall came out, and I created a flexible “stall” by adding a fence gate (so the barn can be one stall or two, with a second entry through an old man-door on the north side of the barn.) 

Let me just say, it required a lot of “creative” engineering… (creative = beer, just FYI.) 

So, good news, it kind of worked, in that all of this effort did manage to keep my one lonely donkey separated from the three larger donkeys who wanted to bully him. But it didn’t work in that the whole point of this endeavor was for Parker not to be One Lonely Donkey. 

Marianne, Zoe, and Guy would be incredible donkeys for anyone who either had an established herd or were just adopting those three alone (they were super friendly and great with people… also, hilarious) but, in this case, were not good friends for Parker, and also (if it wasn’t clear) a metric fuckton of work for me. 

Honestly, the thing that is obvious now (and really should have been obvious then) is that you can’t bring 3 bonded donkeys into a space with one single donkey and expect everyone to be friends. After two months with only increased aggression toward Parker I decided I couldn’t foster the 3 larger donkeys any longer, and instead sent my mom on a mission to find one other lonely male donkey that might be less aggressive and more likely to bond with Parker. 

So… 

Meet Nigel. 

Nigel and Parker spent 3 weeks in separate pastures, but are now living together on the farm like a couple of grumpy old men. (Which makes three of us.) 

And listen, dealing with donkey drama really was the least of anyone’s concerns (including mine) in 2020, but still, it was exhausting.

Anway, we got through it…

Welcome to the farm, buddy. 

from https://ift.tt/3cKFmAS

[sureyhny]

Drinking Beer & Building Shit: Donkey Shelters

First, a warning: Sad farm shit ahead. 

About this time last year, I walked out to the barn one morning and found the older of my two donkeys, Doc, laying unresponsive on the ground. He was alive, but barely. The vet lives just down the road and was able to make it out to us quickly–so I didn’t have to wait long for help and a diagnosis–but it wasn’t good news. Doc had some kind of stroke or other neurological event in the early hours of the morning. He was blind, unable to stand up, not responsive to outside stimuli, and very clearly suffering. 

I’m not a person who puts down an animal easily or lightly, but in this case, there was no question about whether or not it was the right decision. And it still really sucked. 

My only consolation is that it was the best case scenario in a shitty situation. If the stroke happened in the middle of the night and I came out to find a dead donkey in the barn in the morning, I never would have known what caused it (and then would have been in a full-on panic about whether or not he got into something toxic, or if there was some kind of electrical hazard, or all of the million other scenarios I would blame myself for.) Or if the symptoms had been less severe, I might have held on longer than I should have and he would have suffered needlessly. 

And he was, in fact, an old donkey. An old donkey who had a good life here causing trouble and escaping fences, and generally giving me a run for my money in the “who can be the grumpiest old man on the farm” contest. 

So, losing him was fucking sad. 

It was two hours of pure crisis, adrenaline, sorrow, and then, when it was over and the vet was driving away, I turned back to the barn and realized… it was not actually over. Because there was a 300lb dead donkey in the barn. In December (When the ground is typically frozen… i.e not ideal for farm burials.) 

Let me say again, for the record, how fucking sad this was. And, also, a completely different set of logistics than when, say, a beloved family pet like a dog or cat dies. 

Anyway, my mom showed up with a case of beer and we got the thing done, but, let me just say… not the most fun part of farm life. (Possibly related note: I own a set of bucket forks and have access to a backhoe tractor attachment now.) 

So, that is the very sad part of this story. 

It’s also relevant to note that at this point in time I was just maxed the fuck out on “tasks”. There was almost a whole year of life there that just felt like a neverending set of tasks that sucked the life out of me and brought me no joy or energy. (Probably worth analyzing, but not in this post.) Finding a new donkey to integrate into the farm was an endeavour fraught with tasks, when my tank was already running on empty. 

At the same time, donkeys are social animals (you can’t just have a single donkey in a pasture by itself… that’s torture.) 

So–ignoring everything else going on in the world in early 2020–even just on the farm, both Parker and I were struggling. 

Initially the way we handled this was just by opening the gates to the pasture and letting Parks hang out wherever he pleased… 

When it was Parker and Doc together, the pasture escapes invariably ended up with me chasing both of them back from down the road like a crazy person (and, on one memorable occasion, getting dragged through a field by a donkey on the run, true story) … but Parker alone just wanted to hang out and be closer to the “action”. (i.e. whatever I had going on) 

(In another life I would definitely have a pasture closer to the house and more integrated with the back yard. Donkeys like being a part of stuff.) 

But, come summer, I couldn’t ignore that Parker needed more donkey friends (and that getting him donkey friends was going to mean a lot more work for me.) 

One of my good (human) friends found a donkey rescue about an hour away, and the director of that donkey rescue convinced me to adopt 3 new bonded donkeys. 

That’s a mom (Marianne), her boyfriend (Guy), and her daughter (Zoey.) 

Parker was super excited to meet them at first. But they had been spending most of their time in a pasture with 20 other donkeys, so they were actually more excited for wide open spaces and grass, than to hang out with Parker.  

Also, Parker took a liking to Marianne, and Guy took exception to a dude hitting on his girlfriend… and I had a regular donkey love triangle on my hands. 

It became clear, quickly, that all of them could not share a pasture. Also, there was a fencing shortage in 2020 because… reasons. I guess everyone was building fences and using a lot of toilet paper in quarantine? 

I rigged up two different versions of a “fence” that the donkeys basically just laughed at and jumped over about 30 seconds after I thought I was done. (Did not know donkeys were jumpers before this… fun fact for me.) Then my mom took over with the help of my neighbor and rigged up, well, this thing… 

And I’m going to say it was 67% effective, because one third of the donkeys figured out how to do this… 

You really have to watch that thing to the end… it is astounding.

(If this post is starting to feel like an epic saga, imagine what it was like to live the thing.) 

Anyway, efficacy of the fence notwithstanding, I needed another shelter (aka run-in) for the donkeys, since they all couldn’t share space in the barn without a lot of aggression. Which meant this mess had to go… 

I built this addition/annex to the chicken run back in 2017 when my chickens were being mysteriously killed. (By, it turned out, a dog that lives down the road, and was slipping the fence when the batteries on his electric collar went out.)It looked a lot better then. 

For the most part, since the dog was secured, the chicken run (and annex) have only been used periodically. And, in the meantime, have collected a lot of weeds. So… 

Goodbye chicken run annex. 

So many “helpers” on the farm.

There’s some old barn foundation in this area so I used tapcons and the sheer force of my will to hold the posts in place for this build. Then tied it in to the existing barn “framing”. (I use that term loosely because that barn is older than all of us.) 

Still holds up though. 

The roofing I used on the chicken run was basically corrugated asphalt, which I know, sounds weird…but it’s cheap, easy to install, and good for scrappy farm structures. For these purposes I want general shelter, but nothing needs to be weatherproof obviously. 

Not going to lie, it takes a soft (and accurate) touch with a hammer to install this stuff, because if you miss the nail it’s super easy to put a hole in.)  Perhaps best installed sans beer? I wouldn’t know. 

Fun fact about corrugated asphalt roofing… I guess it’s delicious? 

I wouldn’t know, BUT THE DONKEYS WOULD. 

Generally I have no complaints about this roofing except for one thing… between the time I built the chicken run and the time I built the addition, they changed the size of their sheets from 4×6 to 3×6 (and also were straight out of the color gray this summer.) So I ended up short a panel and also now I have a multi-colored barn roof. 

Normally this shit would drive me nuts, but honestly… 2020 was exhausting. 

This run-in has one wall open to the north, and the west side was finished off with pine planks. 

While the intent was to provide shade and shelter in late summer and fall, it’s not appropriate for an all-season shelter in Michigan. 

So while that was a good weekend project last summer, I also had to do some modifications in the barn to have a split stall. 

This was the existing set-up: 

Although just for reference, this was the setup back in 2013 when I first decided to adopt donkeys: 

So, marked improvement. 

But it was not enough space for ALL the donkeys, particularly ALL the donkeys that did not get along. So. 

The back wall came out, and I created a flexible “stall” by adding a fence gate (so the barn can be one stall or two, with a second entry through an old man-door on the north side of the barn.) 

Let me just say, it required a lot of “creative” engineering… (creative = beer, just FYI.) 

So, good news, it kind of worked, in that all of this effort did manage to keep my one lonely donkey separated from the three larger donkeys who wanted to bully him. But it didn’t work in that the whole point of this endeavor was for Parker not to be One Lonely Donkey. 

Marianne, Zoe, and Guy would be incredible donkeys for anyone who either had an established herd or were just adopting those three alone (they were super friendly and great with people… also, hilarious) but, in this case, were not good friends for Parker, and also (if it wasn’t clear) a metric fuckton of work for me. 

Honestly, the thing that is obvious now (and really should have been obvious then) is that you can’t bring 3 bonded donkeys into a space with one single donkey and expect everyone to be friends. After two months with only increased aggression toward Parker I decided I couldn’t foster the 3 larger donkeys any longer, and instead sent my mom on a mission to find one other lonely male donkey that might be less aggressive and more likely to bond with Parker. 

So… 

Meet Nigel. 

Nigel and Parker spent 3 weeks in separate pastures, but are now living together on the farm like a couple of grumpy old men. (Which makes three of us.) 

And listen, dealing with donkey drama really was the least of anyone’s concerns (including mine) in 2020, but still, it was exhausting.

Anway, we got through it…

Welcome to the farm, buddy. 

from Home Improvement http://diydiva.net/2021/02/drinking-beer-building-shit-donkey-shelters/ via http://www.rssmix.com/

[andrewysanders]

Drinking Beer & Building Shit: Donkey Shelters

First, a warning: Sad farm shit ahead. 

About this time last year, I walked out to the barn one morning and found the older of my two donkeys, Doc, laying unresponsive on the ground. He was alive, but barely. The vet lives just down the road and was able to make it out to us quickly–so I didn’t have to wait long for help and a diagnosis–but it wasn’t good news. Doc had some kind of stroke or other neurological event in the early hours of the morning. He was blind, unable to stand up, not responsive to outside stimuli, and very clearly suffering. 

I’m not a person who puts down an animal easily or lightly, but in this case, there was no question about whether or not it was the right decision. And it still really sucked. 

My only consolation is that it was the best case scenario in a shitty situation. If the stroke happened in the middle of the night and I came out to find a dead donkey in the barn in the morning, I never would have known what caused it (and then would have been in a full-on panic about whether or not he got into something toxic, or if there was some kind of electrical hazard, or all of the million other scenarios I would blame myself for.) Or if the symptoms had been less severe, I might have held on longer than I should have and he would have suffered needlessly. 

And he was, in fact, an old donkey. An old donkey who had a good life here causing trouble and escaping fences, and generally giving me a run for my money in the “who can be the grumpiest old man on the farm” contest. 

So, losing him was fucking sad. 

It was two hours of pure crisis, adrenaline, sorrow, and then, when it was over and the vet was driving away, I turned back to the barn and realized… it was not actually over. Because there was a 300lb dead donkey in the barn. In December (When the ground is typically frozen… i.e not ideal for farm burials.) 

Let me say again, for the record, how fucking sad this was. And, also, a completely different set of logistics than when, say, a beloved family pet like a dog or cat dies. 

Anyway, my mom showed up with a case of beer and we got the thing done, but, let me just say… not the most fun part of farm life. (Possibly related note: I own a set of bucket forks and have access to a backhoe tractor attachment now.) 

So, that is the very sad part of this story. 

It’s also relevant to note that at this point in time I was just maxed the fuck out on “tasks”. There was almost a whole year of life there that just felt like a neverending set of tasks that sucked the life out of me and brought me no joy or energy. (Probably worth analyzing, but not in this post.) Finding a new donkey to integrate into the farm was an endeavour fraught with tasks, when my tank was already running on empty. 

At the same time, donkeys are social animals (you can’t just have a single donkey in a pasture by itself… that’s torture.) 

So–ignoring everything else going on in the world in early 2020–even just on the farm, both Parker and I were struggling. 

Initially the way we handled this was just by opening the gates to the pasture and letting Parks hang out wherever he pleased… 

When it was Parker and Doc together, the pasture escapes invariably ended up with me chasing both of them back from down the road like a crazy person (and, on one memorable occasion, getting dragged through a field by a donkey on the run, true story) … but Parker alone just wanted to hang out and be closer to the “action”. (i.e. whatever I had going on) 

(In another life I would definitely have a pasture closer to the house and more integrated with the back yard. Donkeys like being a part of stuff.) 

But, come summer, I couldn’t ignore that Parker needed more donkey friends (and that getting him donkey friends was going to mean a lot more work for me.) 

One of my good (human) friends found a donkey rescue about an hour away, and the director of that donkey rescue convinced me to adopt 3 new bonded donkeys. 

That’s a mom (Marianne), her boyfriend (Guy), and her daughter (Zoey.) 

Parker was super excited to meet them at first. But they had been spending most of their time in a pasture with 20 other donkeys, so they were actually more excited for wide open spaces and grass, than to hang out with Parker.  

Also, Parker took a liking to Marianne, and Guy took exception to a dude hitting on his girlfriend… and I had a regular donkey love triangle on my hands. 

It became clear, quickly, that all of them could not share a pasture. Also, there was a fencing shortage in 2020 because… reasons. I guess everyone was building fences and using a lot of toilet paper in quarantine? 

I rigged up two different versions of a “fence” that the donkeys basically just laughed at and jumped over about 30 seconds after I thought I was done. (Did not know donkeys were jumpers before this… fun fact for me.) Then my mom took over with the help of my neighbor and rigged up, well, this thing… 

And I’m going to say it was 67% effective, because one third of the donkeys figured out how to do this… 

You really have to watch that thing to the end… it is astounding.

(If this post is starting to feel like an epic saga, imagine what it was like to live the thing.) 

Anyway, efficacy of the fence notwithstanding, I needed another shelter (aka run-in) for the donkeys, since they all couldn’t share space in the barn without a lot of aggression. Which meant this mess had to go… 

I built this addition/annex to the chicken run back in 2017 when my chickens were being mysteriously killed. (By, it turned out, a dog that lives down the road, and was slipping the fence when the batteries on his electric collar went out.)It looked a lot better then. 

For the most part, since the dog was secured, the chicken run (and annex) have only been used periodically. And, in the meantime, have collected a lot of weeds. So… 

Goodbye chicken run annex. 

So many “helpers” on the farm.

There’s some old barn foundation in this area so I used tapcons and the sheer force of my will to hold the posts in place for this build. Then tied it in to the existing barn “framing”. (I use that term loosely because that barn is older than all of us.) 

Still holds up though. 

The roofing I used on the chicken run was basically corrugated asphalt, which I know, sounds weird…but it’s cheap, easy to install, and good for scrappy farm structures. For these purposes I want general shelter, but nothing needs to be weatherproof obviously. 

Not going to lie, it takes a soft (and accurate) touch with a hammer to install this stuff, because if you miss the nail it’s super easy to put a hole in.)  Perhaps best installed sans beer? I wouldn’t know. 

Fun fact about corrugated asphalt roofing… I guess it’s delicious? 

I wouldn’t know, BUT THE DONKEYS WOULD. 

Generally I have no complaints about this roofing except for one thing… between the time I built the chicken run and the time I built the addition, they changed the size of their sheets from 4×6 to 3×6 (and also were straight out of the color gray this summer.) So I ended up short a panel and also now I have a multi-colored barn roof. 

Normally this shit would drive me nuts, but honestly… 2020 was exhausting. 

This run-in has one wall open to the north, and the west side was finished off with pine planks. 

While the intent was to provide shade and shelter in late summer and fall, it’s not appropriate for an all-season shelter in Michigan. 

So while that was a good weekend project last summer, I also had to do some modifications in the barn to have a split stall. 

This was the existing set-up: 

Although just for reference, this was the setup back in 2013 when I first decided to adopt donkeys: 

So, marked improvement. 

But it was not enough space for ALL the donkeys, particularly ALL the donkeys that did not get along. So. 

The back wall came out, and I created a flexible “stall” by adding a fence gate (so the barn can be one stall or two, with a second entry through an old man-door on the north side of the barn.) 

Let me just say, it required a lot of “creative” engineering… (creative = beer, just FYI.) 

So, good news, it kind of worked, in that all of this effort did manage to keep my one lonely donkey separated from the three larger donkeys who wanted to bully him. But it didn’t work in that the whole point of this endeavor was for Parker not to be One Lonely Donkey. 

Marianne, Zoe, and Guy would be incredible donkeys for anyone who either had an established herd or were just adopting those three alone (they were super friendly and great with people… also, hilarious) but, in this case, were not good friends for Parker, and also (if it wasn’t clear) a metric fuckton of work for me. 

Honestly, the thing that is obvious now (and really should have been obvious then) is that you can’t bring 3 bonded donkeys into a space with one single donkey and expect everyone to be friends. After two months with only increased aggression toward Parker I decided I couldn’t foster the 3 larger donkeys any longer, and instead sent my mom on a mission to find one other lonely male donkey that might be less aggressive and more likely to bond with Parker. 

So… 

Meet Nigel. 

Nigel and Parker spent 3 weeks in separate pastures, but are now living together on the farm like a couple of grumpy old men. (Which makes three of us.) 

And listen, dealing with donkey drama really was the least of anyone’s concerns (including mine) in 2020, but still, it was exhausting.

Anway, we got through it…

Welcome to the farm, buddy. 

from Home http://diydiva.net/2021/02/drinking-beer-building-shit-donkey-shelters/ via http://www.rssmix.com/

[newl0ndonfire]

@heyyoucoolemo

this kinda ran away from me sorry :( but this is why you tell people you don’t want to hang out with them soon after you meet, aka the story of my stalker who i pretended i was a lesbian to avoid.

since sixth grade, i have walked to and from school. it takes about five minutes to walk to my old middle school and it’s about 12 minutes to get to my high school, and i left my house for school super early (7:30 even tho school starts at 8) until sophomore year. in seventh grade, i hung out with these kids who i vaguely knew from the year before (since i went to a small private school for elementary school) who got to school early and hung out by the gym, which is on the side i came from when i walked to school.

it was chill for a while since most of us were in seventh grade, but there were a few sixth graders. one of the sixth graders was a boy named kyle. i didn’t know him, so i didn’t end up in any conversations with him for like a week and a half. in that time, i was able to overhear what he talked about and stuff he liked to see if i would want to be friends with him, and by the end of that time i found that i didn’t want to be friends with him. two weeks after school started, he tried to introduce himself and since i didn’t want to be friends with him, i just turned to him and said “don’t talk to me until you’ve seen the adventurous adventures of one direction” (i was in my 1d phase since their music was the only stuff i could hear on the radio and know the artist for)

i thought that would keep kyle away from me, but holy fuck was i wrong. i left for school late the next day so we weren’t able to talk (thank god). but the day after that, i left at my usual time. oooohhhhhh boy. this kid would not stop talking to me until i told him i had to go to my first class. he kept quoting the same parts of aaood (adventurous adventures of one direction) and aaood 2 (the sequel) whenever he saw me and tried to have full conversations about them. he spent a whole morning before school (20ish minutes) telling me how the cereal he created in home ec was based on the tac-os (taco flavored cereal) from aaood. none of the other people in that group knew what the heck we were talking about, so there was no one else to cut into the conversation. and since i was not aware i was being abused until freshman year, i was incapable of telling people “no” or “leave me alone”, so i never told him to hang out with kids in his grade who he could more easily relate to.

he continued to be a human gnat to me for the rest of the school year. i hoped summer would make him forget/move on from me, but alas i was wrong.

i stopped hanging out with the people i talked to in the mornings last school year (whom he hung out with as well) because we didn’t have any classes together and started leaving my house a little bit later in the mornings. that didn’t shake him. we sometimes saw each other during passing period, but i pretended to not see him and talked to people who were in one of my other classes during the time instead. that didn’t stop kyle either. i sat at the same table for lunch because why not but had a different group of people i ate with. at my middle school, there were two lunch periods and sixth graders had the first one, eighth graders had the latter one, and seventh grade was split. since kyle was a seventh grader, i didn’t know if he would have the first or second lunch. he was a floater (knew a lot of people and could basically strike up a conversation with any group of kids, but not in any one group. the popular kids in my grader liked him) so he didn’t sit and stay at one table for lunch. one day, he spotted me and headed over to talk to me. for the rest of the year, he visited me at least twice a week to talk about aaood and lament his love life (he claimed that as a seventh grader, he had already fallen in love 18 times with 18 different girls) while asking me for dating advice. the 18th girl he had supposedly fallen in love with was someone i kinda knew because i walked home with her and she was hella uncomfortable with him. he knew i hung out with her, and tried to get me to open up about her, i didn’t because i knew how annoying he was and how much said girl didn’t like him. when his heart was “crushed”, he came to me for a metaphorical shoulder to cry on.

in addition to the above shit, he followed me as much as he could after school. my last classroom was across the school from the gate (we had a closed campus) that i went through to go home. my path to go home was the one that took the least amount of time and forced me to be around the least number of people (aka i didn’t have to walk through a park and past an elementary school), which was ideal for me since i can’t deal with the kids my age in my town on most days (”a jewish country” “naturally tan AND blonde”). kyle’s last class was in the middle of my classroom and the gate. he would wait for me to start walking home, then talk about aaood/his love life/whatever the fuck he was telling me about during lunch from wherever he intercepted my walk home all the way across the track (the long way). my last teacher of the day loved me (i didn’t talk in class, it was a laptop class and i didn’t mess around on the internet during class, she was a sherlockian and so was i, i was friends with the nerds/could get them to share their tech skills/speak up in class/quiet down, y’know, the normal reasons a teacher loves a student), so she was mostly okay with talking to me for five or ten minutes after school about stuff and me leaving the classroom right after packing up my stuff. i did that so i either left early enough for kyle to still be in class (some teachers are serious sticklers for the bell) or late enough that he headed home. on the days that didn’t work, i slowed my walk if he was ahead of me or ran ahead claiming to see a friend if i heard him close behind. that didn’t keep him away either. i just accepted that kyle wouldn’t leave me alone while we were in the same school, and looked forward to being a freshman because he would be an eighth grader.

the summer passed. my freshman year came and went. i was emo by that christmas. at the end of the summer before my sophomore year, i dyed my hair bright-ass red, as in danger days gerard red (apparently my hair bleaches well but it needs a fuckton of bleach [20oz the first time]). i dressed differently. i had a new backpack and new friends. i never gave kyle my phone number, email, Facebook, or anything else. i had mostly forgotten about him.

my sophomore year started, and i didn’t think anything would happen. in the second week of school, i was walking to my english class (which was after brunch [10-10:10]) with one of my friends. i saw kyle out of the corner of my eye and didn’t expect him to talk to me since i was so different he looked at me before going to his next class. the next day, i was heading over to my english class while talking to another friend and he came up to me and said i looked familiar. i gave him a strange face and a small, awkward laugh since i never really wanted to talk to him. a week later, he came up to my friends and i during brunch or lunch (i don’t remember which) and talked to me the whole time. kyle said he had missed me all of last year because we went to different schools and wanted to reconnect. internally, i was all “well fuck” and “please leave” but externally i was all “well i’m basically a new person idk if we can.....” but i guess i didn’t give off my internal vibes enough.

kyle kept coming up to me during brunch and started a conversation with me as soon as he could, even if i was talking to one of my friends. one day he tried to get me to listen to some song of his on sound cloud, but thank god the school’s wifi is shit. another day he asked me how i would feel if someone wrote a love song about/to me. by then i knew i was aroace so i was like “ummmmm no thank you lol”. my friends were telling me i didn’t have to hang out with him if i didn’t want to, which i knew but couldn’t say and risk having kyle be upset (thanks @ my abusive family). kyle and i didn’t have anything in common (i had thankfully left my 1d phase behind) but HE started to change. idk if it was because the freshmen he hung out with had the whole teenage angst thing going on or if he wanted to connect with me, but he started becoming low-key emo and asking for good teenage angst songs and bands. one day, i was starting to walk home and he saw me. he was going on about how the music he was listening to was such a change for what he had listened to before and how it kinda scared him because it was metal, but it helped with his angst. he tried to get me to listen to this black metal band he had found, but luckily we had to go in different directions to go home so i just told him to tell me the band’s name. it was black veil brides, and the album he was listening to was their most recent one at the time (i just looked it up; it was their 2014 self titled one). we left and i was # shook. black veil brides is not and has never been black metal. i listen to black metal and had listened to black veil brides before. why the fuck did he think they were metal? the album he was listening to is rock (according to the iTunes store) what the actual fuck. i tried to get him to listen to mcr (if you’re gonna have teenage angst, you gotta do it right) but he went off on them because “they were too scary and supported bad things” and it felt like he was calling people who self harm(ed) and were/are suicidal idiots who didn’t deserve to life. needless to say, i was rubbed the wrong way and ready to get this kid off my back. i didn’t know if he wanted to just be friends or something more, but i wanted to at LEAST obliterate any idea he had of being more than friends.

i brought this up to my parents as half joke, half “what should i do please give me advice”. my mom suggested to pretend to be a lesbian, and i was like “fuck it i want him GONE from my life”, so i asked my friend eve (who identified as bi at the time) to send me her favorite/hottest pictures of band member’s wives. she sent me a couple of lynz, someone i didn’t know, and megan camper(? idk but pete wentz’s SO) at eight months pregnant and in her underwear (she’s a model i believe). i was ready to bulldoze any and all dreams of kyle and/or his friend. he spotted me as i was walking home and i cut him off and said “holy shit man. i just seriously fucking love girls, full homo” and he asked “oh you’re a lesbian?” in a “i didn’t know that about you” way, not a homophobic way, and i enthusiastically told him “yeah. i just found some gorgeous photos of women, here, let me show you....” and he said “ oh yes PLEASE do. i’ve seen naked women before so i’ll know if they’re hot or not”.

what the fuck. what the actual fuck kyle. i’m a girl (or at least identified as one then lmao fuck gender). i have pe. I HAVE SEEN BOOBIES IN THE REAL WORLD BEFORE. in what universe would you, someone who was not dfab, POSSIBLY have a better grasp of what makes a women attractive to women than me, someone who was dfab.

anyways, he called lynz ugly (”she has wrinkles” she has LIVED kyle) and i didn’t punch him but i totally fucking should have for that.

later in the year, i was done with talking to him during brunch because he was just a pain in the motherfucking ass, so around march i finally told him "hey dude. this is going to be awkward and i’m telling you that now, but i never really wanted to be friends. i’m glad you like the adventurous adventures of one direction, but i told you to watch it because i didn’t want to talk to you”. he took it well, and we haven’t talked/acknowledged each other since.