#and it’s throwing off bills/routine for those who were used to getting paid early

[chrollohearttags]

my job acting funny so I just had to do the most hilarious shit ever

[heich0e]

leave the light on - miya osamu/f!reader (haikyuu!) part 10 in the bff!osamu series tags: childhood friends to lovers, tw instant coffee mention, miscommunication, confessions, ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!

Onigiri Miya closes early on Sunday nights.

It’s not for lack of business—the shop would certainly take in enough revenue to justify staying open regular hours an extra day per week, especially on a weekend. But in the early days of Onigiri Miya, when it was just a one-man show, Osamu needed at least one night that he could count on having off. The workweek business—office workers and students going through their routine hustle and bustle—kept him going, enough so that Sunday nights weren’t a make or break for him, and he was able to start shuttering in the early afternoon once per week.

He remembers those early days. Sweet talking vendors to bring down the cost of produce and haggling with the grubby, bleary eyed men at fish market stalls at the crack of dawn for a deal on the catch of the day. Promising suppliers that he’d be able to get them their money in a couple of weeks if they’d just give him some more time. Standing on the road, because Onigiri Miya was just a street stall back then, trying to coax people in and try his food. To convince them to take a chance on him. He remembers burns on his hands and cuts on his fingers and an ache in his bones that ran so marrow-deep he forgot what it felt like to not be so sore. Sunday nights were the only night he had to relax. The only night he had to sit down, to take off his hat, and to have a beer—or, even more frequently, pass out on his couch in his uniform at 8pm and sleep right through to his alarm the next morning.

Closing early on Sundays had been your idea, way back when— suggested to him gently while he rested with his head in your lap in your tiny student apartment after another 16 hour workday. He still remembers the worry in your eyes as you brushed his hair back from his tired face.

Nowadays things aren’t so hectic. Osamu’s got a good team of people around him to help Onigiri Miya run smoothly—a team who he trusts and values. It doesn’t all fall onto his shoulders in the same way that it used to: he doesn’t have to be there for every open and every close, his bills are paid, he’s not fighting to lure people in off the street just in the hope that he can scrape by for another week.

Now when he closes early on Sunday, it’s more for the sake of his staff than anything else. Occasionally Osamu will take the night off, too; he’ll go home and catch up on housework, run an errand or two, or even grab dinner—usually with you, though evidently not so much lately. But most Sundays he stays behind after his last employee heads out for the night; locking up behind them, switching off the sign in the window to tell the world the shop is closed, and then holing himself up in his office to do some admin. He’ll grab a plate of whatever’s leftover from the day’s service and a cold can of beer from the fridge, put on a rerun of Atsumu’s game from the night before, and get to work shuffling through the paperwork that he’s left to pile up over the past seven days.

Osamu hates paperwork.

It’s not that it’s particularly challenging work—the really hard stuff is left to his bookkeeper after all. It’s just tedious, a mindless task in many ways, and he always finds his thoughts drifting as he sorts through invoices and inventory registers: catching himself being inattentive halfway through a spreadsheet, and having to force himself to go back to the beginning just to make sure he hasn’t missed anything in his carelessness. 

You used to help him with this kind of work, or at least keep him company while he got through it—sitting on the lumpy couch crammed into one corner of his little office and pretending like you weren’t asleep each time Osamu caught you with your eyes closed. More often than not, he’d throw his jacket over you to keep you warm while you napped and then rush through the last of his work so that he could wake you up and get you home. But just having you there on those late nights was enough for him; your presence was the thing that helped.

Coffee is his only saving grace, these days.

Samu shuffles out to the front of the shop on one such Sunday evening, taking off his baseball cap and ruffling the hair underneath tiredly. He’d finally gotten a trim, and he’s glad that things feel a bit more normal again as he rakes his fingers through it—his mother had been right when she remarked that it was getting too long the week before. He tosses his hat down on the front counter of Onigiri Miya, rounding the end to grab a sachet of instant coffee from behind the bar where he keeps his emergency stash.

The overhead lights in the shop are off, but there’s enough brightness filtering out from the still-lit kitchen that he doesn’t need to struggle to see as he prepares himself some hot water to add to the mug in front of him. He tips the granulated contents of his instant coffee sachet into the bottom after ripping it open with his teeth, tapping the empty plastic packaging against the edge of the cup to make sure it all comes out. The kettle behind him hums quietly as it heats to boiling, and Osamu sighs, leaning back against the counter with his arms crossed over his chest.

He stares out at the restaurant—his restaurant, as hard as he still finds it to believe some days—his gaze sweeping over the tables with their corresponding chairs resting atop them. One of the staff had mopped the floors at the end of the night, which left them still slightly wet and glistening. There’s light filtering in through the front windows from the streetlights and the other shops that line the Osaka street outside, and their glow catches in the water that hasn’t yet dried from the tile.

Osamu’s eyes suddenly snap up to the glass that lines the front of the restaurant.

There’s a silhouetted figure—so familiar he could trace it even with his eyes closed, from memory alone—standing on the other side of the door.

Osamu blinks, thinking that the paperwork must have finally gotten the best of him, or maybe that the beer he’d had earlier is inexplicably hitting him too hard. But no matter how many times he squeezes his eyes shut, the familiar shape stays where it is on the other side of the glass each time he opens them again.

His heartbeat thumps, loud and wet, in his ears.

Like the shot of a gun, the man stumbles gracelessly into action: loping around the end of the bar and slipping slightly on the wet tile as he heads towards the door. He fiddles with the lock as he struggles to unlatch it, accidentally trying to force it the wrong way in his haste before eventually getting it right. When he finally throws open the door, a gust of cool night air flooding into the restaurant along with it, he takes in a deep, gasping breath.

“Hey.”

His voice is shaky when he greets you—mostly air and very little shape to the word.

You stare at him from a few paces away, your arms crossed firmly over your chest and a frown tugging down the corners of your mouth. Osamu thinks you look pretty when you’re mad. He always has. But it’s worse now because he knows all too well that he shouldn’t—because he knows you’re mad at him. 

You seem to have something to say, he can tell as much from the almost spiteful glint in your eyes, but you stay tightlipped as you simply stare at him.

“D’ya… wanna come in?” Osamu asks, still holding the door open. He nods his head back into the shop. “Still got some stuff prepped, I could make ya—“

“You’re a jerk.”

Osamu blinks, taken aback.

“Yeah,” he agrees plainly after a moment, thinking it’s only fair of you to say given then circumstances. 

His concurrence only seems to upset you more.

“Like, you’re a real asshole, y’know that?” You’re nearly spitting you’re so angry, your features twisted up in contempt. Your arms uncross and drop down to your sides, and Osamu watches as your hands ball into fists. He’s the one who taught you how to throw a punch, years and years ago now, and he’s wondering if he’s about to experience a practical demonstration of his teaching abilities firsthand.

“I don’t necessarily disagree.” He nods, agreeing with you once more, though this time his response is slower, more hesitant—not because he doesn’t mean it, but because he’s not sure that it’s what you want to hear.

“Ugh!” Your following exclamation is loud, and palpably frustrated, all but confirming his suspicions. “You…!”

Your tone is climbing with every passing second, and Osamu looks furtively up and down the road around the two of you. It’s late in the evening but there are still a few people out, and he sees heads turning in your direction at the commotion.

“Hey,” he says, his own voice dropping in volume but still pleading all the same. “My name’s on the door and we’re gettin’ some weird looks. I wanna hear everythin’ you have to say, but could you please just say it to me inside?”

You look at him blankly, your lips puckering into a petulant, unhappy pout. You seem like you want to say no, to keep causing a scene, and for a second Osamu really thinks you’re about to round in on him again. Instead you trudge forward, stomping past him over the threshold of Onigiri Miya.

Osamu hesitates for a moment after you pass, half in shock and half in relief, and then he lets the door swing closed and locks it behind him for good measure—he’s not sure he wants any unsuspecting people coming in search of onigiri and stumbling upon a brawl.

It’s dim in the restaurant when he turns to face you, but he can still see your fury burning in the dark.

Neither of you say anything.

“You can keep goin’ if you want,” Osamu is eventually the first to speak, and he means what he says. This is the least of the punishment he deserves, after all. And hearing you yell at him is markedly better than the silence.

“Martyrdom doesn’t suit you at all,” you mutter sullenly.

Osamu sighs, scrubbing his hand over his face. “I just wantcha to say whatcha came here to say.”

You begin to pace as you work through your thoughts, slowly walking back and forth in front of the counter, picking at your cuticles. You’d put a fair amount of distance between the two of you, and he’s sure it was intentional. Osamu keeps himself confined to the entryway near the door, while you walk a path back and forth along the length of the service counter. His eyes follow every step you take, like a captivated child watching fish at the aquarium.

“I had a terrible dream last night,—” you finally force the words out, your feet stilling against the shiny tile as your pacing comes to a sudden halt.

Osamu decides to just do the right thing and shut the hell up for once, giving you the floor.

“—I was going to buy 30 kilos of rice from Kita-san’s farm—”

That’s a lot of rice, Osamu wants to note, but his lips part to let the words through and then he decides better of it.

“—and I was there, at the farm, and then Kita-san started telling me that you got married and had a baby. A baby, Samu! Kita-san standing there telling me all these terrible things with that big bag of rice in my hands, and I couldn’t even get mad at him because he’s Kita! So I just had to listen to him go on and on and on about the venue and the flowers and the baby name that you picked out. And the more he’d tell me the worse it was, and the bag of rice just kept getting heavier.” Your teeth bite down so hard into your lip as you suck in a breath that Osamu's amazed he doesn’t see blood. “I was hearing all of these things—terrible things—and all I could think was that I should have been there to see all of that for myself. I shouldn’t have been hearing about it from someone else. And I realized that you were living a whole life apart from me, a life that I didn’t know about or get to be a part of, and it just kept getting worse and worse and I woke up and I felt like I was going to scream.”

You’re out of breath by the time you finish your rambling thought, your chest heaving and your eyes wild and your mouth faintly wet. You look to him, and Osamu doesn’t see that same indignation in your eyes anymore, only hurt. He watches as the expression hardens again, whets itself like a blade—sharpened not in anger, but rather in resolve. In resignation.

“That day. I looked for you first.”

Osamu feels lost now. Are you still talking about that dream?

You understand without him saying it, and explain yourself further. “In high school. The day that I kissed Suna.”

Osamu’s stomach drops, all of the blood rushing to his head so quickly that the shop begins to spin a little around him. He can hear his pulse in his ears. He can feel it in his throat. He can’t help the twist of jealousy in the pit of his stomach, writhing and ugly though it may be, at the mere mention of his friend’s name. He doesn’t have the right to feel the way he feels, but it happens all the same.

“I looked for you,” you keep going, like you’ve broken a seal and have to let it all out. Osamu doesn’t dare try to stop you. He couldn’t even if he wanted to. He watches on like it’s a conversation that’s happening not with him but rather to him. “You were eating lunch with Tsumu in your classroom. I realized he would have had a fit if he knew that I was asking you and not him. I thought about asking him but…”

Osamu can’t feel his fingers from how tightly his hands are balled into fists at his side. His lungs burn in his chest—the breath he’s holding having long since lost the oxygen his body needs, though he can’t seem to draw in another.

“If it wasn’t you, I didn’t care who it was. So I asked Suna.”

The young man processes your words slowly. Incompletely. Like only every third word seems to register.

“Ya wanted me to be yer first kiss?” It’s not the question he ought to ask you but it’s the one his brain chooses to spit out.

Your reply is frustrated, but with an unmistakably melancholic rasp running through it. “Yeah. I did.”

Somewhere distantly, Osamu recognizes a sharp, stinging pain. An ache as part of him realizes that it could have been him. All along. All this time. Him. But the pain is muted, because part of him—most of him—still doesn’t quite understand.

“I think that was the first time I realized it.” 

Osamu watches your face, maps the achingly familiar lines and dips and curves of your features as he tries to read meaning in the space between your words. But he still finds nothing.

“I liked you, Samu. More than I should have. Differently than I liked Tsumu, or Suna, or any other guy.” You laugh, but it’s a hollow, watery sound. “I realized it and it was awful.”

You’re waiting for him to say something, but Osamu is at a loss for words. No, that’s not quite it either. It’s not that he has nothing to say, but that he has everything he wants to say to you. To ask you. But he doesn’t know where to start, or how to sort through them, or even how to will his lips, teeth, and tongue to shape any of them.

“You… Y’know ya don’t have to say this,” his voice is tight, like a rope drawn to secure a knot not unlike the one in his throat, when he finally manages to speak. “Ya don’t have to pretend or convince yourself that you… felt the same as me. I care about ya too much to ever ask that.”

You laugh—a single, sharp, distinctly mirthless ha!—as you throw your hands up in exasperation. “There you go again not letting me have any say, Samu!” You punctuate your exclamation with a frustrated little sound. “Stop deciding things all on your own and just listen to me.”

That shuts him up again.

“I thought I was over it,”—you begin to pace once more, your steps slow and measured—“I really did. I told myself it would never happen and moved on because I never ever wanted to fuck things up between us. Between any of us.

“You told me that you’ve loved me your whole life, but you don’t know if or when something changed. I do. I had a singular moment that I could point to where I realized that if I did or said the wrong thing after that, I could fuck up something that meant more to me than anything else in the world. Even if you felt the same way I did, there’s no guarantee that something like that would work out. But if we tried and it didn’t work, we wouldn’t be able to just go back to how things were. So I told myself that no matter what I wouldn’t. No matter how hard it was or how awful it felt. I could get over it if it meant I never had to lose you. And it was fine. For years it was fine. We were fine. Everything was fine. And then I lost you anyway.”

You suddenly stop pacing and crouch down, your arms winding themselves around your knees as if to comfort yourself. 

“That night, when you…” You swallow, and risk a glance up at him. “I don’t think I’m over it.”

Osamu feels like he might die. Maybe he did already. Maybe this is his life passing before his eyes, because it’s always been you anyway.

“But it’s scary, Samu,” your voice is so small, so vulnerable, when you speak to him again. You’re trembling as you hold yourself. “Aren’t you scared?”

Osamu is suddenly reminded of that fall day in the woods, so many years ago now. Reminded of two kids who didn’t know what they were doing. Who didn’t know anything. But who knew each other.

Slowly, Osamu crouches too—his joints cracking in protestation as he drops his body down to your level. Your eyes never leave his.

“Yeah,” he says, after a moment. Soft but sure. “‘Course I am.”

You let out a soggy, incredulous laugh, but it somehow doesn’t feel out of place. He watches as you reach up and scrub at your eyes.

“I love you,” Osamu says, because it’s true. Because there’s no other words he can possibly think to say in this situation. Because it’s the only thing that he has in his mind.

You look over at him, sniffling a little, wiping at your running nose with the back of your hand in a way that Osamu absolutely should not find as endearing as he does. “How can you just say it like that? Like it’s so easy?”

Osamu wants to laugh too, like you did earlier, but he worries that the sound might come off as almost hysterical thanks to the misplaced hope he can feel simmering in the pit of his stomach. “Sayin’ it’s the hard part, that’s why it took me so long. But I’ve spent forever lovin’ ya. S’always been the easiest bit.”

You choke back a sob, your head hanging defeatedly as your body slackens. You’re a ghost of the angry little thing that was outside of his door only a few minutes earlier, but more yourself now than Osamu has seen you in weeks.

“What about you?” he poses the question so quietly he might worry you didn’t hear him if not for how silent the dark shop is around you both.

“What do you mean?” You know what he means. He knows you know what he means. You’re stalling, trying to buy yourself time that’s run out now.

“Do you love me?” he asks, praying to anyone who’s listening that he’s been a good enough man up until this point to deserve the answer that he wants to hear more than anything else in the world.

“Of course I do,” you say evasively, refusing to meet his gaze. But it’s not the same. It’s not enough.

“But are you in love with me?” Osamu finally dares to ask.

There’s a stretch of the most painful, profound silence that either of you have ever experienced. It goes on for an eternity, though the clock hands in the corner say differently.

You still refuse to look at him, your gaze fixed instead to a point on the wall on the other side of the restaurant. Osamu watches how the light from the windows catches in the tears that cling to your bottom lashes.

“Yeah, I am,” you say, barely a whisper. You speak the confession like it’s the most terrifying thing imaginable. Like it's wretched.

And it is maybe, but Osamu’s never felt happier to hear anything in all his life—he feels a rush of something so visceral and elated flowing through him, he thinks he might pass out.

“Can I touch ya?” he asks hesitantly, his voice thick and unlike its normal tone. He hardly recognizes it as his own.

You peek over at him for the first time, and Osamu revels in the feeling of having your eyes on him. Delights in watching you watch him and knowing that behind the gaze is the same feeling as the one he holds inside of himself. You consider it for a moment, and he doesn’t dare rush you, but eventually—mercifully—you nod. 

Osamu inches forward slowly and wraps you in his arms. Your body relaxes into his hold instantly, and he pulls you into his lap on the tiled floor. He holds you so tightly that he’s scared he might break you, but he still can’t find it in himself to be more delicate. You cling to him anyway.

It’s the first time he’s touched you in months, but every inch of you is still known to him. Still familiar in every way that matters. You smell the same. You feel the same. You’re soft and warm just like always. Osamu buries his face into the crook of your neck, and your fingers eventually lift to play with the hair at his nape. He holds you, and holds you, and holds you more—sating a thirst that’s been building for longer than the time the two of you have been apart.

And you let him.

You hold him too, in the same way.

“If I kiss ya, you gonna cry again?” Osamu asks you quietly after a while, his lips brushing against your throat as he murmurs the words.

You snort, your fingers twisting into the material of his t-shirt at his shoulders. Osamu peels himself away from you and looks up, and finds that your faces are so close. Too close, in any other circumstance.

His palm lifts, cupping your cheek in his hand, running his thumb against the smooth skin underneath.

“Shut up, Samu,” you say, a little smile twisting up the corner of your mouth.

And Osamu happily obliges by pressing his lips to yours.

[chemicalpink]

Starry Night♡ Jimin x Reader

Pairing: Park Jimin x Reader; shifter!Jimin, familiar!Jimin x witch!reader

Genre: fluff, implied smut, hints of humor and angst

Word Count: 3.4k

Warnings: there is a bit of talk about family issues & implied smut

Summary: Every witch is supposed to have a familiar by her side, except you seem to be the exception to the rule, until a certain calico cat enters your life and not only is he your familiar but he might just be the love of your life

OR

The one where Jimin is a calico cat shifter that would like to enjoy the finest things in life, but that is not how you roll so he finds himself falling for you and your weird ways

A/N: Hello! I’ve been thinking about familiar! Jimin for so long you have no idea, feedback is always appreciated, also, tell me if you would like me to do a Part 2. Hope you like it! The original photo is not mine, credits to owner.

There are a few things about Magic that people just don’t realise, for once, it is real, but also, it is far more complex than any human mind can conceive.

Your first approach to magic could be described as anything other than easy, there always seemed to be something new to learn about it, and every time you thought it couldn’t get any weirder, the universe decided to grant your wishes and throw something far more bizarre than the last.

Now, the existence of familiars wasn’t quite a foreign concept for you, you’ve seen your coven full of animals when those witches assemblies took part every time the moon went full or during the massive festivals that took part on Samhain, truth be told, you couldn’t help but feel a sting of jealousy reach you every time you encountered one of your superiors walk by and try to diminish you for having no familiar at all, a rare occurrence for a full witch that had already ended her training.

Although come to think of it, there were a lot of things that made the witches in your coven point you out, whether it was your lack of familiar, your withholding of using magic at all times or the fact that you much preferred to live a much more human life than theirs; Mrs Grimm, the veteran witch that was in charge of the cosy cafe you worked at, had gladly taken you under her wing, constantly reassuring you that having a familiar is such a complicated matter, you had nothing to worry about. 

You could distinctly remember the one time she lectured you on how hunting for a familiar was pretty much like hunting down your soulmate, except that every time you came close, they would run away, plus, there was no telling whether they would be a cliché black cat or a spider, the only thing sure was that once they were ready, they would find you, not the other way around; you had wanted to ask her at the time if, after all her years on Earth, she had found her familiar, but you feared the answer would be a no, mirroring yourself on her, since no animal seemed to ever be around her. 

 “Yoongs, are you sure you can close the shop by yourself?” you told the boy as you wrapped the scarf tighter around your neck and stepped outside to the cold weather, it wasn’t even winter but somehow the Earth decided to play pretend during summer nights that year.

“Yeah, I’ve done it plenty of times before, Y/N” Yoongi was that handsome dude you would encounter once in a lifetime, working odd hours at the cafe on a night where you had a paper due and were rushing to the nearest cafe to recharge and after crushing on him, you would never see him again, he just had that kind of vibe to him, everyone knew it, which is why Mrs Grimm seemed to keep him in the shop to attract costumers, though he had started working a few months after you, you had never come to know exactly how he came into the picture, one day he was just...there, behind the counter, delivering the most perfect lattes you had ever tasted “Go on then, you don’t want to keep your gram waiting” he flashed you one of his infamous gummy smiles as sarcastic as he could to get you going, which you did.

Okay, perhaps you shouldn’t have lied to Yoongi, or taken advantage that Mrs Grimm, who could tell from a mile radius when you were lying,  wasn’t working the shop just so you could get a night out of the shop, but some days were better than others, the past ones had been the worst ones in a while, but you couldn’t just say that you weren’t feeling up to it, as much as magic was a thing, bills were bills and they needed to be paid somehow. 

Clutching the scarf tighter to your body as the wind picked up, a loud hissing caused you to stop dead in your tracks and turn your gaze towards the left side of the sidewalk, a calico cat catching your attention as it stepped backwards, forced by two other cats that were hissing ferally at him, within a second you found yourself shooing them away once one of them took its paw off the ground and launched towards the three-coloured feline, crouching down and offering your hand out, you tried calling for it, only to notice how uncomfortably he limped towards you.

“It’s getting colder out here, and you’re hurt” you observed while scratching its chin, the cat closing its eyes contentedly “Wanna come home with me?” at that the cat opened its eyes almost comically, but let you cradle it between your arms nonetheless, the soft bumping of your heart along with the warmth from your scarf lulling it to a much-needed sleep.

The first few nights with Jimin, which you soon found out was the cat’s name noticing a small name tag while bandaging his limping paw,  were hard to get accustomed to, finding his eyes shimmering in the darkness as he lay awake near the couch during one of your trips to the kitchen for a glass of water in the middle of the night.

“Try not to get to comfy, yeah?” you used to say, thinking that maybe, since he had a name tag, even without information, and with him being fully recovered,  you could somehow find his owner in no time, cats don’t stray too far from their home right? 

Wrong. For all you knew, perhaps Jimin had walked all the way from another continent, no one in a decent radius had even ever seen a calico cat before. Jimin’s gaze always seemed to mock you when the usual midnight ‘try not get comfy’ phrase left your lips, a routine of some sort.

You see, Jimin had soon found out that you were actually a very, very heavy sleeper–except for your regular trips to the kitchen somewhere between 2 and 3 am, and he planned to use that to his advantage. With all honesty, at first, he thought you were dense, not noticing that he didn’t have an actual owner, not noticing that you were in fact, his witch; he had been prepared to present himself in a fancy way– a very characteristic asset of his– but getting jumped by not one, but two familiars gone rouge, and having to get cared for, yeah, that was most definitely not in his plans. 

A second thought then occurred to him after the second night at your apartment, it wasn’t supposed to be, but then again, the universe had never really been on his side ever since he slept through that Ostara ritual a few years back, what if, and that’s probably only him overthinking, what if you weren’t actually a witch? what if you were just a good samaritan that happened to witness his state of need for care and offered yourself?  You hadn’t even once tried to use magic on his dislocated paw, after all. 

And that’s exactly how he decided to roam around your apartment, at night, while you took those weirdly long baths, while on the phone with someone he couldn’t quite place.

“Come on, come on Y/N, there has to be something, anything” he mumbled to himself while unlocking the door to the only room that was left for him to roam, he couldn’t really tell what exactly he was looking for; at first, he thought you might have had some of the weird ingredients witches kept on their cabinets, but after opening and closing the kitchen cupboards, he gave up; right now, presented by the sight of tons of books scattered everywhere in the stuffy room, he could only hope to find your book of shadows, witches weren’t supposed to stay away from them right? then again, you might not even be a witch yourself.

He also wasn’t sure when exactly he had passed out on the floor next to some old philosophy books, but he sure thanked that he had done so in his cat form as morning came and you took him in your arms hurriedly “Hey, how did you-never mind, we have to get going”

The route wasn’t long, and he could soon tell where he was as his nose was met with perfectly roasted notes of coffee grounds, you had placed him on top of the counter as you went to talk with the old witch that owned the place, he could instantly tell she was one by the pendant hanging off her neck, but what he wasn’t counting on, was to encounter him.

Watching Yoongi serve clients those pretty, heavy coloured pastries while he was dressed in black and directed a small shy smile at them, was probably one of your favourite parts of working at the cafe, today it was no exception; until he came across Jimin and stood beside him, locking eyes for a little too long, and- did Yoongi just hissed at the cat? Surely your mind was playing tricks on you. You had spent a few hours early in the morning just sulking in bed, deciding that bringing Jimin to work was the perfect way to get people to recognise him, if no one claimed to be his owner by the end of the day, you would just let him stay home with you, you had grown fond of the feline after all.

The clock had barely struck eight as you got home, cat in hand and gently placing him on top of the kitchen aisle, ready for the daily routine of feeding you both before binge-watching whatever on Netflix. You turned your back to him as you washed your hands when a loud noise of something falling from the counter resonated in the apartment 

“Ah! Jimin! You scared-” the towel you held between your hands dropped to the floor and was followed by a whole five seconds of screaming as your eyes opened as big as plates as you saw this blond-haired man sitting prettily on your kitchen  counter, legs dangling off the edge, well,  this was definitely not how he pictured it “Who are you and what did you do to Jimin?” 

“Well- if you promise not to scream again, I’ll tell you” followed by silence from you, he felt you were ready for his explanation “I’m Jimin! hi, Y/N!” his eyes grew into crescents as he smiled and brought his hand up to wave at you, and if he thought that you screaming at him shifting was unexpected enough, the thought of you launching forward and throwing hands at him hadn’t even crossed his mind “No wait wait wait stop- ah!” 

“I CHANGED IN FRONT OF YOU!”

“Yeah… such a sight, you know?” it didn’t even take you a whole second to launch yourself again against him, but this time he only laughed it off 

“Wait so- you’re my familiar then?” he cautiously formed a flower cup with his hands and rested it against his chin, smiling at you “What took you so long to shift? I thought you were a normal cat!”

“Yeah well, I could ask the same thing, you didn’t even use magic when you saw me hurt! I thought you were a human!” he pouts and finally jumps off from the counter, deciding to just let his weight rest against it “Yoongi told me- you know, you’re technically witch royalty, Y/N”

“I know” 

“I can’t wait to tell Jungkook! Oh dear, he is going to lose it!” his over-joyful tone of voice really contrasted the inner thoughts going on inside your head at the time, it was no secret you were one of the most powerful young witches of the era, but that just wasn’t you.

“Jimin, no” your voice was so quiet, it was surprising that Jimin had caught it from the way he was currently pacing around, a smile plastered on his face as he went on and on about his plans now that he knew who his master was, but he was your familiar after all, there was this fate-driven understanding between the two, it only took his a couple seconds to understand that your magic was not something you were comfortable with.

“Oh, that’s okay then” he smiled at you, every drop of energy drowned from him and you couldn’t help but feel guilty. You could only picture how much it would mean for a familiar to get to know they were paired with a high ranking witch, only to have it taken away from them by the witch herself, being completely honest, now that he had walked into your life, you couldn’t help but feel like you were dragging him down to a non-magic world like you were stripping him away from everything he was.

But Jimin was the sweetest anyone could be, whether he was in human or cat form, he never left your side from that day on, Jimin had soon found out that there were bad days for you, days where he was grateful you had let him in, not just your life, but yourself as well, he had tried to assure you, he had just been thrilled to learn he was your familiar, that it didn’t matter to him whether you prefer to stay in the human world or in the magic realm, he was just glad to be by your side.

On the better days, he actually liked to tease you enough for you to begin training magic again, up until you had gradually become more powerful than before. A few weeks in, you both fell in a comfortable synergy where you began enjoying magic like you used to when you were younger and Jimin had learnt to stay away from magic, as much as shifting even less than before; even though if you had, for any reason, denied him cuddles while on his human form, he learnt you wouldn’t deny him if he looked up at you with teary eyes in his cat form.

Somewhere of a few months into him being practically a roommate, Jimin started working at the café, taking over baking duty, bickering non-stop with Yoongi when they were both needed to serve costumers. 

It was a usual Saturday in the afternoon where Jimin secluded himself a few minutes before closing time to get things ready for Sunday baking, just the two of you in the shop without much to do, his phone started buzzing non-stop with incoming messages, you walked to where it was, and you truly did knew better than to take a peek at it but curiosity got the best of you as the first message you saw was a 

“Hey, how’s the plan on getting to the Royal House going?”

If you didn’t knew any better, you would have sworn your sould had just left your body as you reminded yourself of all the times Jimin had helped you with your magic, how he had managed to convince you that he had no ill intentions behind all those hours you both had spent coming up with new spells, he had you fooled saying that he had adapted to a much more human life.

“Y/N?” Jimin walked out from the  baking room, noticing how tightly you help onto his phone “Y/N what are you-”

“So it was all part of some wicked plan, huh?” you rose your gaze to fix it on his, anger clearly seeping from your eyes, he wasn’t sure how, but he instantly knew he had fucked up “All of- ALL OF THIS WAS JUST FOR YOU TO GET YOUR ASS TO THE ROYAL HOUSE? HUH?” 

He couldn’t even get to you on time as he stood frozen facing the glass door through which you had just walked out, as he reached for his phone that was left by you on the counter, everything made sense, he had once told Jungkook about it, overly excited by learning he was your familiar, but things really did change, he didn’t even remember the text, it wasn’t his fault that guy literally took months to answer!

You crouched down on your sidewalk as a black cat meowed by, disappearing from your line of view, followed by a presence on your side “Jimin is a good kid, you know?” Yoongi said in a hushed tone “And he really, truly cares about you”

“Yeah, that’s apparently not true” you scoffed “I’m just an easy ticket for the highest magic rank”

Yoongi exhaled loudly from beside you and knowing him, he just most likely rolled his eyes “Y/N, I’m talking here as a familiar, not as some empathetic being, we just want what is best for our master” silence followed and he took it as a signal to keep talking “He was spoiled rotten, I’ll give you that. But now? he can make the perfect latte, no magic involved. I fear he might take my spot as the preferred barista”

On second thought, perhaps you let your family problems get the best of you, whether or not Jimin had been excited about being a highly ranked familiar, he had every right to be, it was you who had no right to overthink his actions and instantly blame him for trying to take advantage of you. You would like to think for the past months by his side, you knew better than that.

Frankly, the art of apologising was never one you would consider yourself good at, which is why you found yourself silently doing your routine around the apartment, this time not a single peep could be heard from Jimin either, as he tried to respect your space as much as you wanted it to last.

You walked further down the hallway to where the rooms were, surely Jimin was keeping himself in there “Hey Jimin have you seen-” your words were cut short by said blond walking ethereally out of the shower, towel hanging low on his hips as time seemed to stop and you couldn’t pry your eyes from the way the steam emanated from behind him, or how his hair kept on dripping down the front of his body, some drops making it to the wooden floor, he looked up surprised as he breathed your name, rapidly glancing down at his almost naked form and blushing furiously but somehow gains enough confidence to reach out for your hands “I’m so sorry, I really am. I used to be an asshole, trust me I know and I don’t deserve to be your familiar at all bu-”

“It’s okay, Chim” you look up to meet his eyes, full of pleading in them “It was wrong from me to accuse you of something that didn’t even happen in the first place” you smiled softly and it took no time for him to mirror you, both of you enveloped in a much more comforting silence as his gaze fixated on your lips and back to your eyes as if asking for permission, butterflies that you didn’t even know were there, making a mess inside your belly as you brought your right hand to cup his cheek and helped him lean into you, eyes closed, placing his soft plump lips against your own, hair dampening the front of your shirt when his left thumb caressed your cheek as he deepened the kiss running his tongue to part your lips, right hand placed on your side in an attempt to bring you closer to him, making you hyper-aware of the warmth  in which his body enveloped you in; after separating for air and him casting one of his most adorable smiles  as both of you kept locking eyes, his mouth started leaving a trail of wet kissed down your jaw to your neck, exhaling a moan, both of your hands found themselves on the small of his naked back, lightly scratching the exposed skin; his nose brushing a eskimo kiss against the bit of skin where your jaw and neck connected  which he had just marked with pink blooms all over.

“Well that was most definitely a better way to make up than what I had in mind” he whispered in a breathy voice against your ear

“What did you have in mind?”

“Turning into a kitten until you forgave me?” he chuckled lightly

“Well you might just like this one better” you said as you took his hand in yours and led him towards your bedroom

[coffee-n-bagels-comic-universe]

Out of Action or Lessons to be Learnt

Quick Tag List: @kuruumiya @spacelizardtrashboys @stupidbluegirl @enigmaticandunstable @nattinngrst

This Passage Contains Potentially: swearing, violence, blood, angst, whump, fluff and smutty content. Chapter-specific warning: This chapter contains mention of pregnancy symptoms such as morning sickness, and food cravings as well as mood swings

Summary: Kirby tries to survive the new developments in her life, Rod becoming slightly overprotective doesn't really help much.

Kirby's POV:

After the show on Sunday (24th June) Roddy decided to invite Orton and Schultz out to dinner with us.

"So you got your woman pregnant?"

"Yes, David. Why'd you ask?" I answered for Roddy

"When's it due?"

"Well, Schultzy," I had to do some calculations in my head, "Around the end of next Feb."

"So, Rod, Kirby, y'all got any ideas for names yet?" Orton quizzed

"I ain't got no names, you got any names, Kirbs?"

"I like the name 'Casey' it's a good, neutral name, y'know."

"Your woman's a quicker thinker than you, boy."

"Yeah, Rod, ya married a feisty one."

"As Kirby'll tell ya lads, it's a marriage of equals."

We finished our meals, paid and left, heading to the next show. Tuesday, Twenty-Sixth, Providence, Rhode Island. Then the next show, Wednesday, Twenty-Seventh, Columbus, Ohio. After the Wednesday show Rod and myself spent some time with Orndorff and Orton. Then the next show, Thursday, Twenty-Eighth, Rod was meant to do a show in Dayton, Ohio, without me but he no-showed.

"Rod, McMahon called, something about a show in Dayton?"

"Oh, I forgot to tell them I was looking after you."

"Roddy, I'm fine, you should've done the show."

"Kirbs, I care more about making sure ya alright than doing every show, I need to know that you're okay."

"Roderick. Would you listen to me?!"

"Kirby, don't you go telling me what to do!"

Rod had gotten right up into my face, soon he seemed to notice the tears welling up in my eyes.

"Kirby, I'm sorry, I'm so sorry."

"Woah, Rod. Rod, it's alright, you're okay, Hon. Roddy, come here."

I pulled him into my arms, feeling him gently caress my stomach.

"Kirbs, d'ya think I'll make a good father?"

"Of course you'll make a good father, Rod."

The following day, the moment I woke up I had to rush to the bathroom and throw up, Rod rushed in after me, checking that I was alright and helping me clean myself off. We had to attend a show in Elizabeth, New Jersey the next day. The next show after that was Tuesday, the Second of July, Glen Falls, New York, after the show Rod asked me to come with him to a local bar to meet an 'old friend' of his, or in other words, Rod was asking me to keep him calm.

"Kirby, this is Greg 'The Hammer' Valentine. Greg, my beautiful wife, Kirby Piper."

"You're the gal I keep hearing about from people."

"Well, that depends on what you've heard."

"I heard that you were, or are, pregnant."

"That's true," Orton butted in, "Rod and I got told that on TV."

"Yeah, Piper's Pit, last month. I'm glad you found yourself a person who makes you happy, Rod."

"I, uh, I watched the matches you two had in Eighty-three."

"What did you think of them?"

"They're good, excellent even, though, the dog collar match. I can't watch that ever again."

"Why not?"

"Cause I worry about you, every time I watch it, Roddy."

The next show was Thursday, the fifth, in Hazelton, Pennsylvania. Jimmy Snuka and Roddy. I accompanied Rod to ringside, grabbing a seat at ringside. I had to run to the back about five minutes into the match. Rod rushed to the back after me, I could hear him getting counted out.

"Kirbs, Kirby, are you alright?"

"Rod, Rod, c'mere you idiot."

"Ya tired, Honey?"

I placed my forehead in the crook of his neck, "I'm exhausted right now."

"C'mon, I'll take ya back to the hotel and let ya rest."

Rod drove us back to the hotel and Orndorff stopped by with a new guy.

"Hi Paul."

"Hey, Kirbs, are you alright?"

"I'm better than earlier."

"She was non-stop apologising to me on the way here. Adrian, this is my wonderful wife, Kirby."

"Hi, you're, uhm, Dick Murdoch's tag partner?"

"Yeah, Adrian Adonis, nice to meet ya."

"Kirby Piper, pleasure to meet you too, Adrian. Rod?"

"Yes honey?"

"Can I slap Snuka?"

Rod let out a chuckle, "If you want to, hon. It would make my day."

Orndorff and Adonis shared a knowing look before Paul spoke up.

"Why do you two want to attack Snuka?"

"Because he's a dickhead." I stated flatly before covering my mouth in shock, "I didn't mean to say that."

"Why not, you're right. If he hurts or threatens you, he's dead meat, honey."

"Rod, don't. You can't be in your children's life if you're locked away in prison."

"Children, plural?"

"We all know that this child ain't gonna be the last." Adrian added

"True. Thank you Adrian."

"So, what was your reaction to the pregnancy, Kirby?"

"Uhm, well, if I'm honest with you, Adrian, at first I couldn't believe it. I think my first words were 'oh no'."

"Your first reaction was 'Oh no'?" Rod stated, sounding slightly hurt

"Rod, I wrestle for a living. Pregnancy lasts between eight and ten months. That means I'm out for a long while."

"Alright. Alright."

"I love you, Roddy."

After Orndorff and Adonis left Rod changed his focus back to me.

"C'mere you," He pulled me towards him, chest to chest, before kissing me roughly and backing me towards the bed, "You sexy goliath."

"You are such a hot head, Roderick."

"You married me though, didn't ya." He hoisted my leg, pressing his groin into mine.

"As if I'd turn you down, my love."

On Saturday (the seventh) I was at ringside, watching Roddy lose by DQ, the moment Rod left the ring he walked over to me, pulling me to my feet only to dip me into a kiss.

After the show we went back to the hotel with Valentine, Adonis and Orndorff.

Me and Paul were in the hotel room just chatting away when we heard a crash from the hallway, followed by several smaller crashes and then a banging at the door.

Greg threw the door open and Paul helped get Adrian and Roddy inside.

"What the fuck happened?"

The room went silent and Greg went to get help as me and Paul watched over Adrian and Roddy.

"Roddy."

No response. I took my shirt off (a plain white T-shirt, which would not be white for much longer) and used it to try and stem the bleeding from the cut on his outer thigh.

"Rod."

He groaned in a pained response

"Roderick, talk to me."

We spent the night in the hospital, Rod needed stitches to the wound on his thigh and Adrian needed stitches to the wound on his right pectoral, Adrian would be in the hospital for two days at the least and both would be back in action by Friday.

Jesse came to visit and Rod introduced him to me and vice versa, introducing me as 'My beloved wife, the mother of my unborn child and the woman who saved my life, twice.'

While Rod slept off the pain in his leg, Jesse raised some questions to me.

"Did you see him get hurt?"

"No, Jesse, I saw the injury after Valentine dropped him on the bed."

"How long have you two been together?"

"We've known each other since January, Schultz introduced us. We started dating each other at the end of January, from the twentieth. Got married on the first of June, not too long after that, he got me pregnant."

"This is the, second, time."

"Second time for what?"

"Roddy being injured."

"Yeah, same leg too."

"Some fans are fucking insane."

"I'm just glad they haven't gone after me, Rod would lose his mind if anything happened to me, or the baby."

"You should hear him in the locker room."

"He's always talking about me?"

"Always, usually to Adonis. Those two are usually stuck to each other by the hip. If he's not with Adonis, he's with Orton, or Schultz, or Orndorff, or Valentine, or even me."

"He constantly talks about me?"

"Either you, or more recently, the baby."

"He's the kindest, most respectful man, I've ever met, Jesse."

"Thank you, baby." Rod mumbled out.

"Roddy," I jumped slightly, rushing from Jesse's side to sit next to Rod on the hospital bed, "Are you alright, my love."

"C'mere," Rod pulled me in, lazily and sloppily kissing me on the lips.

"I, uh, I got you guys this," Jesse handed Roddy a book, "I know it's early, but you can never be too prepared y'know."

After Roddy was released from the hospital, we decided to spend the night alone.

"Roddy, I, good God I don't want this to come off as if I'm scared. Rod, I don't want to let you out of my sight."

"Kirbs, come here," He pulled me into a hug, "If I never let you outta my sight, then ya never have to let me out of your sight."

We slept and I got up earlier than Rod, I did my morning routine before deciding to flick through the parenting book that Jesse gave us.

Around half an hour later I finished going through the book and heard Rod yawn and the hotel bed creak under his weight.

"Morning."

"What a beautiful sight to wake up to."

"Roderick, you charmer. How's the leg, my love?"

"Slowly getting better. Kirbs?"

"Uh huh?"

"Damien said that, your Da, called him, as in Damien. We need to go to our place and pick some stuff up that your Mam and Da sent over."

"If we leave after you get dressed, we can get home, spend Tuesday and Wednesday there and then drive to the show on Thursday so we can be there for Friday."

"I love how your brain works."

"I love you too, Rod."

By the time we got back to the house it had actually taken us around a day and a half, we reached the house, got what mail had accumulated and left for the show in Chicago, getting to a hotel on Thursday night.

I had separated the mail into four stacks, bills, family mail, fan letters, and unsorted as of yet.

"Bills, fan letter, fan letter, somethin' from my family, fan letter, fan letter, family mail, bill."

"Kirbs?"

"Cannae talk right now, Rod. Family mail, fan letter, fan letter, fan letter, family mail."

"Kirby?"

"Cannae talk right now, Roddy. Bill, Bill, fan letter, bill, family mail, fan letter, fan letter."

"Kirby, my love, Kirby?"

"I Can nae talk right now Roderick. Fan letter, Fa-"

Rod cut me off by grabbing my face and kissing me roughly.

"Kirby, you can go through that later, right now, ya need ta sleep, baby."

While Rod was doing the show, I stayed at the hotel, and went through all the mail. I ended up going to a local supermarket and an ATM in order to pay the bills, sending money off to each company and opening my fan letters, many of which were actually hate mail, ignoring the hatred of both me and my husband, I opened some of the mail my family had sent, most of which were small boxes of my things or wedding presents.

Rod walked in with Jesse and Adrian close behind him.

"Oh, there's ma beautiful wife."

"Did ya win, love?"

"Double disqualification."

"Oh, Hon."

"No, it's fine. What's in the mail babe?"

"I've dealt with the bills, uhm, wedding gifts from my family, some of my old stuff from my younger years. I've put most of it in the back of the D200. I haven't opened your fan mail."

"Kirby?"

"Yes, Adrian."

"How's the baby?"

"The baby's fine. How are you guys doing?"

"We're good, Kirbs" Jesse stated, rather matter-of-factly.

We spent around an hour hanging out with Jesse and Adrian before Jesse departed, Adrian stayed with me while Rod went out to get the boys some beer.

"So, Roddy's good to you?"

"Yeah, He's the best man I've ever had in my life. He's not possessive, he's rather protective, especially when he's jealous, he tries his hardest to make sure I'm happy and the baby's okay."

"You know, he's my best friend, right?"

"I suspected that you two were close after seeing you guys stick around each other at a couple shows."

The door swung open and Rod placed an ice cold beer against Adrian's neck.

"Hey, hey. stop that man."

"Boys, don't fight, especially when there's a pregnant woman nearby."

"I'm sorry baby, c'mere."

Rod put the rest of the six pack on the floor and walked over to me, kissing me gently on the forehead and then on the lips, several times, getting needier every time and deepening the kiss, backing me up until he could straddle my lap before realising what he was doing.

"Sorry about that, Adrian. I got a bit carried away. She is the most attractive woman I've ever met."

"Nah, don't worry about it, you two are married. You should show that you love each other, you've got a kid on the way and before ya know it, you'll be parents. Ya kids have gotta know that ya love each other, and that love is meant to be shown, ya know."

END OF OUT OF ACTION or LESSONS TO BE LEARNT

[elisajdb]

Life With You: III

Part Three:

Bonding 

It took a couple hours before ChiChi fell asleep. Her conversation with Goku weighed heavily on her mind. While the romantic notions she conjured of her time with Goku as a child turned out to be all in her head, she wasn’t ready to give up on the idea of her and Goku. He was still the man she wanted as her husband.

 As a little girl dreaming of her husband, she knew she wanted him to be strong. Every young man who wanted to court ChiChi knew she wanted a strong husband and to prove themselves, had to best her in a fight. It was already an uphill battle given ChiChi was trained by her father the great Ox King who studied under the legendary Master Roshi. They all tried and failed. Not one caused ChiChi to break a sweat against them. Perhaps, ChiChi later thought, if the boys in the village were strong she would’ve been tempted to accept their courtship.

 Defeating them and the men at the World Martial Arts Tournament made her overconfident in her skills. She felt so prideful she was worthy to challenge Goku. He, who came in second at the last two tournaments, would be challenged by her. It was laughable when she looked back at her attitude. It was also embarrassing. All those hours she sacrificed to be so strong, to be so skilled, to be a match for Goku, were wiped away in seconds. To be so easily defeated, it hurt her pride.

She wanted a strong husband and no one was stronger than Goku, but she was lying if she didn’t admit it hurt she was outmatched so easily. Could she be a worthy wife of someone so strong?

 Or as handsome? Besides strong, ChiChi also wanted a handsome husband and Goku certainly fit the bill. His hair, standing in all different directions were wild and untamable like him. His eyes were innocent and sweet. His body, which was perfection, made her heart flutter. She wanted to touch him. She wanted him to touch her. She wanted to feel and experience what she read about in magazines between a man and woman.

 But it wasn’t just physical attraction. Goku’s innocence and naiveté were alluring to her now just as it were when she was a child. However, since yesterday, she suspect that was only one side of him. When Goku fought Tien and Piccolo, he exuded a type of confidence and aggressiveness ChiChi found surprising. It told her there was more about him than he let on. Physically, Goku’s an open book. He was ready to be naked in front of her and but emotionally, he’s very guarded. He had trust issues with anything close to him. That was the impression ChiChi got from Goku’s reaction to her touching his grandfather’s power pole. Yes, there was more to Goku than he let on and she wanted to know all of him.

 After a shower, ChiChi went to Goku’s room hoping they could talk some more. Maybe she could convince Goku to hold hands. After a few knocks and calling his name, ChiChi entered Goku’s room to find the bed unmade and him gone.

 Dawn had arrived so if Goku was up this early, there had to be one thing he was doing. ChiChi went to the nearest balcony. It had a wonderful view of her courtyard and as she suspected, Goku exercising.

 Goku exercising reminded ChiChi how she and her father were up at dawn for her training. While her father was strict, he didn’t submit her to all the crazy training he did with Gohan under Master Roshi. He just altered it. She was chased by dinosaurs on her milk runs, did construction work and swam in lakes with sharks but instead of fighting off bees to avoid getting stung and possibly scarring her skin, her father made her fight off skunks and avoid being sprayed. ChiChi always thought it was silly her father didn’t mind her risking her life being chased by dinosaurs and sharks but he wouldn’t risk her getting scars by bee sting.

 The hard work paid off for it led to this moment; watching her fiancé exercise in her yard. ChiChi was amazed he moved so fast and with ease in that heavy shirt and heavy boots. So fast that even she couldn’t follow all his movements. How strong he is she admired.

 And yet so unreachable. Physically, she may never get as strong as him. She was willing to accept that as long as she could reach him emotionally but was that even possible? Even though Goku had friends whom she met at the tournament, Goku spent many years isolated and it was still prevalent in him as he seemed so out of touch emotionally. It wasn’t just with her she noted. It was with his friends, too. He spent the last three years away from them training but left them so easily to fly off with her. Would he do that to her one day?

 Along the balcony were potted plants. Their sudden shaking and heavy footfalls behind her told ChiChi her father had arrived. From the corner of her eye, she saw her father looking at Goku. “He’s just like Gohan,” Gyu-Mao commented. “He was up at the crack of dawn exercising, too. It took me a while to get used to that routine when I lived with Master Roshi.”

 Her Dad always supported her and she always felt his love. Maybe he could help her with Goku. “I….I got my work cut out with Goku, Dad.”

 Gyu-Mao was surprised by his daughter’s somber tone. It was much different from her behavior yesterday. “Arranged marriages are like that, ChiChi. It’s going to take a while before you two are used to each other. I told you that.”

 “It’s not that, Dad.” She sighed, confessing, “Goku didn’t remember me.”

 Given Goku’s behavior yesterday, Gyu-Mao wasn’t surprised. Actually, it explained a lot but he wouldn’t let ChiChi know he thought that. He feigned innocence, “He didn’t?”

 “No. I still believed Goku thought of me all this time. I thought once he saw me he would realize it’s time for us to marry. I was angry and felt like a fool waiting for him for years, preparing myself to be a good wife to him.”

 ChiChi refrained herself from crying. She did enough of that alone in her bedroom. Her father was a good man now but he may want to fight Goku if he knew how much he hurt her. “He embarrassed me, Dad. He dishonored me. I thought it was only right I did the same to him and beat him at the tournament. I was so pleased to make the final eight and face off with Goku. I wanted to defeat him in front of the crowd.”

 Gyu-Mao observed Goku and noticed his movements were quicker than his trained eye. He had been out of the martial arts game for a while and while his daughter was strong, he knew she wasn’t a match for Goku. “How did the fight go?”

 ChiChi turned away from Goku rueful. “I spent most of it chasing Goku around the ring and fighting him in the air. Every kick, ever throw, every leg sweep, he blocked. Not even my Kamehameha Wave stopped him. He kept asking questions until I finally told him of his promise. I thought that would jog his memory but he still didn’t know me. He asked for my name but I wouldn’t tell him unless he beat me.” She scoffed. “He beat me without even trying and I was forced to tell him my name. He remembered me but all this time, he thought bride meant food.”

 “Food?” Gyu-Mao eyed Goku puzzled. “If he thought that, then why did he ask my permission to marry you?”

 “He wants to honor his promise even though he misunderstood.” ChiChi was smiling now, clutching her hands to her chest. “He’s a man of his word.”

 “I see.” Gyu-Mao didn’t like this at all. “ChiChi, I remember offering Goku to you as a wife. I don’t think he took my offer seriously, but you told me he promised to make you his bride. Why did he do that?”

 “I asked him and he said yes.”

 That made sense. It had to be ChiChi initiating things. Goku then didn’t seem the type to ask a girl to be his bride. Goku now didn’t seem the type either. “Why did you ask him? Goku isn’t the first boy you’ve met. What exactly happened when you and Goku went to Master Roshi’s? That was the only time you were out of my sight.”

ChiChi had hoped her father would never ask this. It was amazing all these years she was able to keep the details from him. But now, with him interrogating her due to her own concerns about Goku, ChiChi saw no way to avoid this now. “He touched me.”

 “Touched you?” Gyu-Mao gripped the edge of the balustrade. “Touched you where?”

 Oh, boy. There was a shift in her father’s voice. He was not gonna like this. ChiChi rubbed an arm awkwardly. “Down there.”

 Her vague answer was all Gyu-Mao needed to hear. The piece of balustrade in Gyu-Mao’s hands crumbled to pieces! “He WHAT?!” A growl escaped Gyu-Mao’s voice as his eyes were trained on Goku who was still oblivious to the father/daughter conversation. “I’ll kill him. I’ll kill him!”

 Her father was furious and he was ready to jump down and attack Goku. He pressed a foot on a railing he hadn’t destroyed. ChiChi grabbed her father’s massive arm and pulled him hard, hoping to get him away from the railing he attempted to jump. “No, Dad, don’t!” She rushed out quickly, “He touched me because he didn’t know if I were a boy or a girl. He lived in the woods with only Gohan as his human contact and after he died, he was alone for years.” Gyu-Mao stilled. He took his foot off the railing and turned to his daughter. ChiChi was relieved. Her father was going to listen and not go a rampage against her fiancé. “He patted me with his foot then said I was a girl and he didn’t know at first. I was angry with what he did and knocked him off Nimbus. Afterwards, I assumed he was kidding and only said that as an excuse to touch me because he like me.”

Gyu-Mao took in what ChiChi said. He wasn’t violently angry but he was still simmering. He stared at the young man who was oblivious he was almost attacked. “I never thought Gohan’s grandson could be stupid.”

 The blunt insult was jarring. ChiChi never thought her father would say such words about Goku. “Naïve, Dad,” ChiChi corrected her father. “Goku’s just naïve. We both were. When I asked him if he would make me his bride, Goku questioned me on what I meant. I thought he was teasing me again. So the promise was a misunderstanding on both our parts.”

 Gyu-Mao was quiet for several moments. ChiChi gazed at her father wondering what he thought now. Would he insult Goku again? Would he be understanding to her? “ChiChi, if you need me to forbid this wedding, I will do that for you.” ChiChi was taken back by her father’s words. “You don’t have to go through with this wedding. You can marry someone who wants to marry you.”

 Oh, no. He misunderstood. “No, Dad. I want to marry Goku and he wants to marry me. He’s just the way he is because he hadn’t experienced things or know things a normal guy his age should know. He’s been on his own for a very long time. I can be a very good wife to him. Besides, what kind of wife would I be if I quit when things get a little tough? I’m in it for the long haul.”

 Gyu-Mao admired his daughter’s fortitude to not give up so easily but she wasn’t married yet, and in this case, he wished she’d reconsider. That stubbornness. He could see it in her eyes now. If he forbid it, ChiChi would be even more determine to marry Goku. She might do something as crazy as elope. He had to go about this a different way. “That’s the way to approach it, ChiChi. He knows as much about you as you do about him. You don’t love him.” Oh, ChiChi didn’t like that. Too bad. She needed some tough love. “You say you love him but it’s really the idea you created that you’re in love with. You both have to get to know each other. That is when the real love comes in if it’s there.”

 After a long silence, ChiChi nodded. Her father was right. She and Goku didn’t love each other but they will. She also knew her father preferred she settle with someone from their village but wouldn’t intervene in her wedding to Goku unless she said so. “I know, Dad. Thank you.” She gave him a hug appreciating his advice and support. “I’m going to spend time with my fiancé now.”

 Gyu-Mao watched ChiChi jump over the balcony and land smoothly on the ground. He smiled with fatherly pride. She had certainly become a skilled martial artist. He watched ChiChi approach Goku who quickly turned to her. ChiChi kissed Goku’s cheek and though he was too far away to see it, Gyu-Mao knew Goku blushed at the affection. After a few moments of conversation, the two were sparring.

 Gyu-Mao turned and walked away. He needed a moment to himself to mull over what ChiChi told him.

 “Your Highness,” Mrs. Niver approached Gyu-Mao. “I must speak with you. It’s about that boy the princess brought home.”

When Goku woke up the next morning, he saw an unfamiliar ceiling fan staring back at him. It took a moment before he realized where he was. A room in Gyu-Mao’s castle.

 For three years, Goku was used to being greeted by a gold light fixture over his bed. He was used to hearing silence except for Mr. Popo going about his day at Kami’s Temple or the occasional tap on the marble floors of Kami’s wooden staff as he walked about his sanctuary.

 For three years, he got up, meditated, trained alone, sparred with Mr. Popo, ate and slept. He admitted it was a lonely experience. Mr. Popo wasn’t much of a conversationalist and he rarely saw Kami. Outside of training, there wasn’t much to do. Oh, there were school lessons Mr. Popo assigned him on Kami’s orders which Goku didn’t like but there wasn’t much excitement at Kami’s Temple. Goku guessed the only excitement for him was the Room of Spirit of Time but that was an emotionally draining experience. He could only last thirty days in there.

 Meditate. Train. Spar. Lessons. Eat. Sleep. It was all he did for three years. Kami’s Temple was a boring, lifeless and lonely place. For the first time in his life, he wanted a break from training.

 He got what he wanted in the most unlikely way possible.

 Marriage.

 Marriage with ChiChi presented Goku a life away from Kami’s Temple and a life away from how he lived the past six years. It was something he was looking forward to. As excited he was to face off against Piccolo and see his friends again, Goku also wanted a break from it all.

 He spent six years traveling the world, fighting new opponents, making friends and enemies. After the 22nd tournament, Goku wanted to take a break and return to Mount Paozu but King Piccolo interrupted his plans. Krillin, Master Roshi and several martial artists were killed. Goku had to avenge them. When Goku killed King Piccolo and met with Kami to restore his friends, Goku learned another fight awaited him and sign onto three more years of training.

 Now with that over, all Goku wanted to do was relax and go to Mount Paozu. He was happy after all these years, he will go home. He missed that place a lot but he wasn’t going home alone. He was bringing a wife with him.

 He wondered what ChiChi will think of Mount Paozu. If she was going to live there with him for the rest of her life, he hoped she will like it. Goku recalled happily inviting Bulma to his house for lunch when they met but Bulma was only interested in the dragon ball and was unimpressed with his home.

ChiChi lived in a big home like Bulma. He wondered if that meant ChiChi will respond the same way Bulma did to his home.  

 He’ll find out later when they go to Mount Paozu but for now, Goku wanted to see if ChiChi was up. She wasn’t as strong as his friends but Goku saw her as someone he could have a friendly spar with. There was also the excitement he felt fighting her. He couldn’t explain it. His body tingled as if he was going up against a strong opponent but it did something else for him, too. He couldn’t pinpoint what it was. He just liked it and wanted to feel that way again.

 Goku got out of bed and dressed. Stepping out of his room, he crossed the hall to ChiChi’s room. Goku opened the door but before he could step in the room, he heard an angry voice.

 “And just what do you think you’re doing?!!”

 Goku jumped. He saw a short, old woman with silver hair glaring as she marched to him. She slapped his hand away from ChiChi’s door and closed the room on him. She stood in front of the door acting as a barrier.

 Goku frowned at the old lady. Who was she and why was she so angry with him? “Who are you?”

 “I’m Mrs. Niver, head of the housekeeping staff. Now, answer me, boy! Why were you going in Miss ChiChi’s room?”

 “Oh,” Goku rubbed the back of his head. Was he doing a bad thing going in ChiChi’s room? He didn’t think he was since she was in his room last night. “Well, I wanted to see if ChiChi wanted to spar.”

 “Are you a pervert?”

 Being around Master Roshi, he knew that term well. “No.”

 Mrs. Niver crossed her arms over her chest not believing him. “A decent man with manners do not enter a lady’s room uninvited.”

 Goku slowly understood why the old lady was angry. He didn’t knock. “Oh, well, I thought it was okay since ChiChi was in my room last night.”

 “And what were you two doing?”

 “Talking,” Goku said and found himself not liking this old lady’s sudden interrogation. “Why are you asking so many questions?”

 “Because it’s my right!” She pushed Goku who suddenly found himself pressed his bedroom door. “I don’t approve of you as Miss ChiChi’s husband but I will make sure when she walks down the aisle she will be a lady!”

 “Um, oh….kay…..” What was she talking about and why didn’t she approve of him as ChiChi’s husband?

 “If you want to spar, go outside and do it by yourself!” Mrs. Niver ordered. “You don’t need to involve Miss ChiChi in it. It’s bad enough her father indulge her in that martial arts nonsense. It’s not fitting for a lady.”

 “Wha…?” What was wrong with this lady? Goku wondered.

 “You’re still here,” Mrs. Niver growled irritated.

 “I don’t even know how to get outside,” Goku protested. “This place is huge.”

 Mrs. Niver pointed to her right. “Go this way and take a left. If you go to the end of that hall, you’ll find a balcony to jump off of.”

 Goku’s eyes lingered on ChiChi’s door. He really wanted to see her but unless he use force this old lady wouldn’t let him in her room. He walked away annoyed. What was that old lady’s problem? Why didn’t she like him or ChiChi learning martial arts?

 Once outside, Goku forgot about his encounter with Mrs. Niver. He focused on his warmups before he sparred alone.  He lost track of time after the sun rose and had no idea how long he was exercising until…

 “Goku!”

 Goku lowered a leg and turned. “ChiChi.” ChiChi reached up to kiss his cheek. These kisses, he found himself blushing, were nice. Is this what ChiChi meant about touching being good for both of them?

 “How did you sleep, Goku?”

 Goku almost didn’t hear her as he was still focused on the kiss. “Good. How ‘bout you?”

 “I slept well. So…” she looked him over. “I noticed you sparring from the balcony. Are you done?”

 “Nah. I usually go two hours before breakfast.”

 “Oh,” ChiChi’s eyes lit up. “Do you mind if I spar with you?”

 A big grin appeared on Goku’s face. “You want to spar? Wow. I was hoping you would!”

 Sparring, ChiChi realized last night, was something they can bond over. It was a way to reaching him. “Yes. After our fight, I realized I wasn’t a worthy opponent. I want to be as strong as you.”

 Goku laughed. ChiChi was a funny one. “I’m so far above you, you will never catch up to me, ChiChi.”

 ChiChi’s smile quickly turned into a scowl. She threw a punch at him and Goku dodged it. She threw another with a kick to which he dodged and blocked, too. His laughing and dodges added to her frustration, “You didn’t have to say it like that!”

 As they sparred, Goku studied ChiChi’s form. Every punch and kick were perfect. If she was faster, she would’ve gotten him a few times and her hits would’ve left an impression. She was weaker than his male friends but there was no doubt to Goku ChiChi was strong. He felt it in the punches he blocked when they fought yesterday. ChiChi wasn’t as strong as Arale but she was a robot. It wouldn’t be fair to compare ChiChi’s strength to Launch or Ran Fan who fought Nam in the 21st Tournament because ChiChi was superior over them. The blonde Launch was strongest when she had her guns. She knew hand to hand combat skills but nothing challengeable to martial artists. Ran Fan made it to the Final Eight but during her fight with Nam, Goku figured her biggest strength was taking off her clothes to distract her male opponents. When Nam stopped being intimidated by her, he handled her quite easily.  

 ChiChi was different. She was naturally strong. Besides Grandpa, she was the only to figure out his tail was his weak spot. Krillin learned that too late for it to be affective on him. There was also a certain grace to ChiChi’s movements that caught Goku’s eyes. His eyes followed her movement as he would any opponent but unlike his opponents where he watched for a weak spot to strike, he liked watching ChiChi.  

 There it was again. That excitement from their fight yesterday. What was it about her that did this to him? She didn’t stand a chance against him but it didn’t stop her from giving it all she had. His insides were bubbling with excitement. When he went against a strong opponent, he felt a fire light up in him. He could see the fire in ChiChi’s eyes as she came after him; feel it in every strike she made against him. She was strong in a different way and determined, too. Goku liked it a lot.

 An hour into their spar, ChiChi was panting. Goku knew they should stop but ChiChi wouldn’t want to. He knew the feeling well. He was like that when he was losing to King Piccolo in their first fight. To end the fight without hurting her, Goku tripped ChiChi who promptly fell on her butt. She glared at Goku annoyed as he explained, “I had to trip you. You were getting tired and wouldn’t stop.”

 ChiChi pulled herself up. “And do you stop fighting when you get tired?”

 “Not when I’m losing.”

 He felt a fist connect with his face. Even though the punch wasn’t the strongest he was hit with, it was still impactful. He found himself stumbling backwards and a well calculated leg sweep had him on his back. He looked up and saw ChiChi smirking at him. He never thought ChiChi would hit him. He was too fast for her but he let his guard down when he thought the fight was over and she used it to her advantage. Instead of being angry at his miscalculation, Goku was happy. He was gonna like living with her.  

 ChiChi sat on the ground beside him. She placed a hand on his chest. “That’s what you get for treating me lightly.”

 Goku laughed. He deserved that. “I like sparring with you.”

 “You do?” She raised an eyebrow. “Even though I’m not a challenge?”

 “No, but you’re fun. I hadn’t sparred for fun in a long time.”

 Curious, ChiChi asked, “When was the last time you sparred for fun?”

 Goku’s eyes turned upward to the morning sky as he recalled the last time. “Three years ago at the World Martial Arts Tournament. I fought Tien in the final match. We didn’t like each other then but it was still a fun fight. It was just good old fighting and in the end, Tien and I became friends.”

 ChiChi drew circles on his clothed chest. “But you looked happy fighting Piccolo. Even with the fate of the world at stake, you looked happy.” It was something she observed and couldn’t understand about her fiancé.

 “I always liked fighting strong opponents,” Goku explained. “But fighting’s always better when the world isn’t at stake and it’s not for revenge. You fight for revenge and your anger clouds your judgment.” He learned that the hard way going after Krillin’s killer.

 “So you would’ve been even happier fighting Piccolo if he wasn’t trying to kill you and everyone else?”

 Goku grinned. “Yeah. He could make a good sparring partner.”

 “But Goku, he’s a killer. He almost killed you.” Her hand went to where Piccolo put a hole through Goku’s chest.

 “He won’t kill me. I’ll always be a step ahead of him.”

 ChiChi laid her body next to Goku’s with her head on his chest. She closed her eyes, listening to the strong heart beating. “I hope he never returns.”

 Alone like this, after last night’s talks and their spar, Goku didn’t mind being like this with ChiChi. Touching did feel good.  

 “Goku,” ChiChi broke the silence, “Did you like fighting King Piccolo?”

 The smile on Goku’s face fell. Why would she bring him up? “Why are you asking that?”

 ChiChi didn’t notice the sudden change in Goku. “You said the last time you fought for fun was three years ago at the World Martial Arts Tournament. I know you fought King Piccolo three years ago but that was after the tournament.”

 “Yeah, I did.” They were having a nice moment now. Why did ChiChi have to ruin it by asking about King Piccolo? He didn’t like thinking about him. He killed Krillin and Master Roshi. There was nothing fun about fighting him. It was the first time he felt hatred for someone.

 “Goku,” ChiChi said softly, “Did King Piccolo kill one of your friends?”

 “Why are you asking?”

 This time ChiChi detected an annoyance in Goku’s voice. ChiChi didn’t understand. She thought he would like talking about his past fights. She thought this was another way to connect with him. “I know King Piccolo and his minions killed martial artists. I also know after King Piccolo died, the martial artists killed by him were returned to life. Were your friends among the ones killed?”

 Goku suddenly sat up, forcing ChiChi to break away from him. “I don’t want to talk about this anymore.”

 ChiChi stared at Goku wondering what she did wrong. Talking about fights were another way to reach him and…

 Oh no.

 It hit her what she did. She quickly forgot what she learned about Goku. He was guarded on things close to him. King Piccolo killed his friends and he didn’t want to talk about it. Here she was trying to impress Goku, show she had an interest in what he loved but she turned him off.  ChiChi chastised herself for her impatience. She thought being so open with him last night Goku would open up to her. She should’ve realized it would take more than a day for Goku to open up.

 “I’m sorry for upsetting you,” ChiChi apologized. “I want to know you and I thought talking about fighting would help.”

 The guilt in ChiChi’s voice had Goku feeling regretful for how he acted. On one hand he understood why she asked but on the other, he didn’t. There were things he didn’t like talking about. He had his friends for years and they never inquired about his feelings on subjects he considered touchy. Given the way he always act around his friends, they probably thought he didn’t have any feelings. That was fine with him, but ChiChi was different. She knew he did have feelings and wanted to know about them. Goku found that a little scary.

 “It’s okay, ChiChi. I’m not mad. It’s…..” He didn’t know how to explain his feelings.

 “It’s too soon,” ChiChi finished for him. She leaned against him and wrapped her arms around his waist. “I understand and I can wait.”

 At that moment, Goku’s stomach chose to growl. It sounded like an animal roaring. ChiChi pulled back stunned. “What was that?”

 “My stomach.” Goku rubbed it unabashed. “I’m hungry.”

 ChiChi stood up and pulled Goku to his feet. She could help with that. “Let’s go in the kitchen and see what the cooks have prepared.”

 As Goku and ChiChi walked to the castle, ChiChi linked his fingers with hers. Yesterday, he would’ve told ChiChi to stop grabbing him. Part of him still wanted to push her away but the other part… well, he started to think it wasn’t bad at all.

  After breakfast and a fitting for his wedding suit, Goku and ChiChi flew to Mount Paozu. ChiChi held onto Goku, wrapping her arms around his waist and leaned her face against his warm back. There was a major difference to yesterday when they flew on Nimbus. Goku had his hands over hers. While she had a misstep this morning, ChiChi was confident she and Goku were moving in the right direction.

 “We’re almost there, ChiChi! I see my home!”

 ChiChi looked at the surrounding land. There was nothing but mountains and forests. Gohan and Goku really did live away from society. She hadn’t seen a community for miles. No wonder Goku was alone for many years.

 Nimbus descended and ChiChi felt herself clutching Goku tighter. Descending on Nimbus was similar to going down on a roller coaster. She heard Goku laugh. Before she could voice her irritation of being laughed at, Goku said, “Don’t worry, ChiChi. I won’t let Nimbus drop you.”

 Nimbus stopped in front of Gohan’s home. Goku hopped off first and remembering yesterday, helped ChiChi off the cloud. “Here it is! Wow! It’s the same as I left it!”

 Goku was happy about his childhood home. ChiChi didn’t want to hurt Goku feelings saying she didn’t like it but just from looking at it from the outside, she knew it was too small for them. “You and your grandfather lived in that?”

“Yeah.”

 “It looks small,” she observed.

 “It was a lot bigger when I was younger but I was smaller then, too.” Goku opened the door and ducked his head before stepping inside. He realized all too quickly that while he could stand up straight, he didn’t have a lot of room. He couldn’t raise his arms over his head to stretch. The bed didn’t look big enough for his body. The table with the two stools he and Grandpa sat on looked small, too. Odd. He never noticed how small this place was. ChiChi followed after Goku and even though she was shorter than Goku, experienced similar height issues. It was amazing to her one let alone two people lived here. The place was also musty which came from not being cleaned in years. She could give it a good cleaning but this place wouldn’t do for them.

 ChiChi pointed to the bed missing a futon. “What happened to the futon?”

 “I took that with me when I lived with Master Roshi.”

 ChiChi mouthed an ‘Oh’ as she stared at the bed. “Looks like a small bed for two people to share even if one was a child. You and Gohan must’ve slept close together.”

 “Yeah,” Goku agreed. “But I liked sleeping on Grandpa’s lap. His balls were like pillows.”

 ChiChi whipped her head at Goku shocked. “What?” Did he really say that? No. He couldn’t have. “You slept in his lap?” Goku nodded. She did hear right. She looked at the bed again. She had seen pictures of Gohan with her father. He was short man and being a martial artist, he had a strong build. If he slept on his back, ChiChi could see him taking up the entire bed but with a child living with him, wouldn’t it have made more sense to sleep on his side? “Did Gohan have a bad back and could only sleep on his back and not his side?”

 Goku shook his head. “No. Why?”

 ChiChi shrugged. “Oh, just wondering since you would’ve had more room if Gohan slept on his side.” ChiChi stared at the bed, picturing the many nights Goku slept in that position with his grandfather. What in the world was he thinking?

 Later, she would think more on this. She’ll question her father if she had to. For now, she’ll explore this place. Curious, she went to a three drawer chest against the wall. ChiChi went to the top drawer meaning to open it when Goku put his hands over ChiChi’s stopping her from pulling the drawer open.

 “You can’t look in there. Grandpa said so.”

 ChiChi blinked confused. “What?”

 “Grandpa said I could never look at the top drawer. It was his stuff and I wasn’t allowed to look.”

 ChiChi refrained from laughing. Goku’s innocence was funny at times. “He’s been dead for several years, Goku. I’m sure he wouldn’t mind if you look now.”

 Goku shook his head and his hold on her tightened. “No, I can’t. It’s Grandpa’s stuff and I can’t look.”

 He was serious. ChiChi had to remind herself Gohan was a sensitive subject for Goku. She had an idea what was in the drawer. Since it was in the top drawer Gohan deliberately put it there to keep it out of Goku’s reach since he was too short. She made a mental note to toss out what was in the drawer when she gave this place a good cleaning.

 ChiChi stepped away from the chest. “All right, Goku. I won’t look.” ChiChi continued to access the small home. No electricity she guessed noticing no light switch on the wall or any light fixture on the small ceiling. “You didn’t have a refrigerator or a stove? How did you store your food for later? How did you and Gohan cook your food?”

 “Grandpa and I always hunted enough that will fill us at the moment and cooked it over a fire. I never knew people stored food until I lived with Master Roshi.”

 Goku observed ChiChi as she inspected his home. He couldn’t help feeling disappointed at ChiChi’s reaction. It was foolish to think ChiChi would like it. She lived in big house. She wouldn’t be interested in his small home. “You don’t like this place.” It was an observation. Not a question.

 ChiChi turned to Goku. He had a frown on his face. ChiChi placed a hand on his face. “It’s nice, Goku. Thank you for bringing me here, but we can’t live here,” she told him gently. “It’ll be too small for us. There’s no space for a kitchen where I can cook and store our food. There’s no electricity, no indoor plumbing.” She pointed to the bed Goku and Gohan shared. “That bed is too small for us.”

 She had a point Goku admitted. The place was too small for them. He was relieved ChiChi didn’t hate it. “You’re right,” Goku agreed. “We’d bump into each other a lot and it stinks in here. So,” he reached for her hand, holding it in his, liking the contact. “Does this mean we’re living with your Dad?”

 ChiChi shook her head. “No. We can still live here. We just have to make adjustments.”

  “Adjustments?” Goku queried.

 ChiChi walked out of the small home, never releasing Goku’s hand. She noticed the well near Gohan’s home so fresh water was nearby. There was a lot of land, too. There’s a lot that could be done. Yes, yes, this could work.  ChiChi turned to Goku excited. “I have an idea. You and Dad can build our home.”

 “Build our home?”

It was mid-afternoon when Goku and ChiChi entered a capsule shop not far from Yahhoy Island and Goku wasn’t in the best mood. Before they went shopping for a dome house, ChiChi suggested they collect the money Goku won at the World Martial Arts Tournament so they could have some money to start out on. It was there Goku got some shocking news.

 “What?!” Goku screamed. “What do you mean they’ll be no more tournaments?”

 Goku and ChiChi stood in the ruin offices of the World Martial Arts Tournament. Goku and ChiChi were lucky to find the place as Yahhoy Island was still recovering from the damages Goku and Piccolo’s fight created. Several homes and businesses were still digging themselves out of the dirt while others were starting the repairs. The fighting grounds of the World Martial Arts Tournament were still destroyed. The fact no crews were on hand to start repairs attest to what Goku was told; the World Martial Arts Tournament was ending.

 The blonde announcer who witnessed all of Goku’s tournaments, was on hand to give Goku his money and the grim news of the tournament’s ending. He himself only got the news a couple hours ago. He was saddened, too, as this tournament built his career, but he was handling it better than Goku.

 “It’s free for anyone to compete in the World Martial Arts Tournament but we still need money to run our organization. We rely on sponsorships from corporations, businesses and even vendors who set up shop during the tournament. Because of King Piccolo, not only did we have fewer martial artists enter this tournament but we lost a lot of sponsors. They thought investing in a martial arts tournament was too risky. We hardly had any vendors at this tournament. I’m sure you noticed, Goku, the last two tournaments went on for four or five days. This last one finished in a day.”

 “Oh yeah, it did,” Goku said thinking back to the previous tournaments. “There wasn’t even a break for food between the preliminary rounds and the final matches.”

 The announcer nodded. “Now with King Piccolo’s son out there, it put the final nail in the coffin of the World Martial Arts Tournament. We’ll have even fewer competitors, but most importantly, all the remaining sponsors have pulled out. We only have enough money to give you your prize money and repair damages at our offices to make this a museum.”

 “A museum?” ChiChi inquired.

 “Yeah,” the announcer sighed. “It could be a nice tourist attraction and dedication of the great martial artists who fought here.”

 “Aw, man,” Goku groaned. “No more tournaments.”

 “I wouldn’t get down about it, Goku,” the blonde tried to be optimistic. “The tournament ended in the best way possible for you. Not only did you become the winner in the greatest fight ever but you got yourself a pretty wife. You have your whole life ahead of you.”

 Goku continued to sulk as he and ChiChi sat at a table in the shop.  While he sulk, ChiChi looked through a capsule magazine. He absently heard ChiChi tell him the capsules were marked by a specific number and the magazine ChiChi thumb through had a description of each capsule number. To be honest, he was annoyed with ChiChi, too. For someone who studied martial arts, ChiChi wasn’t upset with the tournament ending. In fact, ever since they left Yahhoy, all ChiChi did was talk about their home and what they needed. It was annoying.

 “Which one do you like, Goku?”

 Goku shrugged. “Whatever you decide is fine with me.” Actually, he didn’t care. While should he care about looking at capsule houses when there will be no more tournaments? He wanted to take a break from fighting. He didn’t want it to be forever!

 ChiChi took note of his response as she calmly said, “Goku, this is our home we’re shopping for. You should have some input.”

 “But you know more about this stuff than me. You decide what’s best for us.”

 “Goku, during your travels, you’ve stayed in different homes. You lived with Kami for three years. There had to be something you liked in those homes you want in ours. I’m not asking a lot wanting your input.” Goku rubbed the back of his head, mumbling something. ChiChi didn’t hear him. “What did you say?”

 “I don’t know about this stuff!” he spoke louder causing shoppers to look at them. “I don’t know what we need for a house and I don’t care! You’re the one who said Grandpa’s home is too small! You’re the one who want things like a refrigerator and stove and a bigger bed so you figure this out! I don’t care!”

 ChiChi could feel the eyes of several patrons on her and Goku. It was embarrassing but at least Goku’s outburst wasn’t in front of anyone from her village. If that had happened, she would’ve been yelling at him, letting him know such behavior would not be tolerated especially in front of people who held such respect for her and her father. Marrying Goku will take a lot of patience. She wondered if she had enough to deal with him.

 ChiChi rose from her seat, took Goku’s hand and led them out of the shop. For five minutes they sat at a bench without a word between them. Goku stared at ChiChi wondering what she was thinking, wondering why she wasn’t saying anything. Maybe she was upset he raised his voice at her. He only did that to people he didn’t like when he fought them. He never did that to people he liked and he liked ChiChi. He opened his mouth to apologize but ChiChi spoke before he could.

 “I know you’re not happy there will be no more tournaments but sulking won’t bring it back. I thought this would be a good distraction. I want your input because this is our home. Not having luxuries doesn’t excuse you from having an opinion. I don’t want you to do what I want because I might know more than you on a subject. I want you to do that because you trust me and know what I want is in your ….our best interest.”

 The way ChiChi rattled on about a house, he thought she hadn’t noticed he was sulking there will be no more tournaments. She noticed and she was trying to help by having him focus on something else.

ChiChi was different.

 “Okay,” Goku relented with a smile. “I’ll give my input but I really don’t know a lot about what’s needed in a house.”

 “I can tell you,” ChiChi offered and patted his stomach. “I know you can pick out the perfect refrigerator for us.”

 “Okay,” Goku agreed. “Let’s pick something out.”

 ChiChi smiled warmly at her fiancé. “Good. Oh, and Goku?”

“Yeah?”

 The smile dropped from her face. Her eyes smoldered with anger as she gripped his shirts and yanked him forward, leaving his face an inch or two from hers. “If you ever embarrass me like that again, I’ll make you pay! I don’t care if you are the strongest man in the world, I will make you pay! Got it?!”

 Why did ChiChi being angry at him cause his body to tingle in excitement? His curiosity was also peaked. How could ChiChi make him pay when she couldn’t beat him in a fight? She was a strange one all right but oddly intriguing. 

When Goku and ChiChi returned to Gyu-Mao’s castle, they shared with him their decision to build their house on Mount Paozu. They bought a dome house that had an unfurnished kitchen, large pantry, unfurnished den and a bathroom. Goku and ChiChi decided they would build two houses attached to the ends of the dome house. Each being a bedroom with one having an extra bathroom; one for Goku and ChiChi and the other for their child.

 Materials were already on hand so it was no trouble for the local villagers to load Gyu-Mao’s truck for Goku and Gyu-Mao to drive to Mount Paozu and began work the next morning. As Goku and Gyu-Mao worked to build his home, he was reminded of the days he worked construction for Master Roshi. Despite it being a few years since he did this type of work, Goku hadn’t forgotten it. With Goku’s speed and strength, and Gyu-Mao’s strength the two worked fast and efficiently. By the end of the first day, the foundation was completed. During day two, pipes were laid, floors and the skeletal frame of the walls and roof were installed. The third day saw the completion of the exterior walls, floors and roof and installation of the windows and doors.

 Gyu-Mao used the days alone with Goku to see what kind of man he was. It was obvious he wasn’t a man who would care for his daughter financially. The other suitors had jobs or were working on their careers. Goku’s career was fighting and a true artist like Goku didn’t do it for the money. Gyu-Mao could provide for the couple and he knew his daughter would be able to find something for Goku to do to bring money to the household. He admired the young man’s work ethic and energy. Goku didn’t complain at all by the long day’s work. He followed instructions very well and was proud of what he accomplished at the end of the day. Gyu-Mao felt foolish for thinking Goku was stupid. A stupid man wouldn’t have accomplished what Goku has in three days.

 What concerned Gyu-Mao was Goku forgetting ChiChi and the reason he’s honoring his promise. He was on board now but what if Goku changes his mind in a few months and wants to end the marriage? Where would that leave his daughter? Though still bothered, he disregarded Goku touching ChiChi as an innocent misunderstanding by Goku but Mrs. Niver concerns had him wondering again.

 “He almost went in her room, Your Highness, at a very inappropriate time,” Mrs. Niver said irritable. “It’s not right for that boy to be so close to Miss ChiChi‘s room before the wedding.”

“Whatever Goku’s intentions were to see ChiChi so early, I trust ChiChi to be responsible.”

 Mrs. Niver crossed her arms over her chest. “Trust is blind when it comes to hormones.”

 “I know you don’t like Goku, Mrs. Niver, but ChiChi has always been a good girl.”

 Mrs. Niver warned Gyu-Mao. “That boy will bring nothing but trouble to your family.”

 Trouble for his family he mused. Gyu-Mao thought Goku was trouble when he brought ChiChi to meet him when they were babies. He was a bad baby then but he wasn’t now. He had questionable manners but as ChiChi told him that came from Goku being alone for years out here without Gohan.

 How did Gohan die? Gyu-Mao could only guess. Gohan was an old man, living out here away from civilization with a young active child. As strong he is, Gyu-Mao knew even Gohan couldn’t beat father time. Perhaps it was his heart that did him in. It left Gyu-Mao wondering if Goku, a child at the time, witnessed his death. How did it affect him?

 A cry of joy got Gyu-Mao’s attention. It was lunchtime now. While Gyu-Mao ate the lunch prepared by his staff, Goku knew it wouldn’t be enough for him and hunted a large fish in the lake near his home.

 “Whooo!” Goku cheered dropping a large fish at Gyu-Mao’s feet. “I caught a big one today!”

 The fish was huge. It was enough to fill him for an entire day. If that along with what his staff prepared was enough to fill Goku for lunch, his daughter really did have her work cut out in cooking enough food for him.

 Goku’s smile was infectious as he happily used the wood he gathered before he fished to start a fire.

How could someone who spent many years alone be so happy and good spirited? Gyu-Mao wondered. How did Goku maintain his positive outlook on life when Gyu-Mao knew Goku as a child experienced tragedy when Gohan died?  How could he not want his daughter marry someone like that?

 Perhaps patience is what the two needed from him. Gyu-Mao could remember not everyone was fond of him and ChiChi’s mother marrying. The irony of his attitude towards his daughter’s choice in husband wasn’t lost on him. For ChiChi’s sake, he will give Goku a chance.  

When they returned home in the evening, ChiChi and the servants had a grand meal prepared for them as she always had when they returned from Mount Paozu. ChiChi always welcomed and said goodbye to Goku with a hug and kiss on the cheek. Over the week, Gyu-Mao noticed Goku had softened around ChiChi’s affection. He also noticed how Goku always made time for ChiChi when he came back. Oh, Goku had an abundance of energy Gyu-Mao knew but with the exercises he did in the morning followed by the work he did on Mount Paozu, Goku was weary at the end of the day but pushed it aside to make time for his daughter to listen to her gush about the wedding plans she made that day, talk to him about his day and even watch a movie together.

 After dinner, Gyu-Mao spoke with a few villagers that were joining him and Goku tomorrow to work on the electrical wiring and plumbing. Afterwards, he went to bed knowing another long day awaited him. This left Goku and ChiChi to finish dinner alone.

 “You’re tired,” ChiChi observed as Goku rubbed his satisfied belly.

 Goku smiled at ChiChi. They hadn’t seen each other all day. He should go to bed and get some rest but Goku wanted to spend some time alone with ChiChi. “A little. My muscles are sore.”

 “Has it been like this every day?”

 Goku shrugged. “I kind of noticed it yesterday.”

 ChiChi rose from the table. She held her hand out to him. “Come with me.”

 Goku took ChiChi’s hand and left the dining hall. He assumed they were going to his room as they had spent every night there talking or preparing for the wedding. Last night, he and ChiChi practiced a wedding dance they had to do for the wedding. Tonight, ChiChi walked them to her room and not his. When ChiChi opened the door, Goku remained rooted to the hall floor. “You want me to come inside?”

 “Of course, Goku. You’re always welcomed in my room. Besides, I’ve been in your room enough times. It’s time you spent time in my room, don’t you think?”

 Goku thought about Mrs. Niver but remembered ChiChi invited him in. He wasn’t doing anything wrong going in ChiChi’s room now. He stepped inside allowing ChiChi to close the door behind him. Goku looked around the room in awe. ChiChi’s pleasant scent was all over the room. Unlike his sparse room of a full size bed, ChiChi’s room had a bigger bed, a desk with a sewing machine with a completed outfit suitable for a child, another desk littered with books on cooking, knitting and parenting and big comfy chairs by her window. A partially opened closet reveal plenty of clothes. Goku scratched the back of his head wondering if the house he was building was big enough for them.

 “Do you like my room?”

 “Yeah.” It was bigger than Grandpa’s home. Goku grimaced at the sheer pink curtains surrounding the bed. He hope the bed he and ChiChi will pick out won’t be pink. “Why do you have curtains around your bed? I thought curtains were for windows.”

 ChiChi giggled as she opened the curtains. “It’s a canopy bed, Goku.” Goku saw ChiChi take four, no six pillows off her bed and toss them on the floor. Why did ChiChi need so many pillows and why did she toss them on the floor? Where was she going was his next question when she disappeared in another room Goku assumed to be the bathroom.

 Sure enough ChiChi came out holding a bottle and a large towel in her hands. ChiChi opened the towel and laid it with the bottle on the bed. She turned to Goku. “Sit down,” ChiChi pointed to her bed. Goku sat on the bed. ChiChi knelt before him and removed his heavy boots. “Where are you sore?”

 “My back mostly and my arms.” He suddenly giggled feeling ChiChi caress his left foot. He tried to pull away but ChiChi held his foot tightly.

 ChiChi grinned at him. “So, you’re ticklish here.”

 “Stop! Stop!” Goku cried between giggles.

 ChiChi stopped tickling but she didn’t release his left foot. Instead she massaged his foot, gently working her fingers over his toes, his heel, his sole and ankle. “Does it hurt your feet wearing those heavy boots?”

 “Yeah but not as much as when I started wearing them.” Goku stared at ChiChi thoughtfully. She was right. Touching did feel good. He liked how ChiChi’s hands felt on his foot. Truthfully, he liked all her touches lately. He hadn’t been as reciprocating he noted when ChiChi moved to the other foot and gave it the same treatment. Perhaps, he should change that. “I…..I like what you’re doing, ChiChi,” he confessed. “It feels good.”

 His heart stammered at the look ChiChi gave him. Girls smiled at him before but they never made his body act so weird. How was ChiChi doing this? ChiChi released his other foot and she stood. “Take off your shirts and lie your stomach on the towel,” ChiChi ordered pointing to the bed. “I’ll massage your back.”

 “A massage?” Goku questioned. “What’s that?”

 ChiChi picked up her bottle. “What I just did to your feet.”

 Goku grinned. If he felt good from ChiChi’s foot massage, he’ll really feel good with the back massage. “All right!” Goku eagerly removed his shirts and gently placed them on the floor. He laid on the towel excited. He couldn’t wait for this back massage. He saw ChiChi pouring liquid from the bottle in her hand. “What’s that?”

“Sweet almond oil,” ChiChi answered rubbing her hands together. “I’m gonna rub this on you.”

 “I thought almonds were for eating,” he murmured as ChiChi placed her hands on his lower back and slowly moved upward in long strokes. This felt nice.

 “Where do you feel sore?”

 “Uh…to the right.”

 “Right here?”

 “A little more,” Goku said gently. “There.” He sighed as ChiChi applied more pressure to the area. Goku closed his eyes at the pleasing sensations ChiChi’s fingers conjured. He could’ve used this when he was on Kami’s Temple. He could’ve used this after his fight with Piccolo. Goku figured this must be something husbands and wives do for each other. He’ll have to return the favor one day. For now, he will enjoy the way ChiChi’s fingers rubbed him, moving slowly from his lower back to his shoulders.

 “How does it feel?” ChiChi asked.

 “Really good. No one’s ever touch me like this before.”

 And no one was going to if ChiChi had her way. “I’m glad. I want you to feel good.” This was good for ChiChi, too. She had wanted to touch Goku like this for days. She loved rubbing her hands over his muscles, feeling his strength, knowing this will soon all be hers. His body felt so warm, too. She imagined cuddling up to him on cold nights and keeping warm with his body next to hers.

 She took her time, starting at his lower back before moving up his back to his shoulders and eventually his arms. Reluctantly, she pulled her hands away when she finished. Her eyes lingered over him. When they marry, she will massage all of him. “I’m done, Goku. You can sit up now.”

 He really didn’t want to move. Lying here on ChiChi’s bed where her scent was strongest, where his body was very relaxed left Goku wanting to fall asleep. ChiChi sat next to him and gave his hair a gentle tug. He knew that was a gentle warning. Goku sat up and moved close to her. “My back feels really good now. Thanks, ChiChi.” Impulsively, he pressed his lips against ChiChi’s right cheek.

 When Goku pulled back, ChiChi touched her blushing cheeks. “Goku, you kissed me.”

 He instantly worried. “Did I do it right?”

 ChiChi nodded eagerly. “Yes,” she quickly told him. She didn’t want him to think he was wrong and stop. “I wasn’t expecting it. I really like it.”

 Goku was relieved ChiChi liked it. With building their house and spending these days with her, Goku found himself wanting to do right with ChiChi. “Well, you always kiss me so I thought I should start doing it to you since we’re gonna be married and touching does feels good.”

 ChiChi was nearly giddy now. Finally, Goku was taking some initiative and he was being receptive to her affections. She wasn’t gonna leave it at that. If he felt comfortable giving her a kiss on the cheek, it was time for the real thing! “How about another kiss?” ChiChi suggested. “On the lips this time.”

 Goku thought about it for a moment. ChiChi did say they will have to do this at the wedding. She wanted to practice and after watching that movie with ChiChi two nights ago, he thought about trying it, too. “Okay. How do I do that?”

 ChiChi wrapped her arms around Goku’s neck. “We press our lips together like in that movie we saw.” She blushed. “We can also use our tongue.”

 “Tongue?”

 Her blushed deepened. If she was this way explaining a kiss, ChiChi couldn’t imagine how she’ll feel explaining sex to Goku. “We open our mouths and use our tongue instead of our lips. I only read about this in a magazine,” she confessed. “I’ve never kissed anyone on the lips. I don’t know how good I’ll be.”

“I haven’t kissed anyone either but we’ll be good at it.” Goku was confident. At ChiChi’s questioning gaze, he said, “I catch on fast when I really want to learn something and I really want to learn this and you’re really smart. You’ll be good at this, too.” Goku wrapped his arms around ChiChi’s waist and pulled her closer. “So, let’s do it.”

 Wow. When Goku took charge, it was exhilarating. Her heart pounded in her chest. This was finally happening. Her first kiss. “I’m ready, Goku.”

 ChiChi closed her eyes and puckered her lips slightly. Goku thought back to the movie he saw two days ago. Having an idea on what to do, he pressed his lips hard on ChiChi’s and closed his eyes like he saw the couple do in the movie. ChiChi’s eyes flew open from the pressure of his lips on hers. Her hands slipped from his neck to his bare chest where her fingers dug into his skin to push back. She opened her mouth to protest the kiss but Goku used that opportunity to slip his tongue in her mouth. She felt his tongue touch hers before feeling it move sloppily against her teeth, the roof of her mouth and towards the back where she almost gagged. ChiChi folded her hands into fists and pounded Goku’s chest. Goku loosened his hold and ChiChi used that as an opportunity to push Goku away from her, knocking him off the bed.

 Goku fell to the floor with a loud thump. When he sat up, ChiChi was glaring at him. She wasn’t happy. “Goku, what was that?”

 Goku gaped at ChiChi baffled. “I thought I was kissing you. Didn’t I do it right?”

 “No!” Goku cringed at ChiChi’s outrage. “You were too hard!” She exhaled, calmly speaking, “You should be gentle when you kiss.”

 Goku rubbed the back of his head embarrassed. When he tried something new he usually put a lot strength in it to show he’s giving his all. He thought kissing was the same way. “Okay. Gentle. I can do that.”

 ChiChi sighed as Goku climbed back on the bed beside her. “I hope so. Let’s try it again and no tongue,” she warned. “We’ll work our way up to that.”

 Goku put his arms around ChiChi as she locked hers around his neck. Gentle, he told himself. Gentle. He pressed his lips against hers gently this time for a few seconds before pulling away. “How’s that?”  

 ChiChi was smiling. It gave Goku assurance he didn’t screw up this time. “It was better but a little short. How did you like it?”

 Goku shrugged. “I don’t really know. I was focus on being gentle I didn’t have time to notice what it felt like.”

 “Well,” her fingers stroke the back of his neck. “Maybe we should kiss longer so you can notice what it feels like.”

 “Okay.”

 Goku pressed his lips against ChiChi’s longer this time. He could feel ChiChi’s fingers tenderly caress the back of his neck, feel her bumps caress his bare chest and a pleasing sigh from ChiChi caressing his ears. A strange sensation hit him. He was on the verge of deciphering if he liked it or not when ChiChi pulled away.

 ChiChi’s cheeks were flushed and there was a big smile on her face. “Oh, Goku. That was---“

 He didn’t mean to but he yanked ChiChi to him and kissed her again. This sensation was new to him and he needed to know if he liked it. ChiChi didn’t mind his sudden action as her hand moved from his neck into his hair. He could feel the heat rise on his cheeks with the way ChiChi massage her fingers in his hair with one hand while the other caress his bare chest. This felt different when ChiChi massaged his back. This was better! He liked how her hand touched his abs gently massaging the muscles as she moved upward to his pectorals. This felt really good. He nearly jerk back in shock when ChiChi’s fingers caressed his nipple. That feeling. It was really nice!

 Since ChiChi touched his chest, Goku thought he should do the same. ChiChi said touching should feel good for both of them and he liked how ChiChi touched him. He imitated her movements, touching her stomach through her clothes. He slowly moved up and touched her left breast. His hand closed over it and gave her breast a gentle squeeze.

 ChiChi squealed and pulled back breaking the kiss.

 “Did I squeeze too hard?” Goku innocently asked. “I thought I was gentle.”

 ChiChi breathed heavily from the kiss; her hand still on her left breast. “No, you didn’t do anything wrong. I wasn’t expecting you to touch me there.”

 “But it’s okay, right?” Goku asked. “I thought I could touch you there since you touch my chest.”

 He had a point but ChiChi didn’t know how to explain to Goku the difference between touching a woman’s chest and a man’s.

 As she considered her words, Goku confessed, “No one has touched me like you have, ChiChi. I like it and I thought you would like if I touch you there, too.”

 “You liked it?” She smiled shyly. “I wasn’t sure if you did.”

 Goku nodded eagerly. “Oh, I like it alot.”

 “I like it when you touch me, too, Goku.” Goku reached for her breast again but ChiChi grabbed his wrist. “But we have to be careful not to touch too much before the wedding. After the wedding, we can touch each other wherever we want.”

 Goku’s fell face. He was very disappointed. “So I can’t touch your bumps until after the wedding?”

 “They’re called breasts, Goku. Sometimes people like to call them boobs but they are not bumps.”

 “Oh,” Goku understood but with his one track mind asked, “So I can’t touch your boobs until after the wedding?”

 ChiChi thought about that. She did like it when Goku touched here there but she knew they had to be careful and not go too far before the wedding. It was a week away but a little petting couldn’t hurt, could it? “You can touch my breasts through my clothes when we kiss but that’s it. You can’t see them until after we’re married.”

 Goku was fine with that compromise. It wasn’t long before the wedding anyway. He startled ChiChi when he pulled her to him suddenly and kissed her. ChiChi welcomed the kiss and wrapped her arms around his neck. She felt Goku’s hand on one of her breasts again, squeezing it. He liked touching her there ChiChi realized. One of her hands slid down and touched Goku’s chest. She felt him shudder. She smiled. She like touching him, too.

  Part Four: Interference

 AN: ChiChi in my story knows how to do the Kamehameha Wave. I’ll have a flashback for that in the next chapter. It was implied Master Roshi taught Gohan and Gyu-Mao the technique. We saw Gohan use it against Goku at Baba’s palace and Roshi asked Gyu-Mao why he never used the wave to put out the fire around his castle. Master Roshi even acknowledge ChiChi as an expert when she fought Goku. So I figure if Gyu-Mao trained ChiChi in Master Roshi’s style then she should be able to create a wave.

[chiseler]

TIN PAN ALIAS

They're no longer the household names they once were. In fact their names were not really their names. But between them Harry and Albert Von Tilzer were two of the more successful and prolific songwriters and publishers on Tin Pan Alley, and many of their songs are familiar today as icons of the so-called Gay Nineties and early 1900s. One of them still gets played every day there's a baseball game.

Harry and his brothers were not born Von Tilzers. Harry was born Aaron Gumbinsky or Gummblinsky to Polish Jewish immigrants in Detroit in 1872. He grew up in Indianapolis, where the brothers were all born. The family shortened the name to Gumm, leading to the often-repeated misinformation that Frances Gumm, better known as Judy Garland, was Harry's niece. In fact, her father Frank Gumm was not one of the Gumbinsky/Gumm/Von Tilzer brothers, but a cracker from Tennessee (and predominantly homosexual, interesting when you consider Garland's complex personal and professional relationships with gay men later, not to mention Liza's).

At fourteen Harry Gumm ran away to join the Cole Brothers Circus. He played piano and wrote songs for a traveling theater troupe and changed his name on the road, taking his mother's maiden name and adding the Von for a touch of class. His brothers, all of whom went into the music business after him, followed suit. Making for more confusion, in 1929 a Helen Von Tilzer would marry one of the Marx Brothers -- Gummo, of course. Because of that preposterous-seeming coincidence she's often written up as Harry's sister, but in fact she was born Helen Theaman in New York. Von Tilzer was her first husband's name, and he seems to have been a real Von Tilzer, also not related to Harry and the fake Von Tilzer clan.

Harry worked in burlesque, with medicine shows and in vaudeville, specializing, naturally, in "Dutch" (German) routines. In 1892 he arrived in New York City by train as a groom for a carload of horses. He had one dollar and sixty-five cents in his pocket. For the next six years he struggled, playing saloon piano and writing songs that Tony Pastor and others bought from him at two bucks each.

According to David A. Jansen's Tin Pan Alley: An Encyclopedia of the Golden Age of American Song, Harry wrote his first hit under some duress. He and lyricist Andrew B. Sterling were sharing a furnished room on East Fifteenth Street in 1898 and were "three weeks behind on their rent. When a final bill was slipped under their door, they used the paper to write a chorus and then a verse of what turned out to be their first successful publication, 'My Old New Hampshire Home.'" It was classic barbershop quartet treacle. William Dunn of the Orphean Music publishing company paid them fifteen dollars for it -- a week's rent on the room -- and proceeded to sell more than a million copies in sheet music.

Then Dunn was bought out by Louis Bernstein and Maurice Shapiro, founders of one of Tin Pan Alley's longest-lived hit factories -- it still exists as Shapiro Bernstein & Co., with a catalogue that includes "Ring of Fire," "Yes! We Have No Bananas," "Walk on the Wild Side" (the original, not Lou Reed's song) and the immortal "Wolverton Mountain." They paid Von Tilzer four thousand dollars, a considerable sum in those days, to join them as a partner in the firm. A few years later he would leave them and start his own publishing company.

In 1900 he was relaxing in a whorehouse (or just at a party, depending on the source), noodling on the piano to some lyrics handed him by the British lyricist Arthur Lamb. When Harry saw the girls around him crying, he figured he'd noodled up a smash hit. It was. "A Bird in a Gilded Cage" sold more than two million copies of sheet music, and was one of the most popular weepers of the age, a song we still associate more than maybe any other with late Victorian mawkishness. This time Harry earned far more than fifteen bucks.

He and Lamb collaborated on two more tearjerkers in 1902, "The Banquet in Misery Hall" and the equally lugubrious "The Mansion of Aching Hearts," which a few singers made into hit recordings. That same year a scrawny Jewish kid from the Lower East Side went busking in the saloons on the Bowery, belting out "Mansion" in a raspy tenor to the pie-eyed sailors and hookers who tossed pennies at him. That kid, Izzy Baline, went up to Tin Pan Alley on Twenty-Eighth Street to meet Von Tilzer, who hired him as a song plugger and "boomer." A boomer was a plant in the audience at the music hall or vaudeville house whose job was to cheer and shout "Encore!" when the publisher's new song was performed. Von Tilzer, who was an expert plugger and boomer himself, showed Izzy the ropes. Izzy, who would invent his own German-sounding professional name, Irving Berlin, went on to eclipse his mentor's fame.

But Von Tilzer was no slouch. "Wait 'Til the Sun Shines, Nellie," "I Want a Girl (Just Like the Girl Who Married Dear Old Dad)," "In the Sweet Bye and Bye" and "I Love My Wife, But Oh You Kid!" were all major hits, and he wrote thousands more. That was not unusual. In the crowded Tin Pan Alley milieu, where publishing companies were stacked four and five stories high door-to-door, the competition was brutal, the pace ferocious and the ruling business model crudely simple: Throw as many songs at the public as you can possibly churn out, and hope one sticks once in a while. The lists of songs published on Tin Pan Alley in its glory years, roughly the 1880s through the 1920s, are stupefyingly long -- tens of thousands of songs, hurled at the public in live performances, as sheet music and piano rolls, on recorded wax cylinders, in early versions of coin-operated jukeboxes, on phonograph discs after the introduction of the affordable Victrola in 1906, and eventually on radio. Almost all of those tens of thousands of songs are forgotten now. In fact the vast majority barely made an impression when they were new. You just kept cranking them out, praying for a hit now and again.

Von Tilzer was out there pitching with the best of them. Like all serious Tin Pan Alley composers he jumped on every band wagon that rolled down Twenty-Eighth Street. He wrote Irish and "Dutch" numbers when they were fads, beer-drinking songs when they came into fashion (including one called "Under the Anheuser Busch"), schmaltzy kiddie songs, and songs capitalizing on every new dance craze, from the bunny hug to the turkey trot to the hesitation waltz. He threw three of them together in one song, "You Can Tango You Can Trot Dear but Be Sure and Hesitate." He wrote novelty songs like "The Ragtime Goblin Man" and topical ones like "Old King Tut," a hit for Sophie Tucker the year after Tut's tomb was discovered in 1922.

He also wrote several hit coon songs. Coon songs spun off from minstrel shows in the 1880s. In the 1890s and 1900s hundreds and hundreds of songs with "coon" in the title were published, usually sung to ragtime tunes. They often replaced the Old Plantation nostalgia of the traditional minstrel song with ruder, more overtly racist stereotypes. They were hugely popular, and Von Tilzer wrote his share, songs like "Alexander" (familiar to audiences then as a hifalutin' name for a blackface minstrel character), "Mammy's Kinky-Headed Coon," "My Lady Hottentot" and "Rufus Rastus Johnson Brown." Performers of old-timey music still record that one, though it may be best known for the 1970 funk version by the great Rufus ("Do the Funky Chicken") Thomas. In 1911, Berlin would upstage Von Tilzer's "Alexander" with his own ragtime-y coon song, "Alexander's Ragtime Band." Any similarity to his mentor's hit was purely intentional.

By the middle of the 1920s Von Tilzer had composed something like two thousand published songs, including a dozen million-sellers and as many as a hundred that sold half a million. His output slowed down in the later 1920s and 1930s, but he still credibly claimed to have written some eight thousand tunes. Like many Tin Pan Alley greats, including Berlin, he did it without ever learning to read or write a note of music.

Time and tastes moved on. Harry quietly lived out his last years in the Hotel Woodward, a Broadway establishment favored by show folk, and died there in 1946.

Meanwhile, Harry had brought Albert and the other brothers to New York. Jules worked for Harry. Will started a song publishing company, and Albert and Jack partnered in another. Albert was also a songwriter. He and vaudevillian Jack Norworth collaborated on the giant "Take Me Out to the Ball Game" in 1908; according to an unconfirmed but persistent legend, Albert never actually saw a ball game until the late 1920s. Some of Albert's other hits include "Put Your Arms Around Me, Honey," "I'll Be With You in Apple Blossom Time," the minstrel song "Down Where the Swanee River Flows" (a hit for Al Jolson in blackface), the Prohibition lament "The Alcoholic Blues" ("No more beer my heart to cheer/ Goodbye whiskey, you used to make me frisky/ So long highball, so long gin/ Oh, tell me when you comin' back agin"), the Hawaiian-themed ragtime hit "Oh, How She Could Yacki Hacki Wicki Wacki Woo," and another novelty hit, the zany bum-diddy-bum jungle number "Oh By Jingo!" with lyrics by Lew Brown. ("We will build for you a hut/ You will be our favorite nut/ We will have a lot of Oh By Gollies/ And we'll put them in the Follies.") Born Louis Brownstein in Odessa, Brown had fled the pogroms with his family and settled in the Bronx. In a long career he collaborated with many Tin Pan Alley and Broadway composers on classics like "Life Is Just a Bowl of Cherries," "You're the Cream in My Coffee," "Sunny Side Up" and "That Old Feeling." It was guys like Brown, the Von Tilzers and Berlin whom the rabid anti-Semite Henry Ford had in mind when he ranted, "The people are fed from day to day on the moron suggestiveness that flows in a slimy flood out of 'Tin Pan Alley,' the head factory of filth in New York which is populated by the 'Abies,' the 'Izzies,' and the 'Moes'..." Ignoring him, lots of people recorded the moron suggestiveness of "Oh By Jingo!" -- Danny Kaye, Spike Jones, Stephane Grappelli and Chet Atkins among them.

Following the addition of sound to commercial movies, the studios lured more and more of the music business out to Hollywood in the 1930s. After all, the first hit talkie, The Jazz Singer, was really a singie. Albert went too. He worked in film and tv, mostly contributing to soundtracks of now obscure pictures. He died in L.A. in 1956. By that point much of the Von Tilzer catalogue, especially the older and mushier songs, had faded away, except at ball games. Then in 1958 Lawrence Welk, than whom no one loved old-fashioned schmaltz more, bought the catalogue and engineered a Von Tilzer revival. When the Songwriters Hall of Fame began in 1969, Harry and Albert were among the first voted in.

by John Strausbaugh

[theliterateape]

Gambling with the Currency at Hand

by Don Hall

At every casino in Las Vegas there are these pamphlets. Usually hidden away behind a sign that indicates that one must inspect their sports ticket before leaving the Sportsbook or a promotion for “$30,000 Credit for Gaming” with four paragraphs of fine print underneath. These trifold informational pieces are colored in a dull brown and beige — a sunset photo — with a muted title: “When the Fun Stops”.

“Some problem gamblers may gamble to relieve boredom or avoid feelings of anxiousness or stress. Others may gamble to ‘numb out’ when feeling helpless, guilty, or depressed.” — from “When the Fun Stops” by The Nevada Council on Problem Gambling

In a year and a half of working in an Off-Strip casino flanked by an In-and-Out Burger, a Wendy’s, and a Siegel Suites, I never saw a single soul pick one up and peruse its contents.

The marketing of Las Vegas has promoted an adult playground of gambling, booze, and sex sans accountability for decades. From the days of the Rat Pack to the glamour of Steve Wynn, the city has made its bones on these core values. For every tourist from Japan or Iowa, however, there is someone who lives here in the grimy shadow of weekend fun, either cleaning up the mess left behind or searching through the refuse for something missed as the hungover travelers disembark.

Debra worked in HR for a local company for years. She was born in New Jersey and moved to Nevada in the early 2000’s with her sister. Her life was relatively average — some bills, a mortgage, car payments — nothing beyond her means. One day she slipped and injured herself in a Big Box store and sued. She won an insurance claim just north of a million dollars.

She planned on living off of this payout through her retirement. She paid off some loans, bought a car, financed a home for she and her sister. No more working for a living was almost a daily mantra. This life, however, bored her beyond words. They were in Vegas, after all, and the sirens of slot winnings sung their tune.

Five years later, most of the million dollars has been spent on video poker. Debra is broke but still plays three times a week with money she no longer has for money she won’t see again.

"Most people who gamble do so with no harmful effects. They set limits and stick to them. However, for a small percentage of the population, gambling can become more than a game, and lead to serious consequences for both the gambler and their family.

Here are some of the warning signs:

Gambling to escape worry or trouble Gambling to get money to solve financial difficulties Unable to stop playing regardless of winning or losing Gambling until the last dollar is gone Losing time from work due to gambling Borrowing money to pay gambling debts Neglecting family because of gambling Lying about time and money spent gambling" — from “When the Fun Stops” by The Nevada Council on Problem Gambling

Teddy was a Big Deal in the world of fossil fuel safety protocol. It ain’t Tom Cruise or Barack Obama territory but it had paid extremely well for a long time. He was a hefty man with a booming laugh and a warm smile that sort of expanded his charm two or three feet around him.

When Teddy came there were some rules. This guy spent so much money in one sitting the General Manager would comment that if Teddy wanted everyone in the casino out so he could play in peace they’d be escorted off the property until Teddy was done. It never came to that but the rules were simple:

Teddy played the two ‘Dancing Drums’ slots exclusively, so the machines on either side were shut off.

He drank Sierra Mist and was on a constant refill protocol.

He was gregarious but didn’t want to be bothered by anyone so keeping the hangers-on on the floor away was key.

Teddy always played the maximum bet which for his machines was $8.80 per spin. He routinely dropped between $10,000.00 and $25,000.00 in an afternoon. He'd likely hit four or five jackpots in the $1,600.00 to $4,500.00 range. And he never tipped.

That was such an odd aspect of this guy. He obviously had tons of idle cash but was cheap when it came to the expected Vegas fee for service. It wasn't as if he was a lowball tipper -- he simply did not tip for any reason. He was our definition of a high roller yet behaved like the cat who'd come in looking for nothing but his $10.00 of free play and hopefully a comp drink.

"...eventually funds may not be available to meet the most basic needs of food, clothing, shelter, etc. In desperation the gambler may begin lying and/or stealing to cover up the problems, creating further stress for everyone around them." — from “When the Fun Stops” by The Nevada Council on Problem Gambling

When I first encountered TC and his mother I was hit by the sadness in their situation. He and I were roughly the same age but, as I've been told we are all four bad decisions from homeless, he made all four of them and I had a couple more to go.

Walking the perimeter of the casino, I see an ancient Honda Civic parked slightly off the lines. In the drivers seat is a tall, skinny man, slightly hunched over smoking a butt out the window. He looks sunbaked like people do in the desert, his skin taut and leathery. Next to him is an old woman. Old like those pictures you see from Appalachia in National Geographic. She has an oxygen tube in her nose and is simply staring out the cracked windshield off into a distance I cannot fathom.

"You doing OK out here?" I ask in that managerial tone.

"Yah. We're good. Just waiting until we can get a room."

"You wanna come inside? It's, like, 112 degrees out here and I imagine your friend..."

"My mother..."

"...your mother might feel better in the air conditioning."

"Sho..."

He had an odd linguistic affectation in his speech that made him sound a bit like a child, his mouth wrapping around vowels that rounded them out. He dropped his square, got out of the creaky car, and pulled out a wheelchair that would've been at home next to the dirty doll Charleston Heston found at the climax of The Planet of the Apes.

I put them in the Sportsbook, grabbed a couple of waters for them, and spent a few minutes sleuthing their story. 

TC was well-known by some of the long-term staff. He used to be a player but hit hard times a few years back. No one knew what he had done for a living or how he was surviving but the profile was of someone now homeless, living in his car and occasionally a month-long stay at the hotel attached to our casino so his mother could sleep in a bed. He still was on the free play marketing list but rarely had the dollar to activate it.

"As they continue to gamble, they become more and more emotionally and mentally dependent on gambling, with less and less control. The long-term result is a steady deterioration of the mental and physical health of both the gambler and their family." — from “When the Fun Stops” by The Nevada Council on Problem Gambling

On some fundamental Irish level, I understand this compulsion. While never much into gambling my money as I've never been heavily motivated by its acquisition, my career since college has been a series of driving along the highway at night and wondering if I could survive the impulse of just letting the steering wheel go and closing my eyes.

In ‘89, I graduated and randomly chose Chicago as my new home without the safety net of knowing anyone in Chicago, having a job or prospects, or having ever been in the city. It was the move of a gambler throwing dice to see if the come-out was a natural and betting everything he had.

I lived in my car for four months as I explored this new city and looked for gainful employment, feeding myself and gassing up my home by playing trumpet on street corners downtown.

My chosen field was that of a music teacher and I did that in the public school system on the west side for a decade. Why quit teaching after ten years? Why not? I started a non-profit comedy theater that evolved into something weird but fun. Did that for fifteen years then quit to go work for NPR. A decade later, I decided to move to Las Vegas because isn't that what the hopelessly addicted to risk do?

Debra was distraught.

“Oh my gawd,” she moaned as she pumped another $20.00 in the video poker machine. “My sister’s birthday is Wednesday and I have to pick up her cake but I don’t have the $17.00 to pay for it!”

The odd disconnect between her dilemma and the twenty she just pushed into the bill validator was obvious to me but not at all to her.

“Debra. Why not cash out that machine and use that?” I said, smiling behind my mask.

“Huh? Ah, no, no, no. This money is for poker. I can’t use it for her cake. Maybe if I win some today...”

The next day I get a phone call. It’s Debra. Can I loan her $20.00 until Thursday? I can and I do. She sends me pictures of the party, socially distanced from her garage. Thursday she swings by and palms me the twenty like it’s a tip I’m not supposed to receive.

In the ongoing search for the true American experience, it seems obvious that it exists inside the off-strip casino. A room filled with shiny lights and electronic sounds populated with every stripe from every tribe: wealthy, impoverished, black, white, brown, make, female, non-binary, old, young, fat, thin, liberal, conservative, libertarian, beautiful, homely. All in the room for exactly the same reason: a short term investment in a possible future fueled by luck and circumstance.

Everyone who walks into the casino is prepared to gamble with the currency at hand. That currency cannot be defined simply by dollars available but the intertwined filthy lucre of personality, desire, and need with need being the characteristic with the most pungent strength.

Teddy wasn’t big on chit-chat. He came to plug in the dough and whack the spin buttons with a slap. Except with me. With me, for some unexplained reason, there was small talk.

“I love to travel, Don. Have you traveled?”

“I have. Used to play jazz trumpet for a living and went all over the globe with that.”

“Where’s your favorite place?”

“Edinburgh, Scotland. Took a theater company there for a month in ‘95 and fell in love with the place.”

“Oooooh! I’ve never been there! I have a lady friend I’d like to take someplace new. What else you got on Scotland?”

I went to my office, did some online searches, and put together a PDF of prices and places in Edinburgh. I dropped it off at his machine when he was cashing in a voucher.

His reaction was effusive.

“It’s people like you that make me come here, you know? The big properties are always offering me comp rooms and meals but they can’t give me the feeling of friendship that the people here do.”

Over the course of a few months, I gleaned that Teddy had lost his wife to cancer years before and that his children would have little to do with him. He often had “lady friends” but no one consistent and most were decades younger than he. Teddy was an almost desperately lonely man and felt less so in the casino where his propensity to be a high roller made him feel like he was important.

The 1995 trip to Scotland was another improbable gamble. The small nonprofit theater company I had founded was fraying at the edges. The ensemble needed a goal to achieve and I decided that taking a show to the Edinburgh Festival Fringe with seventeen actors who had no disposable incomes to speak of was just thee thing. I cashed in my pension from the days of teaching and managed a few sponsorships.

It was both financially devastating and artistically remarkable. In the parlance of the gambling addict, it was a win. I lost my ass and gained a cherished city.

TC checked he and his mother into a room one February night a month before the place was shut down by pandemic. During the graveyard shift, his mother was picked up by paramedics and transferred to a hospital. The next day, TC was outside in the courtyard weeping as if the world had ended.

She had been misdiagnosed, given the wrong medication, and had died during the early hours of the morning. TC was filled with sadness and guilt and a sense of impotent rage so like so many on the ass end of life.

He was without options. He was unemployed and unemployable. His one lifeline was his mother both in a financial way but also in that indelible manner that having a daily task, someone to care for, gives a person distraction from the crushing despair of living.

I brought him a bottle of water and a pack of cigarettes and sat down with him for a moment during my shift.

“I don’t know.” he said unprompted after a few minutes of sitting together.

“What don’t you know?”

“I don’t know what to do. They killed my mother. They didn’t even care. When I came in to the hospital, they took me to her and she was just dead. The doctor didn’t even apologize. They wanted to know how I was going to pay for her disposal. That’s how they said it. Her disposal. I used to come here, you know? When I had money? I used to gamble and laugh. I haven’t laughed in years.”

“You did the best you could.”

“NO, I DIDN’T! I didn’t do the best I could. How do you live with yourself knowing you didn’t?”

“I don’t know.”

I think about when the fun stopped for him or if it was ever really fun at all. I wonder if those in my current position watched it happen as TC went from being someone in between Debra and Teddy and started that slide into who he was in front of me and what responsibly did they take as witness to the decline.

Does the bartender bear some accountability to the alcoholic? Does the pimp have some obligation for the john? The casino feeds off of the weaknesses of thousands who come in from out of town to throw away their disposable income on a Hennessy-soaked memory haze of unfettered vice but does it have some sort of moral obligation to the folks who live here and still cash in their downfall with such abandon?

Sometime during the re-opening of Vegas following the COVID shutdown I realized that the place was leaving a mark. Not so much a scar but a dark bruise. A wound underneath the skin and, since there was no one to hand me a pamphlet, I decided that the fun had, indeed, stopped for me.

When I announced to Debra that I was leaving the casino, that I had found work that paid more and was remote to boot, she was distraught.

“This place. We get diamonds and they leave as soon as we get used to them.”

“The West?”

“Vegas. It’s a hard place for good people to thrive. Don’t. Don’t say I’m a good person. I’m not. I try but I’m not. Vegas eats up people. It chews on their hopes and dreams and spits them back out. Oh, I’m so depressed right now.”

She pumped another twenty into the machine and continued to chase the four aces.

“Did you hate it here?”

“Vegas? No. I love it.”

“No. The West. Did you hate it here?”

“No. It’s dirty and seedy but there is a thing about places like this that resonate a tune so few can recall singing. You ever read Neil Gaiman’s ‘American Gods’? The old gods can only congregate in places of bizarre spiritual congruence like House on the Rock or Disneyland. The West is like one of those mythic, tacky places in which the old gods gather.”

“You’re so weird. This is not a spiritual place. It’s a casino.”

“One and the same, Debra.”

Teddy never went to Edinburgh as far as I know. When Vegas re-opened, he stopped coming in to play. That has been the way of things during pandemic. Those with options other than Vegas found different games of chance. I can think of a dozen regular big players whom I haven’t seen since things turned sour. Perhaps the place lost its luster when requiring masks on everyone was too much a reminder of the outside world.

A week or so before I turned in my name badge and Title 31 credentials, TC came in. I hadn’t seen him since that day in the courtyard. He was wearing new clothes. His face was fuller as if he’d somehow become hydrated and healthier. He was obviously clean and his hair had grown out and been cut. 

He pulled down his mask. “Look! They’re implants!” he crowed as his brand new choppers shone in the light. “This is my wife!” and he motioned to a matronly Latina woman who seemed thrilled to meet me.

TC had sued the hospital. Vegas has a billboard for every fifty feet of highway announcing a lawyer waiting to help you cash in on tragedy and it is fitting that TC took advantage of one of them and made bank.

Like the rest of us he was simply gambling with the cards he was dealt, with the currency available to him. Will he squander it, buying pieces of hope, looking for another jackpot? Probably but that’s Vegas. That’s America, isn’t it? 

The America Dream we were promised is just another handpay pot of gold to be gambled away on the promise of the next dream, so why not? How can the fun stop if it was never really fun in the first place?

[multipleservicelisting]

Who is Jonathan Braun? Trump’s Last Minute Pardon Still Faces Accusations of Violence

President Donald J. Trump’s late-night commutation of a 10-year prison sentence being served by a drug smuggler named Jonathan Braun made the action sound almost routine. The White House said only that upon his release, Mr. Braun would “seek employment to support his wife and children.”

What the White House did not mention is that Mr. Braun, a New Yorker from Staten Island who had pleaded guilty in 2011 to leading a large-scale marijuana smuggling ring, still faces both criminal and civil investigations in an entirely separate matter, and has a history of violence and threatening people.

According to lawsuits filed in June against Mr. Braun and two associates by the New York State attorney general, Letitia James, and the Federal Trade Commission, Mr. Braun helped start and worked as a de facto enforcer for an operation that made predatory loans to small-business owners, threatening them with violence if they refused to pay up.

Federal prosecutors for the Southern District of New York in Manhattan also have a continuing investigation into that operation, a person with knowledge of the investigation said Friday.

As recently as two and a half years ago, Mr. Braun was accused of throwing a man off a deck at an engagement party. Federal prosecutors said in a court proceeding that he threatened to beat a rabbi who borrowed money to renovate a preschool at his synagogue. “I am going to make you bleed,” he told the rabbi, according to court documents, adding, “I will make you suffer for every penny.”

How much Mr. Trump and his aides knew about Mr. Braun’s past and his current legal troubles is not clear. In its announcement of the pardon this week, the White House appears to have substantially overstated how much of his 10-year sentence Mr. Braun had completed, saying he had served five years when he had only reported to prison a year ago. (The White House announcement also misspelled his first name, calling him Jonathon.)

Mr. Braun’s family had told people it was willing to spend millions of dollars for lawyers and others to try to get him out of prison, according to two people who have been in contact with the family members in recent months.

No one registered under federal lobbying laws to make Mr. Braun’s case to the Trump administration, though registration would not necessarily be required for legal representation. The White House announcement of the wave of 143 pardons and commutations early Wednesday, just hours before Mr. Trump left office, did not cite anyone who had backed the commutation of Mr. Braun’s sentence.

The lawyer Alan M. Dershowitz, who represented Mr. Trump in his first impeachment trial, said he “played a very limited role” in Mr. Braun’s clemency push, “almost exclusively” advising his father about the clemency process, and was paid “a very small amount of money” for his assistance.

Mr. Dershowitz said he believed Mr. Braun’s argument for clemency was “meritorious,” because Mr. Braun cooperated with prosecutors “for a good many years, and was told that his cooperation would be recognized and he didn’t get that recognition.”

His case is the latest evidence of how far the pardon process under Mr. Trump had strayed from the rigorous Justice Department guidelines and screening that previous presidents had largely relied on for clemency recommendations.

“Jonathan Braun has threatened small-business owners with violence, death and even kidnapping,” Ms. James said. “A federal commutation will not protect Mr. Braun from being held accountable in New York for the civil charges against him.”

Interviews and court documents paint a portrait of Mr. Braun as a major drug smuggler who once beat one of his underlings so badly with a belt that Mr. Braun told others he had left the victim “black and blue.” In another instance, he threatened violence against a woman who worked for him who was threatening to cooperate with prosecutors.

In response to questions about the pardon, Mr. Braun’s lawyer, Marc Fernich, declined to discuss how Mr. Braun had gotten his case in front of White House officials or who had represented him. But Mr. Fernich praised Mr. Trump’s action.

“Mr. Braun’s 10-year sentence was grossly unreasonable — an extreme statistical outlier — on the facts and circumstances of his case,” Mr. Fernich said in an email message. He said he applauded Mr. Trump’s “courage in correcting what was a grave injustice.”

A spokesman for Mr. Trump did not return an email message seeking comment.

Mr. Braun was indicted in 2010 and entered a plea deal in the drug case the next year after initially fleeing the country for Canada and Israel before turning himself in. He was not sentenced until 2019 and did not have to report to prison until last January.

While free on bail after his guilty plea but before reporting to prison, he plunged into a new enterprise, helping run an operation that made loans to small-business owners at extremely high interest rates. According to the suits filed last year by Ms. James, the New York State attorney general, and the Federal Trade Commission, Mr. Braun regularly threatened those who had trouble repaying the loans.

“I know where you live.” Mr. Braun told a small-business owner who he claimed owed him money, according to court documents filed by Ms. James.

Mr. Braun told the business owner he knew where his mother lived.

“I will take your daughters from you,” he said, according to the suit.

Mr. Braun is accused in the suit of telling another business owner: “Be thankful you’re not in New York, because your family would find you floating in the Hudson.”

Previous presidents relied on a Justice Department screening process for pardons that ensured they were being given in an evenhanded way and that those with money and connections were not receiving preferential treatment. But Mr. Trump largely disregarded that process and wielded his clemency powers unlike any previous president.

The Constitution gives presidents the ability to issue pardons and commutations, a brake on the criminal justice system and a way to show grace and mercy. But Mr. Trump doled out clemency to friends, allies, donors, witnesses who did not cooperate with investigations that involved him and his campaign, and those who could help him politically.

“When the Justice Department process is short-circuited, and there’s insufficient vetting — if you don’t take the time to look at someone’s history and potential other exposure — this is what you end up with: a process that appears corrupted by money and influence,” said Daniel Zelenko, a white-collar defense lawyer at Crowell and Moring and former federal prosecutor and enforcement lawyer at the Securities and Exchange Commission.

The full story of Mr. Braun’s arrest, indictment and sentencing spans a decade and, according to prosecutors’s statements in court and filings in his case, often unfolded like a crime thriller.

In 2009, agents from the Drug Enforcement Administration raided a house on Staten Island that Mr. Braun’s drug trafficking network used to stash large stockpiles of drugs. Mr. Braun, who was in Florida at the time, learned from his underlings about the raid.

Immediately, Mr. Braun rented a car and with at least one associate drove 25 hours to the New York border with Canada.

“In the dead of night, dressed entirely in black and utilizing a motorless boat, Braun was ferried across the river into Canada, and remained there for several months, hiding out in one of the properties owned by his Canadian associate,” according to court documents filed by the Justice Department.

Clemency Power ›

Presidential Pardons, Explained

President Trump has discussed potential pardons that could test the boundaries of his constitutional power to nullify criminal liability. Here’s some clarity on his ability to pardon.

May a president issue prospective pardons before any charges or conviction? Yes. In Ex parte Garland, an 1866 case involving a former Confederate senator who had been pardoned by President Andrew Johnson, the Supreme Court said the pardon power “extends to every offense known to the law, and may be exercised at any time after its commission, either before legal proceedings are taken or during their pendency, or after conviction and judgment.” It is unusual for a president to issue a prospective pardon before any charges are filed, but there are examples, perhaps most famously President Gerald R. Ford’s pardon in 1974 of Richard M. Nixon to prevent him from being prosecuted after the Watergate scandal.

May a president pardon his relatives and close allies? Yes. The Constitution does not bar pardons that raise the appearance of self-interest or a conflict of interest, even if they may provoke a political backlash and public shaming. In 2000, shortly before leaving office, President Bill Clinton issued a slew of controversial pardons, including to his half brother, Roger Clinton, over a 1985 cocaine conviction for which he had served about a year in prison, and to Susan H. McDougal, a onetime Clinton business partner who had been jailed as part of the Whitewater investigation.

May a president issue a general pardon? This is unclear. Usually, pardons are written in a way that specifically describes which crimes or sets of activities they apply to. There is little precedent laying out the degree to which a pardon can be used to instead foreclose criminal liability for anything and everything.

May a president pardon himself? This is unclear. There is no definitive answer because no president has ever tried to pardon himself and then faced prosecution anyway. As a result, there has never been a case which gave the Supreme Court a chance to resolve the question. In the absence of any controlling precedent, legal thinkers are divided about the matter.

Find more answers here.

Mr. Braun then fled to Israel where he took refuge for several months, hoping to avoid being apprehended as he continued to run his drug operation from an encrypted Blackberry phone, the documents say. In the fall of 2009, Mr. Braun returned to the United States, where he was arrested and jailed.

When he was indicted in 2010, he was charged with operating a marijuana ring that was one of the major distributors in New York City, smuggling in and selling $1.72 billion worth from 2007 to 2010.

“It is neither an exaggeration nor hyperbole to state that the defendant and his criminal enterprise generated illegal proceeds exceeding the gross domestic product of a small country,” the Justice Department said in a 2010 filing.

His lawyers sought at that point to convince a judge to release him on bail but prosecutors successfully kept him in jail, laying out how Mr. Braun had told others that he planned to flee the United States if he was released on bail.

“Braun specifically told a cooperating government witness that he would ‘never do time in jail,’” prosecutors said in a court filing. “Braun went on to explain that ‘for 10 grand, I could get a fake passport’ and be ‘on a beach somewhere where there is no extradition,’ still ‘making money.’”

In arguing that Mr. Braun should remain in prison, the prosecutors laid out a gruesome episode in which he beat a younger man working for him who had been given the job of guarding $100,000 worth of marijuana being kept in a house in California.

After Mr. Braun learned that the marijuana had been stolen, he called the man and demanded he give him $100,000. The man refused. Mr. Braun and one of his enforcers booked flights to California, arriving there the next morning. They broke into the house where they found the man in bed.

“Braun then took off his belt and proceeded to viciously whip his worker with the belt,” the court documents say. “At one point, the ‘kid’ tried to get away from Braun, but Braun’s enforcer pushed him back down onto the bed so that Braun could continue the beating. In Braun’s own words, his brutal assault left the ‘kid’s’ entire body ‘black and blue.’”

Mr. Braun pleaded guilty in 2011 to two counts of conspiring to import a controlled substance and money laundering. As part of his plea, prosecutors allowed him to be released on bail and live at home while awaiting sentencing. His sentencing was delayed repeatedly.

Legal experts and defense lawyers say that defendants are typically on their best behavior when they are out on bail and awaiting sentencing. But Mr. Braun continued to flout the law, according to the suits later filed against him by the New York State attorney general and the Federal Trade Commission.

In 2018, Bloomberg News wrote a series of articles about how Mr. Braun had emerged as a leading short-term lender to small businesses. While structured to try to avoid usury laws, the rates Mr. Braun changed were as high as 400 percent a year. The New York attorney general’s office opened an investigation in response to the articles.

The next year, a judge held a sentencing hearing for Mr. Braun on the drug trafficking charges. At the hearing, prosecutors laid out two recent episodes in which Mr. Braun had violently assaulted others. One allegation said that Mr. Braun had thrown someone off a two-story balcony at a Staten Island engagement party in the summer of 2018.

The other allegation related to how Mr. Braun had lent money to the Brooklyn rabbi for the preschool. The rabbi had fallen behind on the payments and Mr. Braun reportedly threatened to beat and humiliate him.

“I am coming to Crown Heights,” Mr. Braun said, according to a lawsuit filed by the synagogue. “I will hang papers all over the lampposts in Crown Heights stating that you are a liar and a thief. I am going to tell people that you are running an illegal operation and a scam.”

Fearing the rabbi would be attacked, the synagogue wired Mr. Braun $1,000 and hired a lawyer. In a subsequent call between Mr. Braun and the lawyer, Mr. Braun called the lawyer a profanity, according to the suit filed by the synagogue.

Shortly after Mr. Braun’s commutation was announced, Mr. Dershowitz said he received a call from Mr. Braun and his father.

“Everybody was very grateful. There were a lot of tears going around,” Mr. Dershowitz said, explaining that the father called again on Friday before the Jewish Sabbath. “And he said he is going to continue to call me every Shabbos, so I should expect a call.”

Kenneth P. Vogel and Ben Protess contributed reporting. Susan C. Beachy and Kitty Bennett contributed research.

    Multiple Service Listing for Business Owners | Tools to Grow Your Local Business

www.MultipleServiceListing.com 

from Multiple Service Listing https://ift.tt/3o9gNQl

[kanlara]

Reform pt 2

It’s been awhile since I posted the first part so please read that first if you haven’t.

It had been a few months since the former hero unofficially moved into my apartment and spring was starting to show its first signs. After the first night Liam, formally the Azure Torch, tried to leave without more than a quick thank-you note on my counter. I’d woken to the sound of my front door rattling. Thinking I had an intruder I trapped him with my powers before I realized what was happening.  After a very awkward conversation about secret locks, power misuse, and apologizing Liam agreed to spend the winter in my spare room rather than returning to his homeless lifestyle. We had settled into a routine of sorts that largely revolved around getting to know each other and learning to live with another person. My cats had indeed adjusted to Liam’s presence; well mostly, some had taken to him better than others. 

I’d given Liam a set of keys and spending money so that he could leave the apartment to make purchases that he needed fairly early into our current arrangement. He’d bought a set of okayish cloths and started looking for a job the first chance he got. Without references he had some problems, but eventually a small convenience store around the corner hired him. I wasn’t sure if it was out of desperation on their part or the desire to have him stop applying that got him the job, but he made the most of it. As soon as he received his first check he paid me back the money I’d left for clothing despite my protests. Rather than saving anything Liam had taken to buying groceries for the both of us. 

PIcking up my favorite take out I let my mind wander for the rest of the walk home. Now that spring was around the corner there was an uneasy feeling in the apartment. It was almost as if we were still locked in battle behind our masks. In a way we were, they were just a different kind of mask while the battle was more abstract and complicated. Some days I felt that I would end up going home to an apartment only filled with cats; And the worst part was that I didn’t know how to feel about it. Fate had played an odd joke on me when I tripped over Liam.

Opening the door I was greeted by my cats and Liam. The Latter of the bunch smiled sheepishly at me wearing only a towel and a small black cat on his head, “I thought I’d have a few more minutes before you got home. I was trying to get Soot off of me. He ambushed me in the shower again.”

I shooed the rest of the cats into the apartment before closing the door and placing the take out bags on the table. I glared at the tiny cat for a moment before moving to detangle him from Liams black curls, “Honestly I think he likes the water because he just climbs under the curtain rather than up it when I’m in there. The vantage point from the top of your head seems to be a bonus he’s growing fond of.” Stepping back holding the dripping cat I pointedly kept my eyes on Liam’s, “You could always just shut the door to the bathroom.”

Liam quickly retreated back to his room; when had I stopped thinking of it as my spare room? His rumbling baritone floated down the hall, “It seems wrong to stop them from using the space for that long.”

I nodded to myself silently as I took out plates and silverware. Briefly considering the plates in my hands I put them back, doing extra dishes seemed absurd. Liam took only a moment to throw on worn but clean clothing before joining me at the dining table. Taking his container he didn’t mention the lack of plates. I’d miss this kind of thing when he inevitably left.

We ate in silence, it was an odd mix of newfound comfort and unspoken thoughts. It was one word short of awkward. Thankfully neither of us chose to say anything. After we cleaned up the trash and silverware Liam pulled out bowls and spoons along with my favorite ice cream. He placed it all on the table and gestured for me to sit. Oddly he waited for me to sit before he sat himself. My flight reflex was starting to itch as I tried to wait calmly while he figured out what he wanted to say. 

Sliding a bowl of ice cream across the table towards me Liam’s blue eyes watched me carefully. I thought back to several months ago when those same eyes watched me with distrust. Now I couldn’t quite place what I saw there; worry or hope or fear, something I wasn’t used to, something I wasn't sure I wanted to see.  Rather than focus on it I started to eat my ice cream. When I was about half way through he slid an envelope across the table.

I carefully set down my spoon and took the envelope. Looking at him quickly his face gave away nothing as I opened it. Inside were crisp bills, obviously from his paychecks. Dropping the envelope I shook my head, “I can’t take this. You need the money more than I do. Besides that you don’t owe me anything, the life I have is thanks to you...”

He cut me off with a wave of his hand, “You provided me with the same chance. Admittedly I skipped the masked villian reform treatment… but the point stands. Giving me a chance to get back on my feet was payment enough. The least I can do now is pay you rent in thanks for the room while I needed it.”

“While you needed it? Are you leaving?” This is not what I had expected tonight. He was going to leave now that I’d gotten used to him being here. My thoughts raced uncontrollably, unexpected panic rose. Taking deep breaths I stood too quickly. Going to the sink I sought to mask my reaction. It wasn’t as if I didn’t know this day would come. As I tried to calm my breathing I filled a glass of water.

Liam seemed hesitant to speak, as though he knew he had no good answer to the question. I could hear his spoon in his bowl as he ate behind me. A small head butted my ankle and I looked down. One of my cats looked up and meowed loudly before stalking off to the food area tail high. I glanced at the bowls, empty of course and moved into auto-pilot as I fed the waiting cats. The familiar tasked calmed me and I sat again to finish my ice cream. It remained unmelted.

I looked up to see Liam’s smirk, “What like you really wanted perfectly good ice cream go to waste.”

I laughed, I couldn’t help it, “No, that would be a tragedy.” looking down my voice dropped to a whisper, "as it would be if you left."

There was no response for several minutes and I refused to look up at him. Finally he sighed, “I will never thank you enough for giving me a place to stay for the winter. But I can’t imagine having a washed up bum hanging around is a lot of fun. Eventually one of the masks that checks on you will figure out who I was, that will draw more attention.” He paused, “I’m not worth the trouble Ryn.”

"That's not true," I forced myself to look up, "you out of all the masks…"

The look in his eyes told me that was the wrong thing to say but the words had been said. There was no going back from this. He stood and left me sitting there with my regret. 

Liam moved out the next day.

[baby-onthe-brain]

Affording Baby

Originally Posted 12 March 2018

I’m not going to lie… This is the part that scares me the most. I’ve never been affluent, and there’s only one period in my life where I’ve been well off — a three-year stretch when I was a child myself. The topic of finances isn’t a comfortable one for me, and I’m routinely embittered about all the folks who seemingly have more than I do. 

Not necessarily material things, but also the experiences that financial freedom often grants. Things like routine travel expeditions, or not having to worry about going over your grocery budget and the successive awkwardness of having to ask the cashier to take some items off the bill. I’m trying to get better about it, especially since Rhys brought up a little while ago just how often I voice my opinions on it, but it’s still there in the back of my mind. I’m working on it.

I will not the first (nor will I be the last) to say that having kids is expensive. Really, really expensive. Children are a 20-year investment or longer, and you’d best be ready for the long haul (especially if the economy keeps going the way it is). Which is why when you’re actually planning for a baby, it’s a good idea to make sure you can actually afford one. Or two.

Or three. You know how it goes.

Now, I’m sure that you’re aware of the procession of mommy blogs out there that tell you “how to financially plan for a baby in 5 easy steps.” While these blogs are often repetitive and from an upper-middle-class perspective, they do have some useful advice. Some of the stuff I have to laugh at, like cutting down on routine unnecessary purchases (like mall trips or lattes) and setting that aside into a baby fund instead. Other stuff, though… That stuff is good.

One of the things that I’ve really taken to heart from my research is to accumulate essential baby things slowly over an extended amount of time. It would scar up anybody’s finances if you suddenly had to jam outfitting an entire nursery plus stock up food, and clothing, and diapers, and every other necessity under the sun into less than a year’s worth of paycheques. Getting the job done slowly ensures that you can do a little at a time, without the side effect of wincing whenever you see your bank statement. Well… As much, anyway.

I’ve been accumulating in earnest for a while now, and have been happy to discover that most of it can be gotten second-hand. This cuts down on costs incredibly, and I can help to reuse items that still have a good lifespan to them. Most of these financially-savvy mamas also recommend asking your friends and family for hand-me-downs, which I fully intend to do once I actually have a due date. Keep in mind that a baby shower, if you’re going to have one, will also help you accumulate smaller stuff. A friend of mine said that she didn’t have to worry about getting baby clothes because she’d gotten a whole stock of them as gifts. Score!

There is, of course, the necessity of actually looking at your finances. As I mentioned earlier, this is one of the scary parts for me. Rhys and I don’t exactly live in the lap of luxury; while we are comfortable, it’s an uneasy comfort that comes from a lot of organisation and budgeting. This is something we’ve earnestly taken to in recent months, revising our budget and figuring out down to the (useless) penny where our money is going and when. This new budget is still in its early stages, but it’s so far been helping immensely in making sure we can stay afloat and still get where we need to go.

One of the things that baby prep resources across the board (mommy blogs, books, web-based resources, etc.) have asserted is that you must reduce debt as much as possible. This to me is a no-brainer, but one that becomes rather difficult when you’re saddled with student loans you can’t pay out. My advice is to pay the smallest debt off first and work your way up. If you have a credit card, or somebody loaned you money, get those paid off first. Then, when you’ve gotten them out of the way, move the money you’ve been using to pay those off to the next smallest payment.

Of course, this entirely depends on how much you make, how much debt you have, and a whole slew of other things. I’m not a financial advisor by any means, so if you’re really in trouble financially, seek out help! There are hundreds of debt consolidation and consultation businesses available to you. For example, both Rhys and I are in the process of repayment assistance for our student loans, which means we don’t have to think about them right now. We wouldn’t be able to do anything about it anyway, but it’s nice to know that we’re not being thrown under the bus because we couldn't pay for our educations out of pocket.

One of the things that the baby prep book I’m reading (Rachel Pepper’s Ultimate Guide to Pregnancy for Lesbians) brought up is all the legal stuff you don’t really think about. Admittedly, I completely forgot to factor in stuff like wills, life insurance, and RESPs. Well… No, okay that’s a lie. I’ve had it in my head for years that the moment I conceive, I am going to open an RESP account for my baby. I don’t want them to have to suffer through student loans if I can help it. But, in the grand scheme of things when you’re already worrying about the money you’ll be spending on your little one in the coming months… Well. It’s a kick in the butt.

Thinking about things like your baby’s education when they’re not even born yet, or whether they’ll be able to get by if anything ever happens to you unexpectedly can be a bit of a stretch… But a necessary one. The book I mentioned before stresses how wills especially are important for LGBTQA+ couples, or other couples who underwent ART. The will is a legally binding document that makes your wishes known, and will hold up better in court, should the need arise, than a co-parenting agreement or a known-donor agreement. This is fundamental if you want your partner to have custody of your little one in the event of your passing, especially if they’re not on the birth certificate. Rhys and I have thought about what would happen, should our little one be left stranded without both of us. Not concretely, mind you, but we’ve at least broached the subject.

Wow, this post has turned way more into one of those mommy blog posts than I was expecting it to. Apologies, if that’s not what you were looking for!

Back to the topic, in general, though… I’m not going to say that if you follow the steps I listed above, or any steps found online or in books, that you’ll be completely financially prepared. If there’s anything working in childcare has taught me, it’s that kids throw curveballs just by existing. There will be moments where you’re wholly unprepared for a situation, and just need to roll with it. Doing what you can now will help take the strain off for sure, but don’t freak out if you haven’t paid off all your debt, or if you haven’t saved as much as you wanted. Life happens. Shit happens. It’ll be okay. Do what you can.

I think that one of the reasons why I even started writing this blog post, is because I’ve been coming up against a lot of doubt from myself and others recently. Working out the budget I mentioned earlier scared me shitless about how we were supposed to afford a baby with all the other stuff on top of it. In addition to that, when I asked a “friend” whether I should set up a crowdfunding button to go on this blog to help with the added cost of ART, she came back with a rather judgemental: “If you can’t come up with an extra $2000 for that,” (HA! If only it cost just $2000….) “then should you really be having kids?”

Ouch. Right to the heart of my anxieties. Thanks, I needed that. Please take your entitled, unknowledgeable ass right out of my house. Don’t let the door hit you on your way out. It’s not like I haven’t thought about this for DAYS on end and stretched and thought and researched…. No, I’m not like that at all.

I should have known better, to be honest.  This particular “friend” has no interest in having children herself or being around them for extended periods of time. She has frequently been seen rolling her eyes at all my preparatory excitement, and giving me long looks that essentially said: “oh my god this again?” Her comment really tore into me, though, like a good cat-scratch, and I find myself still thinking about it. I know exactly where I stand socioeconomically, and I know at least generally how difficult it’s going to be, raising a child. There are tons of considerations I’ve already discovered, and tons more that I haven’t even thought of. But if I’m going to let my financial situation forestall my desire to be a mother, do I really deserve to be one? Situations can change.

One of my favourite romance movies of all time, P.S. I Love You has this really exceptional scene in it that I’ve kept with me since seeing it the first time. Granted, the whole movie is about losing a loved one (spoilers?), but it doesn’t start like that. I’ve been thinking about it more and more, and it’s acted like a sort of balm against some of the bile coming from doubters, including my own anxiety.

It’s the opening scene, and Holly (Hilary Swank) is mad at her husband Gerry (Gerard Butler) because of something he’d said during dinner with Holly’s mother (Kathy Bates). Finally, it comes out that Holly is mad at Gerry because he said she didn’t want children right then (along with a slew of other semi-related issues). The scene shows that Holly is a planner, and a worrier, and frequently gets inside her own head and lets her anxieties get the better of her, and I feel that, girl. The whole opening scene is so relatable and almost perfectly voices my anxieties about preparing for a baby. What sticks with me most is what Gerry says though:

“People have babies with no money all the time…. We’re not a mistake just because we don’t have any money.”

You’ve just got to work through it. You’ve got to rely upon one another and support one another, and do what you can. Things will turn out one way or the other (even if you’re not a cute, carefree Irish guy). It may take longer than you want it to, like it will with us, but… You’ll get there. We will too.

Do you have any hacks or saving tips? Have you had similarly unsupportive friends? Let me know in the comments! I’d love to hear from you.

[racingtoaredlight]

Opening Bell: March 1, 2019

In the weeks leading up to a second summit between President Donald Trump and North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un, there were murmurs that Trump, who has been strikingly—notoriously even—laudatory of Kim, and been complimentary of his regime, would seek a further agreement with Kim over nuclear testing and that such a deal would not require North Korea to completely renounce its nuclear program. The highlight of the summit in Hanoi, the capital of Vietnam, was to be a joint lunch between Kim and Trump, joined by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and acting White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney. Then suddenly in the middle of the night—Hanoi is 12 hours ahead of the U.S. Eastern Time Zone—White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders announced that Trump and Kim would not be meeting for lunch and that the subsequent signing ceremony had been cancelled. No reason was given, but it appeared that negotiations had abruptly and irreparably broken down between the two sides. Within hours, the American delegation led by Trump departed from the hotel in downtown Hanoi where negotiations were taking place, and headed to Air Force One at Hanoi’s airport. As the sun advanced across the globe and fell upon the United States, starting a new day, the two sides began to characterize what had occurred. Apparently the sticking point in the negotiations was a request for a lifting of all economic sanctions in exchange for the closure of a single nuclear weapons facility, Yongbyon in the mountainous northeast of North Korea. For a president who swept into office on the reputation as a savvy negotiator, he has repeatedly failed to exhibit such acumen while in the Oval Office. In Hanoi, however, Trump recognized a bad deal when he saw it, and apparently refused to negotiate any further. While the danger of a nuclear-armed North Korea continues to loom, it is important that Trump finally drew a line in the sand and refused to entertain his vanity by entering into a flashy agreement that would actually accomplish very little.

 Back in Washington, President Trump has larger, more complicated issues. On the heels of the significant and damning allegations made by Trump’s former personal attorney Michael Cohen to the House Oversight Committee, reports emerged by the president’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, a key advisor in the administration, had been given a security clearance in 2018 on the order of Donald Trump and against the advice of then-White House Chief of Staff John Kelly and multiple intelligence officials. The charge here cannot be overstated: the regular process by which a member of the executive branch is examined for a top-secret security clearance, a process which due to numerous paperwork mistakes by Kushner and multiple disclosure failures, indicated that Kushner could not be trusted with top secret information, but this determination was surmounted by the raw executive authority of the president, who happens to be Kushner’s father-in-law. While previous administrations have brought in family members—Bill Clinton famously gave First Lady Hillary Clinton more authority over policy than any previous First Lady had officially received—there are few examples in American political history of a president putting more members of his family in positions of authority in the White House, insisting upon it even, than  Donald Trump. And it follows that no president has ever exerted more pressure in order to get the necessary clearances for those family members than Trump. Prior to his time in the White House, this president was a man who was used to getting his way in almost any situation. While this may work in the business world, there are serious consequences—or at least there are supposed to be—for flouting bureaucratic rules and procedures in the political world. At the bare minimum, this casts doubt on Trump’s judgment and intentions behind his actions.

Sometimes news breaks not just in this country, but around the world in quick succession. History records those events and their importance, but usually in isolation to one another; though the major events of Watergate and U.S. support for Israel during the Yom Kippur War of October 1973 took place simultaneously, they are rarely examined in association with one another. Another example of this historical phenomena occurred this week when, shortly after the testimony of Michael Cohen on Capitol Hill in Washington, it was announced in Jerusalem that there was sufficient evidence for an indictment of Israeli Prime Minster Benjamin Netanyahu; an increasingly controversial figure both in the U.S. and in the Middle East. The announcement by Israel’s attorney general that he would indict Netanyahu for corruption takes places only 40 days before Israel’s next general election. Netanyahu, a conservative, has maintained a slim paper thin margin in Israel’s parliament, the Knesset. To counter this, Netanyahu has doubled down and built an electoral coalition with far right elements of Israel politics and sought to appeal to the nationalism of Israel’s Jewish citizens. A victory for Netanyahu and his coalition, it is feared, will force Israel in a nationalist direction that will push it farther away from the peace process that seemed so close to success under Yitzhak Rabin in the early 1990s. These indictments—Netanyahu’s wife Sarah is also subject to indictment—throw a wrench into the election season, though it remains an open question of whether it will be enough to deprive Netanyahu of another term as Prime Minister.

On December 21, 1989, Pan Am Flight 103, operated by a Boeing 747-200 aircraft with 270 souls on board, took off from London’s Heathrow Airport bound for JFK International Airport in New York City. As the huge passenger airliner—the Airbus A380 was still nearly two decades away—settled into its cruising altitude to cross the frigid Atlantic on an inky black night, an enormous explosion erupted from the belly of the aircraft causing it to disintegrate in three seconds. It took upwards of three minutes for pieces of the 747 to fall from the sky onto the Scottish village of Lockerbie; falling debris killed 11 residents of the village. Though Lockerbie was the locus of the investigation, an aircraft the size of a 747 moving at 500 knots suddenly exploding, will fling its constituent parts over hundreds of square miles. The investigation into the Lockerbie bombing remains the largest criminal investigation by geographic size in human history. At the time of the demise of Pan Am Flight 103, the cause was unknown, and a joint American-Scottish investigation was launched. The American part of the investigation was conducted by the FBI operating out of the U.S. Embassy in London. The FBI is the investigative arm of the Justice Department which, in 1989-90, was led by an Attorney General advised by a Vietnam veteran and former federal prosecutor in San Francisco; Robert Mueller III. Mueller took an immediate interest in the Pan Am 103 investigation—labeled ‘Scotbomb’ by the FBI—and visited both Lockerbie and the headquarters of the FBI investigation frequently. In 1990, Mueller was appointed by President George H.W. Bush to head the Justice Department’s criminal division, but the experience of Lockerbie, of the importance of working closely with foreign partners in multi-national investigations, and of reaching out and connecting to victims’ families, stayed with Mueller and has informed his approach to justice ever since.

From the 1960s through the early 2000s, Paramount was one of the preeminent legacy studios of Hollywood. During this time, the studio produced and distributed some of the most iconic films as well as several blockbusters that brought billions in profits. This success lead to Paramount becoming known in the industry as simply the ‘Mountain,’ a reference to its logo. But in the early 1990s, the seeds of discord were planted when Paramount was sold to Sumner Redstone, founder and chairman of cable television giant Viacom. Over the next two decades, a series of poor business decisions led to Paramount falling behind its fellow legacy studios in terms of output and completely outmaneuvered by the burgeoning streaming video market. Now Paramount finds itself not quite on life-support, but in need of a major comeback. For anyone interested in the business of the movie industry, this is an interesting examination.

It is a common criticism of American society that those of us privileged to grow up in the middle, upper middle, or upper classes, too frequently fall into a familiar pattern: graduate high school, attend college, find a spouse—preferably simultaneous to one of the two previous events—marry in a ceremony that follows various religious, social, and familial customs, and then settle down to have 2.3 children. Once these achievements occur, the rungs up the ladder becomes less distinct. After years of great movement, and growth, and change, and adaption, and maturity, there seems to be a general expectation that the family, once properly birthed, will fall into a stasis; a routine in which one or both parents work, they return home to their residence in neighborhoods proper and correct for their income and station in society, they make dinner, they wash the dishes, and then they watch television. Friday nights are for visits to the local supermarket to replenish the pantry and freezer for the week, to make sure there is sufficient lunchmeat and bread and apple slices to feed the children at school during the upcoming week. Saturdays are for soccer matches, baseball games, and basketball tournaments. Sundays are for yardwork or, in the climates which experience more severe winters, working in the garage. The mortgage is paid and utilities are kept running. This stasis is regarded as a warm familiarity or, itself, the achievement of a higher status; college-aged children have successfully reached an orbit similar to that of their own parents a generation before, the two slowly passing each other as the parents inevitably descend towards their own mortal disintegration, which will involve the shedding of belongings, of property, of friends, of spouses, until only one parent is left, cared for by children who temporarily revive them into the higher orbit they themselves have attained. Writer Laura Smith argues that this is not living life in good faith, rather it is an active use of self-deception, of living in bad faith. The Existential writer Sartre regarded such self-deception as dangerous and worthy of scorn in Being and Nothingness. The way to prevent, or break away from this self-deception, is to disappear from your own life, to vanish in a meaningful way, Smith argues. Predictability and comfort are not necessarily worthy partners.

Like it or not, we are officially in the 2020 presidential election cycle. Some would argue, mostly in jest, that the cycle actually began the day after the 2018 midterm elections. Others have argued, fairly persuasively, that this cycle is instead a continuation of the 2016 election cycle, much in the same way that historians considered the Second World War a continuation of the First. With this in mind, the Center for Politics has released its first look at the 2020 Electoral College. Not surprisingly, Manager Editor Kyle Kondik starts out the 2020 election as a toss-up, with several Midwestern states as the pivot points of victory for both parties. Strap in folks, the next eighteen months are going to be a bumpy ride.

  Welcome to the weekend.

[kansascityhappenings]

She used to scrub toilets for $9 an hour. Now her book about it is a best-seller

https://embed-prod.vemba.io/vemba-embed.js

MISSOULA, Mont. — Five years ago, Stephanie Land was slumped over on her hands and knees scrubbing a bathtub. The single mom was a semester away from graduating college and pregnant with a second child.

She was broke. People cautioned her against it. But she decided to quit her job as a house cleaner and go all in on her studies with the hope of becoming a freelance writer after graduation.

“It was incredibly difficult to turn my back on paid work and have faith that my dream would pay off,” she said.

It did. The former cleaning woman has written a rags-to-riches story that’s long on rags before finally offering a hint of riches.

Her memoir about her years cleaning houses, “Maid: Hard Work, Low Pay and a Mother’s Will to Survive,” debuted two weeks ago at #3 on The New York Times nonfiction best-seller list.

The book is an illuminating window into the mundane, low-paid service work that much of America never notices or chooses to ignore.

And now, after years of grueling poverty, its sudden success is changing Land’s life.

She was on a plane last month when her book made The New York Times’ list.

“As soon as I landed, I got a huge amount of texts,” she told CNN. As the plane was taxiing to the gate, she broke down crying.

She put herself through college by cleaning houses

“Maid” begins in Land’s late twenties, when she was living in a homeless shelter with her infant daughter. One excruciating early scene describes Land’s mother flying in from Europe with her husband to help her daughter move from the shelter into a transitional apartment. Land wrote that her mother refused to even buy her lunch, forcing her to pay $10.59 for a burger — “twenty-eight cents less than what I had in my bank account.”

A later scene shows Land having a falling out with her father, with whom she and Mia were staying.

For more than a decade, she’d nursed a dream of becoming a real writer, quietly scribbling away with reddened eyes and a cup of coffee late at night after her daughter Mia had drifted off. She’d become a mother at 28, but lost the support of her family. Cleaning became about the only job she could find without a college degree in the small town where she lived near Seattle.

On her own, without financial support, Land often relied on government assistance programs. In addition to the indignity of being poor, she said even providing the documentation to prove she actually was poor became exhausting in itself.

“You’re having to prove again and again that you’re doing what you say you’re doing,” she said.

Land enrolled in the University of Montana’s creative writing program because of the school’s reputation for launching authors’ careers.

But between cleaning houses and caring for her daughter, Land was a thirtysomething student who didn’t get invited to many parties with her fellow English majors.

“They were all writing about their year abroad and I was writing about cleaning toilets,” she said.

After earning her English degree in 2014, Land finally began to put food on the table with her pen instead of a mop. She became a writing fellow with the Washington, DC-based Center for Community Change. An essay in Vox, in which she dished on all the prescription painkillers she found in the mansions she cleaned, went viral and led to bylines in the New York Times, Washington Post, and other news outlets.

But clicks on her articles didn’t always mean dollars in her bank account.

Land was still struggling when she landed a publishing contract and received her book advance in late 2016. She still had $50,000 in student loan debt and $20,000 in maxed-out credit cards, but she finally gained some breathing room to focus on expenses beyond just basic necessities for herself and her two girls — such as seeing a chiropractor for a case of scoliosis that had worsened through years of scrubbing stains out of carpets.

And she bought the nicest car she’d owned in years: a 2006 Subaru. Even now, though, she said, “I haven’t been to the dentist in years.”

Now her fans include author Neil Gaiman

“Maid” landed high on the Times’ best-seller list, between memoirs by former first lady Michelle Obama and Senator Kamala Harris, who is running for president. Her publisher’s office “was jumping up and partying and hugging” when they got the news, Land said.

Amazon named “Maid” one of its best books for January. Barnes and Noble has the book on its recommended list for February. And author Neil Gaiman has praised her book on Twitter. Land named her younger daughter Coraline after Gaiman’s book of the same name.

Land’s book comes as director Alfonso Cuaron’s “Roma,” a film told from the point of view of a young Mexican housekeeper, is up for 10 Academy Awards, including best picture. Both take a working-class character who’s often on the margins of society and give her a leading role.

Land has been traveling around the US the past couple weeks speaking about her story. She reads sections of her book describing how her exhaustion as a mother, a maid, and a student defy the misconception some have that welfare recipients are lazy.

One fan, who lives the same meager existence Land knew for so long, splurged for an $18 train ticket to see the woman who had written herself out of poverty.

“I just took a train for two hours to see you. I blew my budget for the day,” the woman wrote in a handwritten note she gave to Land. “And from what I read, I know you understand what it’s like to have a daily budget.”

Land has been writing for broad audiences for the last few years, and her hard lessons about poverty didn’t always land softly.

“Most of the responses have been from white men trolling me on the internet,” she said.

But things feel different this time.

“I’m surprised that people really are seeing how hard it is to get on public assistance and to get off of it,” she said. She is mindful of how hard it can be to earn a living, citing the federal employees working paycheck to paycheck who lined up at food banks during the government shutdown.

“I think (the book) tells the stories of our times.”

And Land is speaking out about poverty

Land says a long list of grants, loans, and assistance programs helped her and her family eventually climb out of poverty. But she found these programs could constrain recipients as much as empower them.

Her book describes how meeting government assistance programs’ work requirements while taking college classes and raising her daughter was a constant, near-impossible balancing act. If the government is going to ask for work requirements, they should let college credit hours count for that, she says now.

“My job offered no sick pay, no vacation days, no foreseeable increase in wage, yet through it all, still I begged to work more,” Land wrote in the book. “Wages lost from missed work hours could rarely be made up, and if I missed too many I risked being fired. My car’s reliability was vital, since a broken hose, a faulty thermostat, or even a flat tire could throw us off, knock us backward, send us teetering, falling back, toward homelessness.

Some leaders are pushing to alleviate the hardships “Maid” portrays.

Sen. Kamala Harris is pushing a Domestic Workers Bill of Rights that would support those who work as nannies, house cleaners, home health nurses and similar jobs.

The proposed legislation would introduce federal requirements for domestic workers to receive many of the same benefits routinely expected in other professions, including paid sick days, affordable health care and retirement savings, rest breaks, and fair scheduling practices.

And next month Land is slated to speak on a panel about poverty alongside major progressive public policy figures in Washington as part of an event organized by the Center for Community Change, the same group that first offered her a writing fellowship.

She did it all without a man

Today Land, 40, lives in Missoula, Montana, with her two daughters: Mia, 11, and Coraline, 4.

The girls’ fathers aren’t much involved in their daughters’ lives. Land married another man in 2017, but she said her husband was abusive, and their partnership was brief.

Now she is adjusting to the life of a literary star, even if she doesn’t feel like one.

“I’m not a literary writer. I tell it very plainly, like it is,” Land said. She admires the sparse, meaning-laden sentences of Ernest Hemingway, who advised, “Write hard and clear about what hurts.”

She followed that admonition in Maid’s first line: “My daughter learned to walk in a homeless shelter.”

As she mapped out her memoir, she turned to heroes like John Steinbeck and Kurt Vonnegut and scoured breakout memoirs from contemporary female writers like Cheryl Strayed, author of “Wild.”

In the months to come Land plans to work as a public speaker and mentor low-income writers. Once she catches her breath, she’ll start thinking about another book.

Land says she chose a “hero’s journey” structure for “Maid’s” narrative, believing that memoirists should “show growth and that you’ve learned something about yourself.”

But the single mom also introduced her own modern twist: “I wanted to do it without a man at the end.”

from FOX 4 Kansas City WDAF-TV | News, Weather, Sports https://fox4kc.com/2019/02/18/she-used-to-scrub-toilets-for-9-an-hour-now-her-book-about-it-is-a-best-seller/

from Kansas City Happenings https://kansascityhappenings.wordpress.com/2019/02/18/she-used-to-scrub-toilets-for-9-an-hour-now-her-book-about-it-is-a-best-seller/

[junker-town]

How the Eagles solved their quarterback quandary

The Eagles owner recounts the process for how the team decided Carson Wentz could be the face of their franchise.

After the 2015 season, the Eagles realized that Dallas was still banking on veteran quarterback Tony Romo, the Giants still enjoyed the mature hand of Eli Manning and Washington was enjoying the emergence of Kirk Cousins.

The Eagles' owner, Jeffrey Lurie, was not happy with his quarterback quandary.

Lurie bought the Eagles in 1994. He paid $185 million for them to then-owner Norman Braman, who had lost his zest for ownership, unhappy with free agency and soaring player salaries and unmoved in his belief that the rocketing cost of franchise quarterbacks helped split a division among most locker rooms that was unmanageable.

It took Lurie five years to find a franchise quarterback when Donovan McNabb was nabbed with the No. 2 overall pick in the 1999 draft. It took six years after that for the Eagles to reach Super Bowl XXXIX, a 24-21 loss to the New England Patriots.

Lurie has not had a whiff of the Super Bowl since that game in 2005.

Nor a franchise quarterback.

We looked at the crop of future 2017 quarterbacks and we thought the 2016 group showed us we'd better act now.

He fired head coach Andy Reid after the 2012 season, courted college coaching whiz Chip Kelly from Oregon, and fetched vet- eran quarterback (and former No. 1 draft pick) Sam Bradford among a series of futile moves in recent years. In November 2015, he began hearing whispers about this wunderkind quarterback from tiny North Dakota State. Lurie heard chatter about the 2016 draft presenting two highly projected franchise quarterbacks.

So, in December 2015, Lurie set out on an old mission in a new way.

"I define a franchise quarterback as someone who has the physical talent, the mental leadership qualities, and mental toughness to be a consistently winning quarterback that puts you in contention to win a championship," Lurie said. "He has to have that ‘it' factor. The single most important trait is the mental fortitude to handle the challenges that face a young quarterback. He has to be a smart quarterback — in today's NFL, quarterbacks have to routinely make intricate decisions in 2.5 seconds or less.

"We looked at the crop of future 2017 quarterbacks and we thought the 2016 group showed us we'd better act now. Was there a franchise quarterback we could move up in the draft to get? Was this the year to get what we have been looking for, searching for such a long, long time?"

Those early whispers from November 2015 came from Eagles personnel executive Tom Donahue. He told Lurie there was this small conference quarterback from North Dakota State who looked bright and talented. Who looked interesting. His name was Carson Wentz. Cal quarterback Jared Goff was also beginning to create buzz. Lurie listened. Lurie was intrigued.

A month later, Lurie fired Kelly as his head coach. In January 2016, he replaced him with Doug Pederson, in part because of Pederson's offensive, quarterbacking acumen. And Lurie made sure that Pederson had other equipped offensive-minded coaches around him, including offensive coordinator Frank Reich and quarterback coach John DeFilippo.

Then Lurie hit the road with his new head coach, general manager Howie Roseman, and a contingent of Eagles coaches and staff, all on a franchise quarterback expedition. "I first saw Carson at the Senior Bowl in 2016," Lurie said.

"Our scouts were there. Then we all went on this quarterbacking tour in late March where we met the quarterbacks in their environments. We visited Carson in North Dakota. We visited Goff at Cal. We went to Paxton Lynch at Memphis and to Kevin Hogan at Stanford. We saw some others. It wasn't just to say hello. I wanted to spend time with them. We had a strategy in place."

It was find the right guy.

The right rookie quarterback.

A franchise quarterback.

Then to move up to the top of the draft from their No. 13 spot in the first round and swipe him.

Decidedly, mercilessly, take a bolder shot at solving their lingering franchise quarterback enigma.

Glenn Andrews-USA TODAY Sports

Wentz wowed the Eagles at the Senior Bowl. He wowed them on their tour visit. He wowed them at the combine. He continued to wow them when he visited Philadelphia afterward.

It was his size. His arm. His intelligence. His command. His personality. His skill.

Wentz thinks he understands the connection, now saying about his new town, his new team, his new home: "They love hard work and they love winning. That's the biggest thing, and I'm the same way. I hate to lose. If you're not working hard, I don't really tolerate it either. So, I think it's a great fit for me."

Wentz sure looked like the missing puzzle piece.

We were quite focused on Carson and we decided we wanted the No. 1 pick for the 2016 draft.

Lurie said his pre-draft work showed him that Wentz was remarkable in his poise, confidence, and humility. He considered Wentz a quick thinker. Lurie describes Wentz's confidence as strong but not arrogant, "an impressive air for what he was then, a twenty-three-year-old." He said Wentz was "hungry" and that the quarterback's pre-draft trip to Philadelphia was a reconfirmation of the Eagles' earlier assessments.

"We were quite focused on Carson and we decided we wanted the No. 1 pick for the 2016 draft," Lurie said. "But we were at No. 13. How would we get there? The first move was getting from 13 to No. 8, and I give Howie credit for creating a deal with the Miami Dolphins to achieve that. We learned the St. Louis Rams were very aggressive in getting to No. 1, and our intel said they wanted Goff. We got to No. 2 and took our chances that the Rams were not bluffing."

The Eagles traded three top 100 picks in the 2016 draft: their first-round pick in 2017 and a second-round pick in 2018 to the Cleveland Browns for the No. 2 draft slot. A lofty price they appreciated when the Rams, indeed, selected Goff at No. 1 and Wentz fell to them at No. 2.

"It was a relief," Lurie said. "Our plan came to fruition. I was just very excited for us. It was a ton of research. A study of quarterbacks. We believe we found a young man who has all the ingredients of a franchise quarterback — and, yet, we still don't know. I've been at this long enough to know it really takes a few years to know. It takes every ingredient possible, particularly staying healthy and improving. Surviving the mental part of that first year is the hardest and most valuable."

The Eagles faced that itchy riddle . . .

Start him?

Or sit him?

The plan was for Wentz to sit and learn behind Sam Bradford. McNabb had done that as a rookie behind Doug Pederson, thus further defining Pederson's Philadelphia connection. Lurie and Pederson agreed that Wentz would be best served to watch, wait, and be groomed behind Bradford.

But that began to steadily and then quickly change.

From the earliest camp workouts, Wentz rapidly ascended. Reich, in an early June camp interview, raved about how Wentz's "aptitude was off the charts."

Lurie expounded: "Both Frank [Reich] and John [DeFilippo] began telling me very early in the process that this guy is ready if we need him, that if he had to play he could play. They described it as almost ‘unprecedented.'"

Bill Streicher-USA TODAY Sports

That readiness factor was cemented by this one: the Minnesota Vikings had lost starting quarterback Teddy Bridgewater to injury and called the Eagles in early September requesting a trade for Bradford.

"We were going to play Sam, we had signed him to a two-year contract before the season, but we also knew he was a tradeable asset. And this was a way to get our assets back from the trade to move to No. 2. We determined it was the best of both worlds— not in the short term, but the long term. Carson gets to play right now. We get draft picks back.

"Do you play your rookie franchise quarterback right away, or do you sit him? There is no perfect way. It is a matter of your strategy in how you develop quarterbacks. What are his strengths and weaknesses? Where does he come from and from what system? Peyton Manning and Troy Aikman started as rookies and took their lumps; they had the mental toughness to not only survive it but grow from it. We felt the same way about Carson."

We determined it was the best of both worlds ... Carson gets to play right now. We get draft picks back.

Wentz had orchestrated a pro-style offense at North Dakota State and was granted tremendous liberty in audibles and in his decision-making based on his progressions and analysis of defensive tactics.

The Eagles were aligning Wentz with other rookie quarter- backs in NFL history who were resilient and surprisingly effective as rookie starters.

Among the most recent were Jameis Winston with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in 2015, who threw 22 touchdown passes as a rookie. Andrew Luck in 2012 with the Indianapolis Colts helped push his team into the playoffs as a rookie, throwing for 4,374 yards. Russell Wilson in 2012 (26 touchdown passes, 10 interceptions) led the Seattle Seahawks into the playoffs. Matt Ryan in 2008 produced a rookie season that included his first NFL pass — 62 yards for a touchdown — one of 15 more touchdown passes that season and nearly 3,500 passing yards. Ben Roethlisberger in 2004 won 13 straight games as a rookie with the Pittsburgh Steelers and helped ignite his team into the AFC Championship game.

For most rookie quarterbacks — even potential franchise quarterbacks — starting an entire season can be a pit worth avoiding; especially if a proven, valuable veteran can lead.

Pederson countered, as Wentz took the starting role: "Everyone feels like this kid is ready to go and we drafted him to take on the reigns—it's something we're prepared to do."

The Eagles saw a nimble mind, a big arm, maturity beyond his years, and let Wentz sling it.

In fact, Pederson literally made the call a week before the Philadelphia 2016 season opener against the Cleveland Browns at home. Wentz took the actual phone call that he would be the team's starter while lying on the ground geese hunting in New Jersey. Lurie was certain the Eagles were making the right call well before that.

"I invited all of the quarterbacks during training camp to my box for a concert that was in our stadium, Sam, Carson, and Chase Daniel," Lurie said. "Carson didn't want to come. He graciously declined. He said he had done nothing in the NFL as yet and did not want his teammates to think he deserved such a privilege. He said he believed the veteran players wanted to see young quarterbacks working extra hard, not being treated in exceptional ways in the owner's box. I respected his feelings. I was not surprised. I told him the hopes I had in him. I told him there would be a time it would be OK. This was not only the type of quarterback, but the type of person we were turning to as our franchise quarterback."

Blitzed: Why NFL Teams Gamble on Starting Rookie Quarterbacks by Thomas George, with a foreword by Warren Moon and an afterword by Tony Dungy, will be published on September 5, 2017, by Sports Publishing an imprint of Skyhorse Publishing. The book is available for preorder at Amazon, Barnes and Noble and IndieBound.

[lulew1988]

Graves disease has robbed me

Marie-Louise Pawsey, a lifestyle and dating coach from Australia, who also suffers, like myself with Graves Disease  has very kindly offered to share her story on The Thyroid Damsel. 

Here is Marie-Louise' story!

  Ten years ago, I was a newlywed. I’d met the man of my dreams a couple of years before, and we were fortunate to be living in Melbourne’s CBD in an apartment, unlike most of my friends and family.

During our first year or so, I’d had some issues with my eyes. I couldn’t explain it properly but they were sore, and I had vision issues. All my life my parents had gotten their eyes checked regularly; both wore glasses and my mum had had cataracts. So, I’d been getting my eyes checked every year since I was a teenager and I knew something wasn’t right. We weren’t living near my usual optometrist, so, I made an appointment with an optometrist nearby.

I was pretty much told that there was nothing wrong, but I knew there was, so I went to a second clinic, and was told a very different story but it still didn’t seem to really account for the issues I was having. Ugh!! So, I figured, I’d get a tie breaker, and went to a third. There, I was told that I needed glasses and they’d be prism lenses. I’d never heard of such a thing, but as I’d now had three very different stories, I did a fairly dumb thing, and I ignored them all. I battled on and just went about my business, planning my wedding, and my future. It’s amazing what you can put up with if you put your mind to it.

Six months later, we’d just moved into our new house. Within weeks I knew something was wrong. All the weight I’d been trying to lose in the leadup to our wedding was suddenly falling off, and I couldn’t figure out why. We’d moved from a one bedroom apartment to a three bedroom house, but I didn’t think that the extra walking around as I unpacked could have made such an impact. I didn’t even have much time to exercise since I’d given up the gym which had been in our apartment building, and now I had to commute 45min each way for work. So how was I shedding weight?

I started taking notice of everything. My appetite changed, I couldn’t sleep, but had heaps of energy, my heart race seemed to be that of a thoroughbred even as I woke in the morning, and I couldn’t concentrate on anything. And my eyes seemed to be getting worse all of a sudden.

So, I made an appointment with the GP I’d gone to for years- now that we were back in the area in which I’d grown up.

He’s amazing. I told him my symptoms and he immediately sent me to have blood tests to have my thyroid checked.

Within a week I was at an appointment with one of Melbourne’s leading Endocrinologists and the diagnosis was clear: I had Graves Disease.

When we’d moved, I’d taken a week off work to unpack, and during that time, I’d dropped in my old gym boss who had, on the spot, offered me part time work as a personal trainer.  It was fine for a little while, but my diagnosis meant that I couldn’t demonstrate exercises I wanted my clients to do, or workout alongside them. So I had to adjust by demonstrating once, and then issuing instructions to them verbally. I also had to explain to them what was going on with me, which was scary and revealing, as I didn’t fully understand it yet.

I found I could eat anything I wanted and not gain weight, but I didn’t have much of an appetite. My husband had to beg and plead for me to eat, and sometimes he’d resort to spoon feeding me. Looking back, I’m sure that there were times when I was determined to put the surprise weight loss to good use and capitalise on it. Other times I gorged on chips and chocolate, revelling in the idea of not gaining weight. I was all over the place, mentally and emotionally.

 But as the 15 tablets a day (14 x neomercazole and 1 beta blocker) kicked in, that all changed, and all the weight I’d lost came back with a vengeance. Alas, the snacking habit was a hard one to break, and it’s still one I battle now.

I also experienced trembling legs, increased bowel functions (spontaneously at times), anxiety, intolerance to heat (and I was diagnosed in summer so that explained why I complained more than others did!), erratic sleeping patterns and a myriad of eye problems that effected my work, driving and leisure time.

I’d gone to my original optometrist about my eyes and he’d recommended an ophthalmologist who diagnosed Thyroid Eye Disease. That explained a lot! The problem was that it meant that I’d need special glasses, (prism lenses, can you believe it?) and until they could get them, I wasn’t allowed to drive. I was the sole driver in the family, so that threw our whole routine out. We could no longer visit friends and family on the weekends if it meant driving and our shopping had to be done locally. All of this was a massive adjustment for us, and it caused a great deal of cabin fever for a couple who was used to going to the country every few weeks and being able to do normal day to day activities without restraint.

Not driving was a really good idea too, because despite being back in my old neighbourhood, I suddenly had memory problems. I found, and still find, that I could drive to the same place two days in a row, from the same starting point, and I’d get lost on the second day. I can envisage where I have to get to, and I know where I am, but can’t figure out a way to go, and even if I do figure it out, I’m uncertain about it. Google maps has become a very handy tool for me, but road works and detours completely throw me.

That’s okay now, but back then, I worked at night and drove across town to work. Fortunately, my boss was willing to adjust my hours, so I worked 4 longer nights a week, and was able to get there by train. This meant walking to and from the station, and anywhere else, which added a little more exercise into my routine.

I’d increased my exercise output, but was constrained to walking because I wasn’t allowed to get my heart rate up. I was never really able to convey the fear I felt about having a heart attack. I wore a watch with a pulse monitor and checked it repeatedly, but even when I wasn’t wearing it (in bed, in the shower) I could tell when it was high because my heart would race and then seem to stop. Ten years later, I still have those palpitations and when they become too regular, I go and get checked again.

I began walking 2-4 hours a day. It was one thing that helped me feel as though I had some control over the disease. I really put a lot of effort in, and changed my diet after seeking the help of a nutritionist.

I viewed some of these lifestyle changes as adventures. Certainly, going to work for 4 days was a nice change, and my increased energy meant that I didn’t struggle to work those 12 hours in a day. Seeing the world through a train window gave me new insight into those around me. But those things, I could take or leave.

Inside, however I was changed forever. I determined that I wouldn’t see myself as a victim, but went about making the necessary changes, and following instructions from my doctors.

Along with my endocrinologist, I had my optometrist, ophthalmologist, nutritionist, GP, and later I added a fertility specialising gynecologist. I did the rounds regularly, and it was an emotional and costly venture. The endo appointments need to be paid in full on the day, but are then reimbursed in part by Medicare. The appointment cost around $120 and I’d get about $70 of that back, if I recall. But that meant going to a Medicare (in the early days) office to lodge and claim. Those offices aren’t everywhere, so I’d tend to build up a few claims and do them all at once. So this meant that I was out of pocket all the appointment money until I could get to an office.

In Australia, not all tests are covered by Medicare, and it also depends on which doctor you go to, as to whether your appointment is bulk billed or not. Bulk billed means it’s free for the patient, but other places charge, usually $30-$60. When you factor in appointment costs, on top of medication costs, my extremely expensive glasses, money spent on healthy food, public transport when I was using it etc, all added up and my new life was costing me a small fortune.

(adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({});

One such instruction that my endo issued was that we had to put our baby making on hold. We’d planned to move into our house, live there for a year or so to get used to married life, and then start having babies.

We were told that that plan was on hold until I was told otherwise. That was heartbreaking for me. I wasn’t someone who’d yearned for babies all my life, but now that I’d found my husband, I was keen for them.

Except that was a decision which was taken out of my hands.

For three years, I took my medications, walked and walked, ate, and managed my illness as well as I could, and finally, I received the news I wanted to hear: I was in remission.

I didn’t realise at the time, but I’ve been experiencing anxiety for a long time now. I’ve always been organised but wouldn’t have said I was a control freak, but now, if plans change too greatly, the effect on me is immense.

Over the years, I’ve realised that the disease has flipped my life completely, and if I could control anything- when the disease controlled me- it gave me a sense of balance. But there really is no balance. The disease is in control, and in some ways, the sooner I realised that the better. It wasn’t going to adjust to me, so I had to adjust to it.

But along the way, it robbed me of so much, and that’s something I struggle to accept, even today.

If you loved Marie-Louise' post as much as I did. You can follow her on social media and at her blog! 

Blog

Facebook.com/LifeStylinDatingCoach

  Don't forget to subscribe to  The Thyroid Damsel to get all my latest posts!

[multipleservicelisting]

Trump’s Last-Minute Pardon Frees Man Still Facing Accusations of Violence

President Donald J. Trump’s late-night commutation of a 10-year prison sentence being served by a drug smuggler named Jonathan Braun made the action sound almost routine. The White House said only that upon his release, Mr. Braun would “seek employment to support his wife and children.”

What the White House did not mention is that Mr. Braun, a New Yorker from Staten Island who had pleaded guilty in 2011 to leading a large-scale marijuana smuggling ring, still faces both criminal and civil investigations in an entirely separate matter, and has a history of violence and threatening people.

According to lawsuits filed in June against Mr. Braun and two associates by the New York State attorney general, Letitia James, and the Federal Trade Commission, Mr. Braun helped start and worked as a de facto enforcer for an operation that made predatory loans to small-business owners, threatening them with violence if they refused to pay up.

Federal prosecutors for the Southern District of New York in Manhattan also have a continuing investigation into that operation, a person with knowledge of the investigation said Friday.

As recently as two and a half years ago, Mr. Braun was accused of throwing a man off a deck at an engagement party. Federal prosecutors said in a court proceeding that he threatened to beat a rabbi who borrowed money to renovate a preschool at his synagogue. “I am going to make you bleed,” he told the rabbi, according to court documents, adding, “I will make you suffer for every penny.”

How much Mr. Trump and his aides knew about Mr. Braun’s past and his current legal troubles is not clear. In its announcement of the pardon this week, the White House appears to have substantially overstated how much of his 10-year sentence Mr. Braun had completed, saying he had served five years when he had only reported to prison a year ago. (The White House announcement also misspelled his first name, calling him Jonathon.)

Mr. Braun’s family had told people it was willing to spend millions of dollars for lawyers and others to try to get him out of prison, according to two people who have been in contact with the family members in recent months.

No one registered under federal lobbying laws to make Mr. Braun’s case to the Trump administration, though registration would not necessarily be required for legal representation. The White House announcement of the wave of 143 pardons and commutations early Wednesday, just hours before Mr. Trump left office, did not cite anyone who had backed the commutation of Mr. Braun’s sentence.

The lawyer Alan M. Dershowitz, who represented Mr. Trump in his first impeachment trial, said he “played a very limited role” in Mr. Braun’s clemency push, “almost exclusively” advising his father about the clemency process, and was paid “a very small amount of money” for his assistance.

Mr. Dershowitz said he believed Mr. Braun’s argument for clemency was “meritorious,” because Mr. Braun cooperated with prosecutors “for a good many years, and was told that his cooperation would be recognized and he didn’t get that recognition.”

His case is the latest evidence of how far the pardon process under Mr. Trump had strayed from the rigorous Justice Department guidelines and screening that previous presidents had largely relied on for clemency recommendations.

“Jonathan Braun has threatened small-business owners with violence, death and even kidnapping,” Ms. James said. “A federal commutation will not protect Mr. Braun from being held accountable in New York for the civil charges against him.”

Interviews and court documents paint a portrait of Mr. Braun as a major drug smuggler who once beat one of his underlings so badly with a belt that Mr. Braun told others he had left the victim “black and blue.” In another instance, he threatened violence against a woman who worked for him who was threatening to cooperate with prosecutors.

In response to questions about the pardon, Mr. Braun’s lawyer, Marc Fernich, declined to discuss how Mr. Braun had gotten his case in front of White House officials or who had represented him. But Mr. Fernich praised Mr. Trump’s action.

“Mr. Braun’s 10-year sentence was grossly unreasonable — an extreme statistical outlier — on the facts and circumstances of his case,” Mr. Fernich said in an email message. He said he applauded Mr. Trump’s “courage in correcting what was a grave injustice.”

A spokesman for Mr. Trump did not return an email message seeking comment.

Mr. Braun was indicted in 2010 and entered a plea deal in the drug case the next year after initially fleeing the country for Canada and Israel before turning himself in. He was not sentenced until 2019 and did not have to report to prison until last January.

While free on bail after his guilty plea but before reporting to prison, he plunged into a new enterprise, helping run an operation that made loans to small-business owners at extremely high interest rates. According to the suits filed last year by Ms. James, the New York State attorney general, and the Federal Trade Commission, Mr. Braun regularly threatened those who had trouble repaying the loans.

“I know where you live.” Mr. Braun told a small-business owner who he claimed owed him money, according to court documents filed by Ms. James.

Mr. Braun told the business owner he knew where his mother lived.

“I will take your daughters from you,” he said, according to the suit.

Mr. Braun is accused in the suit of telling another business owner: “Be thankful you’re not in New York, because your family would find you floating in the Hudson.”

Previous presidents relied on a Justice Department screening process for pardons that ensured they were being given in an evenhanded way and that those with money and connections were not receiving preferential treatment. But Mr. Trump largely disregarded that process and wielded his clemency powers unlike any previous president.

The Constitution gives presidents the ability to issue pardons and commutations, a brake on the criminal justice system and a way to show grace and mercy. But Mr. Trump doled out clemency to friends, allies, donors, witnesses who did not cooperate with investigations that involved him and his campaign, and those who could help him politically.

“When the Justice Department process is short-circuited, and there’s insufficient vetting — if you don’t take the time to look at someone’s history and potential other exposure — this is what you end up with: a process that appears corrupted by money and influence,” said Daniel Zelenko, a white-collar defense lawyer at Crowell and Moring and former federal prosecutor and enforcement lawyer at the Securities and Exchange Commission.

The full story of Mr. Braun’s arrest, indictment and sentencing spans a decade and, according to prosecutors’s statements in court and filings in his case, often unfolded like a crime thriller.

In 2009, agents from the Drug Enforcement Administration raided a house on Staten Island that Mr. Braun’s drug trafficking network used to stash large stockpiles of drugs. Mr. Braun, who was in Florida at the time, learned from his underlings about the raid.

Immediately, Mr. Braun rented a car and with at least one associate drove 25 hours to the New York border with Canada.

“In the dead of night, dressed entirely in black and utilizing a motorless boat, Braun was ferried across the river into Canada, and remained there for several months, hiding out in one of the properties owned by his Canadian associate,” according to court documents filed by the Justice Department.

Clemency Power ›

Presidential Pardons, Explained

President Trump has discussed potential pardons that could test the boundaries of his constitutional power to nullify criminal liability. Here’s some clarity on his ability to pardon.

May a president issue prospective pardons before any charges or conviction? Yes. In Ex parte Garland, an 1866 case involving a former Confederate senator who had been pardoned by President Andrew Johnson, the Supreme Court said the pardon power “extends to every offense known to the law, and may be exercised at any time after its commission, either before legal proceedings are taken or during their pendency, or after conviction and judgment.” It is unusual for a president to issue a prospective pardon before any charges are filed, but there are examples, perhaps most famously President Gerald R. Ford’s pardon in 1974 of Richard M. Nixon to prevent him from being prosecuted after the Watergate scandal.

May a president pardon his relatives and close allies? Yes. The Constitution does not bar pardons that raise the appearance of self-interest or a conflict of interest, even if they may provoke a political backlash and public shaming. In 2000, shortly before leaving office, President Bill Clinton issued a slew of controversial pardons, including to his half brother, Roger Clinton, over a 1985 cocaine conviction for which he had served about a year in prison, and to Susan H. McDougal, a onetime Clinton business partner who had been jailed as part of the Whitewater investigation.

May a president issue a general pardon? This is unclear. Usually, pardons are written in a way that specifically describes which crimes or sets of activities they apply to. There is little precedent laying out the degree to which a pardon can be used to instead foreclose criminal liability for anything and everything.

May a president pardon himself? This is unclear. There is no definitive answer because no president has ever tried to pardon himself and then faced prosecution anyway. As a result, there has never been a case which gave the Supreme Court a chance to resolve the question. In the absence of any controlling precedent, legal thinkers are divided about the matter.

Find more answers here.

Mr. Braun then fled to Israel where he took refuge for several months, hoping to avoid being apprehended as he continued to run his drug operation from an encrypted Blackberry phone, the documents say. In the fall of 2009, Mr. Braun returned to the United States, where he was arrested and jailed.

When he was indicted in 2010, he was charged with operating a marijuana ring that was one of the major distributors in New York City, smuggling in and selling $1.72 billion worth from 2007 to 2010.

“It is neither an exaggeration nor hyperbole to state that the defendant and his criminal enterprise generated illegal proceeds exceeding the gross domestic product of a small country,” the Justice Department said in a 2010 filing.

His lawyers sought at that point to convince a judge to release him on bail but prosecutors successfully kept him in jail, laying out how Mr. Braun had told others that he planned to flee the United States if he was released on bail.

“Braun specifically told a cooperating government witness that he would ‘never do time in jail,’” prosecutors said in a court filing. “Braun went on to explain that ‘for 10 grand, I could get a fake passport’ and be ‘on a beach somewhere where there is no extradition,’ still ‘making money.’”

In arguing that Mr. Braun should remain in prison, the prosecutors laid out a gruesome episode in which he beat a younger man working for him who had been given the job of guarding $100,000 worth of marijuana being kept in a house in California.

After Mr. Braun learned that the marijuana had been stolen, he called the man and demanded he give him $100,000. The man refused. Mr. Braun and one of his enforcers booked flights to California, arriving there the next morning. They broke into the house where they found the man in bed.

“Braun then took off his belt and proceeded to viciously whip his worker with the belt,” the court documents say. “At one point, the ‘kid’ tried to get away from Braun, but Braun’s enforcer pushed him back down onto the bed so that Braun could continue the beating. In Braun’s own words, his brutal assault left the ‘kid’s’ entire body ‘black and blue.’”

Mr. Braun pleaded guilty in 2011 to two counts of conspiring to import a controlled substance and money laundering. As part of his plea, prosecutors allowed him to be released on bail and live at home while awaiting sentencing. His sentencing was delayed repeatedly.

Legal experts and defense lawyers say that defendants are typically on their best behavior when they are out on bail and awaiting sentencing. But Mr. Braun continued to flout the law, according to the suits later filed against him by the New York State attorney general and the Federal Trade Commission.

In 2018, Bloomberg News wrote a series of articles about how Mr. Braun had emerged as a leading short-term lender to small businesses. While structured to try to avoid usury laws, the rates Mr. Braun changed were as high as 400 percent a year. The New York attorney general’s office opened an investigation in response to the articles.

The next year, a judge held a sentencing hearing for Mr. Braun on the drug trafficking charges. At the hearing, prosecutors laid out two recent episodes in which Mr. Braun had violently assaulted others. One allegation said that Mr. Braun had thrown someone off a two-story balcony at a Staten Island engagement party in the summer of 2018.

The other allegation related to how Mr. Braun had lent money to the Brooklyn rabbi for the preschool. The rabbi had fallen behind on the payments and Mr. Braun reportedly threatened to beat and humiliate him.

“I am coming to Crown Heights,” Mr. Braun said, according to a lawsuit filed by the synagogue. “I will hang papers all over the lampposts in Crown Heights stating that you are a liar and a thief. I am going to tell people that you are running an illegal operation and a scam.”

Fearing the rabbi would be attacked, the synagogue wired Mr. Braun $1,000 and hired a lawyer. In a subsequent call between Mr. Braun and the lawyer, Mr. Braun called the lawyer a profanity, according to the suit filed by the synagogue.

Shortly after Mr. Braun’s commutation was announced, Mr. Dershowitz said he received a call from Mr. Braun and his father.

“Everybody was very grateful. There were a lot of tears going around,” Mr. Dershowitz said, explaining that the father called again on Friday before the Jewish Sabbath. “And he said he is going to continue to call me every Shabbos, so I should expect a call.”

Kenneth P. Vogel and Ben Protess contributed reporting. Susan C. Beachy and Kitty Bennett contributed research.

    Multiple Service Listing for Business Owners | Tools to Grow Your Local Business

www.MultipleServiceListing.com 

from Multiple Service Listing https://ift.tt/39Vm0Gr