#and especially after he puts it together that she's an eagan. the people that created this nightmare and took burt from him

[ratthumbsup]

the thing is. irving b has wanted to die this entire season. he had nothing left to lose. dylan's friendship wasn't enough to ease the pain, especially when dylan is distracted, and he just wanted it to end. no more fear. no more grief. an opportunity to save his friend and take an eagan down with him presented itself and he took it. he's angry that helena was cruel to him and lied to all of them and betrayed them all and kept them trapped. and he loves helly. but he wouldn't have done that if he wanted to live.

[messysuitcaseblog]

Why We’re in Vermont for the Summer

I thought I’d take a step back and explain why we are suddenly blogging from Vermont instead of Mexico.

Our Vermont History

Friends who knew us when we lived in Mamaroneck, NY (1998-2008) know that during that time, we bought a couple of vacation rental houses in Vermont. We wanted a rural place to escape from the hustle bustle of the NY metro area, and we loved New England, where I lived for much of my childhood.

VT House #1: The Lake House

The first house we bought was meant to be our retirement home, and we nicknamed it “The Lake House.” It’s a six-bedroom chalet nestled on a wooded three-quarters of an acre across the street from 200-acre Lake Rescue, where we keep a dock with boats. The kids and I would escape for half of every summer to decompress in the Green Mountains, go swimming and boating, hike nearby trails, sit around a fire pit making s’mores and singing camp songs, gaze at stars and explore Vermont. We had a Zodiac boat with a motor and used to go tubing. Bob came up for vacation a couple of weeks each summer, and otherwise took Amtrak from NY every Friday for a weekend visit. During the winter, we came up on occasional weekends and some school breaks to ski nearby Okemo. I would XC ski on Lake Rescue.

As soon as the contract was signed on The Lake House, we found ourselves in the vacation rental business, because it came with winter seasonal renters, and that was our plan for paying for it.

VT House #2: The Brook House

We bought the second house, which we call “The Brook House,” a couple of years later because the real estate market was booming, and it seemed like a good investment. The Brook House is a 120-year-old, five-bedroom former chicken coop that backs to a creek and Tiny Pond Recreation Area, 400 acres of state forest that no one seems to know exists. Echo Lake is less than a quarter-mile away. The yard is big and there’s a little country store across the street.

We dubbed it “The College Fund.” Alas, that real estate “boom” turned out to be a bubble when the market tanked. The region is only now recovering, so we still own both houses, though the Brook is on the market. One rental home is quite enough to manage from a distance!

Two Houses Filled With Love

The houses, especially the Lake House, are an integral part of our family story, especially since we moved to Colorado in the middle of the kids’ childhoods, so this region served as an anchor for their lives. We filled the houses with people we loved whenever we could. Family – grandpa and grandmas, aunts and uncles, siblings and cousins – and friends came up to the lake for summer vacations, year after year, creating so many dear memories.

Our friend Marie Laguerre brought her twins Omar and Kayla to attend Farm & Wilderness Barn Day Camp (eight miles up the road, and extraordinary) with my kids, and lived in the house for two weeks with us. I remember Omie would eat nothing but ramen noodles. Marya and Mickey Carter did the same with kids Spencer the bed at the Brook House (and I was so proud of myself for adding plastic covers to the mattresses that summer before their arrival), is now a brilliant athlete attending Harvard!

Cousin Jeanine Troisi came and learned to ski one year; another summer she ran a hilly 5K race along Echo Lake not long after giving up smoking. I was so proud of her! My brother Mike, sister-in-law Paula and their three kids visited; we rode bikes together around the lake with the smallest kids in kiddie seats. My nephew Jake and I kayaked into the middle of the lake to watch the Perseids Meteor Shower. Our friend Valerie Rasmussen, who has since passed away, came to hike and waterfall jump one summer, and to ski one winter.

My dear friends Mary and Sam Wiley brought live lobsters from Newport, RI, and we watched lawbstah races on the front deck of the Lake House before enjoying scrumptious steamed lobsters. I think of her whenever I see those lobster pots, which we still have, just waiting for her next visit. Mary came back another year and used the Brook House as a base while visiting colleges with her son Henry. Or was it Frank? I remember Lex’s stuffed lamb Buggya Guy disappeared during that visit, somewhere between going to car to leave for the Killington Adventure Zone to enjoy the alpine slide and arriving at the mountain. Forever a mystery.

(Above - Hiking the Vista Trail at Echo Lake. Below, the view from the top!)

My cousin Loraine Carapellucci and husband Dave Handley brought their three daughters for a week, and our kids really bonded. I remember we had a merry time on the rope swing of Discovery Island, in the middle of Lake Rescue, giving kids Olympic scores for “poses” before they dropped into the water. Alas, that swing is gone now; the tree from which it hung was brought down in the Great Flood of 2012.

We even hosted a Dominican-American girl from the Bronx named Clarissa Delgado through the Fresh Air Fund, to give her her first nature experience. I remember watching stars with Clarissa, a phenomenal sight for a girl accustomed to bright street lights and no view of the starry sky, and teaching her how to fish. In fact, it seems I spent countless summer hours putting worms on hooks and extricating fish from the same hooks over and over as I taught countless munchkins how to fish off the dock. I failed hopelessly to learn to fly fish, however, despite efforts summer after summer from my friend Eddie Eagan, who was director of the local Chamber of Commerce and taught flyfishing on the side.

I loved running around the lakes, and often woke up early to kayak on the misty lake, alone on 200 acres of calm water save for a couple of loons.

(Misty morning on Lake Rescue)

So many thousands of wonderful memories! When we moved to Colorado in early 2009, we were saddened to realize our Vermont summers were abruptly over. We took a financial hit from the recession that took years to recover from, and couldn’t afford to fly the family across the country. So the houses became vacation rental businesses that I managed from afar, and Bob and I would go back every couple of years to make improvements and do work on them.

We sort of forgot that the Lake House was originally supposed to be our home.  

Reconnecting with Vermont

But this past November, we went up and stayed in the Brook House for five weeks after Bob retired. We took Bob’s mom and sister Beth, and it snowed a good two or three feet during our stay. Bob and I spent an hour every morning in the hot tub on the back deck sipping mimosas and enjoying the sound of the creek while snowflakes gently played with our hair and ice from 13-degree mornings formed little spikes on his beard. My brother Phil, wife Rose and son Philip came for Thanksgiving, and 2.0 (pronounced 2-point-oh, as we like to call Philip the 2nd) sat in the same highchair my kids had sat in as he dropped his pieces of stuffing on the rug. My niece Catherine and her daughter Audrey also came for a few days, and Aud built a snowman in the yard.

And suddenly we remembered that these weren’t just vacation rentals. They were our homes! And even though we had left Colorado behind for the traveling life and sort of felt homeless, we weren’t!

Part-Time VT Residents

So we have decided that we will live in Vermont during the summers. The houses give our kids a place to come to from college that feels like home. They can get summer jobs. They can visit their favorite ice cream place (the Ludlow Coffee Company, formerly Scoops) and eat at their favorite pizza joint (Goodman’s American Pie). They can feel anchored.

(Seward’s in nearby Rutland is another favorite ice cream joint.)

We are working hard, though. Because we are trying to sell the Brook House, Bob and I are spending long hours making improvements – painting the house and some doors, pulling up a rug and refinishing a floor, planting grass and landscaping, buying furniture, and hiring and overseeing workmen. But we’re also going for long bike rides on scenic Route 100, a refreshing opportunity after the challenge of riding in Mexico. We’re hiking the Long/Appalachian Trail, enjoying our favorite ice cream places, trying to visit every bar in the Okemo Valley. We’re running and doing yoga and lifting weights, and hanging out on the Tyson Store chatting with neighbors.

Come October, we will head back south of the border and explore Mexico for the next 9 months. But when Lex gets done with their first year at Champlain College in May, we’ll return to the Green Mountain State and move back into The Lake House for the summer. (Hopefully, the Brook House will be sold and college paid for with the proceeds!)

I relish the opportunity to enjoy the region and explore the Green Mountain State more, without the burden of juggling full-time work, as I did when my kids were young. I look forward to connecting to the community and making friends. And I urge our family and friends to come visit! Because the Lake House has in fact turned into our summer retirement home. And we want to build more memories!

[writerachel]

I know you said you don’t plan on talking about it much but I’ve never heard any writblr mention tv series before! Would you mind giving a quick rundown of it?

oh god it’s mostly just… i honestly don’t know. my friend likes to plan out tv shows and things like that, and all i had at the time was blue moon inn, which was so specific and niche ya know? and i decided a tv show sounded fun, so i came up with some little plot that i don’t even know how i would execute in an interesting way and have it stretch over the span of even a season, i think it would be a comedy but idk how to write a comedic screenplay, so it was mostly just me wanting to create characters who weren’t so specific to a way of life and a certain time period (and yet i’ve chosen to put another one of my wips in a specific time period lol). BUT if you’d like to hear about it i can give a little description and a bit about each character i guess? ps you are so sweet for asking about this i honestly forgot i put that in my writeblr intro, i posted that like three weeks ago haha! i’ll put it under a read more because even this response is really long

it mainly focuses on lillian, who goes by ian and only ian, and two of her college friends trying to get their band back together. i had some plot points, like a couple of her friends would be getting married, a baby was going to come along somewhere, and the band would probably get signed?? relationships would be tested bc of the band’s success, etc. i honestly am not sure. i just LOVE making characters and i wanted to just make a bunch haha 

i have pinterest boards for all these characters but it’s on my pinterest that family members/people irl follow so they’re all secret boards haha

ian grieco - main character. 27. the singer & the pianist of the band. she’s pretty badass lmao. really likes classic rock like zepplin, van halen, aerosmith, etc. when she isn’t in the band, she’s a writer for a magazine! her fc is chelsea tyler (which makes it ironic that she likes aerosmith bc….. that’s steven tyler’s daughter but). no and my dumb ass decided to imagine the main character someone who isn’t even an actress asf;hdgrf 

liana cleur - 27. she plays the bass in the band! she’s pretty chill, just likes to have fun and stuff! trash description 1/10 i’m so sorry. she’s an event planner, and her fc is zoe kravitz. 

cora (levin) merchand - 27. the guitarist. she’s really sweet but still pretty cool. definitely the most “adult” out of the band, as she’s already married. she’s a high school music teacher and her fc is dianna agron. 

hanson kirschner - 28. the only non-original member of the band. their drummer from college didn’t stay in new york city like the rest of them, so they needed to find one. typical band guy, chill and funny, you know. maybe you don’t. i’m so sorry all these descriptions are shit omfg. he’s a graphic designer, and his fc is finn wittrock. 

johanna “jo” (olson) eagan - 27. the band’s “manager.” also ian’s best friend from childhood. really fun but also pretty mature, considering she’s a social worker and getting married to someone 18sh years older than her. her fc is imogen poots.

eleanor “nell” breslow - 28. part of the neighborhood crew from ian’s childhood (ian, johanna, nell, and imogen). she has a five year old son, sawyer elliot, whose father ran off when he found out she was pregnant. she and liana were going to date briefly! she’s a real estate agent, and her fc is mary elizabeth winstead. 

imogen (colley) mendoza - 26. also part of the neighborhood crew. she’s very determined, as she started her own bakery and is doing pretty well for herself, especially considering she’s so young! her fc is stella maeve. 

booker doane - 27. he’s ian’s high school ex, but they stayed good friends. he’s a big Memer, really funny, you know. he’s a manager at a restaurant (which isn’t his ideal job), and his fc is kieran culkin. 

that’s mostly it for main characters! there’s also sam grieco (31), ian’s older brother who she hates and her parents greatly favor. very put together, a veterinarian, and his fc is theo james. his wife is catrina (barberis) grieco (31), whose fc is emilia clarke. she’s a florist. they have two kids together, kelly elizabeth and harrison “harry” samuel. cora’s husband is peter merchand (31). he’s an engineer and his fc is pablo schreiber. hanson’s girlfriend is teagan laserna (24). she’s just starting out as an interior designer and her fc is emily browning. johanna’s fiance-who-turns-husband is jude eagan (45). he’s an optometrist and his fc is michael weatherly. (he was mostly a “guilty pleasure” character. i’m just in love with michael weatherly asddsljgn.) he has two kids of his own from a previous marriage, both boys in their teens. imogen’s husband is chris mendoza (30). he’s a lawyer and his fc is daniel henney. AND ian’s friend/coworker is alice nguyen (29). her fc is jamie chung. EDIT: I FORGOT IAN’S EX BF!!!!!!!!! his bitch ass cheated on ehr after they were together for four years!!! his name is dakota archer (32). he’s a bar tender and his fc is rob mcelhenney (fitting right lmao).

wow i’m sorry i’m sure you didn’t care that much! like i said, it was a character driven project that i thought about for like two weeks omfg. i still love all these characters though! thank you so much for asking about them!! maybe i’ll try to work on this more haha