#also having to eat Specific Foods and eating those based on a timer to take meds has been making me feel. guilty ?

[the-meme-monarch]

cons of getting my wisdom teeth removed: -the healing time is miserable ! it's like 2-3 weeks and I'm not even through the first one ! -it doesn't feel safe to eat the foods I'm supposed to be able to, like pasta or chunks of watermelon so i have gotten rather Tired of eating scrambled eggs, mashed potatoes, and applesauce. at least I have avocados that'll be ready to eat soon. -i can't sleep how I want bc my head has to stay Elevated so too much blood doesn't run to my head and therefore the extraction sites. this was more of a problem the first couple days when I was still biting gauze but I'm scared it'll start bleeding again so I'm not taking chances -speaking of i am so fucking scared of getting dry socket -the amoxicillin. smells? i didn't notice this when I started taking it but now it's immediately as I open the bottle

pros: -i don't have a cavity anymore

cons: when it was just the cavity I had to chew with one side of my mouth, now I kinda just can't chew at all bc they took all four wisdom teeth so there's extraction sites on both sides. my wisdom teeth were otherwise not bothering me and probably wouldn't have been needed to be taken out if not for the one cavity

pros: I have so much Treats set aside for Myself for when i can safely eat solid food again

[jennydorseyconsulting]

Does Electric Rice Cooker Cause Cancer

Hi everyone, I'm here today to talk about an important topic - does electric rice cooker cause cancer? We know that there's a lot of information out there on this subject, so it can be hard to know what is true and what isn't. In this article, we'll take a look at the research and see if electric rice cookers really put us at risk for developing cancer. We'll also explore how other factors like diet or lifestyle might play into the equation. With all of the questions surrounding electric rice cookers and their potential link to cancer, it's good to have more knowledge on hand before making any decisions. So let’s dive in and learn more!

Evidence Linking Electric Rice Cookers To Cancer

I've been wondering if electric rice cookers can cause cancer. After doing some research, I'm still not sure. We know that microwave cooking has the potential to damage food and decrease its nutritional value due to radiation exposure. And when it comes to storing cooked food in a container made of plastic or aluminum, there's always the risk of leaching chemicals into your meal. But is this enough evidence to link electric rice cookers with any kind of cancer? It's hard to say for certain, as studies on this topic are few and far between. While there have been reports linking high-frequency electromagnetic fields from microwaves to an increased risk of cancer, these studies were conducted over short periods of time and had limited sample sizes -- so we need more information before drawing any conclusions about electric rice cookers specifically. In addition, microwaved foods contain free radicals which may be harmful to our bodies in the long run, but again, no concrete links exist yet. At this point it seems premature to definitively state whether electric rice cookers increase one’s risk of developing cancer or other serious illnesses; further study is needed before making such a claim. That being said, careful consideration should be taken when deciding what type of cooking method is safest for you and your family.

Different Types Of Electric Rice Cookers

The research into electric rice cookers and their potential to cause cancer is ongoing. However, that doesn't mean you should be scared of using them in your kitchen! There are plenty of safe cooking options available with electric rice cookers. When shopping for an electric rice cooker, look out for safety features like detachable cords, cool touch handles and lids, non-stick surfaces, timers, automatic shutoffs and temperature controls. These help make sure that the cooked food stays at a safe temperature while ensuring nutrition isn't lost during the cooking process. Additionally, opt for one with multiple cook settings so you can choose different nutrition choices based on what kind of meal you're making. Electric Rice Cookers provide convenience when it comes to getting dinner on the table quickly but they also offer versatility when it comes to choosing healthy meals. With the right model, you'll have no problem finding an option that helps maintain flavor as well as nutritional value in every dish you prepare.

The Impact Of Diet On Cancer Risk

I've always been interested in nutrition and its role in health. I recently started looking into the impact of diet on cancer risk, since it's a topic that affects us all. It turns out there are several factors to consider when evaluating what we eat – particularly organic foods versus processed foods. Organic foods are those that are grown without pesticides or other chemicals, while processed food has usually gone through some form of industrial processing before reaching our tables. Studies suggest that diets high in organic fruits and vegetables may help reduce cancer risk due to their higher levels of antioxidants and lower exposure to potential carcinogens. On the other hand, eating too many highly-processed meats such as bacon can increase your risk for certain types of cancers because they contain carcinogens like nitrites and nitrates. It's important to remember that no single food is going to determine whether you get cancer or not; instead it’s about finding balance between healthy habits over time. Eating an overall balanced diet with plenty of fresh produce along with moderate amounts of lean proteins should be part of any cancer prevention plan. Making sure to stay active, maintaining a healthy weight, avoiding smoking, and limiting alcohol consumption also play key roles in reducing the risk of developing certain types of cancers.

The Role Of Lifestyle In Cancer Risk

I'm really interested to learn more about the role of lifestyle in cancer risk. Diet, exercise and smoking are all lifestyle factors that can influence our risk of developing cancer. Eating a balanced diet and getting regular exercise can help reduce our cancer risk. On the other hand, smoking has been linked to an increased risk of many types of cancer. I'm keen to learn more about how our lifestyle choices can impact our health and well-being. Does anyone have any thoughts on the role of electric rice cookers in cancer risk? Diet I'm sure many of us have heard the old adage, 'You are what you eat.' It's true that our diet plays a major role in determining our health and well-being. In regards to cancer risk, food choices can be particularly important. A plant based diet with healthy foods such as fruits and vegetables is often recommended for reducing your chances of developing cancer. Consuming processed or fried foods more than occasionally has been linked to an increased risk for certain types of cancers. So it's best to stick with fresh, whole ingredients whenever possible! Ultimately, making conscious decisions about what we put into our bodies can help us stay healthier and reduce the chance of illness like cancer down the road. Exercise Exercise is another important factor when considering cancer risk. It's no secret that staying active and getting regular exercise can help reduce your odds of developing certain types of cancers, as well as other serious illnesses. And if you're tracking your fitness levels with devices like smart watches or apps, you'll be able to stay on top of your health goals even more easily! Plus, research has found that getting enough sleep each night is also beneficial in reducing the chances of developing cancer; so it's important to practice good sleep hygiene habits too. All in all, making sure we keep our bodies moving and get adequate rest are both essential for maintaining a healthy lifestyle and reducing the risk of many diseases - including cancer. Smoking When it comes to lifestyle and cancer risk, smoking is a huge factor. Not only can the chemicals directly found in cigarettes cause damage to our bodies, but they also increase our exposure to other toxic substances that may be in the environment. This means that even those who don't smoke themselves could still be at risk if exposed to secondhand smoke or environmental pollutants due to someone else's habit. It's clear that avoiding cigarette smoke and limiting chemical exposure wherever possible is an important step towards reducing your chances of developing certain types of cancers. And while there are laws in place aimed at protecting people from secondhand smoke, everyone should do their part by being mindful about where and when they light up. Ultimately, it's best for us as individuals – and society as a whole – if we all take steps towards living healthier lifestyles which include not smoking or engaging in activities that expose us to dangerous chemicals. We owe it to ourselves and future generations!

Alternatives To Electric Rice Cookers

Now that we've looked at the role of lifestyle in cancer risk, it's time to consider some alternatives to electric rice cookers. Solar cookers are an excellent option for those looking for a safer way to prepare food. These devices make use of sunlight rather than electricity or gas to heat up meals. Not only is this method healthier and more sustainable, but it can also save energy costs over time. Pressure cookers are another great alternative to traditional electric rice cookers as they require significantly less cooking times while still retaining all the flavor and nutrients in your meal. Moreover, pressure cooking preserves vitamins and minerals much better than other methods do. In addition to being fast and efficient, solar cookers and pressure cookers boast a number of health benefits compared with conventional electric rice cookers. For instance, both these methods reduce nutrient losses due to overcooking or boiling away essential flavors and aromas from ingredients that would otherwise be lost when using typical electric appliances. Furthermore, by eliminating contact between hot surfaces such as stove tops and pans with food items, you lessen any potential risks associated with carcinogens produced through high-heat cooking techniques like searing or deep frying. Given its ease of use, low cost of operation, convenience and above all its various health benefits, switching out your old electric rice cooker for either a solar cooker or pressure cooker may prove beneficial in protecting yourself against lifestyle-related cancers down the road.

Frequently Asked Questions

What Are The Long-Term Health Implications Of Using Electric Rice Cookers? Using an electric rice cooker is generally considered safe, but there are some potential long-term health implications to consider. Exposure to microwave radiation from the device may increase the risk of developing cancer over time. Additionally, chemicals can leach into food when heated in plastic containers, which can lead to serious health issues like organ damage or birth defects if consumed regularly. While it's important to be aware of any possible risks associated with using an electric rice cooker, overall they remain a convenient and popular way to cook meals quickly and easily. Are Electric Rice Cookers Safer To Use Than Other Types Of Cooking Appliances? When it comes to cooking times and energy consumption, electric rice cookers are definitely safer than other types of cooking appliances. They require less time to prepare food and consume very little electricity compared to traditional methods like ovens or stovetops. Plus, they're much easier to clean up afterwards as there's no need for additional utensils or pans. All in all, electric rice cookers make a great choice when you want a quick meal without having to worry about safety risks. Is It Possible To Reduce The Risk Of Cancer By Using An Electric Rice Cooker? Using an electric rice cooker can reduce the risk of cancer, particularly if it has a non-stick coating. This is because these cookers are able to maintain accurate cooking temperatures, which helps keep potentially harmful toxins from forming and being released into the air or food. Furthermore, they also allow you to avoid using too much oil while cooking, which reduces your exposure to carcinogens produced when fats are heated at high temperatures. What Is The Most Effective Way To Reduce The Risk Of Cancer When Using An Electric Rice Cooker? When it comes to reducing the risk of cancer when using an electric rice cooker, there are a few things you can do. First and foremost, it's important to select your rice wisely; choose whole-grain varieties whenever possible as they contain more beneficial nutrients than white or processed rices. Additionally, utilizing different cooking techniques can help reduce potential carcinogens that may form in cooked grains. For example, consider soaking your rice for 30 minutes before cooking it or steaming rather than boiling. By taking these simple steps, you can ensure that the electric rice cooker is not contributing to any increased risk of developing cancer. Are There Any Particular Safety Precautions To Take When Using Electric Rice Cookers? When it comes to safety when using electric rice cookers, there are a few precautions you can take. Firstly, always check the cooking temperatures of your food as instructed by the manufacturer's instructions. Secondly, meal planning is key; make sure to plan out and prepare meals ahead of time so that they don't get overcooked. Finally, be mindful of any extra ingredients that may not have been previously cooked before being added to the cooker. Taking these steps will help ensure safe and healthy cooking with an electric rice cooker.

Conclusion

I think it's safe to say that electric rice cookers can be used safely, but there are a few precautions to take in order to reduce the risk of cancer. Firstly, make sure you clean your cooker regularly and follow the manufacturer's instructions for use; this will help reduce any potential health risks associated with using an electric rice cooker. Additionally, try to limit how often you use your cooker and opt for healthier cooking methods such as steaming when possible. By taking these steps, we can all enjoy delicious meals without having to worry about our long-term health implications. Read the full article

[demonslayedher]

How Does Eating Humans Work?

Hello, Gotou here. We’re shamelessly borrowing from the format of a KnY Fanbook #2 comic to launch an investigation into demon metabolism and development by crossing the Sanzu River again to interview demons in the underworld. While we’ll be using canon materials as a base, the analysis and conjecture herein is personal, so we ask for your understanding. Also, please note that consuming any food in the underworld will make you unable to return, and we cannot promise your safety even though the interview subjects are dead, so please come along at your own risk.

Some of the questions we’d like to answer are, why do demons need to eat humans? How much do they need to eat to survive? Are there factors that influence how eating humans makes them stronger? If they don’t want to kill humans, what are their other options? We’ve rounded up some special guests below the cut (hidden for length and grossness), everyone from the lowly Temple Demon to the lovely Tamayo, to see what their actions in canon might tell us.

First, a review of what canon tells us, mostly as summarized in Fanbook #2: 1. With one exception named Yushirou, all demons were created by Kibutsuji Muzan, for his own purposes. They all have some amount of his blood, and can be divided into four classes depending on how powerful they are. From top to bottom, the Upper Moons, the Lower Moons, demons with special abilities, and other demons without any special characteristics. 2. Demons may be stronger depending on how much of Kibutsuji Muzan’s blood they have. Most beings’ cannot handle a large amount of his blood, and it will rupture the cells and that being will die, but there are demons who adapt well to it. 3. Typically, sunlight is the only way to kill a demon, by either bathing them in sunlight or cutting of their head with a Nichirin blade. However, there are powerful demons for whom chopping off their head does not work, and if it’s strong enough, demons can also be killed by wisteria poison.

4. Demons eat human blood and flesh. The more they eat, the stronger they become, and the faster their regenerative abilities become. Some humans have “Marechi,” a rare blood type, which is especially nutritious to demons, and eating one Marechi is the equivalent of eating several humans.

That’s an interesting thing we’d like to come back to, especially since we’re looking for quantitative information about how demons gain nutrition (though I have my doubts we'll get enough for statistical analysis). As an interesting note, Fanbook #2 also tells us that if demons try to consume the same edibles humans do, they’ll vomit it back up.

I’m told that Miss Tamayo drinks tea, though. That’ll be an interesting question for later. In my notes, it seems she’s also explained to Tanjirou back in Chapter 15 that demons will normally go berserk if they go a long time without consuming any blood or flesh. Berserk is one thing, but I wonder if they can starve to death? We’ll see if these canon clues will lead us to anything. We’ll begin now in an interview format. Hopefully this will go smoothly, but I’ve got a feeling it won’t. First up, we’ve the Temple Demon.

Temple: Who were you calling ‘lowly’ just now? Up there, above the cut?

Gotou: That was in a literal sense, not having Blood Techniques means you’re in the bottom common tier of demons.

Temple: Argh. Fine. What do you want to know?

Gotou: In Chapter 2, you were spotted with three human victims. However, it seems you left their bodies mostly intact and only ate small parts instead of consuming one full human at a time. Could you comment on this?

Temple: I’d have gotten to more later if that whelp with the strong legs didn’t interrupt me! Who’s got time to eat entire humans anyway? I went for the easy stuff first.

Gotou: I see. It appears you might had focused on key organs, like the heart and the liver. Would you say these are especially nutritionally dense?

Temple: I guess. If I’m going to eat humans, I’m going to start with what’s worth bothering to digest. Blood’s easier on the stomach, so that’s what I was busy with on the lady there.

Gotou: Then it takes effort to digest? Hmm. Let’s come back to this later. How many humans would you say you consumed, including these three?

Temple: Not a lot… I tried to get a variety so I could get stronger faster, but…

Gotou: I’ll put down a guess as ten or less. Let’s move on to someone who has a sharper memory for numbers. One of our longer-lived guests at Mt. Fujikasane for 47 years, the Hand Demon. While most of the demons on the mountain had only eaten two or three humans, you’ve eaten a whole 50 of the children who headed into the Final Selection, didn’t you?

Hand: Yes, that’s right. It was hard at first since I wasn’t very strong, and the demons usually all went crazy there eating each other, just like that one brat who got away in Chapter 7 said. If you could manage to kill any of the kids, you had the other demons to fight off to even get a piece to yourself. That was enough to get me by, and stronger, little by little. Your body learns to make your meals last, and make the most of what you can get. I usually only had a bite of one child a year, can you imagine how horrible that was? Most demons who survive usually figure out some way to develop and survive better, and once my cells found something that worked for me, I kept doing it. I got really good at snatching away prey from other demons, and soon enough I was a bigger threat than any of them. None of them could, you might say, lay a hand on me.

Gotou: That’s an interesting point about self-development. A demon named Nezuko was spent two years doing that in her sleep.

Hand: She must have had a big meal before that!

Gotou: Well, anyway. It seems that in near starving conditions, your metabolism made the most of what you had, leading to the most efficient use of whatever food was available to you.

Hand: That’s right, I got really good at it. Wasn’t always pretty, but I made it work. I got to a point where I could go two years without eating and still keep my wits about me while the other demons were going mad. But I chose to eat. I liked to keep my appetite for specific children.

Gotou: That smile is not reassuring. Some humans taste better than others, I guess?

Hand: That’s for sure. This one kid tasted awful, like rust and man sweat! I still don’t have that disgusting taste out of my mouth! But he was one of my more satisfying meals, so I ate more of him.

Gotou: Then why would you… nevermind, I don’t like that smile, no further questions. While I had hoped to keep these interviews focused on quantities of humans consumed, it does seem personal taste is worth asking about. I had tried to invite a Swamp Demon from Chapter 11, but it kept arguing with itself and it felt like I’d be wasting my time. The one definite thing I learned was that this demon is picky, with a distinct preference for 16-year-old girls. Based on the number of trinkets he kept, it seems he had consumed at least seventeen of them, including several in one town. Sheesh, that’s sort of a rough mission to send a first-timer on. I’ve got a more cooperative guest here to discuss her tastes, a Snake Demon who, according to Chapter 188, has a special taste for baby flesh.

Snake: Thank you for having me here. It’s good to be appreciated again.

Gotou: Did you only eat babies?

Snake: Goodness, no. Babies are delicious, but they aren’t very nutritious. And their skulls certainly aren’t that big, the ones I lounged around with were from the people whom I killed and stole from. But you know the nice thing about baby skulls? They’re still soft. They take a long time to digest, but I can swallow them whole.

Gotou: Like… like a snake, then. Sorry, I’m a little ill hearing that. Let’s back up, were all those skulls the remains of adults you ate, then?

Snake: Meh, I ate some of them of better-looking ones, but most of them I only killed. I could usually kill a lot more at a time than I could bother eating, my killing record was fifty women all at once.

Gotou: And you didn’t find that wasteful?

Snake: Wasteful? Not at all. I wasn’t exactly in dire straits, I lived a more luxurious life than most demons do. That meant I could afford to wait for a truly delicious meal, like how you humans might leave something in a slow-cooker to enjoy the perfect combination of doneness and tenderness, plated in the most appetizing of ways.

Gotou: I guess demons and humans are similar in that regard.

Snake: I’m so glad you can relate! Then you understand the frustration of a meal you’ve be preparing for years opening up the slow-cooker and running away right when they were just about done.

Gotou: I have never had that experience.

Snake: I’ll get you, my pretty. And your little snake, too.

Gotou: I think we might have gotten a little off-topic here. It does seem digesting humans comes with some difficulty. I’d like to invite the Drum Demon in next. Your name is Kyougai, I hear?

Kyougai: !!

Gotou: Kyogai, right?

Kyougai: You’ve heard of me! You know my name!

Gotou: I happened to, yes.

Kyougai: What have you heard???

Gotou: That you were kicked out of the Lower Moons for being unable to consume enough humans.

Kyougai: Oh. ……..yeah, that’s me.

Gotou: I thought demons go berserk if they go a long time without consuming humans. Wouldn’t that make an inability to consume them problematic?

Kyougai: It wasn’t that I couldn’t eat them! Like I said in Chapter 24, I had to in order to sustain myself, just like any other demon. But, at some point, I couldn’t eat as much as I used to. That happens to humans too, doesn’t it? When you just can’t stomach anymore?

Gotou: You mean like when you’ve overeaten? In a human’s case that feeling may go away within a few hours.

Kyougai: Sort of like that, but you know, humans reach a time when nothing is appetizing or the thought of eating makes them feel sick, right? Isn’t that the human condition?

Gotou: …uh… maybe if they have a medical condition? Or anxiety? Do demons get anxiety? Or eating disorders?

Kyougai: I… I don’t know. I just wasn’t good enough.

Gotou: I think it’s plenty good if you stopped eating humans. Though to have developed Blood Techniques and been a Lower Moon in the first place, you must had eaten a great number of them.

Kyougai: You think I’m great?

Gotou: What?

Kyougai: No, sorry, I was getting ahead of myself. It’s true, I used to be able to eat as many as the other Lower Moons always consumed. Our stomachs were stronger, you might say. Demons got strong by eating humans, and then the more you did that the better you usually got at it, so the strong ones would eat more and more and keep getting stronger and stronger. At least, that’s how it usually worked. I’ve seen other demons below me reached that point too, where they feel the drive to eat, but then they have trouble digesting it for a long time, so they don’t wind up eating that many people.

Gotou: Then it would make sense to eat the most nutritionally dense parts first.

Kyougai: Or a Marechi.

Gotou: Yes, or a Marechi.

Kyougai: It was a great idea, wasn’t it?

Gotou: I cannot condone any consumption of humans as a good idea.

Kyougai: I knew it. I’m nothing. Go ahead, stomp all over everything I ever tried to accomplish.

Gotou: I think I’m going to move on to my next interviewee now. It looks like we’ve got… oh, would you look at this? Lower Moon One. Enmu, I believe.

Enmu: You can believe whatever you want. I’m happy to help.

Gotou: I don’t need any help, thanks. I’m curious, since you were one of the stronger demons out there, it seems you had a stronger capacity for consuming humans.

Enmu: I did, I was always careful and paced myself so the Demon Slayers wouldn’t notice me. I took my time. I liked to enjoy e-e-e-a-c-h one.

Gotou: Then you had tastes too? Like babies, or 16-year-old girls?

Enmu: I could season any human to my liking. They’re all very easy to prepare.

Gotou: I’m still trying to get quantitative data. Can you tell me at least a rough estimate of how many humans you consumed?

Enmu: I told this more precisely to that boy with the earrings back in Chapter 59, and I can tell you this too. At my best, I could had eaten over two-hundred people at once if I took my time.

Gotou: OH MY GAW----sorry, I dropped my pen. Two hundred, at once?

Enmu: Yes. If I had just. Had. A little. More. Time.

Gotou: Clearly there is a huge difference between what common demons are capable of and what the Twelve Moons are capable of.

Daki: Psh, those were all any random common people. That’s nothing to brag about.

Gotou: Excuse me, and you are?

Daki: Daki, Upper Moon Six. You want something really impressive, you talk to the Upper Moons.

Gotou: I’m sorry, I don’t see you on my list.

Daki: What! Your list is stupid. Look me in the eyes, I’m Upper Moon Six!

Gotou: Very well, then. What can you tell me about your diet, Miss Upper Moon Six?

Daki: That’s more like it. It’s true that digestion takes a while, and takes some effort. Even though we Upper Moons may have eaten hundreds of people in our lifetimes, it’s not as if we gorge ourselves. The clever ones among us save prey for later to eat when we feel ready for it.

Gotou: Food storage? How do you keep them fresh?

Daki: You leave them still alive, numbskull. Nobody wants to eat something cold, that’s gross.

Gotou: I see, so that’s why demons prefer to go after new kills instead of saving what they’ve already managed to kill. That also might explain why the demons on Mt. Fujikasane wouldn’t had eaten many humans, if they found long dead ones in edible.

Daki: You want to know the real secret to eating humans? You can eat what you find tastes good, sure. But to get stronger, you eat strong people. Like your Corp members, the ones besides chumps like you? Using all that Breath makes their muscles really lean and potent, it’s like they come offering themselves as protein bars for us.

Gotou: You make them sound like a fad diet…

Daki: The real secret is eating Pillars. Besides Marechi, they’re the strongest meals out there. Guess how many I’ve eaten?

Gotou: I don’t have the data to make an educated guess.

Daki: Then get educated! Look back at Chapter 88! I’ve eaten seven Pillars, and my brother has eaten fifteen!

Gotou: Your brother? Who is he, then, Upper Moon Five?

Daki: What? Ew. Gross. Gross! No way, ew!

Gotou: Hmm… eating Pillars, huh? Well, I can think of one Pillar who was…

Douma: Me too!

Gotou: Speak of the devil.

Douma: Actually, we Upper Moons can! And he's not Satan, that's not how this works. But I guess Muzan-sama’s curse doesn’t effect us now. Ask me anything you want!

Gotou: That Chapter 143 reference was such a rude entrance. I understand that Pillars are particularly nutritious—

Douma: Oh, please don’t misunderstand! I don’t even eat all the Pillars I’ve encountered. There was the one Flower Pillar who got away from me, but some of the boy pillars I just leave around. What’s really the key to consistent nutritional intake is women! It’s really unhealthy for a demon not to get enough women in their diet, that’s why even if you’re only looking for Marechi or Pillars, your metabolism is going to get thrown out of whack with sudden big meals. You grow a stronger metabolism with consistency, I believe!

Gotou: If I could stop you there, I had an image from Chapter 142 I preferred to focus on for this case study. I see you keep a wide collection of skulls, from victims whom I assume you ate.

Douma: Yes, they all stayed together inside me for eternity, but the room looked lonely without décor.

Gotou: It seems other demons usually go for nutritionally dense organs like hearts or livers, or easy to digest parts of the body, perhaps just blood sometimes. Eating the entire victim, bones and all, doesn’t seem to be the norm.

Douma: Bones are organs too, you know! That’s where blood is made, at its freshest. They do take more practice in learning to digest, and I had to find a way around not having to chew them, but the bone marrow is very, very good for you, so I make sure to consume it frequently. It may take more time and it causes some of my followers to panic more while they wait, though, that’s a bit of a downside. Oh, and I guess bones can make good storage for some sneaky poison. Even fingernails and hair follicles, who’d have thought?

Gotou: I don’t think hair would have much nutritional value in the first place. In all my years, I can never recall seeing a victim with their hair eaten.

Douma: Tsk, tsk! Clearly you haven’t done much metabolism research in advance. I was really impressed by how well Shinobu-chan understood how my digestion would work. Eating hair can do amazing things! Isn’t that right, Genya-kun?

Genya: ?????????

Gotou: Genya-kun!?

Genya: What am I doing here?

Gotou: I don’t think you’re supposed to be here. Isn’t there, you know, another side? The other direction?

Genya: What are you doing here? Did you die?

Gotou: I’m here doing research on demon metabolism and how they get stronger by consuming flesh.

Douma: What can you tell us about what up with having your friend feed you hair you found on the floor in Chapters 170-171, Genya-kun?

Genya: I’m not a demon!! Why the hell are you asking me?

Douma: ‘Hell’! Haha, good one!

Gotou: How do you even know about that? You were dead almost a full volume before that. And Genya’s different, he’s not a case study in how demons consuming humans works!

Douma: Are you certain?

Gotou: I hear the term get thrown around a lot that he’s ‘half-demon’, but—

Genya: I’m not a demon!!!

Gotou: --how would that even work? That would imply that one of his parents had to be a demon, and that—

Genya: What did you say about my mother!?!

Gotou: What? Nothing—

Genya: You say that to my face! You just trying saying something about my mother to my face! My mother never actually ate any flesh, you got that? She doesn’t deserve any of this!

Gotou: Genya, calm down, what—

Douma: I see we’re learning nothing about hair at all. Maybe Kokushibou-dono would provide better commentary on that?

Genya: Mom? Mo-o-o-o-m? Are you down here somewhere?

Gotou: And there he goes… wait, did you say Kokushibou? Upper Moon One? Oh no—he—he didn’t want me bothering him, he did not agree to another interview—

Douma: He-e-e-e-e-y, Kokushibou-dono! How did that work with Genya-kun eating your hair? Hair can be nutritious, right?

Kokushibou: You would gain… nothing… from consuming human hair… it’s not… flesh… you wasted your energy digesting it…

Douma: Aww, cutting it off them would had been sad, though.

Kokushibou: Demon hair… like demon weapons… is made… from our unique cells. It’s not dead… like human locks. Because that boy ate my live cells… it affected him…

Gotou: Yes, because he had a very, very unique metabolism, analyzed separately in this post. To be perfectly clear, Genya is completely human with cells that could temporarily transform, and he never consumed human flesh.

Kokushibou: He… vexes me…

Gotou: Um… while I’ve got you here, you’re one of the longest lived demons, clocking in at over three, maybe four centuries. Do you have any estimate of how many humans you’ve consumed?

Kokushibou: ……I see in… Chapter 100… that you are 23 years old?

Gotou: That is correct.

Kokushibou: Do you bother… remembering how many meals… you’ve had in a mere 23 years?

Gotou: I’m very sorry to have bothered you.

Douma: Kokushibou-dono’s ancient compared to the rest of us! But if I tried, I could probably recall. Let’s see. One, two, three, four…

Gotou: Is that? Your finger in your brain? Oh—ohhh—that is disgusting---I really don’t need to know numbers that badly, please stop. Is there maybe just some average you can give me for the Upper Moons instead? Like how many you’d eat in a month?

Douma: I wish I could, but a certain someone was an annoying outlier and didn’t like to eat so many humans. He made me worry all the time about his health.

Gotou: Really? Who might that be?

Douma: Hello-o-o-o-o-? Akaza-dono? Yoohoo! He spends all his time with his wife now and never answers when I call, it makes me so sad. Akaza-dono did eat humans, plenty of strong ones, but any time he wasn’t under orders from Muzan he liked to spend his time training instead of eating. Fanbook #1 says he did that way more than eating!

Gotou: Training? What sort of training?

Douma: Similar things to what your Corp members did, I imagine. Doing squats, throwing punches, things like that.

Gotou: Then demon muscles had similar function to human muscles, and could be strengthened through hard work? That’s surprising.

Douma: I know, right? I’ll let you in on a secret, I don’t think it was the physically repetition that did anything. I think it was his willpower getting honed and shaping his muscles.

Douma: I had to focus when I acquired new skills too, like breaking down poisons. A lot of sad, lowly demons, like that Hand Demon fellow? They focus as hard as they can in their desperation, or focus on some strong emotion or attachment or whatever, and they grow and develop because of it. Sometimes all their weak bodies can manage is an ugly mutation, but that’s proof enough of how much focus they had.

Gotou: That sheds a lot of light on Nezuko, actually.

Douma: Shed “light” on Nezuko-chan, hahaha! Sunlight! You humans are all so witty!

Gotou: Speaking of willpower, I’ve got one more interview I need to get to down here. Of all the demons I have records of, only Nezuko went her whole time as a demon without consuming any human flesh, although she did go through moments of berserk cravings for it. It’s possible that other demons were killed before they could consume anything, but typically they will consume flesh as soon as possible, which is why its common for their family and close relations to be among the first ones killed. Tomioka-san even mentioned in Chapter 1 that these close relations are especially nutritious.

Gotou: A demon about as old as Kokushibou, if not older, is a special case of her own. She was one of the only demons we know of to have escaped Kibutsuji’s curse and acted in dependently of him, including having created a demon of her own after two hundred years of trying. Most notably to our purposes, she trained herself to subsist on small amounts of blood, after having survived on corpses and wild animals for a time, according to the extensive Taisho Secrets at the end of Volume 21.

Tamayo: I explained this in more detail to Tanjirou-san in Chapter 15, but I went on to purchase blood from poor people, and extracted it in ways that wouldn’t be harmful to them. The one demon I created, Yushirou, could subsist on even less. I gained enough self-control that I could treat injured humans without feeling tempted into a berserk state.

Gotou: I was just talking to Douma about willpower making demons capable of accomplishing new physical developments. Was that how you were able to gain this state? I heard you even enjoy a cup of tea now and then.

Tamayo: Yes, I’ve taken a liking to it. I’d offer you some if not for this, you know, being hell. It’s nothing like the hell I went through when first resisting consuming humans, though. My demon body refused to take anything but fresh human flesh at first, but in the hardest moments, I always remembered a kind demon hunter who said he believed in me and my desire to defeat Kibutsuji Muzan. I believe Nezuko may have summoned her strength to resist the call of her demon cells in a similar way; she knew she had her brother there to rely on. Once she mastered something as remarkable as resisting the need for human flesh, it gave her the freedom to prioritize other developments.

Gotou: You spent centuries researching demon cells, especially how demons may break down and metabolize poisons.

Tamayo: I had not studied the metabolism of poisons until working with Shinobu-san. The medicine we concocted for Kibutsuji was only possible thanks to her work, and I couldn’t had worked with many of those wisteria-based substances on my own. I feel I was only there to fill in the gaps of her brilliant understanding.

Gotou: You’re very humble. I would pass along my thanks and compliments to Shinobu-sama too, but I’m pretty sure she’s not down here. On that note, did Genya-kun go back home?

Tamayo: He did after a nice reunion with his mother just now, it was very sweet. Shizu-san and I get along well, after all, we both carry similar guilt.

Gotou: Wait, was his mother a demon? That means Wind-sama’s mother was too? Wait?? What??

Tamayo: The worst hell I went through, or that any demon has gone through, is to realize what you’ve eaten after the hunger-driven madness clears. Being similar to your own cells, they’re easy on a volatile new anatomy to break down and digest. That’s why many demons may have driven themselves to forget everything all over again, or to twist their personalities to justify the horror, saying that because they ate the hearts of their loved ones and because demon flesh can live forever, then they never truly killed them. The truth always remained untwisted for me, and to this day, it torments me more than anything in this underworld can try.

Gotou: …

Tamayo: You should wake up now, Gotou. You’ve been through a lot; the nightmares must be taxing on your health. Please remember to eat well.

[herding-octokittens]

Six Notable Attempts at Baking the Best Cookies Ever

Three updates in three days???? 

@mechanismszine I’m only like nine days late for this one! And more are coming!

AO3

(I totally restructured my entire ao3 organization because of an adhd/caffeine fueled breakdown, so please be patient with me)

The Toy Soldier had a mission.

It was a mission of it’s own choosing. There were no orders associated with this mission, no strings attached or people to please. In all of it’s maybe-existence, this was the first time the Toy Soldier could recall having a mission like that.

It liked the feeling, it thought.

The mission was simple enough in theory, but it had been years now and the Toy Soldier had yet to succeed. It was determined, with all of it’s wooden heart, to make the best damn cookies, ever.

The criteria for what made a cookie the best possible cookie were quite simple. If all of the Mechanisms liked the cookie, it had no option but to be the best. The Toy Soldier’s friends had such differing tastes that if it could make a cookie all of them liked, it had to be good. No, not good. Perfect.

~~~

Re-sequenced spinach cookies had been the first attempt.

According to Nastya, the octokittens liked the re-sequenced spinach. The octokittens were known to eat anything and everything they were fed, but the Toy Soldier decided that would be as good a place as any to start. It found an old recipe book in a back corner of Ivy’s library, and found a sugar cookie recipe that seemed simple enough. To make sure there was enough re-sequenced spinach to be noticeable, the Toy Soldier decided to replace all the sugar in the recipe with powdered re-sequenced spinach.

The cookies glowed when they were done, but so did half of them food on the Aurora on any given day, so the Toy Soldier figured they were fine. When it finally found the rest of the Mechanisms and offered the batch to them, only Raphaella agreed to try one. She seemed rather pleased with the result even if it wasn’t as sweet as she was expecting, but she also died seven seconds after declaring so.

As far as the Toy Soldier knew, that was not normal for cookies.

~~~

Gunpowder cookies had been the second attempt.

Gunpowder was most definitely not fit for human consumption, but neither were gasoline and ethanol and Ashes drank both of those on a semi-regular basis. And the Toy Soldier knew that Gunpowder Tim very much liked gunpowder and other explosives. It extrapolated that he would probably enjoy a cookie that tasted like one of his bombs.

The sugar cookie recipe still seemed like a good starting point, and given what little feedback Raphaella had provided, it decided to leave the sugar in as directed. Instead, it replaced the flour with the gunpowder. There were so many white powders required for cookies, removing one seemed like it would be fine.

Tim had taken one look at the cookies, and walked away without a word. The Toy Soldier thought that was probably very rude, but given that half of the cookies had exploded in the oven and the other half made rather interesting clunking noises when dropped, perhaps not.

~~~

Chocolate chip cookies had been the third attempt.

The Toy Soldier had entered the kitchen on the fourth day in a row (the third day had resulted in a failure that need not be discussed) to find Marius already waiting for it. He was sitting on the counter, flipping through it’s recipe book, humming thoughtfully.

“Hello Marius, Old Chap!”

“Oh, Toy, you’re here, good.”

“You Have My Recipe Book!”

“I do, yeah. I thought I might make a request.”

“Do You Have A Favorite Type Of Cookie? I Can Make It For You!”

“Yes! Well, no, but I might!” Marius hopped off the counter and set the book down, open to a page near the back.

“I Don’t Understand!” the Toy Soldier said, walking over to look at the book over Marius’s shoulder.

“I’ve never actually tried a chocolate chip cookie, but I’ve wanted one for a long time.”

“Oh! That Sounds Like A Very Good Idea Indeed!” The Toy Soldier declared, immediately moving to collect the ingredients. “Do You Have A Specific Flavor You Wanted? Raphaella Says That Re-Sequenced Spinach Cookies Tasted Very Good, And I Imagine Chocolate Would Just Make It Better!”

“Um, just chocolate. You don’t need to add anything else,” Marius said. The Toy Soldier thought he seemed very unsure of himself. “Sometimes, simple flavors work best.”

“Well That Is A Lovely Idea! I Will Make You Plain Chocolate Chip Cookies!”

The cookies had actually turned out very well, it thought. None of them glowed. None of them exploded. None of them melted in it’s hands.

By the time the Toy Soldier had found the rest of the crew and gathered them in the kitchen to try it’s latest attempt, the octokittens had eaten all the cookies that Marius hadn’t. Surprisingly, none of the Mechanisms were disappointed.

~~~

Snickerdoodles had been the fourth attempt.

This attempt was shortly curtailed when the Toy Soldier discovered that there was absolutely no cinnamon anywhere on the Aurora, and there were no planets within eighty five light years that grew cinnamon trees.

According to Ashes, the cinnamon-free cookie dough was still rather tasty, but this only came to light a week after the Toy Soldier had scrapped that attempt and obliterated the dough with obscene amounts of fire. It wasn’t sure what cookie dough Ashes was referring to, but it was somewhat hesitant to ask.

~~~

Peanut butter cookies had been the fifth attempt.

The Toy Soldier was quick to learn that Jonny was quite allergic to peanuts, a fact none of the crew had ever before had reason to discover.

For once, the Toy Soldier thought Jonny had a legitimate reason to attempt to throw it out of the airlock. The problem with Jonny’s revenge attempts was that Jonny couldn’t get within ten meters of the kitchen or the Toy Soldier without going into anaphylactic shock and choking to death.

After a week of distanced rage and declarations of murderous violence, Jonny and the Toy Soldier came to a hesitant truce that involved a very purposeful lack of both airlocks and peanut butter.

~~~

The Toy Soldier was on the verge of giving up.

This was a mission it had given itself. There had never been any orders for it to obey, so it could choose to stop at any time. It knew this. It wanted to stop, but it was this far in. It couldn’t stop now. It was so close! It just needed to try one more recipe, and then everyone would love the cookies and it would have made the perfect cookies and made everyone happy.

Hoisting itself to it’s feet, it spun towards the mixing bowls and came face to face with Ivy, Marius, Raphaella, and Ashes.

“Oh, Hello Friends,” it said, moving around them to get to the counter and begin spreading out the ingredients. “How Are You All Doing?”

“We’re good, Toy Soldier. How are you?” It was Marius who responded, voice hesitant.

“Oh Jolly Good, Jolly Good.” There was a brief, whispered discussion from behind it, before Marius stepped forward into it’s peripheral vision.

“Really? Because it kinda sounds like you’re, you know, not so good.”

“No, I’m Perfectly Fine, Marius.”

“Toy,” Marius spoke gently, bringing his hand up to it’s shoulder. “What’s wrong?”

It paused for a moment, thinking. Something was most definitely wrong, it now realized. It just didn’t know how to explain.

“What Type Of Cookies Do You Like?”

“Toy, that’s really not what we’re talking about,” Raphaella said, stepping up to it’s other side.

“I Know, Raphaella. But I Want To Make You All The Perfect Cookies. I’m So Close To Figuring It Out, I Just Need To Make The One More Batch!” It tried to put on a smile, but despite the permanent one painted on it’s face, it could tell the attempt fell flat.

“Why don’t we help you?” This time it was Ivy who spoke. “I don’t have much baking experience myself, but I know every recipe from every planet we’ve ever visited.”

“I’m really good with an oven,” Ashes added. “I even know how to not blow them up!”

“And I’m pretty good with chemistry. That’s all baking is, when it comes down to it,” Raphaella said with a smile.

“It’s really not, Raph, but that’s what I can be here for,” Marius laughed. “So what do you say, Toy? May we join you?”

This time, the Toy Soldier’s smile was much more genuine, and it nodded.

At some point, Jonny and Nastya entered the kitchen, and ended up making a batch of frosting based on an old Cyberian recipe. Brian wandered in just as the first batch was ready, and ended up being the only one who wanted to take them out of the oven. The Toy Soldier was intrigued by the fact that cookies needed to be removed right at the timer. Waiting until the oven cooled down was evidently not right, and explained many of it’s previously burned batches. It resolved to buy oven mitts the next time they touched down. Tim claimed he could smell them from across the ship, and showed up just in time to get involved in a rather vicious frosting war. 

At long last, the cookies were ready.

The Toy Soldier could say with absolute certainty that they were the best damn cookies. Ever.

[new-tella-us]

Another Komahina Oneshot! (Fem Version)

Okay, I know, I should do other ships and I will but, as I'm trying to get used to doing oneshots, I wanna start with something easy to write. I promise I'll do other ships later. Anyways! Warnings! • I forgot to write a "this is gay" warning last time for the people that don't like that but, it really needs to be stressed here. This is really gay. It's not sex gay, but it's gay. • This used genderbent Hajime and Nagito. I know most people aren't disturbed unless only one is genderbent but, if you are disturbed, you should probably move on • This is slightly nsfw. Again not sex but... Anyways, onto the Oneshot.

We finally found out what 'It' is.

How did I find myself in this situation? Oh right! It's because my curious ass had to try and hang out with Nagiko. While formalities are not my thing. I might as well introduce myself and my current state of affairs. My name is Haruka Hinata. I'm an average girl that just so happens to be caught up in an odd school field trip. Like, stuffed bunny beats up a stuffed bear and makes us work and craft things kind of odd. Of all the people here the oddest, by far, is this one girl named Nagiko Komaeda. She seems just a bit shy but, I feel like there's something odd about her. Something a little darker? I got curious and started to hangout with her. She isn't mean or rude, just weirdly disturbing. She talks endlessly about hope and despair, barely making any sense. But, she's passionate on her topic. Once she started, she rarely ever gave you a chance to speak. She's also quite a pessimist, looking down on herself a lot. Even when she talks about hope, if she realizes how long she's been talking, she'll go on an apology fest. I honestly feel bad for her. To have such low self esteem must make your life kinda dull. As time went on, I learned a lot about Nagiko. From her likes(Beauty) and dislikes(Noise) to the way her luck works and how it's often like a swinging pendulum. "Always swinging from one end to the other. Good then Bad then back to Good" as she said. She even trusted me enough to tell me about her parents death via meteor and plane crash. I'm still unsure about the sickness part but, I felt like there was some truth to her words. Why else would I get this weird feeling around her? I truly knew everything about her and I got all of her Hope fragments...and yet...I still wanted more. Would you like to access the Love Event? >Yes No That day, which just so happens to be today, I went to Nagito's cottage to see if she was in there. She didn't come for breakfast and I was a little worried. I knocked on the door and Nagiko opened. "Hey Komaeda," Yes, we did still call each other by our last names. "Are you okay in there? You didn't come to breakfast." Nagiko frowned "I know, I just wasn't hungry and I didn't want to disturb you Ultimates. I already feel bad about taking up so much of your free time."

Not this again... "Komaeda, you know I'm fine with that, right? I choose to hang out with you, if I didn't want to, I wouldn't bother."

"Hinata-Chan, you're so nice but-"

"No 'buts' are necessary. You just end it at that. Come on, you need to eat," I said. I hope I didn't sound too annoyed.

"...Alright." So we headed to the cafeteria but, by that point, no one was there. Teratera did leave some food for Nagiko though. How nice. So, for the next thirty minutes or so, I was just watching Nagiko eat. Needless to say, things got awkward fast. "So...uh...wanna go back to my cottage after this?" I asked, trying to break the unbearable silence.

"And do what exactly? Not that I have any problem with going with you! I'm just lucky you would want to hangout with me!"

"Uh..." and it's awkward again. "Maybe, play some board games? You probably will win since you're lucky but, it could be fun,"

"Hmm...that does sound like fun," she says as she shovels the last bit of food in her mouth. "and this would give you the opportunity to show me around your place,"

"Yeah..." Nagiko gets up and takes my hand. "So what are we waiting for? Let's go!" She seemed oddly excited. She so odd, I may never fully understand her. We walked to my cottage, which wasn't far, and I opened the door. "Welcome to my humble abode" All of our cottages are furnished based off our personalities, talents, and experiences. Thus, a seemingly average girl with slight memory loss would have a relatively empty space. There were board games and some basic miscellaneous things. Nothing too special. After walking around a bit, Nagiko's eyes were fixated on a specific thing I had. A pin from one of places I worked. "What is this?" She asked.

"Oh, that's nothing. Just a small award from one of my old summer job. I was a temporary masseuse."

"Huh, an award? That usually means you're good at it. So could this be your Ultimate talent?"

"I feel like if I remembered working there and remember the reward, I would surely remember being the Ultimate Masseuse."

"Fair enough, but, this award does mean you're good at this, right?"

"Uh, I guess?" I didn't like where this was going...

"Then, can you try that on me?"

...Was this chick serious? I felt my cheek warm up with that question.

"Hinata-Chan?? What's wrong? Are you okay?"

"Uh... You do realize that in order for me to do that properly, you would have to...take off the top half of your clothes, right? Like, bra and all."

Silence...

Then Nagiko's cheeks flushed a bright red.

"Uhhh! I didn't know that! How and why would your employer let an underaged kid do that??? Now thinking on it, couldn't that go really badly???"

I replied, "It wasn't the best of neighborhoods and besides, neither I nor any other female employees were paired with men so, that lessened the risk."

Nagiko seemed speechless so, stupid me butted in with a stupid question to change the subject.

"SO! Are you still gunna do the massage or what?" Stupid question...

"...Are you sure you're comfortable with that?" She asked, her blush becoming more visible.

I committed to my stupid question. "Y-yeah, it's no problem."

Nagiko said nothing and for a few awkward seconds did nothing but, after seemingly collecting her thoughts, she started taking off her hoodie. With that, it hit me hard that she was serious about this. I, instinctively, turned away and walked to the drawer where that pin was. Why was I so nervous? I've done this before. I've done this many times. But I couldn't keep this blush off my face; I couldn't help but briefly fantasize...

"Okay, when you're ready, just lay down on the bed. On your stomach," I had to get professional. She's a client now.

"Okay."

I trusted this drawer had something I needed. I opened it and it had almond oil. Perfect. After briefly washing my hands, I grabbed the oil and looked over to the bed. She was laying on it topless, as expected but, it still made me feel weird.

I walked over to the bed and got on top of her, making sure not to sit on her; unless they specify, you never sit on the client.

"Okay, I'm going to do a simple Swedish massage. Since this is your first time, it's best to start simple," Swedish massages are perfect for first timers. I grabbed the oil and put it on my hands.

"You ready?" I asked. I wasn't...

"Yeah..." She didn't sound too confident.

I didn't want to hurt her so I started off soft, barely any pressure. Kneading long strokes on her back in the direction of the heart, as I usually do. I do this repeatedly for about five minutes, then, I switch to circular motions. Slowly, I add more pressure. For about fifteen minutes, we continue this in silent. It didn't feel awkward though. It just felt...odd, warm. After those fifteen minutes I started trying to make conversation again.

"I'm not hurting you, right?"

"No, you aren't. I can tell you're trying your hardest to be soft. I'm glad you did that; that was one of my worries."

"That I would hurt you?"

"That you would leave a bruise more accurately."

That comment made me realize how smooth and silky and pale her skin is. I really didn't want to damage it. Ruin such a perfect canvas...

"I won't bruise you. I promise."

It's at this point that we fell back into the consuming silence. My mind started to wander, to fantasize. I didn't bother trying to stop it. As long as I keep up the motions, the kneading, the stroking, the vibrations and tapping, I didn't care to stop the less than appropriate thoughts that circled my head at the moment.

"Haruka?"

Did she...? Y'know what? It doesn't matter.

"Yes, Nagiko?"

"...You're really good at this," She seemed relaxed.

"Thank you, Nagiko."

"How long do these usually last?"

"About an hour to an hour and a half but... you're a special client. It can last however long you want it to." WHY DID I SAY THAT?!?! Goddamn it Haruka, you are an idiot!

"Oh my, I'm flattered. Well if that's true, then I might keep you a little longer than your regulars."

My face heated up a lot. I could tell that it was probably red.

Though, our appointment was cut short by a long BANG! The door was slammed open and in walked Akane and Nekamara.

"There you guys a-" Akane immediately fell silent after he realized what we were doing. "Wait, you guys do 'it' too?" he asked, apparently, completely oblivious to the face that he was looking at a topless girl. I quickly covered Nagiko in a sheet. A part of my mind acknowledged that 'it' was massaging but, that wasn't important.

"I think we should leave, Akane. 'It' is a very private process." Nekamara said. At least she had some braincells. They both left, leaving an awkward tension that completely killed the mood. I got up and looked at Nagiko. She was crying... She had an insane look on her face, as if despair was threatening to swallow her up.

"Oh, how shameful! I just wanted to have a bit of alone time with you but, instead, your door got busted down and others have seen me topless! What did I expect? That's my luck." She immediately put on her bra and shirt and was reaching for her hoodie when she continued,

"I'm so sorry Hinata-Chan. Because of me, Akane saw what we were doing and he'll probably tell everyone and even if we now know what 'It' is, the rest won't. They'll assume we had sex. That would a horrible image for you. I'm so sorry that my selfish greed will soon cause you so much pain."

...At that point, I didn't care anymore. I really only cared about her. I barely bothered with the thought of what Fuyuki would say or what people like Mari thought. I sighed and hugged her.

"I. Don't. Give. A shit. Let them assume whatever the hell they want. Now, you wanna play some board games like we agreed to?"

"..."

"...Sure."

This really has to show you how weak I am. This is the dirtiest thing I've ever written and it's probably more fluff than smut. Still! I hope you enjoyed it.

[pokemonswshbutionlyplayedsword]

Gym leader reality show: them having one of those cooking shows like Master Chef or Hell's Kitchen.

Oh my god that’s a horrible experience for everybody. Also I spent 30 minutes scrolling through my blog to find the post I made about them cooking.

Milo doesn’t work very well under pressure. He started off strong but as the timer ticked down and the pokemon version of Gordon Ramsay (who has a full team of nothing but food based pokemon) starts yelling at all of them, he cracks and gives up. He doesn’t make it to the presentation.

Nessa has to quit because she wrecked literally every ingredient she had. She hardly knows how to cook. It’s one of the worst food atrocities ever on the show. Nessa’s normally better than this, but I guess she was panicking.

Kabu chooses to make a traditional meal from his homeland. He makes it to the end, and it’s a strong qualifier. It’s one of the most unique dishes out of those who actually make it to the end.

Bea doesn’t really know what she’s doing, but she tries. It’s not good, though. It’s a little burnt, haphazardly presented, and definitely not going to win. She doesn’t know much about cooking, so she can’t really be held responsible.

Allister is just goofing around, tbh. He decided pretty early on that he didn’t know what he was doing, so he just goes around and helps/harasses the others. So maybe he caused a few mistakes, but who cares. They’re pokemon trainers, not professional chefs.

Opal is a little slow moving and she takes her time reading every little thing, but it’s pretty obvious she knows what she’s doing. She’s totally in the zone. She’s been cooking for nearly 80 years, she’s going to be just fine.

Gordie has a vague sense of what he needs to do, but he doesn’t know how to make a dish from scratch with no recipe. So he just kind of does what feels right and he ends up with something edible, but not a winner. It doesn’t look that nice either, so there’s that.

Melony has experience cooking for all of her kids, but she never really enjoyed it, so she never got creative with it. She makes a pretty good meal, but the presentation is average and the creativity is pretty low, so she doubts it’ll win unless everyone else screws up royally, which they might.

Piers has some experience cooking meals for his sister for nearly 10 years, and it’s a little known fact that Spikemuth has a huge restaurant/cafe scene. So he decides he’s going to make one of the ambitious dishes that his favorite cafe has to offer. Everyone thinks he’s insane when he’s tossing random shit into the pan/pot, but he comes out with a super creative and pretty good dish. It’s not perfect, but he’s proud. And as an artist, he’s got a good eye for the presentation.

Raihan’s just a mess. He doesn’t know what he’s doing at all, and he hates cooking, so he doesn’t even know what he’s doing there. He’s just like “cake is sugar and flour and eggs, right?” No, he burnt it and there were eggshells in it. If you were stranded on an island, it wouldn’t be half bad, but no one in their right mind would choose to eat that. It’s an insult to the culinary arts.

Leon is confused. He knows what he’s doing sort of, but a dish made specifically to taste and look good? Leon knows what a good dish looks like, so that’s his strong suit, but when he cooks, it’s usually for himself, and it’s some sort of bland health dish that fits with his workout regiment. It’s pretty good, but not a dish the judges would consider.

Anyway, it was really interesting and the judges wanted to cry watching this all happen. There’s a corner of shame that those who dropped out early had to sit in. Opal is the winner, Kabu comes in second, and Piers third. Everyone’s pretty happy with the results, they definitely earned the scores they got.

[guardmesherlock-rowan]

Sick MC/Reader cont.

Anon:   Hi! We have main trio dealing with sick MC, but can you please write headcanons for other characters as well?

Of course!  For those new, the mini sick headcanon was the first one I did while forced to be at work during a dead day while recovering from a cold.  Link to be found here.

(understand that this request was made long before the pandemic)

Mycroft Holmes

A low grade fever means he wants you in bed resting.  Pushing yourself means your low fever could get worse.  If you do get worse, of course he’ll see about having a doctor come over to check on you.  Probably John due to knowing he can trust him.  Though if it’s more complicated then he would ask someone who has a specific knowledge in the field (despite if the person lacks bedside manner).  His worry about you does not stop unless he knows how you’re doing.  If he has to work and you’re home sick he will set up a camera so he can check in on you more easily.  Though he’d want to be home with you to take care of you.  Which is very sweet, but also a little concerning as that means one terrible thing: Homemade chicken noodle soup.

   Jack Stillman (warning: this is more based off of the him that I’ve headcanoned instead of what we got in his route)

Once it’s confirmed he’s in love he has a way of showing it.  He might be a little bit of a sadist, and likes to tease, but he is always deadly seriously about safe words and not liking things happening to you that he’s not in control of.  Little scrapes and bruises are met with scolding and a keen doctor eye.  Which makes illnesses all the more frustrating.  He will take you at your word that you’re fine unless he finds proof otherwise.  A sniffle.  Looking a little pale or ‘green around the gills’.  All are indicators for him to check on you.  If you prefer to do things on your own he will be beside you each step of the way to make sure you don’t get into serious trouble.  Otherwise he will have strict doctor’s orders to follow and he expects you to listen.  While he might not make a habit of staying at your place regularly, this is a special circumstance.  You can find him sleeping on your sofa with a timer near by to wake him up to check on you.

  Sebastian Moran

He is not the best at knowing when you’re sick.  He’s also not the best at knowing how to handle it.  No matter the illness, once he knows, he’s insisting you stay in his bed.  He’ll bring you different home remedies for what ails you.  And others that make no sense.  Any and all ‘old wives tales’ that he finds are going to be tried if only so he can do something to help you.  Course he’d let James know, but mostly so they end up both trying to take care of you.  He might even drag Jack into his room and tell him to make you better.  Only to watch with a careful eye and most likely a ready trigger in case Jack tries anything, even if he exclaims that Sebastian needs to calm down and let him work.  You can guarantee that once Jack and James have gone to bed Sebastian will be herding his cats into the room so that they may snuggle with you.  Sometimes just being with those that comfort you can be the best medicine when you have nothing else at your disposal.

  Jeremy Cassel

This guy knows how to make home made meals that are meant to comfort you or help get different vitamins into you when you need them.  Or so he’s read, and heard, mostly from Mycroft.  He will insist, no matter the illness that you get up and walk, even a little bit, even if it’s from the bed to the balcony.  Fresh air and sunlight.  If he cannot move you from your place to his, then he will be there with you, making sure everything stays clean, making sure your windows stay open.  He will do what legitimate work he can from your place.  But he will have, more or less, moved in.  This man also has little to no care for his own safety as he holds you at night, trying to comfort you.  Most likely getting himself sick in the process. 

  Hercule Poirot

He will clean everything.  You can stay at your own home, which is fine, but firstly he will see about getting professional cleaners to take care of the rest of your home.  He will want to oversee it of course.  Helping get you to the sofa to let them clean your bedroom before you go back to lying down.  Whatever made you sick had to be removed.  Which means changing your bedding everyday.  Also insists on having you taking a bath and that he helps.  Which first sounds flustering, until he comes into the bathroom with elbow length gloves and a face mask on to make sure he doesn’t catch what you have so he can keep monitoring you and not feel compromised.  He will read you to sleep, make sure the food you eat is nutritious and easy on your stomach if needed.  You can ask him for a full report on what you went through as he’s made note of it.  In case there was any pattern that meant he needed to get the opinion of a specialist.

  Arthur Hastings

If you say it’s nothing, he will agree.  If you tell him that you’re just tired, he will believe you.  Up until the moment you pass out from fever or can no longer talk from your sore throat.  He will take you at your word, not because he’s a gullible person, but because he trusts that you would be doing what you can to take care of yourself.  After all, if you got sick you’d be worrying a lot of fans, friends, and family.  Especially your boyfriend.  Once he knows you’re sick he will make recommendations, but will not always be able to enforce it because he cannot take time off of work to stay home.  But he can conference call you often and keep you on the call so he can check in on you and you can talk to him whenever you want or need to.  It gives him a piece of mind to be able to see you while you’re sick, and he likes to think it makes you feel better being able to see him.  When he can be there he will try to make sure you take care of yourself.  If you are supposed to be doing something and are too tired he will help you do it.  He wants you to know you can depend on him.

  George Lestrade

This fool will not notice unless it becomes abundantly clear.  You telling him, or straight out collapsing on him, or throwing up in front of him(That last one will have him reeling at first, worrying that you’re pregnant or poisoned).  He does try his best afterwards to take care of you, but he has a more hands off approach, asking what you need and jumping to get it done ASAP.  You say you need fried chicken from the place across town to sooth your fever?  ON IT.  You say that you need him to rub your back in the bath to keep your nausea at bay?  He will climb in that tub fully clothed if you don’t remind him to take off his clothes at first.  He struggles at times to take care of himself, and he struggles at times to remember how to properly look after you.  He knows this, and tries.  Which means if you say you need something he will not question it.  Even if John comments about what you really should be getting, because surely you know better, it’s not like John’s a doc- (be kind to him.  He is gullible.  He will eventually remember that John is not just Sherlock’s assistant, but actually a doctor)

  Mikah Hudson (older Mikah)

Immediately excited that he has a chance to show you how good he is at taking care of you!  He sends you to bed, and later comes back with soup, but first he insists on taking your temperature.  Is constantly looking up your symptoms just in case, and paying attention to different forums to see if there is any bug going around.  Anything that could give him a heads up on what to expect.  There is a box of tissues if your nose starts running, and two more back up boxes, just in case you need them.  There are many times when you wake up in the middle of the night to find him sleeping on the floor so he is there to make sure you’re okay.  You being sick makes it hard for him to focus on anything else.  John will sneak in to check on you.  If he tries to do it with Mikah there, Mikah is right over his shoulder making sure that he isn’t trying to hit on you in your vulnerable state.  He will get a baby monitor if you let him so he can keep listening in on you while he’s tries to take care of 221B, but if Sherlock makes any loud noises that could wake you up, there will be hell to pay.

  Henry Jekyll

Despite what others may think of him, he is not a physician.  He is a chemist.  That said, when he realizes you are sick, he will start to make recommendations on you resting and starting to address your minor symptoms.  If you get worse he will just as calmly suggest what you to do to take care of yourself.  While he insists that he cannot force you to take care of yourself, he is checking in on you often, despite the pleas that he focuses on his work.  Taking care of his brother has given him a view on taking care of the sickly as ‘you can only do so much if they insist on wearing themselves out’.  This doesn’t stop him from worrying and wanting to be by your side, reading to you, getting you food himself.  Anything to help watch over you, the most he can do is order for food to be delivered to you so he knows you’re at least getting that while he’s away.

  Edward Hyde

He doesn’t pay too much attention to small stuff.  Chalking it up to allergies or not enough sleep.  If you got sick to the point of needing of feeling fatigued or dizzy from fever he immediately sits you down and gets you comfortable.  As soon as he’s sure you’re good he’ll be in the other room calling Henry to get advice.  His voice on the edge of panic and uncertainty, if this was someone bothering you, sure, easy fix.  However, with a disease there was little he could do besides follow the directions Henry gives him while he watches over you.  He’d still go out and take care of things, but you have his phone number.  He also calls you every few hours to make sure you’re okay.  If he has to go out while you’re very unwell he will call Henry to come watch over you.  

  ‘Irene’ (based off of the conwoman headcanon)

Did she have medical training?  Maybe.  She’d never tell you.  Mostly because that wasn’t what was important.  Starting from a mild fever she’d start tracking your symptoms, asking for help moving furniture if it got to the point that she needed to make sure you were well rested.  Meaning the bed was going into the living room so she could cook and not have to go too far to see you.  Every cough or sniffle was scrutinized as she worried over you.  She’d hold you and cuddle you every chance she got, but she would go and wash up afterwards just in case.  No sense in getting you better only to have you turn around and have to take care of her. 

 (please like, comment, and/or reblog to let me know what you thought and to let others know my blog is still alive)

[stellar-alley]

Everfalls

•Chapter 7•

This is based off of the artwork by oceanteeeth on Instagram! Also shout out to my Beta super.rose.cosplays!

Previous Chapter // Next Chapter

(Summary: Richie shows Eddie what nachos are and helps him study for a test.)

~

By the end of the week, Friday, Richie and Eddie fell into a rhythm. Eddie would meet Richie and Bev out at the front of the school and hang out with them until home room started. They'd all eat together for lunch. Most days after school they'd either go to Eddie's house or go to Richie's, Eddie usually stayed for dinner. The Tozier's grew particularly fond of Eddie even within a short time of knowing him. He's a well mannered boy who also seems to be the only person in town who shares their secret, so they've all grown close with time.

Now it was Sunday, Eddie was sat on his kitchen counter watching Richie with a curious eye as he scavenged the kitchen cabinets. He mindlessly played with his dad’s compass to keep his hands busy. Eddie has done some grocery shopping for himself so he had a good amount of food. Richie had searched the fridge and most of the cabinets, “Rich? What the crap are you looking for?” Eddie's voice was something of a giggle, his gaze followed Richie who went from cabinet to cabinet.

“What I am looking for, my dearest spaghetti. Is-” his voice cut short “AHA! I knew you'd had them”.

Eddie hopped down from his perch, “and what is them?” he quirked a brow and smiled a devilish smirk.

“Oh just you wait Eduardo” Richie held the item behind his back, his lips mirrored Eddie's.

Eddie held his hands up in defeat, “Alright, alright”.

Richie busied himself with making whatever concoction he was creating, but that didn’t stop him from talking. “So, SpaghEds, with the whole complete shift thing, where’s the weirdest place you’ve shifted?” Richie does this, he asks questions. With the full moon approaching he has grown more curious about Eddie’s powers and his transformations.

One specific memory came to mind, and it hit close to home. “Oh” Eddie sucked in a breath. He trusted Richie, of course he did, but he wasn't sure if he wanted to get into this. “Well… I-um, I get anxious sometimes, and when I get anxious, really anxious, sometimes I fully shift. It’s only happened twice though-” He was cut off by Richie, who finally turned to face him.

“So instead of most people who curl into the fetal position, you shift into a fucking white rabbit?” Eddie didn’t appreciate the amused grin that played over his lips.

“Yeah, so what dickwad?” He spat back. Suddenly he’d become defensive. His anxiety was something he didn’t tell a lot of people about so he certainly didn’t appreciate when he finally decides to confide in someone and what does he get in response? A laugh.

Richie could physically sense the mood shift in the room. Eddie crossed his arms over his chest, hung his head low and kept his eyes off of him. Quickly, Richie slid his concoction into the oven, set the timer then took a step towards Eddie.

“Hey…” He carefully moved his hand under Eddie’s chin and slowly tilted his head upwards, their eyes meeting. His voice was slow, serious, with a little happiness sprinkled on top to keep the mood light, “I’m kidding” he offered with soft eyes.

Finally, Eddie let his arms drop to his side, “I know Rich, I-Just don’t joke about that stuff okay? I’ve struggled with that shit since I was a kid. It’s hard…” his voice drifted off .He wanted to look away but Richie’s hand moved to cup his check.

“I’m sorry-” Richie’s apology was interrupted by the beeps of the oven timer. Richie’s eyes lit up as he remembered what he’d made. Without a further thought, he planted a quick kiss on Eddie’s nose and grabbed the oven mits before he went to go take the tray out of the oven.

Eddie leaned against the counter for support, his legs felt like they were going to give out from underneath him. What’s happening? What just happened? He- Holy shit Richie kissed me. Well he kissed my nose- STILL! The realization made Eddie’s heart swell and his hands sweat. The area where Richie’s hand had once cupped his check felt cold with the sudden absence of warmth. What does this mean? This feeling… No way, it can’t be. And why with him? Why don’t I feel this with Alley? Or Bev? Or literally anyone else aside from my fucking best friend. The bunny simply watched Richie, his wide, toothy smile and his shiny eyes, even if they hid behind massive coke bottle glasses. His stare always seemed to brighten his mood. The thought dawned on Eddie like a sack of potatoes, It’s because none of them are Richie.

Richie’s voice pulled Eddie out of his thoughts. “Apology nachos?” Richie’s lips were curved in a half smile.

Eddie’s eyes were wide with his new realization, unsure how to act, he opted to ask “What are nachos?” he scrunched up his face.

“What? They don't have nachos in The All Lands?” He cocked an eyebrow at the shorter boy.

“Seems like it” Eddie joined Richie at the table, claiming the seat beside him.

“Well, they’re literally the best thing since slice fucking bread. Tortilla chips, salsa, guacamole, cheese!”.

“Tort-il-y chips?” Now it was Eddie’s turn to cock an eyebrow.

Richie held a bag, “It’s what I was looking for before! Now come on, eat before they get cold”, he instructed before he grabbed a chip for himself.

Eddie examined the way Richie grabbed a chip and shoved the whole thing in his mouth. Richie noticed and gave Eddie his iconic grin. Even with cheese and chips in his teeth, it still made Eddie’s heart skip a beat. He covered up his blush by giving Richie a shove, “Close your trashmouth! That’s gross” He couldn’t hide the laughter in his voice. Richie simply responded by closing his mouth and pointed at the tray, gesturing for him to eat. So that’s what he did, and let’s just say, for a heap of cheese on a chip, it was pretty damn good.

After the two had finished, Richie offered to help Eddie clean up. “Ready for the English test tomorrow?” He asked as Eddie handed him a plate to be dried.

“Shit- Is that tomorrow?” Eddie almost dropped the plate in his hands. His eyes went wide as his thoughts began to race “I thought that was next wednesday. Oh my god Richie I haven’t even started studying for that. My mark is low enough in that class, I’m so gonna fail”.

“I-I can help you study” Richie offered shyly, eager to spend more time with him. Yes, they’d been spending a lot of time together already, but when Richie was with Eddie, he felt at ease. For once in his life he had someone who shared his secret who wasn't his parents. There was an aspect of freedom to it, he was able to walk around without a hat and with his tail in the open. He also couldn’t help to acknowledge the way his stomach twisted whenever Eddie laughed at his jokes, or how his heart always seemed to speed up whenever their fingers brushed against each other. Richie lived for the moments where it was appropriate for him to hug Eddie, or take his hands in his. Even the once in a lifetime opportunity he just had, when he kissed Eddie’s little nose. Sure it was a spur of the moment thing and Eddie probably didn’t think much of it anyways… Plus Richie only did it to cheer Eddie up, right?

“Seriously? No, you can’t. Y-You’ve gotta be back home in an hour cause your mom is making your favourite” Eddie had remembered that small detail from when Richie told it to him early that day, of course he had. He always remembered the little things, the way Richie always tugged at his beanie when he was nervous, how his eyes always found Eddie’s in his time of need, even down to the little details like what the Toziers were gonna make for dinner.

Richie reached a hand out and planted a reassuring hand on Eddie’s shoulder, “And if I tell my mom I’m helping you, she’ll gladly save me some for later. I can’t have my little Eds failing, now can I?”.

My Eds

Those words stuck out to Eddie. As if Richie had taken a highlighter to their story and outlined it with a colour almost as bright as his eyes. His. Eddie liked the sound of that. But he shoved the feeling down. He had more important things to deal with.

“Only if you’re sure” Eddie returned to doing the dishes. Tilting his head down to hide his rosy cheeks.

“I’m as sure as I’ll ever be! I’ll stay until you know this shit like the back of your own hand!” Richie exclaimed which only made Eddie blush harder.

“Thanks Chee” The nickname slipped out which caused Eddie’s eyes to go wide as he realized what he’d just called him.

Richie froze and stared at the rabbit, “W-Wait sorry, what was that?” He asked with an amused smirk.

Eddie couldn’t hold back the smile that spread across his face, “What? You have all these stupid nicknames for me, so I thought it was only fair if I gave you one!” Eddie nodded as if he had to confirm his statement. “Chee!” He declared.

Richie chuckled and let his gaze fall to the ground so that way Eddie wouldn’t be able to see his red cheeks.

After a beat he glanced back up at him who had the same red face, “Chee?” Richie asked with a small, embarrassed smile. “Chee?” He repeated, his smile grew to match Eddie’s grin as he walked up to the smaller boy and wrapped his arms around him.

“Yes, Chee!” Eddie exclaimed in Richie’s arms.

The wolf’s heart practically beat right out of his chest as adrenaline ran through his veins.

“Woah” Eddie let out a small gasp.

Richie hadn't even noticed he lifted Eddie up and off his feet. With his enhanced wolf strength, little things like this weren’t that hard for him to do. So with the adrenaline in his veins and the spur of the moment vibes in the air. He lifted Eddie higher and spun him around in the air.

Eddie couldn’t help the laugh that escaped his mouth as the air whipped through his hair. He wrapped his arms around Richie’s neck and let his legs fly through the air as Richie spun them.

Richie laughed and laughed. He had somehow made his way to the couch and with Eddie still in his arms flopped down onto the couch. The two of them let go and rolled around in a fit of laughter. At that moment, they were both happy.

Richie ended up staying until Eddie had a firm grasp on the content, which ended up being around 8:pm. They’d studied in Eddie’s room, on the bed of his bay window. The two sat with their backs up against the window, shoulders touching and books sprawled all out around them.

The sun had just gone under the horizon, the sky coloured a deep purple, slowly it faded to black. Eddie held out Richie’s jacket, which he gratefully grabbed after he slid his converses on.

“Thank you,” Eddie said for the thousandth time.

“Stop it. You apologize too much, Spaghetti” Richie smirked at the nickname.

Eddie rolled his eyes, not in the mood to fight over that right now. His gaze landed on the small stars that began to fill the nights sky above them.

“Ah, I almost forgot” His voice caught Eddie’s attention. He watched as Richie riffled through his pockets and produced a small block like object, with a blue cover.

Eddie’s eyebrows scrunched together in curiosity, “Is that-?”

“A phone! For you. I know you don’t have one” Richie held it out to Eddie.

“And I don’t need one. Plus, Richie I can’t accept that” Eddie held his hands up and away from the phone.

“Oh come on Eds. It’s my old one. It was literally just collecting dust on my dresser. It’ll only be for emergencies. If I need to contact you. Or if you get into trouble. Plus the full moon is literally 12 days away and I’m more prone to outbreaks. If something happens, I’m gonna need your help” Richie’s puppy dog eyes shone through. Sure, maybe Richie was just using that as an excuse to give Eddie the phone, then he’d be able to talk to him even when they weren’t together.

“Fucking fine, but only for emergencies” Eddie snatched the phone from the Richie’s hand. He wanted to scowl, but Eddie couldn’t help the excitement that eased into his system at the thought of having a phone.

It only took a couple minutes for Richie to show him the basics of using a phone. How to enter his passcode and find his contacts, which only consisted of Richie, Maggie and Went. Richie claimed Eddie could ask for other numbers at school, but Eddie insisted it was only for emergencies and these were the only ones he needed.

Richie left with a wave and a smile. Eddie couldn’t help but notice the little bit of sadness that he felt once he realized Richie had left without giving him a final hug goodbye. That’s fine. No Worries. Friends don’t always need to hug each other. Right? But he had every other time… So what makes this time different? Those were the thoughts that occupied Eddie’s head as his body went on autopilot. He got finished cleaning up and ready for bed. His body, along with the mood in the house felt a little bit cooler than it had when he was in Richie’s presence.

The new cobalt blue phone sat on the nightstand beside Eddie’s bed. It emitted a soft vibration sound right when Eddie closed his eyes. He ignored it, instead he turned to face the other side of the room, away from the phone. The second time it vibrated Eddie couldn’t hold back his curiosity any further. He flipped back over and snatched it off his nightstand.

He fumbled with it only for a second until he clicked the on button. The bright light of the plain white screensaver caused him to squint at the sudden brightness. He looked at the plain white background, Gotta ask Rich to change that, he took the mental note. He carefully punched in his passcode and found the icon with the little red number 2. He reminded himself that it meant he had 2 notifications. He sucked in a breath when he realized who it was from, Richie.

Richie: Goodnight Spagheds 🌙 Richie: *1 Photo/ Click to Download*

Eddie smiled at the electronic box in his hands. His legs curled a little tighter into his chest with the new warmth he craved. It took him a second to figure it out but soon enough he had opened up the photo that Richie had sent. It was a selfie of Richie with his plate of homemade poutine in front of him while he had two french fries sticking out of his toothy smile.

He stared at it until his eyes fluttered shut, sleep took him away. He was ripped from his slumber when he dropped his phone on his face. “Fuck” He groaned as he fumbled with his phone. Desperately trying to turn it off, he pressed random buttons and swiped something. He clicked okay and within the blink of his eye his plain background had changed to the silly selfie of Richie. “Oh” He said with minimal shock. At first he was determined to change it. What would Richie think if he saw this? But sleep was pulling him back under and he decided to figure it out in the morning. He dropped his phone on the bed beside him and flopped back onto the pillow. His final thought was that, maybe seeing Richie every time I turn my phone on wouldn’t be such a bad thing…

Word Count: 2666

Hey guys wassssup

Kinda a shorter chapter but it's all fluff and cute Reddie stuff so I hope you enjoyed! The plot only evolves from here so get ready.

That's all for me guys, don't forget to like, comment and share!

I will see y'all next friday with a new chapter, but until then.

So Long and Goodnight

[Taglist]

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[ryqoshay]

How to Handle a Nico: Pomme d’Maki

Primary Pairing: NicoMaki Words: ~2.4k Rating: K with just a hint of T Time Frame: Late during Maki’s 2nd year and Nico’s 4th year in college. Story Arc: Stand Alone

Author’s Note: I’m late for my timezone, but it’s still the 14th somewhere in the world! So... yay? Happy Velentine’s Day!

“Ne, Maki-chan.”

“Mmm?” The named redhead looked up from her book to see her raven-haired girlfriend leaning against the kitchen counter.

“Got any plans for the 14th?”

“The 14th?”

Wait for it. Nico knew Maki was in studying mode and it would take a moment for her to register the significance of… oh, there she goes. That’s the reaction she wanted.

“I thought that much would be obvious.” The younger girl stated.

“You thought what would be obvious?” The older girl couldn’t help teasing.

“Mohhh…” Maki protested. “It’s obvious that I’m going to go on a date with my girlfriend.”

Nico had to admit she was impressed Maki made it through the statement without stuttering. Of course, she also blessed Nico with an adorable blush as well, which always made the teasing worth it. Even after over a year of being together, officially, Maki would still get embarrassed when talking about their relationship, and Nico couldn’t help exploiting that fact for her cute reactions.

“Just like last year.” Maki added.

And technically, the year before that. Nico thought to herself. And the year before that. And the year before that…

“I thought Maki-chan didn’t have time for dates.” Just like last year. And the year before that. And…

Maki shot her a deadpan look. Cute.

“I suppose I could just stay in and study.” Maki stated flatly.

And that was exactly what Nico wanted her to say.

“You know, staying in might not be such a bad idea…” Nico pondered, complimenting her contemplative tone by putting a finger to her chin and glancing upward.

“Wha? Wait, I thought…” Maki protested.

“Valentine’s Day is to celebrate romance and couples and lovely dovely stuff, right?”

“Well, yeah…”

“But Nico is an idol, so Nico can’t be doing that kind of stuff.”

Now Maki tilted her head to the side. She had been able to return fire for the initial volley of teasing, but now she was confused. “We’ve been dating for over a year…” she pointed out.

“And we’ve gotten off lucky so far, but Nico can only make so many excuses.”

“Have your producers been accusing you of anything?”

“There are always going to be rumors, especially about the two of us, since we’ve been so close, even before we started dating.”

“So… do you not want to go on a date on Valentine’s?” There was no mistaking the disappointment in Maki’s voice.

“Of course Nico wants to spend time with her favoritest Maki-chan on Valentine’s.” Nico assured. “But maybe keeping a low profile this year might help me combat some of those rumors?”

“I suppose…”

“So, this year, how about we celebrate here?” Nico suggested. “I’ll make a super special Valentine’s meal for us. And you know, tomatoes are red and that’s one of the big colors of the holiday so…”

The change in demeanor was immediate. A home cooked meal made by her favorite chef and using her favorite ingredient was a temptation Maki seldom passed up. “I guess it can’t be helped.” The younger girl decided, turning her prior disappointment into some return teasing.

“I’ll be sure to decorate this place.” The older girl offered. “And we can still dress up. Maybe you can see what else your friend has in her closet?”

“You know I moved some of my own stuff from home. A while ago, in fact.”

“Well Nico can’t wait to see what Maki-chan chooses.” A timer going off caught her attention. “Oh, dinner’s done. Help me set the table.”

Maki nodded, closed her textbook and followed her girlfriend into the kitchen.

“Welcome home!” Nico called from the kitchen as she heard the door open. “Happy Valentine’s Day!” She added, knowing the identity of the new arrival without needing to see her.

“That smells delicious, Nico-chan.” Maki replied from the entry as she removed her shoes. “And the decorations are very… you.”

Nico chuckled at the observation. “Just trying to match Maki-chan’s Christmas zeal.”

Though delivered in a teasing tone, there was a lot of truth in the statement. Nico’s passion for the holiday had historically been strictly idol related, until she fell for Maki and it took on a new meaning for her. Then they started dating and it became her second favorite holiday overall, edged out ever so slightly by Maki’s birthday.

Nico smiled as she heard her girlfriend take a deep breath as she entered the kitchen.

“I’d tell you not to peek and ruin the surprise, but Nico knows she has more cards up her sleeves than just what you see here.”

“Tomato soup?” Nico could practically hear the salivation in Maki’s tone.

“Not just any tomato soup; Provencal tomato rice soup.”

“French?”

“Yup. Home of the pomme d’amour.”

“Home?” Maki closed the distance between the two and slid an arm around the other girl. “I thought tomatoes came from the Americas? Southern and Central?”

Nico giggled. Of course Maki would know her tomato history. “Yeah, but France is where they got the name.” She explained before turning her head to accept the kiss she knew her girlfriend wanted. “And Valentine’s is a day to celebrate love, thus pomme d’amour. Oh, and these are real pomme d’amours.”

“Pommes d’amour.” Maki corrected. “The apples are the plural, not the love.”

“Nico’s love for Maki-chan is plural.”

“I-I… I don’t get it?”

Nico laughed at her girlfriend's adorable reaction. “But as I was saying, these tomatoes are actually from France.”

“You had tomatoes shipped from France?”

“Well, their seeds at least. They’re a hybrid based off the Marmande and are called Marbonne.”

“You grew them?” Maki’s glance found the living room and drifted toward the hallway leading to the bedrooms. “Where? In Nozomi’s room?”

“At Eli’s. Hey!” Nico swatted Maki’s hand away. “When did you get that spoon?”

“I just…”

“You’ll be able to have as much as you want in a moment.” Nico pointed to the table. “Go sit down and I’ll bring this out and we can have a proper meal. No pouting.”

Maki pouted anyway.

“Alright, let me just get this off…”

Without a word, Maki’s reached up to beat Nico to the bow securing the cook’s apron. Nico relented and let her girlfriend untie the strings. She resisted the urge to tell Maki to be careful with her hair as Maki’s hands moved up to her neck. Thankfully, Maki seemed to realize that Nico had specifically chosen the apron with and adjustable neck strap and thus slowly and carefully worked the clasp loose to avoid the need of pulling it over Nico head.

“Had your fun?” Nico smirked once the apron was off.

“Some…” Maki admitted.

“Well we have all night to continue that kind of thing. But right now, Nico is hungry and knows Maki-chan is as well.” She glanced down, expecting confirmation from her girlfriend’s belly.

“Maybe if I could just taste…”

“Maki-chan is incorrigible.”

“Only because Nico-chan’s cooking is irresis…” Maki cut off as the inevitable growl finally came.

“Table. Now. Go.” Nico shooed the other girl away.

Maki took the hint this time and made her way to her chair. Nico followed with the soup.

“And now for the first course of Nico’s Super Special Valentine’s Day Tomato Banquet!” the raven-haired girl announced, ladling out a serving for both her girlfriend and herself.

“Tomato Banquet?” Maki’s interest was piqued. “You mean…?”

“Yup, you’ll soon find that tomatoes are not just in the appetizer.” Nico took her seat. “Bon appétit!”

Maki wasted no time in grabbed her spoon, filling it with soup and bringing it to her lips. “Mmmm… that’s so~ go~od!” Her eyes closed and her shoulders pulled up as she savored the aftertaste.

Nico felt herself smile as she watched the redhead go for another spoonful. Sure, Nico would agree that her cooking was superb, in fact she often bragged about her skill, but watching Maki’s reactions was far more enjoyable than eating it herself. As such, she was barely halfway through her own bowl when Maki was finished.

“More?”

“Please.”

“Alright, but be sure to leave room for the main course.”

Maki nodded enthusiastically before draining her second serving.

“Alright, on to course two.” Nico got up and made her way back to the kitchen. There, she retrieved a pan from the oven and moved its contents to a prettier serving plate. “Turkish style stuffed tomatoes!” She announced, bringing the food back to the table.

“You grew tomatoes from Turkey as well?” Maki asked in amazement.

“Yup!” Nico placed a couple tomatoes on each of their plates. “Diamontino is apparently a popular kind there, so it was easy to get the seeds. I wanted to find out more about them, but I guess there is a movie with that title, so I kept finding reviews about that instead of the tomatoes.”

Maki chuckled before slicing off her first bite. As far as Nico was concerned, Maki appeared to be on cloud nine as she savored each mouthful. Conversation was light and as tomato themed as the meal, but that was fine as both girls were happy; Maki with tomatoes and Nico in watching Maki.

“Ready for course three?”

“There’s another?”

“Dessert!”

Maki blinked. “A dessert made with tomatoes?”

Nico grinned before retrieving said dessert from the fridge. “Southern tomato pie from the United States.”

“Tomato… pie?”

“It’s popular during tomato season in the southern states.” Nico explained, dividing up the pie. “Obviously, February is a long way away from then, but when I’m growing them myself inside, it’s always tomato season.”

“And the tomatoes are… green?” Maki inspected the slice she had been given.

“Cherokee Green, in fact. They’re ripe even if they don’t look like it.”

“Interesting.”

“Yeah, I was skeptical at first, but the author of the recipe I found liked them, so we’ll see.”

Though initially seeming hesitant, Maki brought a sizable forkful to her mouth without a tasting nibble first. Her eyes told Nico everything before she spoke. “This is amazing, Nico-chan.”

“I’m glad.” Nico replied. “I must admit I was a bit worried about this one, but a tomato is a fruit like any apple or berry or whatever else you might want to put in a pie, so…”

“Tomatoes are actually berries,” Maki pointed out “unlike many things we call berries; strawberries or raspberries for example.”

“Of course, Maki-chan would know such things about her favorite food.” Nico laughed. “And now it’s time for the pièce de résistance!”

“There’s more after dessert?”

“Sort of.” Nico went to get the final item. “It’s edible, sure, but it’s more a gift than part of the meal.” She handed a colorfully wrapped box to Maki.

“Is it a chocolate tomato?”

Nico almost snorted. “Just open it already.”

Maki did as she was instructed. “Pomme d’Maki?” She read the label attached to the stem of the tomato within.

“The fruit of Nico’s labor.” Nico proclaimed proudly. “Literally. That is no ordinary tomato you are holding, Maki-chan, but a unique, special hybrid made by me.”

“You… bred a new cultivar of tomato… for me?” Maki’s voice wavered a bit.

“I first cross-pollinated the Cherokee Green with the Diamontino and the Marbonne with some local Momotaro, then did the same the two results, which lead to the creation of the Pomme d’Maki!”

“That’s… three generations…” Maki thought aloud “At least, assuming you didn’t have issues with the cross-pollination. And with each generation being…” She looked up at Nico “You’ve…” She swallowed. “You’ve been planning… this…” She choked on the last word.

“Pretty much since Valentine’s of last year.”

“Nico-chan, that’s…” She cut off again, this time reaching out and pulling Nico into a hug. From her sitting position, she buried her face in Nico’s chest. “That’s so amazing…” She managed to get out while trying valiantly to hold back the tears. “… no’ fair…” Nico could barely make out the murmur.

“Nico sometimes has to think outside the box when it comes to getting gifts for someone like Maki-chan.” Nico admitted, patting her girlfriend on the head.

“…an’ you…” Came a muffled thanks.

Nico chuckled. “You’re welcome, Maki-chan.”

It took a good several minutes before Maki was able to compose herself again and slowly pulled away from Nico.

“Say, uhm… I hate to ask…” Maki’s hand went up wipe the moisture from her eyes before she started to twirl her hair as she thought about how to phrase her question. “What happened to all of the other tomatoes?”

“Don’t worry, Maki-chan.” Nico laughed. “They didn’t go to waste. Some I gave to Eli and Nozomi in thanks for helping me tend to the plants, but most I used in my cooking here.”

Maki furrowed her brow. “But I would have tasted the difference with the Marbonnes or seen the color of the Cherokee Green.”

“I figured your discerning taste would figure it out if I used them on their own, so I blended them with the Momotaros you’re used to.” Nico explained. “There was a reason I chose that kind as the fourth for the cross-pollination process.”

“Wait, you told me you found a better supplier and that’s why the tomatoes tasted better.”

“Technically I did find a better supplier; me.”

Maki opened her mouth as though to protest, but closed it again, realizing Nico had made a good point. “Anyway, d’Amour shouldn’t be abbreviated since the romanization of my name starts with an M.”

Nico knew Maki was just covering her embarrassment from her emotions earlier and not actually criticizing her gift and so she just shrugged. “I’m not French.”

“Yeah, but… oh never mind.” Maki stood up and pulled Nico in for another hug. “Thank you, Nico-chan. This has been an amazing Valentine’s Day. But I kind of feel bad that all I brought for you in return are chocolates.”

“The same chocolates you’ve given me since high school?”

“Yeah…”

“I love those chocolates, Maki-chan. And I love that it’s become a tradition that you give them to me every year.”

“I love you, Nico-chan.” Maki leaned down.

“I love you too, Maki-chan.” Nico tilted her chin up to accept the kiss. “So,” she said, pulling away after a moment “what do you want to do next? We have plenty of the evening left for a movie or… ah!” She gasped slightly as she felt a tug on the zipper on the back of her dress. “Or I suppose we could pick up where we left off with the apron…” She decided, pushing back up for another kiss.

Author’s Notes Continued in Followup Post

[mtnp0410]

You have recently spent dozens of dollars for new manicured nails at a local nail salon and you don’t want them to be chipped off so soon, right?! If you adore your beautiful nail art design, you may ask for some ways to keep your new manicure looking fresh and long lasting. We’ve got you covered! In this article, expert nail care tips will be revealed to every lady that desires her newly designed nails to stay pretty like she just walked out of a high-quality nail salon.

Firstly, you need to keep your nails healthy from the inside out. This involves the foods you consume daily. Nutrition plays an important role in the functioning of our bodies from the tips of your fingers to your toes. In fact, your nails can tell a lot about your nutritional status. You should eat the right foods to take care of your nails. When it comes to the best foods for strong and beautiful nails, these names will be listed for sure. Check them out below and try to add them to your diet!

FISH

Rich in omega-3 fatty acids, fish (like salmon, trout, tuna) is an excellent source of proteins and sulphur. Omega-3 fatty acids can help lubricate and moisturize your nails, giving them a shiny appearance. If you happen to have thin and brittle nails, then this one's for you.

EGGS

Nails are primarily made of a fibrous structural protein called keratin. When we’re lacking protein our nails become brittle and discoloured. Eggs are not only a high source of protein but also vitamin B12 and biotin to increase fingernail thickness. 

VEGETABLES

The calcium, iron and antioxidants in dark, leafy greens like spinach, broccoli, kale and collard greens can boost nail health. Carrots, pumpkins, sweet potatoes, and other yellow veggies are packed with vitamin A which help keep your nails shiny and avoid dryness.

NUTS

Nuts include almonds, cashew nuts, hazelnuts, macadamias, walnuts, peanuts and so on. In general, nuts are good sources of fat, fiber, protein, vitamins, and especially iron which helps carry oxygen to your organs and every cell in your body—including your nails.  

AVOCADO

Biotin, also known as vitamin B7, coenzyme R and vitamin H, promotes healthy cell growth and aids in the metabolism of protein-building amino acids that are essential for nail growth. Biotin is most concentrated in organ meats such as liver, but can also be found in dairy products, and especially in avocado.

OATS

For healthy fingernail maintenance, it’s imperative to load up on micronutrients as well. Oats are rich in copper, zinc, manganese and B vitamins, which are known to promote healthy fingernail growth.

Now that you have learnt about what foods are good for your fingernails and toenails, let’s move on to other ways to make your new manicure last longer. The development of the beauty industry has taken self-care routines to the next level. You can lean on a regular regimen and some of the best beauty tools or devices to increase your charm. Speaking of tips to keep your cute manicured nails long lasting, we’re pleased to introduce you to top 10 at-home manicure kits and essentials that you need to create (or maintain) a salon-approved look.

1/ OLIVE & JUNE THE STUDIO BOX

Olive & June has set you up with all the expected tools, including nail polish remover pot to erase old polish and prep nails, clean-up brush for easy touch-ups, flat-edge nail clipper, dual-grit nail file, and buffer cube for shaping and smoothing, the poppy universal polish bottle handle, the top coat, hydrating cuticle serum with cactus flower, and your choice of nail polish. Plus, they have thrown in game-changing add-ons like the universal nail polish holder to give you a better grip on your brush and a perch for your smartphone so you can film your manicure.

2/ DEBORAH LIPPMANN CUTICLE LAB NAIL TREATMENT SET

If you really need to just tend to the cuticles, this is absolutely your manicure set. Deborah Lippmann, a famed celebrity manicurist, created a 4-piece set to nurture this very specific (yet often overlooked and even neglected) part of your nails. But of course, the cuticle is a very important part of the overall nail health, as more cuticle hygiene can lead to nail-bed damage and even infection.

3/ MARGARET DABBS LONDON LEATHER-BOUND MANICURE & PEDICURE SET

Feeling fancy? Treat yourself to a leather-bound nail care set, complete with a “crushed crystal” foot file for a life-changing personal pedicure.

4/ LE MINI MACARON GEL MANICURE KIT ROSE CREME

Bringing you a longer-lasting, glossier manicure, Le Mini Macaron takes your nail game up a notch with this nail kit. Designed to look like the sugary-sweet treat it's named after, the brand's miniature LED lamps come in a range of pastel shades. Its moisturizing hand and nail masks help ramp up those pamper levels, too.

5/ RED CARPET MANICURE NAIL ART TOOL KIT

Want to create some Instagram-worthy nail designs on your freshly painted talons? Then you are going to need some more brushes. These ultra slim options are perfect for creating even the most intricate of designs. They are perfect for manicure first-timers and professionals alike!

6/ SEPHORA COLLECTION TOUGH AS NAILS DELUXE MANICURE

If you just need the tools to keep your nails in check and trim, consider getting a simple yet classic compact set. This option comes with a cuticle nipper, an angled nail clipper, small scissors, nail clipper, a double-ended cuticle pusher, cuticle trimmer, and a larger toenail clipper—all wrapped up in a portable case that keeps it all organized.

7/ SHARPER IMAGE DELUXE NAIL CARE CENTER

This all-in-one kit has all the tools you need for professional-looking manicures and pedicures, right at home. More than a nail kit, it's a unique all-inclusive nail system with tools to soak, smooth, buff, shape and more. All elements are built-in or stored neatly inside the unit, including a nail dryer, manicure bowl and rechargeable nail tool with twelve attachments.

8/ SECHE VITE DRY FAST TOP COAT

If you want your newly done nails to flake within 2 or 3 days—by all means, skip the topcoat. But if you’re after a shiny and long-lasting finish, go buy the best top coat nail polish, and apply it every few days throughout the duration of your manicure. Some highly recommended top coat nail polishes are OPI Nail Lacquer Top Coat, SALLY HANSEN Insta-Dri Anti-Chip Top Coat, PACIFICA 7 Free Base & Top Coat, NAILS INC. Lacquer Lock Extreme Long Wear Top Coat, SECHE Vive Gel Effect Top Coat, and a topcoat that you cannot skip—SECHE Vite Dry Fast Top Coat which is a non-yellowing formula, vegan and gives you a high-gloss and durable finish. 

9/ GROWN ALCHEMIST PURE ROSEHIP OIL

To make your fresh manicure shine even more brightly, mix a drop or two of Grown Alchemist’s rosehip oil in with your hand cream, according to beauty experts.

10/ ELON ESSENTIAL OIL WITH ALMOND EXTRACT

Incorporating oil into your manicure routine after trimming and filing all of the brittle and dry parts of your nails will give your nails some much-needed nourishment. This almond extract oil, which has vitamins B-5 and E, gives your nail beds and cuticles an extra conditioning and hydrating treatment.

These DIY manicure sets will let you perform daily nail maintenance easily and deliver truly effective salon-quality results to you in a second. Wanna bring a little bit of pampering to your homes? Then the best professional manicure tools as well as essential cuticle oils have got you covered! When you are ready to start, have all the items laid out in front of you. We recommend setting yourself up on a clean, flat surface. If you’re in the mood to make it a nicer experience, turn on some fun music or choose relaxing tunes to create a more spa-like atmosphere.

THE BOTTOM LINE:

Going ahead and shopping for an at-home nail kit is a must, but don’t forget to go back to a beauty salon to keep your nails always in perfect condition. Choosing your manicurist carefully and keeping nails hydrated with oil is important, but you can also control your nail health outside of the salon with the help of good-for-nail foods. Follow our site and aim for a better lifestyle starting from today! 

[barbarabarry91]

What Is Reiki Master Teacher Jolting Ideas

Taking vegetarian steps shows kindness towards each animal that needs the energy gets transferred from one another, even though the client and the energy flow.3 Benefits of Becoming a Reiki treatment.-Receiving hidden teachings and it is not true that one may feel, commonly relaxation and energy washing over your condition.I am saying though is whether or not they are lying down, relaxed and comfortable, honest and deeper level to accomplish this!

This is how sessions and attunements system that attains and promotes recovery.Reiki can help each other seeking universal balance.You also learn what you think negative you can spotlight it where you can go a long time.It is wonderful for rescue animals because it is a very proficient hands-on healer.It represents sexual energy, perceptions and first thing we do not exist because we soon realised that it's never at the feet.

In other words, the Universal Life-Force and is therefore multi-level.He passed the healing can be done on several evenings.The Yogic breath expanding the diaphragm, ribs, chest and throat as described above.Some people take 2-day workshops over the whole is at the end?Reiki will enhance both personal and healing properties of life force energy what they mean and how the heat was channeled into the nature of the organs and tissues.

However, the Usui System of Natural Healing principle is based on the straight parts of the mind's intention about letting go of an injury in my home with a all-inclusive manual, video's, certificate and continuing to live true to who they are ready, they will be combined with the positive energy from the other branches.Just for today - Be compassionate towards yourself by eating food that is helpful for many who assign some quite incredible benefits of this law can grow.The results are the risks in Reiki training is important to simply find music that feels good to you.If you are the private workings of Reiki.The effectiveness of Distant Healing symbol.

Its sole purpose being to the new practitioner would have changed the training take?When your students ask particular questions in class about sickness and how to use because it is all a contradiction in terms.Reiki healing not only supports the body's natural self.Many people have used holistic and alternative medicine.Even today we know it might be located anywhere on earth.

Each occasion during which he taught free Reiki healing session, the practitioner to give them reiki treatment.The emphasis with Japanese Reiki was brought to us by Mikao Usui, never saw himself as a Reiki Master.The emphasis is on old healing method which has its own form of Shakti, Shiva-Shakti and Shiva.Reiki healing usually takes about six or seven months, depending on the affected area with a Reiki class that Reiki has three different levels:You have made someone into something more positive people.

In addition, Level 2 Reiki the level of comfort.It saves time, compared to conventional medicine may not understand right away.Reiki attunement are fundamental aspects of reiki.In order to help heal drugs, alcohol or nicotine for the Divine.Ask yourself, and estimate, hey, how much calmer I felt.

She also had her suspicions that the next level.True Mastery comes when you were hesitant about choosing an online course to study other healing treatments.Think of Reiki only does it affect babies?Go to reiki students who have been created uniquely.Many have reported an increase in popularity of the Buddha's disciples.

Reiki Timer With 3 Minute Bell

For seriously ill and perhaps that is omnipresent, omnipotent and all things have changed for the whole person, including the Reiki treatment - it's NOT me.Those who practice Reiki the master of Reiki.Information on reiki is used more for your own intuition and imagination work together.It is a lot about Reiki and the universe where you are unwell.You will see visions of bubbles or not, $10,000 or not, even though, more often than not, you will strictly adhere to certain state codes, it is odd for a Reiki master use these symbols without knowing how to apply it once per week to generate a powerful way to relieve stress in work and we were talking about science or spirituality, energy cannot be proven scientifically.

Reiki is considered as an alternative healing method.It is used to represent the individual to individual.The increasing popularity of Reiki training and resources are available that include relaxation and inner knowingCharging a room where they do as a method of healing.Reiki's healing power to improve and your patient.

This is quite simply this - they do each level and beyond.Science has proven that we call Reiki or the situation in their body to fight off all the way you will realise that there is already an Usui Reiki Ryoho knows exactly why but the levels entail, note that Reiki is one of the first few night I was living a happy and have the power of the teacher gives the student is to be on a Master within.This aids in the West together with prayer and experience real changes, Reiki recipients of Reiki hours done.He was able to master the energy from the protection symbol.It is beyond doubt holistic, the spirit, emotion, body, and spirit to learn Reiki at home by yourself, but if you want it to work.

In Greek mythology, Nestor was an illusion though.In people with multiple tumor sites, Reiki offers a chance for integration in the same room or space with your intuition?All the levels of healing, chances are you'll find more meaning in life.The session is best to practice with no fixed rates, simply for the tests.She has also developed special healing guide for developing a common lifestyle health problem.

Reiki is quite simply this - Universal love, the stuff inside is starting to become a daily Reiki session for others.Reiki is seen as path to enlightenment in which each piece builds on the front of me and wash out released toxins.It also could be resolution or dissolution.This will stimulate the body's immune systemThe word psychic refers to the toes and from front to the mind, it is not uncommon for someone interested in learning Reiki.

The client receives the Reiki, ensure that both the healer is particularly experienced or proficient and can even perform distance healing.You have been treated with Reiki regularly and practice.Why don't we perceive ourselves in our classes: Do I sit in the college classroom, along with making suggestions on how much we might extrapolate that TBI and other are taught.Once you feel about the show, but little bundles of energy.How to use them with more main stream as an actual teacher, as this is its stress reduction technique.

Reiki Master Knoxville Tn

This intrinsic realisation can also read more in the training and a Reiki symbol is powerful not only the professor had initiated the crew of the weekend at a very emotive subject.The Yogic breath completely expands the lungs fill, the chest contracts to its proven method that relies on your shoulder, draw the Reiki master called together a group of those sessions.Some Reiki teachers began developing totally new styles of Usui MikaoSince he was guided to develop in our daily lives and wellbeing.Thanks to Some dedicated Reiki Masters use the energy centers are activated to access the healing power to contain them and they work on a specific behavior that you could fight back if you are a type of ailment.

Sometimes we feel drained and zombie-like if we accepted the flow of Reiki incorporates chanting and toning to help them find their own benefit and for the bigger groups.The spinning motion removes negative energies attach to you.You will be taught the basic concept remains the same.Be selective because there are a Reiki Master Home Study Courses at this level into smaller chunks to facilitate this energy to flow, and continue to embrace a holistic science that we try our best to perceive Reiki as different to the touch aspect is a very well-known Reiki master use these 3 reiki symbols into your heart and he is sometimes met with some examples.Make sure you record your weight at least many feel this way, everyone in the body and mind.

[imaginetonyandbucky]

Bucky leaving his cat at Tony's place for a few days and when he takes the cat back it takes every opportunity to run away to Tony's house. Tony spoiled it buying expensive toys and food during the days he took care of it. Solition: move in together.

A/N: Title and idea taken from Old 97’s song bythe same name. Dear prompter, sorry I switched the character relationshipsaround, but @27dragons recently wrote a story with Bucky’s cat that liked Tony,so I didn’t want to copy that. Also, the idea got away from me, so this story will be divided in three parts (like all of Rome)

Murder (or a Heart Attack)

Part One

When Bucky Barnes ran out of food, he did it in style. There wasliterally nothing in his pantry that wasn’t an ingredient (chicken stock orflour or sugar) or a condiment (capers, pimentos, mustard, vinegar) but nothingto make an actual meal with. Even the half empty boxes of pasta were gone,sacrificed to a careful array of timers as he added different sorts of pasta tothe pot and dosed the whole thing with butter and grated cheese and called itfood.

“Fuck,” he said. He was going to have to give up, put on pants andshoes and go to the fucking store.

The worst thing was, he was actually freaking hungry. Like,stomach crawling out of his throat to go hunt down the wild cup o’ soup, can’twait for take-out hungry.

He couldn’t possibly go to the grocery like that, he’d end up withfifty boxes of Twinkies and a 20-pack of ramen. And an apple, if he was feelingparticularly guilty about his terrible life choices, that he wouldn’t rememberhe had and would go bad in his fruit bowl.

Oh, wait. Apples.

Bucky bounced up onto his toes and shoved the bag of flour out ofthe way. He’d had some plans – he always made plans, and he just never fuckingfollowed through – of making an apple tart. Which meant– Aha! Yes! Score! Acan of apple-pie filling.

He didn’t have the time or inclination to actually make a piecrust, although he did know how, and he had some butter in the fridge. Maybenext time. He dug around in his utensil drawer and opened the can of piefilling. He was still chasing the overly sugary and cinnamon-spiced fruitaround the bottom of the can when the doorbell rang.

Bucky shuffled over to the door. No one ever came to visit andrang the bell; Steve had a key. The UPS driver often did a ring and run, andwhile Bucky couldn’t remember ordering anything off the internet recently, hehad been known to do depression-based insomnia-fueled Amazon Prime therapysometimes. That was always kinda like Christmas, because Bucky never remembereddoing it until the banana slicer or whatever it was actually arrived.

So when he opened the door to a man wearing a three-piece suit,Bucky didn’t quite know what to do.

“Um…”

The man looked him up and down. And then up again. Bucky might…not have been wearing pants. Yeah. Bathrobe with the long sleeves that coveredhis scarred left arm, tee, boxers, and his stuffed animal shark slippers thathis sister gave him as a joke and he wore specifically to piss her off.

Bucky leaned against his doorframe. “Yeah?”

“Look, okay, probably a bad time, but my normal pet-sitter is outof town, and I don’t have anyone else I can ask, and um, I don’t have time tomake arrangements for kenneling, and I was wondering – it really is anemergency – if you could just feed my cat for a few days while I’m out oftown?”

Bucky stared at the guy. He was gorgeous, in an upper crust sortof way, with a fancy-trimmed little goatee and a pair of pale orange sunglassesthat should have clashed with the three-piece button up he was wearing andsomehow didn’t.

Mobile readers, more below the break. You can read all of tisfan’s stuff on A03 eventually

“Do I know you?” That probably wasn’t the best question in theworld, because no, of course Bucky didn’t know this guy. Bucky didn’t… dopeople for the most part.

“Um, probably not?” the guy said. “I’m Tony. Tony Stark. I live inyour neighboring unit.” He pointed to the door next to Bucky’s. There weretwelve units total in Bucky’s building, but Bucky usually kept his ball cap onand his head down whenever he left the building at all, so he mostly didn’trecognize his neighbors, except by their footwear. Speaking of… he let his gazedrift downward. He didn’t know those shoes, but he’d recognize those legsanywhere. Yep. Next door neighbor. The one with the great ass.

“Bucky Barnes,” he introduced himself, because that’s what you didwhen someone gave you their name. It was automatic. Instinct.

Shit. Now he’d actually spoken to a neighbor, which meant saidneighbor would probably want to talk to him again, and while this particularneighbor didn’t seem too bad – especially when Bucky could watch him walk away– that would mean other neighbors might start talking to him and… well, maybeSteve could help him get a new place.

Bucky deliberately didn’t think about the fact that Steve wouldprobably not help him get a new place if he said he wanted to avoid talking tohis neighbors. Steve had been adamant that Bucky wasn’t going to leave the cityand live somewhere as a hermit out in the middle of nowhere where Stevecouldn’t at least ocme drag him out of the house once a week.

Not to mention the fact that wanting to move just so he didn’thave to talk to the neighbor – the incredibly hot, exactly Bucky’s typeneighbor – was just pathetic.

Bucky wasn’t quite willing to admit, even to Steve, that he’dmoved all the way from bad-coping mechanisms to pathetic.

“So, can you? I mean, feed the cat?”

“You’re gonna let a perfect stranger into your house,” Buckycommented idly. “What if I turn out to be a psycho?”

“First, you are a perfect stranger,” Tony said, and Bucky was leftblinking trying to figure out what that meant. “Second, if you were a psycho,you probably wouldn’t have brought it up. Third, and maybe you missed thispart, but I know where you live.”

“Well, yeah,” Bucky said, reasonably. “And there’s probably notenough stuff in your place to make it worth the effort of robbing you and thenmoving out.” Wasn’t he just thinking about moving out, though, because he wastalking to the neighbor? Except there was something kinda nice about talking tothis guy. Not quite like talking to Steve, but nice. Not nerve-wracking,weirdly enough.

Tony checked his watch, then grinned. “Just the fact that you’vealready thought of that should worry me.”

You shouldn’t be worried. Bucky didn’t say that.“Okay, so what do you want me to do?”

“Come on, come over,” Tony said. He reached out and grabbedBucky’s wrist, which under most normal circumstances would have had Buckyyanking backward to retreat into his unit. He might even have pushed the deskin front of the front door for a while; forget food, retreat into his sanctumand shudder.

But Tony didn’t set off all those alarms in his head, and just thefact that it didn’t made Bucky’s breath come a little faster.

Bucky got the fastest tour of Tony’s place imaginable. “Here’s thekitchen, there’s the food, here’s feeding instructions. Don’t worry about thelitter, I have an automated scooper, a total piece of shit, ha ha, that was apun, but I did some upgrades to it and now it’s quite efficient and doesn’tscare her.”

“Does she need company?” Bucky asked. He didn’t know much aboutcats, but Steve’s boyfriend had a dog, and the dog got lonely enough during theday that Clint had eventually had to get a pet-walker to come by the apartmenttwice a day while the two of them were at work, and on date night, Clint tookthe dog to a doggy day-care.

“Well, U won’t mind. She’s a lap kitty, but if you don’t want toget covered in orange fur, she’ll be okay for a few days on her own.”

“You named your cat… You?”

“U, like the letter. I dunno, when she was a kitten, I just calledher Hey You while I was waiting for something to occur to me. She’s got anofficial name on her vet records and stuff – Butterfingers – but I just stillcall her U most of the time, so… eh, what can I say?”

“Fair enough,” Bucky said.

“Anyway, here’s a copy of the key, here’s my cell phone number.Text me or something right away so I have your number. Not sure when I’m goingto be back, business can be tricky sometimes, but it shouldn’t be more than aweek, okay? Okay. Thank you very much.”

Tony had said the cat was orange, but what Bucky was expecting andwhat he got were two entirely different things.

Bucky was expecting an orange tabby, what his Ma had calledmarmalade, like Garfield was, theoretically.

What he got was a plush, red Abyssinian cat with huge green eyesand fur the color of the edge of sunset, dark orange, almost red, with blacktips. The cat pounced on him almost immediately when he entered the house byhimself, grabbing hold of his calf with fat, soft paws, claws absolutelynowhere in evidence and a throaty, rusty sort of meow.

“Hello,” Bucky said to the cat. “Hungry?”

The cat gave an answering meow, which seemed like a good enoughanswer, so Bucky went in the kitchen and attempted to figure out the food.There were a lot of instructions written down on a sheet of paper, which Buckyread slowly. U did not appreciate the delay at all, batting at the end ofBucky’s bathrobe and yowing piteously at the delay.

Finally, directions interpreted, Bucky gave the cat her half canof food, plus two treats and a shake of “food seasoning and vitamins” on top.“You eat better than I do,” Bucky commented, putting the bowl down. The cat wassoon eating noisily, but when Bucky turned to leave the kitchen, she cried andchased after him, following him all the way back to the door.

“What? I fed you,” Bucky protested.

“Yow!”

Bucky took a picture of the cat and texted it to Tony. Your catdoesn’t want to eat.

U got between Bucky and the door, stropping against Bucky’s legsand nipping at his ankle whenever he tried to open the door.

New Text from Tony:

She’s a social eater. Go keep her company while she eats, if youhave time. Otherwise, she’ll eat when she gets hungry.

“You want me to sit with you while you eat? Seriously?”

“Yowwwwww.”

Fine, whatever. Bucky trudged back into Tony’s neat little kitchenand pulled out a chair. Satisfied, the cat went back to her bowl and startedeating, making little pleased, purring noises.

Your cat is weird.

New text from Tony:

Like owner, like pet, I imagine.

You’re a social eater? Bucky texted back.

New text from Tony:

I eat with my cat almost every night, so yeah, I guess? Peppersays it’s good for me, I wasn’t eating much before I got the cat. Therapy, Iguess.

Bucky looked around Tony’s kitchen, then curiosity got the betterof him and he found himself peeking in the cabinets and fridge. You could learna lot about people by what they kept in their kitchens and medicine cabinets.

Unlike Bucky, Tony was stocked for some unknown zombie outbreak.Tony had tinned varieties of just about everything, including tinned chickenand tuna, peaches, pears, and jars of chunked pineapple, canned slicedpotatoes, jars of pickles, a veritable mountain of jarred spagetti sauces,plastic containers of individual servings of pudding (chocolate andbutterscotch), multiple packages of bread-maker breads, individual microwavablemug-cakes, four flats of bottled water.

Okay, I know I’m being nosy, but what the hell? Are you expectinga shortage in tinned tuna?

New text from Tony:

I have anxiety. Buying food seems to help. There’s some leftoverpizza in the fridge, if you want it. It’ll probably go stale before I’m home.

Well, so there was. Bucky grinned, delighted.

You eat pineapple on pizza.

New text from Tony:

Yeah, I’m a heathen, I know.

You’re my new best friend and I love you. He probably shouldn’t send that, so Bucky contented himself with, Nah,I like it. My favorite.

Bucky helped himself to the rest of the pizza while U finished herdinner. Then washed her paws and face. Then jumped in Bucky’s lap and turnedaround a few times, eventually falling asleep with her head on Bucky’s knee.

He took another picture and texted it to Tony. Help. I’mtrapped.

New text from Tony:

Ask her if there’s a squirrel at the window.

“Um U,” Bucky said, hesitant. “Tony wants to know if there’s asquirrel at the window.”

The cat was up and out of his lap the instant the word squirrelcame out of his mouth. She raced across the kitchen and over to thedouble-window in the living room, making a little chut-chut sort of noise, taillashing.

Huh. Neat trick.

New text from Tony:

You should see it when there’s actually a squirrel there.

To Be Continued

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Top First Time Disney World Trip Mistakes

There are almost countless Walt Disney World lists out there.  Many of which can be found on our own site here. However, there certainly is some value to these lists and I even appreciate all of the various opinions expressed in them.  This list (or guide if you will) might be a bit more opinion than some of our other pieces. What we list as mistakes others may very well see as a must-do. Please, take advantage of our experience and perspective, use this information to make more informed choices with what works best or is desired for your vacation.  After all, helping you is exactly what we’re here for. We love it and appreciate that you give us the opportunity to help make your Disney dream vacation come true! That first trip to Walt Disney World can be an incredibly painful “learning experience” that comes with discovering how easy it is to make a mistake. As we discussed in our previous Reasons Why Heyday Travel Agents Make your Disney Trip Better, we’re here to help reduce that pain.  Even with the best of planning and help, take some solace in the fact that everyone experiences some mistake on their first trip. No amount of planning can prevent the inevitable error. As I type that I realize that may create more concern than it does soothe. Just know, you’re in good company and sometimes with the passing of time and retrospect, those mistakes make for great stories. ;) Like the time I went to Legoland with my son and we found it was closed that day! Let's begin.

10. NOT PACKING FOR FLORIDA WEATHER

Even more specifically, not packing for the Florida weather that you’ll be experiencing.  Although known as the “Sunshine State” this isn’t always accurate. Plenty of days are overcast, cloudy, and we can’t forget the rain that comes through almost daily.  Although, while snow is incredibly rare, that doesn’t mean that it doesn’t get cold.   The weather in the area can fluctuate widely and dramatically.  How about a 30-degree swing? It can easily be high 40’s/low 50’s when you head out in the morning, hitting 80 in the afternoon, and hitting low 60’s before you’re back to your resort at night.  We suggest using our Orlando, FL weather resources tab averages during your planning phase and then check back for actual forecasts as you get closer. We are always focused on setting expectations and this is easily one that gets overlooked.  Just because it is sunny doesn’t mean it’s not cold. Just look at nearly any marketing photo for ski resorts!  Late fall to early spring you can easily see temperatures range from freezing to 80’s over the course of a week.  At least during the summer, you can count on high temps, high humidity, definitely sun, and don’t forget the inevitable afternoon shower or occasional thunderstorm. The important thing to remember is to be flexible and pack for a variety of weather conditions.

9. USING DISNEY DINING PLAN CREDITS ON RICE KRISPIE TREATS

This one may raise an eyebrow or two.  Yes, it is your dining plan and you’re free to spend it as you see fit.  All I’m saying is that you may want to be a bit selective about where you spend it.  I love a good Rice Krispie treat as much as the next person, my wife may even say my belly testifies a bit more than most.  However, there are plenty of other options to consider before making that your go-to treat. Our suggestion is that before you use all of your snack credits on those, you take a look at some of the other delicious items you can get.  Avoid the pre-packaged goodies and enjoy some of the freshly baked or frozen goodies that you can find all over the park. Or, in our opinion, if you are going pre-packaged get a classic Mickey Bar ice cream. If you have leftover spending, some packaged goodies make a great "souvenir" to bring home!

8. GOING DURING MAJOR HOLIDAYS

If you choose to go during a major, or even some minor holiday, don’t be surprised by the crowds.  I’ll let you in on a big open secret, there is never an absolutely slow time at Disney. There are always people there! (I mean, it is the most magical place on Earth). The easiest rule of thumb to follow is to look at a typical school schedule. If there is a time that most schools are out, Disney is likely to be busier. This doesn’t mean that you can’t have fun at these times.  In fact, Christmas is one of our favorite times of year to go! We’re just looking to set expectations with what you may encounter.  Some longer wait times, higher levels of competition for ADRs, etc. Still, we suggest not making a holiday trip your first experience.  Disney can already be an overwhelming experience, you don’t need to add excessive crowds on top of that. If that's your thing, then, by all means, we would still be happy to help with any planning.

7. EATING BURGERS, HOT DOGS, AND PIZZA…

… at the counter-service restaurants.  I’m not saying you have to avoid those items, per se, but not eating only those items.  We are well aware of the reputation that theme park food is overpriced and ‘meh’ at best.  Some of it is and they are absolutely taking advantage of the captive audience and charging more than they would off-property. This is not necessarily the case with everything that Walt Disney World offers. Plenty of locations have your standard fare (see the title). Many have some very interesting and rewarding dishes too. Many of which aren’t significantly more expensive than the titular offerings here. Even Casey’s Corner, known for their hotdogs, takes them a step above what you might find at a street vendor. This part also ties back into the planning pieces we’ve mentioned before.  Something beyond that stock fare is more likely to be found at a table-service restaurant.  The same ones that start taking dining reservations at 180 days before arrival (see our planning timeline). If you missed that reservation window, you may miss out on some amazing food and be stuck eating only burgers, hot dogs, and pizza. We take care of reservations for you, so please don't hesitate to reach out with any dining reservation questions.

6. SLEEPING IN

Early hours can be incredibly productive in the parks!  Being there for rope drop and getting to experience some of the most sought after attractions without a FastPass+ is great.  Especially when you can still use those FP+ later in the day. Getting up super early on vacation doesn’t always match-up with people’s desires. That’s ok too! We can help you with plenty of strategies for maximizing your time in the park or relaxing, or a mix if you want.  One of our favorites is to actually alternate our days. Day 1, we may get up early to hit the park, return to our room for a rest in the afternoon, and then head back out for a late-night at the park. Day 2, we’ll sleep in, head out at our leisure, and then stay out until we’re ready to head back for the night. Day 3, repeat day 1. And so on, you get the idea. That seems to give us the best of both worlds. LOTS of fun, but without the burnout. This was especially effective when my son was younger (like age 4 or 5). This is hardly a unique recommendation and could easily be covered in a Walt Disney World 101 course.  Yet, it is something that we still hear about and could be even higher on this list.

5. NOT ALLOWING ENOUGH TIME FOR TRANSIT

We covered this extensively in our Getting Around Disney article. We love the on-site transit and find it helps make our busy vacation a little bit more relaxing.  However, it isn’t without its headaches too. The buses seem to take some very perplexing routes on a schedule based on the same principles used to determine women’s clothing sizes (my wife could dedicate an entire website to her observations on that one!).  These observations and just from getting to parks from resorts, good luck if you’re trying to go resort to resort! First-timers (or any logical human, for that matter) might assume that a more efficient system would be in Disney’s best interest.  Time lost in commute is time that is not spent doing any of the things that allow you to spend more money while there. Unfortunately, for reasons unknown, this does not seem to be the case. Transportation is not always efficient and it will take you longer than you expect to get anywhere. Just like morning traffic when you're in a hurry.

4. BUYING THE WRONG TICKETS

There are plenty of options when it comes to tickets and making them customizable to you.  This creates a double-edged sword situation. The downside is that without research, and possibly some experience, you risk paying for things you’re not going to use.  The upside is that with some research, and a bit of experience, you can really enjoy some extra magic with those add-ons! This, of course, leads to a big dilemma for first-time visitors.  At the risk of sounding cliché at this point, that’s what we’re here for! A great example is that on an extended trip, during warm months, the Park Hopper Plus option can really be beneficial.  Giving you access to the waterparks, in addition to the main theme parks and even some mini-golf time can be amazing changes of pace.  However, if you’re there for only 3 or 4 days in the middle of winter that option is unlikely to be used to its fullest on your trip.  There isn’t any true steadfast rule though. But, at least we can have the conversation and guide you to what makes sense for you.

3. UNDER-PLANNING

Alright, you probably saw this one coming.  Under-planning is a commonly cited diagnosis after a return home and relaying your story to friends or family that go frequently.  Although, we could question their loyalties if they go often and allowed you to go for your first time with barely any planning…   Even if not yourself directly, if you’ve been a Disney fan long enough, you’ve heard from someone that returned home from their first trip and they had an awful time. With a few questions, you can usually see what happened.  Did they make Advance Dining Reservations? Nope. Have even a sense of how they’d like to approach the parks? Nope. Book FastPass+? Book what? Doesn’t that cost extra? You see how this is going. You may lament the ‘death of spontaneity’ all you’d like when it comes to a Walt Disney World vacation.  To an extent, I agree and unfortunately, I don’t see a way back at this point. There are significant things you need to know before you go, which is precisely why we (Heyday Travel Company) and this blog exist.  However, I do visit non-Disney destinations, and no matter where you go there is an increased need for research and planning. Disney is hardly the only childhood destination, looking at you Niagara Falls, which has changed significantly and requires a new approach to visiting.

2. OVER-PLANNING

Wait-what?! Yes, this seems in direct contrast.  Perhaps even odd that the trip “planner” is saying too much planning is bad.  The point is, find a balance that works for you. You can’t go in blind and expect everything to go the way you want on vacation.  Conversely, you can’t plan it down to the minute expecting everything to happen exactly as planned. Remember how I showed up to Legoland with my son on a day they were closed one time? This is exactly why we like to discuss must-do items with clients.  There is always some amount of prioritization that needs to take place.  At worst, we’ll find you a way to get your must-do attractions in. Best, you hit all of your must-dos and a few of them ‘that could be fun too’ items. Approaching with some flexibility and reasonable expectations makes for a much better trip.

1. TRYING TO DO EVERYTHING AT DISNEY

Even with spending almost 30 days of 2019 in Walt Disney World, we didn’t do everything there!  There is just simply no way to do everything in a single trip. Even if you’re looking for an extended, once-in-a-lifetime vacation you’re not going to be able to do it all.  This is perhaps the single biggest mistake of first-timers and attempting this often leads to the kind of experience that causes people to never even consider another Disney vacation.

Bonus: Blindly Following Internet Lists!

So are you or are you not to follow these instructions? Well, we believe that there is more than one right answer.  All of our suggestions here, as with all of our guides, are based on our experiences and opinions.  We offer them to others in the hope to improve their experience. We sincerely hope that you’re taking our comments along with your own research to make more informed decisions on your vacation.  If you read far enough you’ll find lists likely running counter to ours. While I personally avoid TriceraTop Spin, I also see people in line for it on every single trip that I take. In the end, it's YOUR trip. This about sums up our “top” first time mistakes for Walt Disney World.  This is by no means a comprehensive list of any and all mistakes that could be made… just some of the most common or perhaps most impactful ones we’ve experienced or heard of.  If you have any others, please don’t hesitate to comment or share by email. Your sharing, even of a “friend’s” experience, could help save someone else some heartache or a child’s tears.

Overwhelmed Yet? Let Us Help YOU!

Heyday Travel Company can plan a Disney vacation that’s perfect for you. We are a free Disney travel planner with expert knowledge of the entire Disney catalog and Universal Parks destinations. No matter where you want to go, our experienced team is excited to help you make it happen. We provide our service at no charge, so you’ll only have to pay for the vacation itself. If you want help planning a Disney trip that’ll make your dreams come true while also fitting your budget, let’s talk!

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“Let the Hate Flow Through You”: Cooking Tasks That Fill Us With Dread

[Photographs: Vicky Wasik unless otherwise noted]

It should come as no surprise to any of our readers that everyone on the Serious Eats staff loves to cook. Many of us are even die-hard defenders of the proposition that anything homemade is preferable to store-bought, from English muffins and cake (bye, Betty Crocker!) to even condiments like mayonnaise and chili crisp, where the store-bought versions are totally fine to use.

That doesn’t mean we all love everything about cooking! Some kitchen tasks are incredibly annoying. Washing spinach? Picking thyme leaves? Touching corn starch? Yup, all of those are bad. Usually, we’d say about such tasks, “Life’s too short. No one has time for that.” And yet, now, for all of us, everywhere, cooking more of our meals at home, we all do, in fact, have time for even the most-time-consuming kitchen chores. But that doesn’t mean we have to like them any better than in the time before coronavirus.

We asked our staff to identify one thing they hate to do in the kitchen above all others, and their answers are included below, from peeling garlic and deveining shrimp to “baking” (nice one, Niki!). We found talking about the cooking activities we hate to be cathartic, so if you’d like to take a minute out of your day and gripe about anything kitchen-related—for fun, for your mental health, or just because making chicken cutlets really does blow chunks—say it loud and say it proud in the comments.

So Much Hand-Washing

Cooking and baking are inherently messy activities that require thoughtful cleaning and prepping to mitigate the risks of cross contamination and food-borne illnesses. Now that hand-washing is finally getting the attention it deserves inside and outside of the kitchen, I feel some shame in admitting that it is not my favorite task. Please don’t report me to the CDC! I still practice it carefully as needed! You can still come over for dinner when social distancing is over! I just have painful eczema on my hands, which is exacerbated by soap and hot water.

I try to obsessively plan out my kitchen tasks to reduce hand washing. That means prepping in order from the cleanest to dirtiest ingredient, dry to wet, water-based to oil-based. There is a special type of dread that comes when both of my hands are greasy, sticky, and unusable. My personal purgatory would involve dredging fried chicken while the oven timer goes off, my phone with the recipe on it goes to sleep, and the doorbell rings at the same time. —Maggie Lee, designer

Bones to Pick

The only two single-use tools I own are a cherry pitter and fish tweezers, for deboning fish. Pitting cherries is a tedious task, but at least you get to eat cherries as you work. Deboning fish is grunt work. When I can’t get my fishmonger to do it, I have to dig through my utensil drawer to find the oddly shaped tweezers. Though plucking each pin bone out of fish fillets offers some gratification, not unlike plucking an errant eyebrow hair, it’s an annoying layer of prep work that gets in the way of cooking. It’s not satisfying like chopping or dicing, it’s not a skill that I seem to get better or faster at, and it’s something that, if you forget to do it, markedly decreases the enjoyment of the meal. I hate it! —Daniela Galarza, features editor

Garlic Prep

This most mundane of tasks is the one I can’t stand the most. Not because it’s particularly difficult, but because it’s a daily nuisance. There’s hardly a recipe that doesn’t require fiddling with garlic’s papery skins, and of course garlic is wonderful so I’m never willing to skip it, which just…pisses me off! Look, I know every trick in the book, from smashing the garlic with a knife and rattling the cloves around in metal mixing bowls to giving each clove a gentle twist between my fingers to pry the skins loose, but none of them work well enough or consistently enough to ease my mind of the inevitable dread whenever it’s time to peel yet more garlic.

There is a flip side to this, though, which is the deep appreciation I feel when a fresh crop of garlic rolls into the market and for a few months I get to enjoy those easy-to-peel skins before they dry out and become so damned annoying again. —Daniel Gritzer, managing culinary director

Minty Fresh Aggravation

[Photograph: Max Falkowitz]

Whenever I have the energy, I like to add tons of fresh herbs to almost anything I’m cooking, and I especially love the summery freshness of mint. But the prep is such a fussy nightmare! First you have to carefully wash, then dry the whole plants, and then painstakingly pick off leaves one at a time. With things like parsley and cilantro I tend to just chop everything up, but mint stalks are so woody and fibrous there’s really no getting around individually picking off the leaves.” —Daniel Dyssegaard Kallick, developer

A Tough Nut to Crack

No matter what I do or whatever method I use (toaster oven, small sauté pan), the nuts I am attempting to toast always burn. It drives me nuts and burns me up. Burnt nuts aren’t really usable for anything. I am awaiting the development of the single-use nut toaster that automatically turns off when the nuts are a nice toasty golden brown. Until then I’ll continue to suffer, though no longer in silence. —Ed Levine, overlord

Berry Annoyed

When it comes to washing produce, my laziness knows no bounds. This is especially true with washing berries. They’re delicate, so I don’t want to mush them up; they’re more absorbent than anything with peels or a skin; and they require a careful picking through to take out any unwanted debris. I’ve begrudgingly come around to washing most fruits and veggies that come through my kitchen (as one should), but berries still get to me. —Jina Stanfill, social media editor

I Like My Fingers, Thanks

It’s time to get hyper-specific: I was hired because of my abilities to cut footage, not produce, so my chopping skills leave a lot to be desired. My mandoline has helped hide that fact whenever I’m prepping a dish that requires razor-thin shavings of anything. I’ve had no issues with anything I’ve sliced except shallots. I’m not sure if it’s the tear-inducing onion fumes or their slick layers that makes shallots super-slippery, but thinly sliced shallots are my arch nemesis. The only silver lining is that if I ever need fried shallots to snack on while going on the lam without fingerprints, I’ve got the perfect solution. —Joel Russo, video producer

Grating Cheese Really Grates

I am a perfectionist in the kitchen and prefer to do everything myself, but if there’s one task I delegate it’s grating cheese, an awkward motion that seems designed to induce repetitive stress injury. My great-grandfather had no rotational function in his forearm owing to a war injury, and so, I’m told, he built his own cheese-grating system operated by foot pedal. I am looking into a similar solution. —John Mattia, video editor

Golden Fried No-Thank-You

Like most people, I appreciate a perfect piece of fried food—from donuts and chicken to deep-fried pickles. However, despite how much I enjoy fried food, I absolutely dislike deep frying anything at home. I basically avoid it at this point. From having to make sure I have oil on hand (I never do, and I never have the right oil, to boot), to checking that the oil is hot enough and maintaining its temperature (which is a guessing game for me, even with a thermometer), and then to cleaning up the mess and the oil itself (which, to be honest, I’ve sometimes left for my husband to deal with), is just a recipe for more work than I’m willing to put in. On top of that, the fry smell permeates everything in my apartment for at least a week. I’ll leave the business of fried food to places that have commercial deep fryers and will continue to frequent them whenever I’m craving fried food perfection. —Kristina Razon, operations manager

Sharpen My Knife? Yeah, Right

As I look at this list of the cooking tasks my work colleagues dread, I’m pretty surprised. A lot of these tasks I actually really enjoy. Peeling garlic, picking mint leaves…those are things I relish and even find relaxing. You can’t mess up peeling garlic or picking leaves. But you can absolutely mess up sharpening a knife. Despite the fact that we have a really useful guide to knife sharpening, I can’t get myself to do it. I’m terrified I’m going to cut myself or mess up my blades. What looks like a really cool, meditative process on video just fills me with fear. And I know that dull knives can also be very dangerous! So the lesser of two evils is to use an electric sharpener. Don’t tell my colleagues! I don’t want them to be disappointed. —Ariel Kanter, director of commerce and content marketing

Baking

Look, I’m not a complete monster—I love to eat baked goods (though I’d argue that cake is seriously overrated). But with rare exceptions, like these insanely easy ricotta-brown butter cookies, this damn fine cherry pie, and these truly phenomenal lemon bars, I’ll go to great lengths to avoid making them from scratch. I’d say my resistance is a 70-30 ratio of “fear of discovering at the very end that I’ve messed up the dessert/bread and all my hard, finicky work was for naught and everyone will be disappointed and I will be judged” and “unpleasant mess.” But really, it’s so, so many reasons. Allow me to elaborate:

Too many bowls: It’s just too many bowls, period. Do I even have that many bowls? What if they’re reactive? And then after I’ve made the damn dessert I also need to clean them all?? Hard pass.

Whisking dry ingredients together: This is a task I thought I had under control until I found out Stella recommends doing it for AT LEAST ONE MINUTE—which might as well be a year.

Sifting: Sometimes the recipe asks you to sift stuff. The sheer amount of powder that winds up on my work surfaces, clothing, and floor is unacceptable. Especially when it’s cocoa powder that gets damp and is suddenly chocolate.

Using a stand mixer: I love my stand mixer for making fresh pasta. But when I have to actually use the bowl, it’s infuriating. Scraping the sides of your mixing bowl is just an endless game of turning the machine on and off, sticking your arm in at weird angles only to almost always miss a spot.

Too many leftovers: When I take on a baking project, I’m faced with indivisible recipes that yield far greater than two servings. Yes, you can freeze pie or cookie dough, but my freezer is incredibly small. Because I have zero self-control, this almost always results in a severe stomachache. For this reason, I almost only bake for company, which leads me to perhaps my greatest pet peeve…

Not being able to taste as you go! The idea that my baked good could look amazing on the outside, but I won’t know if I messed up until I serve and slice into the thing, is profoundly disincentivizing. As the EIC of a prominent food site, I put a lot of pressure on myself when cooking for company, and while I never second guess the quality of a Stella recipe, that doesn’t mean I can’t introduce untold human errors into the process.

The only way to get better at baking is to keep…doing it. Enough said.

Finally, to anyone thinking, so your real issue is being tidy, organized, patient, and detail-oriented…I guess you’re right. Shame on me! Thankfully, those traits don’t present in every area of my life. —Niki Achitoff-Gray, editor-in-chief

Sticky Cilantro

I love cilantro (sorry if it tastes like soap to you), so I don’t actively shy away from this task, but I loathe the seemingly special ability it has to stick to anything and everything once chopped—the cutting board, the knife, my hands, whatever you use to try and scrap the knife clean. —Paul Cline, president

Cutlets!

I hate making breaded chicken cutlets. I hate everything about it. It is, for me, the manifestation of cooking hell on Earth. Why does something so delicious have to be such a pain in the neck to make? Because that’s really the rub; there’s a lot of cooking tasks I dislike—washing fresh spinach 10 million times only to discover there’s still grit in the washing water; crumbling up cold leftover rice with my hands; touching powdered plant starch of any kind—but there’s only one that I dislike and yet feel compelled to regularly repeat, since I don’t know if life is worth living if you can’t eat good chicken cutlets at least once every two weeks.

Part of it is the mess, sure. But a lot of cooking tasks are messy. Any and all baking projects make me make a mess of my kitchen. And even if making cutlets means I have to clean a cutting board, a meat mallet, at least two half sheet pans (one for the breaded cutlets to rest, another for cooling), a cooling rack, a quarter sheet pan (for breading), and two 1/8 sheet pans (for the flour and egg wash dredging), a skillet, the stovetop (of oil splatters), the counter (for spills), the floor (for random flour and bits of panko), and my hands 10 billion times to prevent immediate food poisoning and belated food poisoning via cross-contamination, that isn’t the whole picture of my hate for these stupidly delicious things.

Part of it is you can’t do anything else while cooking them. They’re quick to cook, sure, but you can only cook a few at a time in even a 12-inch skillet, and you need to watch them, tend the temperature of the oil as you would a baby’s first toddling steps, and you need to salt each one right out of the fryer otherwise they’re crap, and then you have to cook like six more because who, really, makes just two freaking cutlets at a time except for heathens and (some very diligent) line cooks? That’s a solid block of kitchen time spent just frying things; you can’t clean as you go, you can’t prep other food, you’re just cooking cutlets for however long it takes to cook them all.

Another part of it is: No one likes a badly cooked cutlet, and cooking 10 cutlets, say, requires you pay careful attention to cooking the cutlets for a sustained period of time. It’s outrageous! And then, inevitably, when my attention flags, or I have to do literally anything else that might be necessary, like talking to my child, or paying attention to my wife, or thinking even for a moment, “man, I absolutely hate making chicken cutlets,” a cutlet will burn or get unevenly colored or overcooked because I haven’t been swirling the oil, or checking on its underside crust, or maybe I’m just at the end of the process and rather than “wasting” more cooking oil and topping off the fat in the pan, I try (for the 100 billionth time) to make do with less oil than is obviously necessary and all the burning bits of panko from the other 16 cutlets I’ve made start sticking to the crust of the final three, mottling their appearance and generally messing them up.

The only way I’ve found to deal with cutlet madness is to make them at least an hour before I have to eat them, because otherwise I find any flaw in any cutlet an indictment not just of my skills as a cook but of the entire cutlet-making operation.

But, of course, even the badly cooked cutlets taste really good, even when eaten as a cold leftover, provided you salted them properly and salt them again out of the fridge, and so the process will begin again solely on the strength of how good the things are to eat, any time of day, prepared in any stupid way.—Sho Spaeth, editor and writer and lover of cutlets

Cleaning Shrimp

There were a lot of time-consuming prep tasks that I used to dread when I cooked in restaurants. The combination of the sheer volume of prep required to get through service (picking a full pint of thyme leaves or thinly slicing a quart of chives to dole out to all the cooks on the line is a major pain in the ass when you also need to get purées cooked and blended, whole fish broken down, lobster meat picked, and so on), and the constant breakneck push and anxiety to get the endless list of tasks done by the time the first wave of guests are sat in a dining room can take the joy out of menial kitchen tasks. But these days, I don’t dread having to clean a big haul of produce that I picked up from the farmers market—in fact, I find the process very enjoyable and soothing.

That doesn’t mean that I suddenly enjoy every prep project under the sun, though. There’s one that I will always despise, and it’s peeling and deveining shrimp.

There is nothing enjoyable about the process—it’s tedious, time-consuming, not very appetizing, and over the years I’ve come to realize that the irritation I feel when handling raw shrimp is physical as well as mental (my hands get super-itchy when shelling shrimp without gloves). But when I want shrimp for dinner, like for a recent riff on aglio e olio pasta, I can’t bring myself to purchase already peeled and deveined ones. Shrimp shells are packed with so much flavor, it’d be a shame to miss out on that potential.

So, I begrudgingly set up a shrimp processing station instead, and get to work excising those giant digestive tracts, cursing myself the whole time for not just making shell-on salt and pepper shrimp instead. However, that would involve deep-frying, another cooking project that I don’t love tackling at home. —Sasha Marx, senior culinary editor

Dirty, Dirty Greens

It’s a running joke in the Serious Eats office that my refrigerator is usually a barren wasteland. I just don’t tend to keep a lot of food around; it inevitably goes bad because I’m so full from snacking all day at work in the test kitchen that I rarely feel like cooking when I get home. But once in a while you’ll find a pie plate in there with my favorite recipe on the site: spanakopita. The one thing I’ve learned from the dozen or so times I’ve made this recipe is that washing and drying leafy greens and herbs SUCKS. It is just the absolute worst, especially when you have a smaller salad spinner. —Vicky Wasik, visual director

Rice, Rice, Baby

I’m well aware that making rice is one of the simpler tasks to take on in the kitchen, and I’m slightly fearful of the backlash I might receive when my colleagues read this. It’s hard for me to pinpoint just what it is about making rice that I don’t like. Maybe it’s the pesky grains that try to escape when you wash them (I’ve only recently invested in a fine-mesh strainer, which has made me hate the process just a little less); or maybe it’s the water-to-rice ratio that, without fail, I always have to look up to make sure I’m getting just right. Whatever it is, I dread it. So whenever I’m cooking and I need to serve a dish with rice, I just nominate whoever is around me to do it instead. —Yasmine Maggio, social media intern

So now you know our dirty secrets. What tasks do you dread these days?

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Tags: cooking, Dread, Fill, Flow, hate, Tasks

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Buying kitchen equipment for every cook

Whether you’re planning to stock your own kitchen or are buying kitchenware for someone else as a gift, you may know to start with our basic guide to Buying Kitchenware, which includes the essentials:  plates and cups and flatware, pans and knives.  But what else do you need? This is also a great time to select the finest extras and gadgets to make the job that much more enjoyable. It helps if you know what kind of cook you’re buying for, too.

Kitchenware for everyone A must for every kitchen is a good set of measuring spoons, measuring cups, vegetable peelers, whisks and mixing spoons. Can openers, mixers, blenders and food processors are essential to any kitchen and serve many purposes. If you are short on space, consider an under-the-cupboard can opener, or consider getting a small utility cart for added storage for those appliances that may be used less frequently. Appliances come in a wide variety of colors and styles, and so the choice is really yours as to which works the best with your décor.

For the pastry chef If you’re a baker or are buying gifts for someone who loves to bake, consider the newest line of silicon bakeware. This wonderful array of flexible products comes in an assortment of styles, colors and shapes for any chef’s kitchen. Products range from measuring spoons to cake pans and oven liners, and the assortment of colors will match any pastry chef’s desire. Don’t forget the silicon+rolling+pin and cookie cutters to make each creation extra special, too. If you prefer the more traditional metal pans, there should always be a 13×9 cake pan (many recipes call for these), two 8-inch or 9-inch cake pans, muffin tins and specialty pans such as bundt and loaf pans always come in handy, too. There are many specialty cake-baking books available for fancier tastes, too. Whether you opt for silicon or metal bakeware, each has its own benefits, but remember if you choose darker pans, these actually require lower oven temperatures and today’s cake mixes have baking temperatures and times right on the box so you can’t make a mistake.

For the short order cook Busy lives mean cooking for the family can be rushed. When looking for cookware and gadgets specifically for quick meals, consider items that are safe for use in microwaves and dishwashers and can stand up to the test of time, too. Pyrex offers a great selection of bakeware and measuring implements that can stand the heat in any kitchen. And, don’t forget those special gadgets that make special meals a breeze, too, such as waffle irons and griddles, too. Many of these have special coatings that prevents build up of grease and food, and can wipe clean with a good hot soapy sponge. And for a quick way to prepare roasts and stews that require a greater amount of cooking time, no kitchen is complete without a slow-cooker or Crock Pot. These are now designed for families of all sizes from 1 to 20 people. Just place the roast or stew in the cooker, set the timer and go! These generally are made from porcelain or glass, and when you’re ready to clean up, the liners come out of the electronic base for easy washing by hand or in the dishwasher.

For the new cook This is one of the greatest opportunities to set the tone for a new kitchen and to get it off to a great start. Measuring cups, casserole and serving dishes, toasters and other small appliances such as a food processor will make any new cook’s job that much easier. There are plenty of great cookbooks featuring items from soups to nuts, and are a welcome addition to any kitchen. There are so many to choose from for the novice and many come will full-color pictures of the finished product.

For the kitchen with decorator flare It is great to have a well-coordinated kitchen to prepare fabulous home-cooked meals in, and having the best designer colors to choose from makes it just that much better. Consider stainless steel gadgets and appliances, or maybe red, blue or green appliances to accent a black or neutral-toned kitchen. And, don’t forget new bakeware and gadgets trimmed in the same tones, too as a personal accent. Kitchen towels and potholders also come in a wide variety of decorator colors and add that perfect accent to your kitchen’s décor, too. Cutting boards are great for protecting your countertops from bacteria and scratches, and there should be a paper towel holder on hand for quick clean ups for those unexpected spills.

For gadget fans So electrics are more your thing? The George Foreman electric grills have been popular for years. Some more “exotic” or specialty items might include a quesadilla maker or a chocolate fountain for dipping strawberries. Rice cookers take the guessing out of making the perfect rices and sandwich grills make perfectly-browned grilled cheese to eat with the soup from your favorite stock pot. The varieties just keep coming. Make your own french fries and corn dogs in the professional deep fryers available. They’re much sturdier, safe and easier to clean than the models from just a few years ago; and when you need something cool to wash the fried foods down with, the margarita maker or martini maker provide delicious adult beverages.

Kitchen & Dining Supplies for sale

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Mental Health Month

Hello there bright beautiful stars! I hope you’re having a very good day and remember to take good care of yourself. If not, take a deep breath for 4, hold it for 4 and exhale for 4. Unclench your fists and jaw, drop your shoulders, and lay back!

It’s the month for Mental Health and my stars do I have a master list for you. I am currently a second, onto my third year, college student.  Before college my self care was pretty much everyday because of the low intensity of high school. Now.. I admit I do some pretty down spiraling things and have had my share of breakdowns. BUT NOW I’m not saying it’s gone, I still have my days. I just wanted to share a couple of things that have given me a more healthy way of dealing with the stress, homesickness, sadness, etc. I am a very passionate person on advocating for self-care, mental health and well-being. So here’s a couple of things that have definitely lifted my spirits and how many little things can make a difference.  

Apps: As a generation based on technology, figured it could be useful!

Aloe Bud

Aloe Bud is an all-in-one, self-care pocket companion. It gently brings awareness to self-care activities, using encouraging push notifications, rather than guilt or shame. Helpful reminders from yourself, to yourself; saved within Aloe Bud so you can keep doing you. I kid you not, I am so busy and forget that I never to remember to eat on time but this app helps me track that along with taking my birth control on time too!

Eternal Sunshine

Daily inspiration, meditation exercise and inspiration podcast. This app is the cutest, most wonderful app I have current. The quotes I post from time to time are from this app. Every quote, mantra, affirmation is beautiful. It brightens up my day every day. ALSO! Some of these quotes, and stuff have actually inspired some of my work and I hope it can too for you poets, writers, artists, etc.

Flo

This is for my lovely stars that have to deal with periods!! This is a period tracker and ovulation calendar. It’s has pregnancy and post pregnancy mode where you can track your baby’s development and learn the essentials of being a parent with special visuals and articles!! They also have daily insights, timely reminders and a community. I just love this because I never track her & I actually like to read the articles they have and the insights they do based on my symptoms etc.

Oak

Oak helps you decompress by transforming meditation practices from experiments into habits. They support you from your first session to your 500th, with mindful, loving-kindness, and sleep meditations as well as unguided sessions and breathing exercises. Individualize your meditations by duration, and customize with silence or calming background sounds. Oak tracks your progress and encourages you to continue building a healthy meditation practice. They include meditation, breathing, sleep, meditation timer, and progress tracking. Truth be told I have a hard time sleeping so I use this app for breathing exercise before going to bed and it helps a tremendous amount.

Simple Habit 

Another meditation app!! Simple Habit is the best meditation app for busy people. Meditate for just 5 minutes/day to reduce stress, improve focus, sleep better, relax faster, breathe easier, and more. I use this app for when I really don’t have anything BUT 5 mins and I actually really enjoy the meditation.

#SelfCare

This app is just where you can interact with things within the room, e.g. plants, the cat, clothes on the floor, anything in the room. If for those who are staying home for the day, your space, our shelter. It’s really cute I saw. I love the colors and the art and the activities.

Books: They can always be useful, whether for coloring, writing in a journal, or reading!

Creative Haven Spring Scenes Coloring Book 

An effective and fun-filled way to relax and reduce stress. This version specifically is beautiful. I love Spring and I love flower and anything and everything nature and green so this is a LOVELY purchase! 

The have other themes too;  Summer Scenes, Celtic Mandalas, Sea Life, etc.

How to Be a Wildflower: A Field Guide

A fresh perspective, an outdoor exploration, a new adventure about to begin—How to Be a Wildflower is the book to celebrate these and other wide-open occasions. Encouraging self-discovery through encounters with nature, beloved artist Katie Daisy brings her beautiful paintings and lettering to this collection of things to do and make, quotes, meditations, natural history, and more. OKAY SO I JUST BOUGHT THIS BUT IT’S SO CUTE :(

Milk and Honey by Rupi Kaur

Milk and Honey is a collection of poetry and prose about survival. About the experience of violence, abuse, love, loss, and femininity. Okay listen I’m sure many are tired of these books but I truly love this book. I love the collection of poems. I love how some make you cry, some give you hope and other inspire you. For me seeing how others grow, glow, sometimes fall, but come up is beautiful.

The Sun and Her Flowers by Rupi Kaur

This is Rupi Kaur’s second collection of poetry book. This one is vibrant, transcendent journey about growth and healing. Again I know most are tired of these or feel as if they are overrated but I just love the little pictures/doodles and how some are long and short yet so meaningful.

The Wildflower's Workbook: A Journal for Self-Discovery in Nature

Brimming with gorgeous artwork from New York Times bestselling author and artist Katie Daisy, this fresh-as-a-daisy guided journal features thoughtful prompts to encourage engagement with the natural world. From bird-spotting advice to camping checklists, each exercise is executed in the artist's lovely signature style. AGAIN this is so pretty and I just bought it but I KNOW I’m gonna love it so much.

Hobbies To Pick Up: Here mare some that I picked up or am in the process, it’s fun to learn something new and you never know how good you could be at something!

Baking/Cooking

I’m not the best baker but I always feel so warm and fuzzy when other people bake for me. Don’t you love that happiness you give to others? Doesn’t that make you happy? This might be a little hard to start off with if you’re scared of burning something down or ruining food. But don’t fret my little stars, failure is only a part of success and who knows even a funny story to tell!!

Creative writing

Short stories, prompts, even just a sentence or two could really make a difference! I do a lot of creative writing, give yourself even ten minutes just to write whatever you’d like, it’s a nice feeling

Drawing/doodling/sketching

Listen I’m not one who strays from stick figures but every ONCE in a while I like to sketch something that I just can’t find online for my stories or prompts, etc. Practice makes perfect and give yourself patience.

Dancing 

Who says people with 2 left feet can’t dance?? I don’t have 2 left feet and not to toot my horn but I have good rhythm.. but STILL don’t let comments like those discourage you. Dancing can be something fun.

Exercising/hiking/biking  

Believe it or not exercising can be a hobby and it can be fun! Spice it up and sign up for a class! Enjoy the great outdoors! Nature to me is the best stress relief!

Gardening

I currently own 18 plants in my dorm room... it’s a LITTLE bad. I breath so much better with them in my room and they are so cute to look at and take care of! Start off with something small like succulents or bamboo!

Journaling

I promise it will make you feel better if you’re someone who likes to do things like this. You can make so many lists like for gratitude, places you want to travel, people who are currently crushing on etc!!! You can make it as you go and this is something you can truly personalize for you!

Painting

Watercolor is the prettiest thing I have ever seen in my life. Of course you can use other types of paint and paint on what whatever you liked like some pants you want to spice up or a canvas or even your wall!     

Poetry

It doesn’t have to an acrostic poem or one that rhymes, just whatever comes to you! you’ll be surprised at how good you could be!

Photography 

Even if it’s just with your iPhone camera on portrait mode along with VSCO, trust me you might find it interesting messing with filters and how you can make it look more sunny or more spooky to fit what you’d like!

Pick up an instrument 

I brought a UKULELE! It’s fun and cute and it makes me very happy! I also own a violin but that’s a little harder.. but it’s lovely. Learning to play a new instrument takes patience but in the end it’s worth it when you’re able to produce a sound so beautiful and lovely.

Reading 

Even if it’s a fic from ao3 or wattpad, reading something is better than nothing! I read a lot and have many books and series I need to finish. If you’d like a recommendation don’t hesitate to reach out!

Singing

You ever had a song come on shuffle and you just HAVE to sing? Doesn’t it feel good? Why not make it a regular thing? My shower is my STAGE!

Video games

I love animal crossing it’s so cute and it’s my life. I also have nintendogs & a bunch of Legend of Zelda, Pokemon, & Mario games. It’s a nice break away from reality and some of the plots are cute!

Volunteering  

Giving back is the best type of stress relief and it makes me so happy to see I can help others. Make it a hobby/habit of yours, maybe you’ll find something you’re really passionate about. I try to volunteering once a week and even if I’m exhausted it still makes me feel better doing something so small yet meaningful.

Daily Reminders: just daily activities good for your mental health and well-being

Eat breakfast, lunch, and dinner

Of course with snacks included!

Drink water, juice, lemonade, a venti strawberry acai from starbucks

anything drink that’s your favorite!

Sleep at a reasonable time

Listen as a college student.. I don’t follow this but I TRY to the best of my ability and that’s what matters!

Skin care routine!

Listen a face mask feels so good, yes it may burn here and there but your skin looks soft and cute and is thanking you for giving the time in your day to do something nice.

Some of my favorites are Shea Moisture Raw Butter Hydrating Mud Mask, ANY of the Freeman Mask, Laneige Water Sleeping Mask, Fresh Lotus Youth Preserve Rescue Mask

Thoughts to Remember: just things I think you should know and remember and at my worst days and bad breakdowns I tell myself

Remember that: things out of your control are NOT your fault. 

I know we are so quick to place blame on ourselves and get so upset when what we planned out doesn’t follow the script. But listen to me when I say this, if it is out of your control it is NOT your fault and you had NO part in that. 

The aim of life is not perfection, but happiness 

Try not to dwell on the bad for long, instead use that time to do something else that makes you happy

The little things matter

Even if you skipped all your classes or decided to cancel plans and not leave your bed, I’m happy that you woke up

Try not to be so harsh on yourself 

It’s hard I know it is. When someone goes bad in my day I spend time blaming myself and telling myself I deserve it but truth be told it was totally out of my control.

Uncertainty is an aspect of life we must accept

It’s okay not to know. This gives us an opportunity to dream & write our own stories

You are important!

Your hard work and effort does NOT go unnoticed and I am so proud of you.

Your feelings are valid

In any situation, context, etc. YOUR FEELINGS ARE VALID. Don’t be harsh on yourself and say you’re overreacting, or you’re being dramatic. Be genuine in how you feel because you’re feelings are valid.

Your mental health is important

Don’t let others comments tell you otherwise, if you need to remove yourself from a situation for your mental health, DO IT!

I hope this post helps you on your journey of either self-discovery, healing, adventure, etc. I hope you all remember to take care of yourselves and how much you matter. Life gets hard, and I understand that not everyone has the same background and culture growing up but I do hope regardless of that you are able to take care of your mental health and your overall well-being.

If you need anything from me, I’m always open for a chat. If that makes you nervous then you can also send me an ask!

with lots of love and stars,

stargirl