#don’t make bird jokes unless you’re actually a bird

[jackdaniel69nice]

Tokoyami: *scrolling through the channels on the tv when he suddenly comes across a bird documentary. They are doing a mating dance*

Dark Shadow: Oh! I like that!

Tokoyami: *chuckles and moves on*

Sero: I thought you said the bird jokes were “distasteful”

Toko: It’s funny when we do it

DS: Who said I’m joking~~

[knavesflames]

hiii I really really love your writing and i just read your post about insecure reader x arlecchino ! 🫶 i was wondering if you would be willing to write something similar but with a reader insecure about the opposite, being too feminine/curvy like having wide hips, a tummy and big thighs, it's ok if not tho, thank you for reading 💗

Of course!! As a curvy gal myself I can resonate with this HARD. There aren’t super many who write curvy reader (and the ones who do slay, btw) so I am more than happy to write this. I’ve actually been excited for this ever since I received this ask.

Contents: insecure curvy reader, arlecchino being arlecchino, fluff with a hint of sadness sprinkled in

Word count: 1120

Writing utc!

Having dragged Arlecchino along to a lunch with your friends, you’d think you’d be happier than you are right now. Arlecchino is not like your friends in the slightest, them laughing and talking loudly with playful slaps on each other's arm as they melt in hysterical laughter. You suppose that is why Arlecchino zeroes in you and your behaviour now. Arlecchino is usually the quiet one, cracking a small smirk at a joke or huffing in laughter occasionally, you being the bridge between hysterically happy and Arlecchino’s level of calm. And yet, there you sit, poking the small salad leaves with your fork, a miserable expression on your face.

She frowns, glancing over at the plates of your friends. Pasta, focaccia, a burger.. why on earth do you have a salad? One that doesn’t even look good, of all things. Her foot moves to nudge you under the table.

“Eat. There is almost nothing on your plate and you look miserable. Shall I go and order more for you?”

You’re quick to deny her offer, a little too quick for Arlecchino’s liking, if she’s honest. She watches you for the rest of the lunch, watching how you smile and say you’re too stuffed to get dessert. She gives you a pointed look when you say that. She says nothing, but somehow you know that she’s not about to let this go.

You both walk home at a leisurely pace in comfortable silence. Feeling the slightest of breezes against your skin and listening to the afternoon birds chirping relaxes you, and it’s always a pleasure to walk through the town. Arlecchino’s arm snakes around you, resting gently on your hip. A silent gesture, but one she does often, one you usually enjoy.

“Don’t.”

The word pierces through the air as you shrug her arm off, continuing to walk in silence. Her eyes focus on you again, your face holding the same miserable look, like you’re about to burst into tears. Her brow creases and she folds her arms over her chest, her tone almost accusatory. Almost.

“What has gotten into you, love? You do not wish for my touch, you did not eat, you lied to your friends.”

“No—“

“If you say “nothing”, I swear to the Tsaritsa I will sit you down and not let you move until you tell me.”

You both walk the rest of the way home in tense silence, her words simmering. You know she isn’t joking, she would. She has done it once before, and it was the longest hour of your life. Of course, she only means well, but sometimes her ways of showing it can be a little.. tricky. You’re home before long, sliding the keys into the door and shutting it with a small click. You know you have approximately five seconds before—

“Tell me. You have not eaten except about five salad leaves, it is 4pm, your clothes are unusually baggy for your taste. Unless you plan on turning into a rabbit, you will tell me what is going on inside that pretty little head of yours.”

Her stare is unwavering, piercing through you in a way that would make anyone shudder and run away. You are not afraid, you know how soft she really is, at least around you, but you know you can’t put off telling her any longer.

“They are smaller than I am.”

“What? You are slightly taller than them, yes. What is wrong with that?”

“No. Not like that. They’re just.. smaller. Smaller breasts, smaller hips, smaller thighs. I don’t understand why I have to be this way.”

You mutter, gesturing to your body, hidden under the clothes. They are indeed baggy, chosen quickly when you glanced at yourself in the mirror this morning. She is silent for a while, clearly pondering. Arlecchino has a tendency to be blunt, a little too blunt, and it’s obvious she’s trying to soften her words.

“That is true. That does not make you any less beautiful. You are very feminine. I enjoy that.”

You stare at the floor, sniffling a little. It takes her a few seconds to realise you are crying, albeit trying to hide it to the best of your ability. But she is vigilant, she knows. She always knows.

“It is not a bad thing to have the body you have. You are healthy, you just have curves. Many people have surgery to get what you have naturally.”

“They can have it. I don’t want them.”

“Stop. I do not want to hear this nonsense. It is ridiculous. You..”

She walks behind you, pressing her lips to the nape of her neck. You swat her hand away when it brushes your arm, but she tuts and brings it back, gently caressing the skin.

“You are stunning. Your breasts are perfect. They are full and I can hold them in my hands just right. If I must admit, they are good to lay on. They are soft, and they move with your breathing.”

Her hands move, tracing the outline of your breasts through the baggy shirt. She traces a heart before she moves downwards.

“Your hips are beautiful. They are wonderful to hold, both when I come up behind you while you back, and while you are on top of me doing things only we speak about. And, they will be perfect, should we have a child.”

“Your stomach is wonderful. I enjoy massaging it, kissing it, and it may or may not be a weakness of mine when you wear those lovely dresses I know you own.”

Arlecchino’s hands gently knead the skin of your stomach as your tears slowly come to a stop. You can’t help but feel a little better knowing that the person you love finds you just as attractive as you hope she would.

“Your thighs, my god. They are so plush and you know how I love nipping at them, leaving pretty marks only you can see. I love feeling them next to either side of my head, feeling them clench around my head when.. well, you are aware, are you not? Having curves does not make you any more or less of a woman than someone with less curves than you. You are perfect the way you are.”

A small smile graces your face, a smile that always makes her warm inside, though not once will she admit it. She returns a smile of her own. Rare, but genuine.

“I will make you pasta. You will eat it. There is no argument.”

You groan, following her to the kitchen, though you attempt to hold back a giggle when you speak.

“Arlecchino, you.. you lack in the cooking area.”

“Did I ask?”

[live-laugh-legolas]

Oh, I really like your headcannons!!!! I would like to ask how do you think the members of the brotherhood (especially Gandalf) would react to the fact that the reader has wings and is also going on a journey (this was inspired by the valkyries, so I imagine how she would fight with these wings)

The fellowship x winged!reader

Aragorn:

-A huge weight is lifted from him knowing someone like you is on their side

-I also totally think he would be prone to motion sickness

-So if you ever have to fly him over a large gap or something he will need to sit down for a little

-“I’m never doing that again”

-He will help you preen your wings after battle to get the blood and dirt out of places you can’t reach

Legolas:

-He has absolutely heard about legends about your people

-He is so honored to get to meet you

-Watching you fight is so fascinating

-Will just take a moment to watch before almost getting beheaded in his distraction

-Calls you “birdie” in elvish

Gimli:

-You do literally anything with your wings and he is like “YEEESSSSS!”

-He’s such a cheerleader

-We also know he loves the powerful girl bosses

-So you are a top tier in his opinion

-I imagine that a winged being wouldn’t like being underground so he tries to keep you distracted with stories while in Moria

Boromir:

-My first thought was that Boromir would be like Thor when he met the Valkyrie

-He’s such a fangirl

-Ngl, after seeing you fight he’s a little timid

-I mean everyone else saw that right? You just decapitated that orc with your wing

-So badly wants to show you to his brother who would be awed

Frodo:

-He doesn’t know much about your people but he’s adamant to learn everything

-He is so thankful you will be helping him on this journey

-When he gets exhausted from lack of sleep because of the ring you carry him on your back and he can hold onto your wings

-Have him help preen your wings to get his mind off of his troubles for a little

Sam:

-Thinks you must be an angel when he first sees you

-He’s a little intimidated

-Ok, maybe a lot intimidated

-But that’s only because he thinks you must be one of the most beautiful creatures to walk middle earth

-He is concerned what you will eat if what was caught for dinner was a bird

-Would it be weird if you ate chicken? It feels unethical

-Actually probably gives a stern talking to whoever caught the bird because what if it was upsetting for you

Merry:

-Take this hobbit for a flight

-He will be so excited

-He would absentmindedly pet your wings (if you were ok with it)

-Maybe just give him a feather to play with

-He also makes so many bird jokes

Pippin:

-He doesn’t want you to think he is disrespectful

-So he doesn’t ask

-But he really wants to pet your wings

-They just look so soft and silky

-Until they are dirty from battle; but would help you pick twigs and dirt out of them

-“so…um…do you take dirt baths?*

Gandalf:

-He probably knew you before the council, and probably is the one who invited you

-You have been friends for a while

-He is vague but smug when someone asks about you

-He likes to see people’s reactions to you

-You’re like his party trick; he’s like ✨tada!✨*jazz hands to your wings*

-It gets old, but not to him

-He rides on an eagle and you fly next to them

-He refuses to let you fly him anywhere unless absolutely necessary

-But will be a backseat driver even though there is nothing to backseat drive about

———————————————————————

I love a winged reader and I have my own little oc in my head that I regularly have in this scenario. I’m a sucker for winged characters ngl. I don’t really know the Valkyrie so idk how accurate this will be to them

Also I may update this at some point cuz I don’t think I did a good job with it especially considering how much I think about this just in my own time; so sorry

[beautysamour]

What kind of fluids are we talking about…

Pairing: Aaron warner x reader

Set slightly before the first book, you’re one of Warner’ soldiers.

Characters: Kenji Kishimoto, Aaron Warner

Summary: Aaron Warner reminds you to drink water.

warning/s: A slightly suggestive joke from Kenji at the end.

point of view: 2nd person

enjoy!

—

You woke up to the sun shining in your eyes, the sounds of bird chirping, and-

and kenjis loud ass voice forcing you to wake up.

“Rise and shine princess- we have work to do!Unless you hit your head so hard you forgot all about it?” Kenji doesn’t shy away from letting his sarcasm drip out with his words. for fucks sake.

Kenji resumes pacing around your room, not bothering to hide his loud footsteps. All of course, to piss you off and get you off your bed.

You groan before pushing yourself off of your bed- sending a glare at Kenji- “Alright, alright. You’ve been yapping for the past 30 minutes Kenji, get the fuck out of my room.”

Kenji stopped his pacing and let out a gasp before reciting one of his dramatic monologues, “Did you just curse? At me? I bless you with my presence and you-“

“Fuck off, Kenji, I’ll be out in a few minutes.” He raised an eyebrow. You let out a dramatic sigh, “I promise. Now please, I still have to get out of my bed and I don’t have a shirt on right now.” You finish your sentence with a deadpan directed at him.

He turns and heads towards your door, and actually walks out your room, but not without sending you a slight smirk and a flirty response of: “You were that excited to see me?”

You threw a pillow at him, which he throws back and says “I’ll meet you at the eating area.” before closing your door.

A few seconds pass before you fully get out of bed. A groan escapes your mouth as a wave of nausea violently came over you. As you get dressed the wave of nausea that crashed into you seemed to have only gotten worse, even after blocking all the light from entering your room because that seemed to make it worse.

With another groan and a shake of your head, you open your door and made your way to Kenji. As soon as you opened your door, you immediately leaned on the wall- the nausea only getting worse. You let out a few curses under your breath and pushed yourself off the wall.

“Fucking hell,” you whisper once you regain your composure. You let out a heavy breath and began to walk, luck seems to really be on your side however, as you bump into another wall.

A rather soft…wall? No it wasn’t a wall, it was definitely a human. Bumping into whoever this was seemed to have brought your headache back, you brought a hand up to your temples and took a step back from the person.

“Sorry, my bad,” you mumble out and side step around them, desperately hoping that this time you’ll actually reach Kenji, and that the person you bumped into wouldn’t get angry and track you all the way down.

“I almost thought you went back to sleep.”

You sat down across from Kenji tuning out his voice, your headache was throwing you off. “I bumped into someone,” you close your eyes as you rested your elbow on the table, bringing your hand up so you could message your temples and shield yourself from the light.

The remaining time of breakfast was filled with Kenji going on tangents about some movie called Tangled and with you tuning him out, focusing on messaging your temples.

After breakfast officially ended, you and everyone else began to go to their designated area for work. It seems that your boss, Warner, was conducting a mission that involved some kind of asylum. Well that’s what Kenji told you.

After cleaning up the table, Kenji reunited with you and the two of you began to walk out of the cafeteria. Seeming to have realized that you didn’t feel well, Kenji stopped talking and instead focused on making sure you didn’t fall over while walking.

The light hurt. Everything seemed so much louder than normal, and you felt so cold. The violent throbbing in your head only got worse and now you really wanted to throw up. Kenji seemed to have started speaking again but his voice was muffled and everything started to blur.

Your feet began to slur, and the last thing you see before you completely black out- and before you even realize that you were falling- was the figure you bumped into earlier walking towards the two of you.

—

You woke up to silence.

The room was dimmed and you were in your bed again. The throbbing in your head is still there but not as violent as it was a few…hours? A few hours ago.

You tilt your head towards the lamp in your room that was responsible for giving your room the dim lighting, only to be greeted with the presence of your boss- Warner.

You immediately push yourself up into an upwards sitting position, tempted to push yourself completely off the bed but he speaks up before you could make another rash move.

“Relax. I don’t need you making any sudden movements that will end up having you pass out again.” He gets up from where he was leaning on your desk and pulls up a chair to sit in near your bed.

You don’t respond to him at all, you don’t even look at him, you’re not even sure if you’re breathing any more. The hell is he here for?

After a few moments of silence, you realize that Warner was waiting for you to say something- when you take too long to respond he speaks up again.

“I have an order for you, you would’ve heard this earlier at the briefing but you passed out.” You stiffen in embarrassment, you passed out- and he was told about it.

“This is an extremely private mission, I expect that you’ll be able to keep this private and complete your part of the operation. In two months, Kent is going to go to an asylum where he is going to have direct contact with who we’re trying to get. Once they come back, you will be in charge of keeping her well and making sure she gets comfortable. You will essentially be her best friend.”

You look up at him and make direct eye contact- vibrant green eyes- he seems to be waiting for a response again. This time you’re able to respond in time.

“Yes, sir.”

The two of you keep the eye contact for what feels like a minute, and then he gets up. “I have high expectations for you, Kishimoto recommended you for this operation.”

Hearing this takes you out of the daze that the eye contact put you in, “Ken-Kishimoto? Why?” Realizing that was a stupid question, you clear your throat and whisper “nevermind” under your breath.

What the fuck? Stupid, stupid. He probably doesn’t even know why Kenji recommended me!

You look back up at him again only to be met with a glass of water in your face, “Make sure to hydrate. I can’t have you passing out once she’s here.” Feeling your cheeks slightly burn up from embarrassment, you mumble out a thanks before taking the glass of water out from his hands.

You watch him walk towards your door and open it, taking a step out. You feel your nerves settle thinking that the moment is finally over but then he turns back towards you- causing your back to immediately straighten. “And by the way love, make sure to keep your head up while walking. Some bastard might take it personally if you bump into them.” He gives you a slight smirk before fully stepping out your room and closing the door.

…..

IT WAS HIM?

Your face fully flushes this time as the embarrassment is now too much to handle. You bumped into him?! Warner- of all people!

Your little panic session is cut short when Kenji rushes into your room.

“Are you feeling better?”

You take a few moments to respond but end up giving him a nod.

“That’s good…so did Warner give you the update?”

“You mean what my part in the operation is?” Kenji nods. “Yes, he told me.”

The two of you remain quiet for a few moments before Kenji speaks up again.

“No….”

“What?” You respond confused, what was Kenji saying no to…?”

“Don’t tell me you like him…” Kenji dramatically brings a hand up to his mouth, “Kenji what the fuck are you talking about?” you respond.

“Oh, no, don’t “kenji what the fuck are you talking about” to me,” he poorly imitates your voice, “I get being intimidated by being alone with him one on one, but blushing? Uh uh, I can’t believe this.” He says even more dramatically.

“Kenji, I don’t-“ you’re unable to properly form a sentence, getting even more embarrassed. You did NOT have a crush on Warner of all people…absolutely not….

“Yeah right,” Kenji says, “hey, where’d you get that water from?”, he asks in a rather teasing tone. “Warner,” you respond. He raises an eyebrow before speaking again, “Hmm…well. I bet you would’ve preferred if he gave you another kind of fluid-“

Your mouth drops open at his grotesque implication, “Kenji, get out!”

—

[mik0rin]

2day, 2morrow, 4ever : party music & too many pauses

gojo satoru x black fem reader genre: college au, angst, second chance romance, exes to lovers warnings: cussing, alcohol consumption word count: 3,853

playlist: spotify apple music

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partner story (pls read): 224: the archives sign up for the taglist -> here!!

The birds, the flowers, and the leaves on the trees have all returned. Spring came around as a reminder that everything that was once gone always comes back. 

And you wish it wasn’t true. 

As much as you love the warmer weather and the occasional rainy days, you feel like you're descending into madness. You see him everywhere; while you’re grocery shopping, on the way to work, even when you run to the Family Mart next to your apartment. 

And it would be fine if he were actually there.

But, it's never really him. Whenever you “see” him, it’s only things you associate with him and your mind makes up the rest, projecting whatever image you have of him onto some poor unassuming person. You’re sure you’ve frightened a few people with your dead stare or teary eyes. 

You’ve avoided going out for the past few days trying to mentally prepare yourself for classes that start soon. Right now you’re sharing a blanket with Shoko on the couch as you watch a movie. Her phone vibrates on the coffee table and she picks it up, reading the notification before turning to you with a sly smile. 

“You wanna go to Haruka’s party tomorrow?” 

You turn to her with a small excited smile of your own,  “Now you know, you never have to ask.” 

She falls into your lap dramatically, “Do you know how boring it was without you?” 

“I know I’m the light of your life and-” 

“I didn’t say all that.” 

You push her off your lap and she falls to the floor with a soft thud. Shoko looks at you in disbelief as you step over her and walk to your room, flipping her off in the process. 

“Don’t follow me, we aren’t friends anymore.” 

She’s right behind you, playing into your joke, “Come on, babe. You know I can’t live without you!”

With every step the sole of your shoes stick to the hardwood floors, the temperature is straddling the line between bearable and uncomfortable, and you narrowly avoid a collision that would end with you covered in someone’s drink. 

It’s going to be a good night. 

Shoko’s hand is wrapped around your wrist as she leads you through the crowd in search of some harder alcohol. The both of you are insanely good at handling your liquor and the wine coolers you were offered earlier aren’t doing anything for you. 

Luckily, you’re able to swipe a bottle of tequila off of one of your old classmates. You and Shoko are going shot for shot until a man with curly hair approaches you with a shy smile. He looks at you briefly, saying a greeting you can barely hear over the music. Then his eyes are glued to your best friend and you realize this is the boy she was telling you about when you were abroad. 

“Take her away.” You tell him. 

His eyes darted between you and her, “Is that okay?” 

There’s a silent exchange between the two of you. Shoko wants to make sure you’ll be fine without her because you were always each other’s first priority. 

“You’ll be doing me a favor. I can’t stand this girl.” You smile against your shot glass before downing its contents. 

Shoko is glaring at you and you look at her innocently. You know she won’t leave you alone unless you push her to, and you’ll be damned if she ruins the chance that is being presented to her. 

Her focus shifts to the man, “It’s fine, Kazuo. Apparently, I’m no longer wanted.” 

They start to walk off and she looks back at you, her face screaming “Are you sure you’ll be okay alone?” 

You give her a reassuring smile and mouth, “Don’t forget protection!” Shoko rolls her eyes at you but you don’t miss the light pink that dusts her cheeks.

You appreciate her concern but you want her to enjoy herself without worrying about you falling apart. You know you’ve been a bit sensitive lately but it’s something you’ve been taking day by day and it doesn’t mean that you’ll shatter into pieces if you’re left unattended. 

You make your way to the dancefloor, finding some of your other friends. The music is providing a good escape for your tumultuous heart and mind. A distraction or an opportunity for release is what you desperately need; being on a different continent for six months only works because there’s no chance of running into whatever you’re running away from. But being back in Tokyo is testing your resolve and you don’t know how you’ll survive if you don’t have an outlet. 

Your limbs are starting to ache and the heat in the house has officially become uncomfortable. You excuse yourself from your group of friends and make your way to the kitchen, it’s where the A/C is the strongest and you would give up anything to feel the cool air on your exposed skin. After pushing through your fellow drunk college students, you lean against the counter and let out a sigh of relief. 

“y/n?” 

You turn your head towards the sound, “Naomi?” 

She looks a little different from the last time you saw her. Her hair is ginger and she’s swapped her usual goddess braids for locs, she even got the septum piercing you remember her always wanting. 

She opens her mouth to say something but is cut off by a deep voice calling her name. 

There’s a reason why Shoko is the only one you’ve willingly seen since you’ve come back. Despite the obvious reason, which is living together; if you’re with her you know it’ll only be her. As much as you miss your group of friends, there’s anxiety that looms over you at the thought of hanging out with them and having to be near him, pretending like everything is fine. 

But it seems like that might be happening regardless because you see Geto turn the corner in search of his girlfriend and his eyes widen when they see you. He greets you but still doesn’t cross the threshold into the kitchen like he’s trying to keep something out. 

Or more accurately, someone. 

But it’s too late because you can already see the ends of white hair and hear the voice that rings out, 

“Did you find her, Suguru?” 

He found her. As Gojo fully makes it into the kitchen, he realizes Suguru found one more person. It seems like everything has been put on pause as the four of you stare at each other, awkwardness settles in the air like humidity and this is exactly what you wanted to avoid. 

It’s hard for everyone when a couple that shares the same friends breaks up, especially when the friends aren’t exactly privy to the reason why. 

Gojo is trying (and failing) to keep his eyes off you but he can’t, he never can. You catch his stares but you’re more worried about how to fix the situation you’re stuck in. You really want to escape but where does running get you? It seems like you keep ending up in the same position and truth be told: you’re tired. 

You take a deep breath, clenching your fists that rest at your sides, and turn towards your ex-boyfriend. 

“Can we talk outside?” 

He falters a bit, taken aback by your request. What could you possibly want to talk about? And how serious is it that it requires privacy? 

Another few seconds pass before the blue-eyed man coughs out an “Of course.” Geto and Naomi eye the both of you, questions on the tips of their tongues but they keep silent as the two of you walk away, weaving through the dense crowd of people. 

Satoru slides open the door to the balcony, letting you through first before closing it behind him. The night has gotten cooler and you feel it all over your exposed skin, you lean against the railing and stare forward, your gaze fixated on the city’s skyline. 

“Gojo.” 

Ah. 

There's no intimacy in that name. He's so used to his given name falling from your lips or other terms of endearment, but this? 

This feels so cold. 

“I think we should try to at least be friendly? This is the third time we’ve run into each other and I know for sure it won’t be the last. We have the same group of friends and there’s no way we can avoid each other forever and still hang out with them.” 

Satoru nods in agreement, he gets what you mean and it wouldn’t be fair to either of you to sacrifice hanging out with your friends because you can’t be within five feet of each other. But, there’s also disappointment that swirls in his chest, he thought there would be more. 

That maybe, just maybe you would say the one thing that has been weighing on him ever since he saw you. 

“Yeah, I can do that.” His voice comes out much steadier than he thought it would. 

You look at him, his face neutral but you can see something brewing under the surface and you wonder if he wants to say something more. You give him a minute, the air between the two of you growing quiet but the thump of the music from inside fills in what would be an awkward silence. When he doesn’t say anything more, you turn around and place your hand on the door handle. 

“Imma head back inside.” 

“Okay. I’ll see you later?” 

“Yeah, later.” 

You slide the door open and you step back inside, immediately greeted by the warmth of the party once again. The conversation plays in your head like a broken record and you wonder if that was the right decision. 

Friendly, huh? 

Will that even work?  Aren’t your feelings a little too strong, a little too complicated, to be reduced to friendly?

The cherry blossoms have begun to bloom and classes have started. Albeit, there was an understandable amount of shock when you and Gojo acted as if nothing was wrong between the two of you, everyone adjusted quickly enough and the friends you missed when you were abroad, were only a text away again. 

The two of you can’t say it has gone completely back to normal; you can tell they try not to leave you alone with each other or even sit next to each other. If the conversation seemed to move towards any topic that involved the two of you, it was quickly steered away. And it’s not like you didn’t appreciate their efforts to make you comfortable, you just wish it wasn’t so obvious. 

And there’s the lingering problem, or lingering stare from your ex that you’ve been trying to ignore. It’s like every single time you’re around him, Gojo’s eyes are physically unable to look anywhere else. You’re used to it, he was like that when you were together too; always staring and when you would turn a little shy and question him, his response was always a compliment or “What? I can’t just look at you?” 

But now it’s different and the desire to ask him what he’s looking at eats at you. And every time the opportunity arises for you to do so, you don’t take it. There’s fear that the answer that Satoru gives you won’t be one you know how to handle. 

The seven of you are sitting in a group study room; papers scatter the table, textbooks lay open with sticky notes and highlighter galore, and you are showing Haibara something on your laptop. The poor boy has been struggling in biology and the semester is only a month in, and he thought who better to ask than the person whose major includes it?

“Before the citric acid cycle, acetyl-CoA has to be made. So, remember the glycolysis cycle notes I sent you?” 

“Of course! Those notes are the only reason I passed my quiz last week. I don’t get how you understand this stuff so well, you’re like a genius.” 

You lightly knock your shoulder against his, “Stop, you’re embarrassing me.” 

“No, seriously. I’m always lost in biology class until you explain it.” 

“You’re just saying that.” You dismiss, but you still flash him an appreciative smile before going back to explaining. 

Satoru watches this whole interaction, not in a burning jealousy kind of way because he knows Yu is just beyond grateful for your help. But in a yearning way, a longing way, because he wants that kind of smile to be directed towards him once more. 

A genuine smile. 

None of your smiles have been genuine whenever he’s around. It's not even a matter of it failing to reach your eyes. Your smiles always came from your heart. And one might question Gojo and say “Well how can you tell? Looks the same to me.” 

But Satoru knows. 

He knows.

He knows every single one of your expressions, there’s no way he shouldn't. He's studied your face to the point he could write books about it. He could detail what every blink, curve of your lip, and twitch of your nose meant. He's studied you to the point it’s engraved into his heart and he’ll continue to because you have and always will be his favorite lesson. 

Then he’s watching you leave with Shoko, the two of you bickering over what you should get for dinner. She says something to you and you laugh, pure and sweet. 

Gojo starts to think that this whole “friendly” thing is never going to work. 

At least not for him. 

And maybe not for you either.

"I’m not going, I have something to do next week.” 

“Bullshit,” Naomi calls you out on your lie and Shoko nods in agreement. 

You keep your eyes laser-focused on your lab report, you don’t want them to see the sadness you’ve been doing a damn good job at hiding. 

“All you do is go to class and do your homework, you have nothing going on in your life,” Shoko adds. 

You side-eye her, your lips falling into a displeased frown. She’s right but that doesn’t mean you want her to verbalize it. And it’s not like you don’t want to go to the Marine Biology department’s fundraiser and support Nao, but it's the date that is keeping you from finding it appealing. 

May 14th. 

The date of the fundraiser. 

And the date of what would’ve been your two-year anniversary with a certain white-haired individual.

And you can’t blame your friends for not realizing what that day that is, nor do you want to tell them. You want to avoid the looks of pity and the attempts to cheer you up; all you really want to do is wallow in your room until the day passes. And you want to avoid Satoru as much as you can. 

But the way both of the girls are looking at you is telling you that your plan of sitting alone in the darkness of your room with music blasting is not going to happen. There’s no way out of this unless you tell them the truth and somehow that seems worse than just giving in and attending the event.

“What do I have to wear?” You ask with a sigh. 

Gojo sheds his suit jacket, the heat of the room and his emotions that are running on overdrive are raising his body temperature to unpleasant levels. He wants to be anywhere but here, he should be at home sleeping away the thoughts of an anniversary that never came to fruition, however, Suguru insisted he come and he would’ve declined if Kento and Yu hadn’t said they weren’t going if he didn’t. And then Geto was basically pleading with him to go and help support his girlfriend, and Gojo has always been weak to his best friend. 

So here he stands, black suit jacket hanging in the fold of his arm as he walks outside to get some fresh air. He’s surprised and maybe a little grateful that he hasn’t run into you; the sheer amount of people and the fact he basically became one with a wall in the furthest corner of the room is what really kept the two of you apart. It’s not like he didn’t want to see you, he always wants to see you. 

Satoru wants to see the dress you wore, the hairstyle you chose, and that beautiful face of yours. He wants to feel the comforting heat of your skin and be enveloped in the aroma of your sweet perfume. He just wants to be near you, but it's probably best for the both of you not to see each other on a day so heavy like this one. 

Maybe the gods above are rearranging the cards that determine your fate because the second Gojo steps outside, he’s greeted by very familiar bare shoulders and curly-ended braids . His heart beats rapidly in his chest as his eyes work in conjunction with his memory to permanently engrave this image of you in a dress that fits like someone made it drunk off the sight of you. You look like the cosmos personified, like the wonders of the universe were based on you and you only. 

His heart hurts, it hurts so much. 

You should be wearing this dress with him as you walk under the streetlights and cherry blossom petals fall on your hair and shoulders. Your hand should rest comfortably in his as you look up at him with a complaint written in your eyes- your heels are starting to hurt your feet. And then he’s scooping you up into his arms and you give him the sweetest smile as he carries you the rest of the way home. 

There’s no way he can move on from you. 

Satoru turns around, deciding going back inside and dealing with the heat is better than fantasizing about what could’ve been. The door creaks as he opens it and you whip your head around at the sound. 

“Satoru?”

You’re genuinely surprised and you don’t even notice that you used Satoru instead of Gojo. You’ve been trying to keep that distance between you by not addressing him so familiarly but the simple fact of not seeing him all night and then suddenly his right in front of your eyes is shocking you back to old habits. 

His heart pounds, his name always sounded better falling from your lips.

“Sorry, I’m not trying to bother you or anything.” He takes one step inside. 

Even if it hurts to see him, even if this day is one of the most painful. 

You never wanted to be around him so badly. 

“You’re hot.” 

Gojo's cheeks burn at your statement, if it weren’t for your deadpan voice it almost sounds like you’re complimenting him. 

“Nah, I’m fine.” 

“No, you’re a liar. I can see how red your neck is from here, just stay outside it’s fine.” 

He removes his hand from the handle, walking towards the railing of the balcony. Satoru puts a comfortable amount of distance between the two of you and he’s suddenly reminded of the similar scene that occurred at the party. He starts to wonder what conversation will happen this time. You turn your head towards him, unshed tears shining in your eyes and it takes every ounce of his strength not to immediately pull you into his arms. 

“It’s our anniversary.” You whisper out, broken. 

You don’t know why you suddenly said that but maybe you’re craving something from him. You want to be truly seen in your feelings, and oddly enough the only person who can provide comfort and truly understands what you’re going through is the man who is part of it all. 

Gojo lets out a shaky exhale, his knuckles turning white as he grips onto the railing. When you left for the other side of the world, there was so much he wanted to say to you and this might be his only chance to do so.

“When we broke up,” He starts and you stiffen at the memory but you don’t stop him, “I should've fought harder for you. I should've done more to reassure you that it would be better, I would be better.” 

Then Satoru looks at you, his expression just as broken as yours but there’s a sad smile on his face. 

“But you know I can never say no to you. And I knew at that moment even if you didn’t want to break up with me, you thought it was the right thing to do.”

You take half a step closer to him, “I never thought it was the right thing to do. I thought it was the only thing. I tried to justify our behavior in so many ways, I wanted to blame it on us being young and dumb and not knowing how to love properly but even now we aren’t that much older.” 

Your words are now replaced with silence because no matter how much you want to deny it, both of you are right. It might’ve been the right thing to do at the time and you are still young, learning to navigate the world and all the dreams and nightmares that come with it. 

But, six months apart is a long time for lovers and a lot of growth can happen when you have the time to realize where things went wrong. 

Satoru closes the space between you, draping his jacket over your goosebump-covered shoulders. You don’t move away, you allow yourself to soak in the scent of his cologne and enjoy the warmth he brings you. 

“I’m sorry.” He says softly. 

“I know. And I’m sorry too.” 

And as if to test the waters, your fingertips brush against his wrist and without a second wasted, he slips his hand into yours. 

It feels like heaven, it’s comforting in a nostalgic way. It feels oh-so-right, like the last two puzzle pieces that fit together perfectly. And then you realize the feeling never changed and nothing else will ever be enough. 

A love like this only happens when the stars align perfectly and it would be foolish to let it slip away again. 

Satoru runs his free hand through his silky hair and you look up at him with those brown eyes he loves so much. 

“I can’t do this.” He says, a little bit of frustration leaking out.

“What?” 

“I want to try again, please. I want to be yours again.” 

You look at him, examining the seriousness in his furrowed brows and unwavering eyes. The way he grips your hand like you would run away if there was even a millimeter of room. You don’t know if it’s a good idea but what’s the alternative? Living without him? 

The pause you’re taking is too long to be considered appropriate and Gojo’s skin tints pink at his outrageous request. 

“Ne-”

“Okay…” You interrupt him and his eyes widen at your answer, “But can we take it slow?”

He squeezes your hand, “Whatever it takes.” 

a/n: hope you guys enjoyed this chapter !!! also im trying to have the first chapter of the partner story up sometime next week,, also i think i might have tag this slow burn (but at the same time its not) ??

[midnightsun-if]

What’s one thing the MC could do that would get the ROs angry or annoyed?

I’ll put this in the relationship stage as those were the first things to pop into my mind.

Koda: Nothing truly gets under his skin as he tries to remain as calm as he possibly can… Koda doesn’t like being angry or annoyed — especially not at someone he loves/adores… If it were to happen with the MC? It’d probably be because of something ridiculous that wouldn’t last that long before Koda either apologized or got over the initial reaction… Something severe? Might have just been caused because he doesn’t like feeling like he’s being talked down to or his own brand of intelligence is being called into question. (Not that you can’t tease him, he’s well aware he’s not the smartest, but there’s levels… Though I don’t think that’d be an issue with the MC.)

Scarlett: Not telling her how you truly feel. In this stage in the relationship, Scarlett takes communication very seriously — given how she’s always been and how she’s aware it influences relationships… Not that you can’t ever keep something to yourself, but Scarlett will detest if you say one thing and mean the complete opposite. Communication and trust are big things for her… What do you have if you can’t even commit to either of the two?

Cyrus/Cyra: Bird jokes, typically. That’s not to say you can’t call them Birdie or something bird/fire related… They just truly enjoy bird jokes overall; there are instances where they’ll chuckle or won’t mind it as much, but they’ll typically prefer for their romantic partner to not make said jokes. (Unless they’re being a bird brain, then it’s completely fair game.)

Quinn: They’re fairly laidback, but they’re extremely loyal to certain members in their back — like their older sister — so badmouthing said members would certainly cause them to get a bit prickly, but I can’t truly think of anything else that’d make them angry/annoyed… Unless you’re just doing things to make them that way.

Caden: Tardiness/Lateness is a thing that tends to ruffle their feathers — if it’s once or twice they won’t care, but continued absence will definitely make them feel things they don’t particularly want to feel. It’s not only about being left alone, but the simple fact that you may have forgotten them — when that could never be the case for Caden… Plus, they find continued tardiness/lateness rude in a general sense too.

Sloane: The silent treatment or ignoring them. It’s something they absolutely hate. If you’re mad at them? Fine. Want to shout at them? Cool. Berate them for being an asshole? Probably deserved. But they will never appreciate or like being ignored — brings up way too many issues for them. They’d much rather you share your anger with them instead of nothing at all.

Blake: Prying. Even if it’s for a good reason. They’re willing to share a lot with you, but there will always be certain things that Blake won’t want to discuss or talk about in greater detail then they may have already shared with you. Prying on specific topics is a sure fire way of getting them annoyed (and actually angry if you continue to do so).

Reginald/Regina: Pretending like you’re interested in something they’re talking about when you’re actually not — they understand the sweetness behind the gesture, but it’s something they’ve had to deal with their entire life. If you’re not interested, then just be honest, not in a dickish way, just let them know, and they’ll try to find something else to talk about. Not everyone is into what they’re into and they’re more than fine with that. They wish to connect with you in the things you both love doing, not for one of you to pretend… (Unless it comes to Star Wars… they’ll probably still talk about Star Wars.)

[fumiyami]

51. knows every bit of gossip in 1A (either just from being observant or from Mina!!)

52. doesn’t really care for hero merch (unless it’s something like an accessory/something he can wear) but still gets it free from hawks unwillingly

53. he spaces out a lot so everyone in class 1A thinks he’s just being all broody and dark but in actuality he’s either staring at his reflection (if he’s zoning out at a mirror/window) or talking to dark shadow in his mind

54. SO GOOD at arguing and comebacks but doesn’t use that skill often

55. I imagine his parents to be like in a dark gothic gang or something like that (maybe that’s where he got his way of speaking from🤫)

56. when he’s older and a pro hero I imagine his fan base is mostly just goth kids and teenagers who look up to him!!

57. LOVES having his feathers stroked (or preened by dark shadow) but doesn’t ask for it or anything usually

58. speaking about his feathers, since they’re all over his face/head that area is warm during the winter and usually overheats in the summer

59. ALSO he hates the fact that summer is so hot since I can tell he’d be sweating if he had to do hero work like running around and fighting villains in THAT HERO COSTUME.

60. has a massive sweet tooth though not many people would expect him to

61. has a bunch of nicknames like “fumi” “mika” (one that I got from a fanfic) as in like fuMIKAge “toko” and then there’s mina who adds adjectives to the start of tokoyami like that one time she called him angryami!!

62. collects the most obscure things ever

63. once he like settles into UA and gets more confidence he sets up a secret tiktok or whatever account where he does song covers and his own original songs!! (class 1A find out and they go wild)

64. once got tricked into getting tipsy by hawks (got this one from a fic!!)

65. sometimes he wants to dress more gothic but i’ve seen how hard it is to find super cool masculine looking goth clothes☹️

66. due to the fact that he’s partially a bird whenever he gets sick the symptoms don’t show up for a while so when they do show up it’s BAD.

67. once accidentally misspelled his classmates names and no one’s letting him live it down

68. has a collection of rings

69. love language is definitely mostly gift giving!! (and all the other ones but mostly gift giving)

70. wears contacts cuz he refuses to get glasses that actually fit him and then wear them

71. as a baby (chick) he didn’t speak for like 3 years (just small chirps and stuff) until one day he just randomly started speaking full sentences?? skipped the whole starter tutorial😣

72. can and will randomly say some creepy fact like “if you nurture little bits of surgically removed brains then it will grow eyes.” “YOU’RE STARTING TO SCARE ME SCARYAMI.”

73. actually really enjoys gossiping but would never admit it

74. also loves shopping!!

75. mr aizawa’s favourite student (one of aizawa’s voice actors, english I think, told us this was true!!)

76. somehow knows who everyone has a crush on, who’s dating and who hates each other (mina pays him in apples for info on the drama they’re gossip buddies trust)

77. can mimic voices and sounds SO easily

78. he only gets really super mad when someone ignores him or goes into his room without permission!

79. can (but probably won’t) argue on why being goth and being emo are different things

80. birds sometimes follow him thinking he’s one of them (he is but would never admit it)

81. HATES quirks that can make people laugh involuntarily (he gets flashbacks into the past with miss joke😖😖)

82. isn’t as introverted as people think but is usually judged like that

83. got his red choker as a gift!!

84. LOVES collecting pins and keychains and stuff like that

85. someone once mentioned mating season to him and he still holds a grudge

86. is able to perfectly understand Shakespeare’s texts and speak like him

87. CAN ROLLER SKATE.

88. he can hit really really high notes (like think ballad of Jane doe from ride the cyclone) while singing but refuses to do that front of most people

89. makes playlists for people but in the end either forgets to show them or gets too nervous

90. once accidentally flew into a window and hawks will never let him live it down

91. planned to be a writer/journalist when he was younger

92. will subconsciously copy what other people say which is how he started saying revelry in the dark

93. SUPER ticklish but makes dark shadow come out before anyone even gets close to hearing his actual laugh

94. genuinely likes the taste of birdseed but refuses to let himself enjoy it

95. is always seen with closed eyes because he’s always just naturally tired so this is his way of resting without actually resting!

96. everyone thinks he’s always annoyed or mad or something cuz that’s the way his face looks when he’s just neutral :((

THIS IS A PART 2 OF MY OTHER HEADCANON VIDEO A BIT AGO SO THATS WHY THE NUMBERS ARE ALL WEIRD!! ALSO I LOST MOTIVATION TO DO THIS ONE SO THEY KINDA GOT WORSER EACH TIME😰

[obsessedtomone]

Unravel Yourself Before Me ⛓️ Chapter 1 - Convenience ▸Shigaraki x femReader

Summary: “Say, I’ll make you a killer deal,” he begins, the tone of his voice deceptively even, failing to mask the coldness. “If you fucking apologize to me right now, and manage to clear things up with the professor before—” He slides his sleeve just above his expensive-looking smartwatch and casually checks the time, “—the class ends, in about… mmh, give or take three minutes? I promise you won't regret this as much as you will if you do go through with this stupid shit you started with me.”

His face breaks into a slow and creepy smile as he threatens you, body emanating nothing other than incredible malice.

You wish you could turn back time and never cross his path, that stupid night at the store.

You wish you were a different, nicer person, one that knows when to bow their head or to apologize if they messed up.

But you weren’t and you won’t. Setting: University AU - No quirks (unless degenerate personalities count) Tags: Slow burn, Eventual Smut, Unhealthy/Toxic Relationships, Humiliation, Mentally Ill Reader, Angst, Hurt/Comfort, Enemies to ??? Warning: Dead Dove – Do Not Eat | Mind the tags TW: Implied Su/Self H, Dubcon, Reader has a super shitty past like actually, Shigaraki Tomura is his own warning.

AO3 Crosspost | Chain Divider by firefly-graphics

Chapters: One • Two • Three

Chapter 1 - Convenience Pitter-patter.

With a pop of your joints, you reach for the moon or the ceiling or maybe the gods above. You reach and you reach and finally you feel that satisfying stretch burn through your muscles.

What time is it anyway?

Uh-oh.

You cringe, because the birds are chirping, the first light of the day is starting to show, and because… you’ve been gaming your entire fucking Saturday night.

It’s 4:30 AM when you check your phone.

—And you could’ve been studying, could’ve been in touch with your project buddies, to at least send them your part of the project in time. But you didn’t and you won’t.

Not at least until tomorrow anyway.

Tomorrow, probably around ten minutes before your group’s deadline.

Yeah, you’re that special kind of asshole.

Looking around yourself, you realize that—all of the sudden, the room feels so fucking stuffy you could suffocate. It’s messy and god fucking knows when you opened your goddamn windows last.

So that’s exactly what you decide to spend your next action point on, as your mind briefly wandered back to your past few Valorant matches. 

You actually stayed up late, trying your best to climb to Diamond and dealing with the hyper-misogyny of random pathetic incel teammates who immediately shit themselves the moment a woman opens her mouth on mic.

Whatever.

At least you weren’t living in your mommy’s basement, swimming in a sea of trash, right?

You glance around your room and wince.

Okay, maybe you’re swimming in like—a puddle of trash. 

But that’s okay, because you’re definitely way above those goblins on a societal level… right?

You don’t dwell very much on that particular thought.

With a yawn, you reach for the windows and open them wide. The cool air of soft autumn rain invades your stale room the second you open them, replacing the warm stuffiness of your man-cave and filling your lungs with fresh oxygen.

You wonder how long it’s been raining for already, when you feel your stomach—the one vital organ you’ve purposefully been ignoring all night—growling. What did you eat today?

When the fuck did you eat last, actually?

“Uuugh—” you whine, finally feeling the shakiness of your hands and the overall weakness of your body. 

On your way towards your joke of a kitchen, you decide what flavor cup noodles to scarf down quickly before you hit the hay. Your internal debate is torn between two particular flavors, before you open the cupboard and realize—there aren’t any instant noodles left.

God fucking damn it.

You briefly glance down over your sorry excuse of an outfit—one that would put homeless people to shame—made up of plain black sweats and an oversized black hoodie, noting how you should also maybe perhaps take a fucking shower after literally sweat-gaming all day.

Fuck it, you think, taking a total of two seconds to decide that this was good enough for the world, before you set off to the nearest twenty-four hour convenience store.

So you grab your phone, your keys, and that’s what you do.

────────

Despite the hints of a rising sun, it’s still pretty dark outside. The air smells like fresh morning rain and wet concrete.

You don’t mind, because to your own delight, it couldn’t be quieter around here.

The neighborhood you live in is incredibly sketchy, but you couldn’t complain given it’s barely a fifteen minute walk to your university and the rent to your rundown one-bedroom apartment is dirt fucking cheap.

It suits the broke ass bitch that you are and you like it this way—one, because you have a thing for sketchy run-down places and two… because it’s yours and yours alone.

The totally-legal-and-definitely-wont-blind-you pepper spray you bought from the shadiest internet store sits snugly in the pocket of your hoodie, one hand occasionally fidgeting and feeling the rim of the object. 

Knowing you have something to use in your defense makes you feel safer when you’re outside. You never know when something unpleasant could go down.

You’re so used to being on-guard after all the years of shitty experiences. 

Of being on your own.

Of stupid shit that kept happening to you.

So you walk, if only with a smear of anxiety, because you still need to stay vigilant and not put the universe to a fucking test.

The first thing you notice when you waltz into the corner store, is how goddamn bright the fluorescent lights are. They’re far too bright for your tired eyes that are used to endless hours of staring into dimmed screens with the lights off.

The second thing you notice is how eerily quiet it is inside—save for the whirring, clicking and occasional gurgling of the refrigerators in the back. Or at least that’s where you think the sounds come from.

It’s odd that the current shift didn’t think of turning on the radio to fill the silence—to make this place feel less like a ‘bad end’ location from a horror game—but a quick glance towards the staff at the counter and their wireless earpieces tells you that they couldn’t give less of a fuck about the store’s ambiance.

Not that it matters, when you’re too busy surveying the shelves in search of some food, of something edible, the ‘food’ in question consisting mostly of snacks and other nutritionless garbage that would give nine point five out of ten doctors a cardiac arrest.

Speaking of heart failure, you find yourself in front of the refrigerated drink aisle, using all of your brain wrinkles to make your hardest decision yet.

Which one of the canned heart attack flavors are you gonna buy today?

You hum, spending a good three minutes (give or take) thinking, and when you finally go ahead, reaching with your fingertips to grab the energy drink—

“Hey,” a low and grating voice speaks right behind you.

The sound makes you fucking jump.

You turn around with a scowl and then—straight out of a comedy skit, you feel like you’re staring at your male doppelgänger.

An extremely sketch-looking guy, wearing black sweats that match your own, the hood of his equally dark colored hoodie up and covering a messy mop of white hair.

And then you notice his… his intense crimson colored eyes, drilling a hole through the middle of your fucking skull.

If only looks could kill.

“Did you need something?” You fail to mask the venom in your voice, aimed at him for no good reason.

A skin care routine, you think.

Not like you bothered with one either, but at least your face isn’t disintegrating into disgusting flakes yet, unlike his punk ass.

Motherfucker couldn’t have waited two fucking minutes for you to pick something? 

Where the fuck do you have to be at like 4:50 in the morning?!— you scoff, but the words remain yet unspoken.

The hooded figure raises his hand to scratch at his pale neck, seemingly annoyed at your shitty attitude towards him. 

He just has to meet the worst type of bitch at this ungodly hour, on a Saturday no less—and he isn’t having it. 

Red eyes stare you down for a moment, watching your face scrunch up at his sight.

“You’ve been standing in front of the drinks for like ten fucking minutes, ugly ass bitch.” He finally claps back, and with that, your eyes narrow. “Pick something or get the hell outta my way.”

“I was just about to, asshole,” you reply, voice betraying you and ultimately cracking while you seethe. “Grab your stupid ass drink so you can finally go home to the boys and cry about not getting any.” 

You finish your sentence and stand aside for him, motioning to the drinks all the while his eyes widen in what you presumed to be shock—but before he has the chance to respond, you hurry the fuck up and leave.

The poor employee at the counter who saw the scene playing out (store ain’t that big, now), seems to want nothing to do with any of this. Graveyard shifts must be really fucking fun when you’re graced with not one, but two annoying idiots.

You drop all of your items on the counter and while the cashier is scanning them, you pat all four of your pockets, looking for your wallet to pay.

Until it dawns on you.

No fucking way—

Ain’t no fucking way your stupid, braindead ass forgot to bring money.

This isn’t fucking happening to you right now.

Especially since the embodiment of patience is standing just a few inches behind you, shifting uncomfortably from one leg to the other and waiting with bated breath for you to finally pay and get lost.

“Uhh. Do—Do you guys keep tabs open?” you ask, recoiling at the sound of your own voice, scratching at the back of your head sheepishly and almost whispering the second half so the guy behind you wouldn’t be able to hear it. “I kind of… forgot my wallet at home.”

The cringe that is already coursing through your veins, deepens infinitely when you see the employee stare at your face, as if you grew a second head.

“No.”

Your humiliating predicament makes the guy behind you break into the creepiest snicker. You shoot him a glare and dare him to say something, but he’s too busy laughing at you.

God, if only the ground would swallow you whole, right fucking now.

With the worst shades of shame coloring your face, you turn around to leave, swearing to never set foot in this fucking establishment ever again. Nevermind that it’s the only store close to your house.

Before you have the chance to make good on your promise, the white haired guy reaches out—if a bit hesitant—and grabs your arm.

What’s the chance a nuke would crash into this fucking store and wipe out your entire existence, together with whoever is here to fucking witness this? Or maybe aliens could finally make contact with planet Earth and take you the fuck away. Getting your ass probed sounds infinitely more appealing than this incredible embarrassment you feel in front of the two assholes.

“Hold.”

Your pathetic gaze lifts from the ground and when you meet his eyes he looks—amused?

“What. Let go of me, man.” You panic, trying to free yourself from his grip, but his fingers are firm. Is that blood under his fingernails?

“I’ll pay,” he offers, a disturbing smirk playing on his dry lips.

This fucking guy.

“N-No, I’m good. Thanks.” Your voice is shaking more than you want it to and you feel tears finally prick at your eyes.

Why do you live your life this way? Why are you so fucking pathetic—especially in front of assholes like him?

Why are you still so weak? 

After everything you’ve been through?

You try once more to shake him off of you, but he’s deceptively strong for his build, and doesn’t relent now that he’s got you where he wants you to be.

“It’s okay, really. This just made my night so I’m gonna pay for ya,” he says, the almost-even tone in his voice not matching the way his creepy smile seems to be getting wider.

He swiftly pulls out some scrunched-up bills from the pocket of his sweats, slipping them to the employee who could not give less of a fuck about whoever pays first, grabbing your already-bagged purchase and basically shoving it to you as he gives his best ‘Come again soon!’ bullshit line that actually translates to ‘Please fucking leave the store already’.

“How about that, huh? Now you owe me one, little bitch,” he whispers into your ear, voice low and full of grit sending chills down your spine and rendering you absolutely speechless.

Without sparing you so much as a second glance, he finally pays for his own shit and leaves the store in a smug stride.

You could basically read the “EZ” he wrote in slash all chat while destroying your fucking nexus.

What a horrible fucking night, you think to yourself, hurrying to go home as well.

Your only comforting thought being that you wouldn’t have to see his stupid fucking pasty face ever again.

[anti-dazai-blog]

34- To kill two mockingbirds with one stone (and other complaints)

Welcome back to the Anti-Dazai Series!! 

I’s been around 5 months since the last time I’ve posted. I’m back now. I’ll be here until school starts again (this is a joke actually because school starts on Thursday. I’m here for the next two days until I’ll disappear again.) 

Thank you all for sticking around regardless of my inconsistent posting schedule and tendency to disappear for months once school gets busy. I really truly appreciate it. And to people who appear in my notes often—I recognize your urls and love you all individually. Thank you so much for enjoying this series, I hope to continue creating content you enjoy. 

Now onto what you’re all here for: grievances with Dazai.

————————————————————————————

Atsushi and Akutagawa are now face to face on the Moby Dick. This was orchestrated by Dazai, as a part of his artificial rivalry-making project.

The moment Atushi sees Akutagawa, he begins having his standard trauma flashbacks of all the times Akutagawa attacked him—notably, the times previously mentioned in the anti-dazai series, where Dazai provoked Akutagawa into Attacking Atsushi. During those entries, I’ve noted that all of these attacks would not have happened had Dazai not created a personal reason for rivalry between Akutagawa and Atsushi by repeatedly mocking Akutagawa through saying Atsushi’s better than him in every way.

So we already know that Dazai was responsible for Akutagawa’s attacks on Atsushi, as well as those attacks being something that didn’t happen by accident through a butterfly affect Dazai couldn’t have predicted—on the contrary, causing Akutagawa to attack was the sole goal of his provocations. What we now know, however,  is that these attacks did more damage than physical. 

Atsushi’s mental state as always been.. bad. Not good. Right from the start, we see him constantly reliving his trauma from his days at the orphanage whenever anything triggers it. While it’s unclear if the other characters are aware of how severe his trauma is or how frequently he relives it, I find it hard to believe that a character like Dazai, who’s constantly shown to be practically omniscient, would be entirely unaware of Atsushi’s poor mental state. Yet he gives him more trauma to add to his never-ending pile. 

As per usual, Atsushi and Akutagawa spar until Dazai puts a stop to it. Ironic, considering he also put a start to it, but I digress. Dazai, who has been guiding Atsushi from afar through a comm device, tells Atsushi that the way to get Akutagawa off his back is to tell him that Dazai wants to tell him something, throw the comm, and run. 

Atsushi does this—and as Dazai predicted, Akutagawa chases the comm, giving Atsushi an opening to run. 

Akutagawa devotes his entire life to Dazai. Dazai doesn’t spare him five seconds unless he’s using that time to antagonize him under the guise of training. But Akutagawa would prefer this antagonization over being ignored. 

Dazai knows this, and knows that his current goal is buying Atsushi more time to complete his mission. Or so he claims. Because if he were actually acting on that goal, he would have stayed on the comm and had a long, drawn-out conversation with Akutagawa. Or he didn’t even have to do that much—he could just stay on long enough to say “don’t attack Atsushi, I’ll never speak to you again if you attack him today.” 

But as we know, Dazai’s goal is not to help Atsushi or ensure his safety and wellbeing. He instead is working towards establishing an artificial rivalry that serves no purpose other than being an entertaining side project for him to work on. [I’ve elaborated more on this in other posts, but in short—the “second generation of double black” truly serves no purpose and other ability users can do what they do much better than them.] 

So instead of speaking a word to Akutagawa, he decides to kill two birds with one stone by hanging up—antagonizing Akutagawa while furthering his and Atsushi’s rivalry.

Because of this, I titled this entry “to kill two mockingbirds with one stone”—merging the common expression with the name of a famous book. Originally, I was planning on titling this one “kill two birds with one stone,” but that expression has a neutral to positive connotation. It’s usually convenient to get two things done at once. “to kill two mockingbirds” sets the tone much better.

For those unfamiliar with the origins of the book’s title, “To Kill a Mockingbird” is names as such after a very minor yet significantly symbolic scene in the book. The protagonist’s father gifts her and her brother air rifles, and explains that they can aim at any birds they see, since they eat people’s crops and destroy their gardens. However, they must never aim at a mockingbird. Their father explains that unlike most other birds, mockingbirds don’t harm the crops or gardens. They don’t cause harm and therefore they shouldn’t be harmed.

It's a repeated theme throughout the book—harm should not be caused to the innocent. It will be—it always will be—there will always be people out there who, through malice or thoughtlessness or stupidity, harm people who never did anything to them. But regardless, each person must try their best to avoid killing mockingbirds.

And now back to Akutagawa. 

Akutagawa may not seem innocent at first glance, but he doesn’t kill mindlessly. He doesn’t kill for fun. He doesn’t get any enjoyment or pleasure from it. He kills when he finds it to be necessary. Yes, he can be provoked into attacking Atsushi, but that’s about it, and that’s because of the deeply rooted emotions and trauma he has surrounding his former mentor. 

And as for Atsushi—he’s undeniably innocent here. He never asked to be here, he never even asked to join the agency [and similarly, Akutagawa did not intend to join the mafia]. Yet he’s dragged into all of this and is now forced to go on this mission that he’s underqualified for. 

Yet Dazai finds a way to harm both of them at once—Akutagawa, by ingraining his worthlessness into him further by pretending he was willing to talk to him, just to hang up the moment he gets the comm—a needlessly cruel way of going about it, designed specifically to hurt him. 

And Atsushi, by provoking Akutagawa further through making a blatant displaying of showing how he’s in constant communication with Atsushi but won’t say a single word to Akutagawa—thus sending Akutagawa deeper into his own self-loathing and need to prove himself—which he only knows how to do by attacking Atsushi.

So here we have two dead mockingbirds. How tragic. Let’s mourn their loss. 

On top of all that’s been mentioned, there’s one more thing to say about the harm caused by this plan—

Atsushi was sent in alone under the guise that he would be guided by Dazai the whole time. Like I said, this mission is something he’s unqualified for, and although it’s not impossible for him to succeed alone, that was not what he agreed to when getting the outline for this mission. 

Dazai wants to taunt Akutagawa so badly that he was willing to cut off Atsushi’s only contact with the outside world. Now Atsushi’s stuck, alone in a giant floating whale in the sky with two powerful ability users who would attack him on sight. 

So with that, we have the beginning of what will soon be the final boss fight of this arc. 

Please stick around until my next semester is over for more Anti Dazai Series content—I will be back—and if my workload is light this semester, I’ll post a few times during the next few months. Thank you so much for your patience 

[nivisob]

WELCOME ONE AND ALL… TO THE

WOLF ZIRKUS!

I’m your beloved ringleader, ANDREAS / FENRIR / TED / KOLLIN !

past users : @fasterthanasp33dingbullet @jysian @slopmasc @stylerzz04 @thqtcher

Preferably only call me Andreas if you know me irl

I’m an autistic (+ a bunch of other stuff) system with adhd as well who literally doesn’t do anything but shitpost on this account. I AM A MINOR. DNI if you are nsfw.

Sometimes I’ll post about my special interests but most of this is just a glimpse into my sick and twisted head… heh.

(You can legally kill me for that joke, it’s encouraged actually)

LABELS ᡣ𐭩

My labels are fucking bonkers, so do bare with me:

Intersex nonhuman (angel/goat) transfemmasc boygirl attracted to men. He/him or it/he but please use she/her if you don’t know me very well. Same goes for terms

INTERESTS ᡣ𐭩

They change a lot but here are my main ones

(Bold for hyperfixations, italics for special interests)

MUSIC : siouxsie and the banshees, the cure, sign crushes motorist, bauhaus, harley poe, icp, tv girl, tally hall and it’s side projects, rob zombie, GHOST, teenage disaster, johnnascus, afourteen, GHOST and pals, femtanyl, MAILPUP, S3RL, MF DOOM, Tyler the creator

MEDIA : zero day, ride the cyclone, mandela catalogue, don’t feed the muse, lacey’s games, azumanga daioh, smiling friends, pizza time pizza, happy meat farms, walten files, chuckle sandwich, johnny the homicidal maniac, handsome man friends, deadpool, popee the performer

CONTENT CREATORS : ted nivison, slimecicle, alex bale, wendigoon, schlatt (because of chuckle sandwich, dni mcyt schlatt likers), jerma, flamingo, kubz scouts, doctor nowhere

GAMES : re4, hotline miami, postal, cry of fear, afraid of monsters, lollipop chainsaw, tf2, papa’s freezeria, overwatch, miitopia, , Mouthwashing, roblox

MISC : psychology, horror movies as a whole (i went to horrorcon 2024!), computer science/programming, hacktivism, human anatomy, really anything to do with brains and how trauma affects it???

DNI ᡣ𐭩

if ur any of my bf’s opps (you are also my opp) ,under 14, over 21 (unless we’re close and have known eachother) (mutual @scouts-cosplays is immune to this rule) (he’s cool, hello oomf), racists, homophobes/transphobes, zionists, MAPs and zoos (I used to hunt your kind for sport back in my day… [said in old man voice]), nsfw blogs, melanie martinez fans, zionists, pro-contact paraphiles, exclusionists, radfems/radqueers, pro/comshippers, j.k rowling / harry potter fans, mcyt fans (specifically tommy likers, you make me uncomfortable), vivziepop likers, IF YOU’RE GONNA CALL ME OBSESSED WITH ANYTHING I LIKE. YOU SPECIFICALLY CAN DIE!!

FUN FACTS / BYI ᡣ𐭩

⛦ I struggle with coherency as a whole so I will probably be confusing to talk to some days. Be patient

⛦ I have really bad memory loss, it’s nothing personal if I forget who you are

⛦ In my culture, a certain kind of bird that can turn its head 360° is bad luck. Do not send me this bird or talk about it near me. Don’t even mention it’s name, it’s bad luck and will send me into a panic attack

⛦ I’m a people pleaser, I’m also very emotional ^__^

⛦ I LIKE MEN!!! I AM GAY!!! I AM A GAY MAN!!!

⛦ tone tags are needed for me. I also DO NOT like random ass people being mean to me as a joke. If we JUST met through a mutual friend, YOU ARE NOT COOL TO CALL ME SLURS AND BE A DICK!!!

MY FAVORITE CLOWNS ᡣ𐭩

@stealingyourteeth ᡣ𐭩 ⛦ @spirals-and-stars-s ⛦ @imdeadandimeatingyourbrains ⛦ @orndbfksbshdsns ⛦

[luckytidbit]

Food for thought.

Ok so I've seen an anonymous ask on someone’s blog recently about people being rude in the unwind community, (which first of all, if you’re being rude, shame on you.) I've seen mention of, actually no I’ll take it verbatim. “I like scrolled by multiple of peoples posts and fics about like theories and stuff, and most of them have people getting mad over them or feeling the need to prove it wrong? Like I get it, but it's just an idea 😭”  This community is pretty small and I haven’t seen any other unwind theory posts lately (Unless this person is talking about ao3, I’m not on there.), so I’m left to assume this ask is about the “Connor’s brain coping after his unwinding theory.” And the reblog I left on it, so let’s break that down shall we?

Personally, I grew up on Film and Game Theory so I’ve never seen debunking a theory as something that’s rude, just a part of a community helping another have the correct facts. Which by the way, @korokeea, if I’ve upset you, I am deeply sorry, it was never my intention to do so. My reblog was supposed to be seen as playful banter. (Side note, dream endings are very amateur, don’t do them unless you know what you’re doing. Even I wouldn’t do them, (I think I’m amateur anyway <:D.))

Also wanted to add that I should be using tone indicators, and that also I’ve seen examples of people whose first language isn’t English not understanding Western satire, so my apologies if I’ve confused you.

Now that I’ve addressed the main point, there was also something else I wanted to bring up.

This is obviously a parody of LIVE SLUG REACTION I used to add to my reblogs of Conland content (Connor x Roland), I also might have confused people doing this. I don’t think Conland is anyone’s cup of tea, personally, I see it as a crack ship that lives rent-free in my head, but I can understand how I could’ve confused someone. I honestly do like A Dog With A Bird At Your Door A Lot, even if the notes say “I hate gay people.” (Like, C’mon now Kuromi.)

Honestly, I came here to create art and not be judged for it, I have one to two irl friends that I see almost daily. The rest of it are just classmates that will turn on me the moment I say something that doesn’t fit their dialogue. (If you get what I’m saying, I have to say the right thing or they’ll look at me funny.) I’m honestly super stressed and pretty prone to anxiety right now, graduation, prom, removal of wisdom teeth via going under (anaesthesia), you name it! So you can see why I find a great sense of escapism in Tumblr.

Lastly, I wanted to say that in this community it is almost impossible to create micro-communities because of our small size. You CANNOT be vague or make inside jokes because almost everyone follows each other. On the original ask post that I first talked about, the responder mentioned a “that one guy” and my poor mutual @bopeisdope thought they could be that one guy. (Which is completely wrong, she and @lazysailor are the sweetest people I have ever met here. Oof sorry side tangent.)

Anyway If you made it through this thing, thanks for letting me get this off my chest.

[thecheshirerat]

Dear Aubrey

(danbrey fic for @tazsapphicweek ! this has been so fun. I'll put it on AO3 if anyone wants, but idk how collections work. also the prompt was technically "home" but I've done like three based on that prompt so...)

Dear Aubrey, 

Do you know how many casserole dishes I’ve washed for the privilege of control over the TV? Jake said that if I keep putting on Supernatural I’ll owe him three bags of the fancy squid chips he likes just for his suffering. 

That’s not it. 

Dear Aubrey, 

I’ve been watching Supernatural. You were right, it’s pretty good. 

Dammit. 

No. 

Dear Aubrey, 

They didn’t have TV shows in Sylvain. You know that. You’ve been there. But of the three that I’ve encountered so far, Supernatural seems pretty good. Definitely better than streaming old episodes of America's Test Kitchen, which is all Barclay wants to watch.

FUCK.

Dear Aubrey, 

Do you know how many perfectly good sketchbook pages I’ve spent, trying to draft a proper letter to you? 

I know you’re not, like. Living far away. You’re going to be back in a few hours, actually, probably, unless you’re killed, but I don’t think you will be, and then you’ll eat something terrible for you and pass out like, two floors above me. 

Maybe I could pass this to you through the vents. 

Did you know that passing notes between bunk beds is common to both our worlds? Sometimes I imagine you’re in the bunk above me, and we could just, talk. In the darkness. About everything. 

The truth is, I’ve got a lot to say. But you’re not here, so I’m writing it down. In my sketchbook. I really should buy a notebook or something. 

Goddamnit. 

I could’ve sketched so many cedar branches on this. 

Dear Aubrey, 

This is going to sound insane, but you smell like home. A little smoky, a little like flash-paper, but there’s also this strong ginger smell. That part is familiar. It’s orange and spicy and makes my teeth flinch in their illusion. 

When you walked by the other day it felt like every spark of heat in my body rushed towards you, like there’s a current between us. What do you guys call it, bird bumps?

For a moment, I was just, frozen. And then you looked over my shoulder at the vase of flowers I was drawing and said something like, “Oh my gosh, that’s so cool!” And you joked that I could make hundreds of dollars online if I drew Deacon Winchester. Your hand brushed my shoulder, and all the warmth came back, just like that. 

I’ve never felt anything like it.

Well, I have. You know about the crystal, right? It felt kind of like touching that. 

God, Dani. Don’t bring that into this. 

Dear Aubrey,

I’ve spent so long trying not to stand out.

I can have my identity, so long as it's quiet enough that no one looks too closely. 

I can doodle on the cover of my sketchbook. I can be the quirky alt girl who doesn’t have her license at the age of… what age do I tell people. I don’t even remember. I can stare into the mirror, smiling at the freckles that show up on my nose, and people will forgive me for not wearing makeup, but they can’t see my skin when it glows, they can’t see my teeth. They must never see my teeth. 

You, on the other hand. Your flashy gestures, your vibrant hair, your jacket that you can barely see under all the pins. When you walk, they clink, alerting people (people whose skin didn’t tingle the moment you arrived, people who are not me) that you’re here. You’ve got an identity strong and colorful enough to be armor. You wear your teeth on the outside. 

I want to know what’s under all that. Not to be- nevermind. 

I want to know what it’s all protecting.

Or maybe, it’s protecting us. 

Dear Aubrey, 

I miss Sylvain a lot. 

It’s hard to describe the feeling of missing your former planet. It’s like an ache, but sharper. It’s hard, and scratchy, and it eats a cavern inside of me. It’s empty in here. It tingles. My pain chimes, and the chimes echo. 

It chafes at you, when the world you’re in is not yours. I don’t belong here, and Earth has no qualms about reminding me. Alien customs. Alien holidays. Alien people, but… not so much you. 

It went away, the other day, when you touched me. Just for a second, I was full. 

In that second, I felt so free. I felt so untethered. I felt like I could go and be anywhere as long as it was with you. So, not untethered. Re-tethered. 

Sometimes I imagine there’s a string between us, and when I see you fidgeting with your fingers, it’s being pulled, looped and tied. I want you to make me into jewelry, to set me around your neck. I want to swing there, next to that gemstone you always wear. I want your heartbeat to warm my skin.

To be a vampire is to know that you are empty, and that other people fill you up. 

Here you are, with all this vitality. If I soaked myself in it, if I tucked myself like a bunny rabbit into your arms, if I bottled up vials of flame to warm my bath and make my tea, would you even notice? I don’t want to hurt anyone. Sometimes I feel like I’m scraping away at the walls of a cave inside me, and one day my willpower will collapse. I keep shoring up my inhibitions. 

Why does it feel like I’ve awoken from the most restful sleep of my life after talking to you? Why do I feel relieved when you brush my arm? I just want to close my eyes. I want to take off this disguise. I want to follow you. 

God, I barely even know you. 

This is so weird. I’m sorry. 

Dear Aubrey, 

I have one episode left of season five of Supernatural. I thought I’d take your advice about stopping there. And now I get the joke you made about chevy impalas! 

Do you want to watch the last episode together? 

Love, 

Sincerely, 

Yours,

Dani <3

PS: See on the back my drawing of Dr. Harris Bonkers :)

[jodilin65]

WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 28, 2018 Still feeling okay and sleeping well though my heart goes aflutter at times. It’s different than when I first started getting palpitations. At first, the palpitations were just my heart beating a little harder and more obvious yet my HR seemed the same as usual. This, however, feels like a cross between a flutter and a vibration. I also felt a strange pulsing sensation on the left side of my neck just above my collarbone but after all the tests I’ve had and not having any other symptoms, I doubt anything is wrong.

Had partial runs today but I think that’s due to diet changes. So I’m definitely going back to what I had last week which will consist of less meat and sodium. Still doing pretty well with cutting back on the sugar and soda.

Tom stopped by the dentist on the way home from work yesterday, paid what the joke of an insurance company declined to pay, and rescheduled my cleaning and checkup for the same day I see the dermatologist which was also rescheduled due to Tom’s busy work week the week before. So on the 21st, I will have two appointments in Folsom and Roseville. It’s always better not to have to have them, but when I do it’s great to shoot two birds with one stone. Plus, I always look forward to seeing Kathleen. :-)

Last night’s dreams were too vague to really be worth noting so I’ll skip that and just say that my Lorazepam has expired and for now I’m not going to request a refill. So I better not have any major anxiety attacks! I haven’t since Stacey EMDR’d me so I should be okay. I sure hope so, anyway. I still have scattered, random bouts of anxiety but not at the epic levels I used to have. There’s still a chance I might have to have my medication adjusted.

So Aly gave me her take on Kathleen and while I know she couldn’t see the way she’d look at me or hear the things she’d say, and even though she also thinks she’s the type that’s friendly to everyone based on the promo video I shared with her, she agrees there might be something there. She said it’s one thing to say you’re in someone’s prayers but another to say you’re in their heart.

I agree. As soon as she added her heart in her note, that made me wonder. While there is more to suggest she sees a little more in me than usual, there are still a few things that suggest otherwise, so unless she bluntly says so either way, only she knows what she really feels. Between my age and being with Tom for so long and loving him more and more each year, it’s nice to be considered special to someone as pleasant as her, but I can’t actually imagine myself going any further with her than hugs and maybe a quick kiss here and there, no matter what’s on her mind.

TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 27, 2018 Yesterday I looked online to see what we were expecting in the mail that day and recognized Kathleen’s handwriting on one of the envelopes. Remembering that she was to be sending us a bill, I found a part of me wishing, almost hoping, that she would enclose something with it. Something nice that would make me smile, even though I wasn’t sure what. Well, sometimes our wishes come true because there was a note at the bottom of the summary saying it was great talking to me and that I was in her prayers and heart. A nonbeliever in prayer or not, that put an instant smile on my face. I had felt run down all morning, almost as if another cold was trying to set in, but between that and a second cup of coffee, I definitely perked up. This was no doubt the only bill that ever made me smile, LOL.

LOL, should I disappoint her, though, and tell her I’ve tested it and that prayer doesn’t work? Seriously, this was very nice and really made me smile. She’s so sweet. I just wonder if there’s something about me or if she’s like this with everyone.

I also still think experience is what makes you a believer… or not. Okay, I don’t have to have experienced France to know it exists, but had I not had so many dream premonitions I probably wouldn’t believe in that either. It’s a matter of percentages for me. I did a prayer experiment several months ago and only one of the things came to fruition… Not enough to convince me. But hey, if it works for others, more power to them!

The only weird thing was that this form didn’t have a place to insert a credit card number. Tom said that before there was always a box present for that. Hmm… A simple error, or a means of getting me to call her again. If she wants to chat again all she has to do is call or email me. Either way, Tom’s going to stop by sometime on his way home from work since they’re right on the way.

For a fleeting moment, but only a fleeting moment, I wished I were in touch with Andy so he could give me his take on Kathleen and whether or not he thought she likes me. As in REALLY likes me. I think I know what he would say, though, and I’m waiting for Aly, who always seems to have issues keeping up regularly with everything but texting, to check out her note which I took a picture of. I’ll always cherish it unless Kathleen turns out to be crazy or a real asshole. Really, though, I’ve never known anyone else to have such issues with being able to get online and keep up on Twitter and other sites regularly. Even with the shitty connection we had in Auburn, we were still able to do things like that.

Sometimes I wonder if there’s a catch to Kathleen. I mean I’m still not 100% sure she really does want to be my friend or is really all that into me simply because of the details she doesn’t always remember, like that time she asked when I was coming in and didn’t even remember my name. Then there’s the fact that she didn’t have any response to my telling her that I let my liberal sideshow in my books, and of course, no book sales since either. I told her months ago she could look me up and haven’t received any email or anything from her since our chat, even if that wasn’t long ago, so I’m not really sure what to think. When I go to the office or she needs to call me about something, she’s pretty obvious with the way she feels, but then she doesn’t take the initiative to reach out to me in between these times, so who knows what’s really on her mind? If she’s all that involved in the church and really into God and prayer and all that stuff she may be a lot more closed-minded than I thought. Plus, she was saying how cute a couple Tom and I made and things like that. Those who are truly conservative aren’t usually keen on the idea of being friends with people like me, so we’ll see. She mostly acts like she’s attracted to me and wants to be my friend but then there’s this part of her that suggests otherwise. Lastly, there’s a possibility I have her all wrong and I’m mistaking someone who’s extremely friendly and complimentary for being attracted to me. As they say, there’s a first time for everything, and even though I haven’t been wrong with these kinds of things yet, maybe this time I am. Only time will tell.

I have to see if I can bump the dermatologist up a week because there’s a big update going on the week of the 12th at work. I have a feeling it’s not going to be that easy in which case I will probably just forget it and then reschedule my dental cleaning. This rash hasn’t killed me yet and it’s just a minor annoyance as opposed to anything serious or debilitating in any way. I just can’t believe I’m going to be able to get anything before May because they always seem to be booked up a few months in advance. I can probably get in sooner with a foreign male doctor, but it’s not that important unless it gets worse and I think it would have by now if it was going to.

Actually, I just jumped online and checked for OTC treatments for lichen planus and found something that might be worth trying. However, they were able to bump me up a week for an appointment with the physician’s assistant so Tom can reschedule me when he goes to pay the dentist. Especially since I don’t think there will be a follow-up or anything. I think the PA will be able to give me a list of the best possible remedies for what I have. My teeth are more important than my skin right now. I just think the word cavity and I get them.

The sun was warm while the air was cool when I was out jogging earlier. Only a 25% chance of rain tomorrow and a 70% chance the next day.

Last night in my dreams I ran into Adonis somewhere and gave him a big hug.

Then in another dream, I was running through a building in the late afternoon holding a camera in one hand. I’m not sure what I was looking for or expected to see, but when I didn’t find anything suspicious, I headed to a mini cafeteria or restaurant of some kind and found Mitch working behind the counter. I asked to try a sample of some fancy dessert that was really sweet and chocolatey. It was delicious. He told me it was really good and I should get a piece. I said, “Yeah, I’ll have a piece.” Then I was looking toward the window and noticing the darkening sky. I then remembered I left a friend waiting for me outside and hoped she wasn’t getting too impatient and that the buses were still running.

MONDAY, FEBRUARY 26, 2018 Signing in on this rainy morning as the turkeys gobble away and of course there are the “off-key trumpets.” It’s better than landscaping sounds and motorcycles. Someone was hammering early yesterday morning but it didn’t last long. Oh, how nice it is to be able to concentrate on what I’m doing without having to crank up some music or sound machines to drown out the loud equipment, traffic, etc. I still miss the summer heat, though. Saturday morning we asked Alexa for a weather report and she mentioned snow flurries.

“I did NOT just hear that!” I said as Tom laughed his ass off. It was too clear and then too warm to snow, though.

But again I almost feel like I’ve got a cold coming on. My throat is a little scratchy, my head feels heavy, and I feel a bit rundown, too.

I skipped my meds today because I felt a little on edge yesterday.

Eliminating sugar has dropped me a couple of pounds but I doubt I’ll lose much more if anything at all. Tammy has lost 76 pounds which means she’s about 188 pounds. OMG, that’s less than a 40-pound difference between us! Can’t believe she suddenly just up and lost her appetite, though. I’m guessing she started a medication that suppressed her appetite.

My book Campus Games was released yesterday!

I was pleased to see that the new season of Bates Motel is on Netflix so I’ve been watching that.

Went to Walgreens yesterday and got some Fantasy Coconut perfume, Heiress perfume by Paris Hilton in a pretty pink glittery bottle, and this interesting 4D Barbie coloring book. When you use that app she appears to be dancing on the page of the coloring book and you can still see whatever’s in the background. For someone that’s into high-tech stuff, it’s pretty cool.

We also went to Sam’s where he got gas and we got some food, too. I just got a big box of Chinese chicken fried rice.

I ordered some incense yesterday but not oils to make my own with. I’ll get that in a few months or so. For now, I got some ready-made fragrances like:

Drakkar Noir Driven Egyptian Musk Escape Eternity Fierce Halo Issey Miyake Jasmine Flower Jamaican Sunrise Lavender Sage Mango Madness Money Blessing Obama Paradise Patchouli Flower Rain Raspberry Crystal Rose Secret Crush Strawberry Fields Style in Play Tommy Girl Vanilla Musk Wet Kisses Warm and Sensual

An ad led me to Babbel where you can take a sample language learning lesson in a few different languages, so I learned some basic Indonesian phrases, even though I’ve never had a desire to learn Indonesian in particular. The cool thing is that you speak what you’ve learned and it only lets you pass if you speak it well enough. If I didn’t have a knack for languages and if I hadn’t already learned others, I’m sure it would’ve laughed at me big time.

I’m using some questions I’ve been asked as writing prompts. I will answer one of them today quickly. “If I’m sure the afterlife doesn’t exist, then why do so many people think it does?”

First of all, I’m not 100% sure of anything. I just think it’s too hard for most people to accept that death could be the end and therefore telling themselves they “live on” is their way of holding onto their loved ones. I think a lot of beliefs are what we want them to be. God is what people want Him to be. If you want to believe there’s something up there that’s good, that loves you, that’s got your back, that will never give you more than you can handle (even though something’s going to kill us all someday), and that’s given you “free will” even if that basically means it won’t intervene in most cases when bad things happen to you, then that’s probably what you’ll believe.

Me? I don’t have all the answers but I do tend to go by science unless I see something that suggests otherwise. With so much good and so much bad in the world and then with myself having gone through so much good and bad in life, I really don’t know what to think. My gut instinct says there probably isn’t a God or an afterlife. Humans are basically made up of the same cells, bacteria, water and other substances that you’ll find in bugs and weeds. But they don’t go on to an afterlife, do they?

Last night I dreamed I was staying with Tammy and I had my colorful rainbow slippers with the pink glitter-eyed Beanie Babies on the tops of them sitting on the floor. Someone came over and Tammy wanted to run out and tell them something, but she couldn’t find her slippers. My slippers were by the door and she didn’t want to go out barefoot. She mumbled something about how my slippers would never fit her but I told her they would because they were wide but might be a bit short. Sure enough, she was able to step into them, joking about whether or not I owned anything grown-up and devoid of color.

Kathleen was insisting in another dream that a ghost was playing with my hair yet she was sitting there swatting it with a ruler which definitely didn’t have me very convinced it was a ghost, LOL. Speaking of her, I hope I hear from her soon. She’s such a sweet lady. Probably one of the best-looking retirees you’ll ever see as well, but she isn’t quite retired yet.

Then I had a dream where Tom and I separated even though we didn’t appear to be fighting. I was to meet him for a sex date the following day at lunchtime and he came up behind my chair where I sat at some desk just beyond a sidewalk somewhere. He literally went to lift me up though not completely off my feet and asked if that was okay. I nodded and then we began walking down the sidewalk that ran along some street that was who knows where. I contemplated whether or not I should tell him I was in a “screwing” mood because I was sweaty and worried I might stink down there if he wanted to go down on me.

Then I was in his place and was surprised at how clean his bathroom was. It was done in rich shades of turquoise and was very detailed. There was a shower stall and toilet to the left of the door and the sink was on the right.

I also contemplated whether or not I should ask if he was going to be moving back in, only some older woman had moved in and was sleeping in his bed, so I wasn’t so sure he would be keen on the idea of moving back just to have to sleep with her.

Then there was some dream about Bob leaving for work and me thinking that he had something like six or seven years left to work.

SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 25, 2018 Tom is still recovering from his cold and we will be going to Walgreens in a few hours or so. Yesterday we took a nice relaxing day to just veg out. He watched TV and I listened to audiobooks. Tom doesn’t have a fever but every time we check me, I’m always about 97. I wonder if that’s part of why I get cold easily.

Haven’t been spending much time on Facebook as it just gets more and more depressing every time I check in. What little I check of the newsfeed is always so full of negativity and repetition that I don’t see how it wouldn’t drive pretty much anyone crazy. Yes, I agree that we need to ban assault rifles. They’re totally 100% unnecessary. But do I need to hear about it a million times? Dwelling on things isn’t always better than under-addressing them.

Been hearing the geese more often which almost sounds like these demented trumpets but I don’t mind hearing them as opposed to this one dog in particular that has a fierce and annoying bark every time the rude owner that won’t put a muzzle on it walks it.

I noticed another house for sale down the street and wondered if it could be Ray’s. That would be nice but I can’t tell from this angle and I’m not curious enough to walk down and see. The big mouth is well into his 80s but doesn’t seem disabled and in need of assisted living, and his wife is the park’s newsletter editor, so I can’t see them moving.

I was looking at the high-rise apartments by where my parents used to live, thinking it would be nice to have a nice view for the first year since we would probably have to rent for a while before we found a place but they’re a little expensive. Tammy said there are lots of affordable places in her area. But as Tom said, what is her definition of affordable compared to mine? Well, I guess that depends on what we’re going to get for retirement, but it’s too soon to know this. He won’t be able to get much of an idea until he’s 62. If he retired at 62 he’d probably still need to work part-time.

When I was watching a documentary about a crime committed in the Ocala Forest, I decided to look up the area, impressed with the seclusion and all that. Because it’s further north I thought it might be cold, but it’s not. We definitely don’t get in the mid-eighties at this time of year here. So I did some research and was impressed with how cheap it is. Space rent, trash and sewer and all that shit comes to $1200 a month here. That’s actually pretty damn cheap for CA. But I can’t deny the fact that having a space rent of about five or six hundred dollars is appealing. That way, if we end up with less than what we expect, we would still have plenty of money. The only catch is that cheaper may mean older places that aren’t as nice. I would really love to have something built in this millennium for once.

I looked at some mobile homes in adult communities and was impressed with the amount of space around some of the houses. We did see a motorcycle in the driveway of one of the places, though, so some adult communities do allow them. Like I said, I’m no longer looking for a quiet place because I know quiet doesn’t exist for me. It simply wasn’t meant to be any more than I was meant to be tall. The best I can hope for is a place that’s at least quieter than this, and since I have lived in places where I was woken up less often, I know it’s possible to obtain. Not being just a few feet from a busy street would really help. In looking at the Ocala area I saw pros and cons. Originally I thought it might be a good idea to rent near Tammy and see if she pesters us or not. If she did, we could settle elsewhere. I like the space around the houses, though, I like the climate, and I like that being further inland is a little safer from hurricanes.

I know I said I’d like to be on the coast, but the thing about the beach is that unless you’re right smack-dab on the beach or within walking distance or at least bike-riding distance from it, it really doesn’t matter if you’re a 10-minute drive or an hour’s drive, at least in my opinion. Especially since I was never one to enjoy sitting on the beach all day doing nothing. Not only would I burn to a crisp, but it’s totally boring to me. I suppose I could take my laptop, but that can be done just as easily sitting on a lanai or by a pool. I’ve never been overly outdoorsy, especially in a place with lots of bugs and humidity. I would spend most of my time outdoors there swimming or bike riding.

The negatives to Ocala would be that I probably wouldn’t have any kind of a spectacular view, like lakes and stuff like that, there are a lot of blacks, the utilities may be less reliable, and we might not be able to order groceries online. It really sucks that you can’t know all the pros and cons of a place without actually living there, but of course, those are always subject to change at any time. The only thing that might worry me a bit about having a more spacious and private yard would be that this might tempt people to leave their dogs outdoors, if not round-the-clock, then during the daytime. Great place for grandkids to scream up a storm, too.

Tom said it might be kind of cool to live near Cape Canaveral so we could watch the rockets launch, but there’s no saying at this time where we’ll end up.

SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 24, 2018 Cutting back on sugar, meat and soda really has made a difference on the scale. I’m not losing, of course, but there’s no longer this fierce battle to keep from gaining. But now I’ve gotten some meats, fried/battered foods and some sugary treats for this week for variety. It will be interesting to see how it affects me. While it might be expensive, Amy’s frozen dinners and soups may be the way to go if I want to stay 30 pounds overweight instead of 300.

It just hit me, though, that canned soup is listed as an anxiety-triggering food along with sugar. Funny too, as I was having quite a bit of soup as I tend to do in the winter when I got hit with another round of anxiety. Next time I get hit with it I’ll have to pay attention to what I’ve been eating.

This rainbow of colorful washcloths is harder to grip and they’re a little too smooth to really scrape off the dead skin so I’m going back to my gloves. I’ll just wash them more often.

Noticed that my upper right gut pain has been better these last few days. Other than a few scattered bouts of anxiety, I’ve been doing quite well and even sleeping better when the damn motorcycles and trash collectors aren’t waking me up.

I don’t know about Tammy, though. She said something about having a bunch of tests done but didn’t elaborate. Either way, I’m totally not picking up a vibe from her saying that she really wants to be part of my life and I’m definitely not picking it up from her kids either, especially Sarah. This is both good and bad. I feel a bit shunned but at the same time, I hesitate to get that close to people who are so different and with such mean streaks.

Tom is getting over the worst of the cold his wife didn’t get. ;) He’s just got a bad cough as everything starts draining.

Still having torturously cold temps and still dreaming of a warmer climate. Someday. I just don’t know if that someday is sooner than planned or not. It totally figures that I may very well have a damn good friend towards the end of my time here rather than the beginning. I still don’t know what to make of her either. I almost feel like there’s got to be some catch. Kathleen may be far from the most attractive woman I’ve longed to be connected to but if these types of women have been forbidden thus far, even as just friends, then why now? Even if she were ugly; she has a very bubbly, upbeat and soothing personality and seems very bright.

The only things that suggest she may not be physically attracted to me are how she didn’t seem very interested when I hinted at being liberal, and the way she said Tom and I make a cute couple. She also hasn’t bought any of my books.

I don’t know what to think yet. There’s a lot more that says she is attracted to me than not. It was all there just like with Stacey only much more obvious. Since Tom was right there the whole time it’s a little hard to believe he didn’t pick up on it as well, but he’s not as observant as I am and would often have his eyes on his phone or paperwork as opposed to her. But it was all there… The things she would say, the body language, etc. I literally saw it in her eyes as the eyes really are the windows to the soul.

What’s interesting is that unless she’s playing games with me and never does contact me, one of my three prayers has been granted. It’s totally a coincidence, though, since anxiety is still an issue and I’m still fat.

FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 23, 2018 My anxiety dissipated early yesterday morning and I couldn’t help but wonder how I would be feeling at the moment had I not skipped my meds. Still trying not to worry that my problem could lie within the medication, but I suppose if worse comes to worst and I’m still having problems a year after not having a period, I will have my dose lowered or skip once a week. Really hope it doesn’t come to that.

Today I’m kind of in the middle where I’m not the calmest I could be but I’m not anxious either.

The park gave notes to all the homeowners with four complaints/requests.

“At least they’re trying to enforce some rules,” Tom said.

Yeah, but in the meantime, we can still be as noisy as we want. rolls eyes

They complained about people parking on the street overnight which should be left for emergency vehicles, people not including their space number on their rent checks, and people dumping gardening debris as well as dog shit in places they shouldn’t be dumped. Gardening debris has been ending up in creeks, greenbelts and neighboring yards. This doesn’t surprise me at all knowing how selfish and inconsiderate so many people are. There was shit one time on the corner of our place but it could’ve been from one of the turkeys. If we ever do start noticing regular shit, we’ll catch them on camera and then I’ll bring their dog shit to them and stuff it down their throats. I totally feel for my sister when she got “shit on” in her park and I would have spoken up too, even if it meant making enemies since most people take complaints, no matter how legit they may be, as if you just said the most insulting, cruel, unreasonable, unfair and meanest thing anyone ever said to them. They act like these little victims that you’re bullying.

Aly misunderstood me and thought my dermatologist appointment was yesterday when it’s really in March. She asked how it went and I thought wow, that’s really nice. She cares enough to ask when I don’t have appointments yet Andy didn’t give a shit enough to ask when I did have appointments. It would sometimes hurt when I would mention that I had an appointment that day or the next day and not a word was said about it unless I brought it up first. All I know is that the less people care about me, the less I care about them. I try to give “equal” attention, too. If I don’t hear from you that often, you won’t hear from me that often. I don’t want to try to weasel my way into someone’s life that doesn’t really want me there, at least not full-time, any more than I would want someone trying to weasel their way into my life that I either didn’t like or felt indifferent to.

Yesterday I finished Socio and it’s just under 16K words. I will begin the editing soon but I don’t know when. I’m not in any hurry. I will be publishing Campus Games this weekend. While it’s gotten tons of views on the UK Authors site, no one has commented yet. I don’t know if that’s because they haven’t found any glaring mistakes or if they’re just too lazy to comment. It’s being submitted to my publishers this weekend no matter what.

I’ve been missing meat so I got a little more this week even though I try to avoid it as much as I can stand to do so. I know I’ll never get my cholesterol numbers good but I can get them close with exercise and a proper diet. I no longer bother to try to lose weight because I know that after all these years, the extra pounds aren’t going anywhere no matter what, LOL. Maybe there will be a breakthrough someday where they’ll figure out how to suck the calories out of food or there will be something we can take without killer side effects, but I don’t see it happening anytime soon.

Not sure what my next writing project is going to be. I had a couple of story ideas in mind but I’m not sure of anything yet.

Last night I dreamed I was locking a tiny studio or room with a combination lock then began walking down the street. It was a fairly busy urban street. There was some traffic and some pedestrians walking along with me. It was a warm sunny day and I looked at a nearby woman and thought she was dressed a bit warm for the weather.

THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 22, 2018 Last night I had a surprisingly anxious night and where I used to love spending most of my time alone, the older I get, the more I hate it. Yet when he left for work I could still feel the anxiety stabbing in and out of my chest. My heart was a bit racy, too. The question is if I didn’t skip my meds occasionally like I’m doing today, how much worse would it get while I’m still in perimenopause? Probably bad enough. I don’t know this for sure but I’m guessing my heart would race more and I would end up with the runs regularly.

Another question will be what to do if once I hit menopause it turns out that the meds have been the main culprit all along even though we don’t think so. I guess if worse comes to worst I will skip doses once a week or ask to be lowered to 62 mcgs. Funny too, because 75 is a bit of a low dose as it is. Pretty sure 100-125 is the norm.

As always, it’s several factors fighting with each other. If Tom were suddenly retired we don’t doubt that I would feel better regardless of the physiological aspect of what’s going on with me. If he were home every day I would be tempted not to skip and see how I did and whether or not I would get as bad as I was last June when I didn’t skip right away. As I’ve been saying, I wish to hell I could stand the more severe anxiety because it’s just about the best damn diet one could ever be on, LOL.

But yeah, last night I was doing Stacey’s emotional tapping, drinking chamomile and sipping Sleepytime tea as well, but I could still feel the anxiety sitting in my chest.

Poor Aly was in a car accident but she’s okay. That makes both her and her boyfriend. Someone T-boned her by misjudging the yellow light but she wasn’t hit hard enough to activate the airbag. Her car will be fixed this weekend but the insurance is only going to cover 85%.

Tom was saying how he didn’t think he would be able to retire at 62.

“Then why are we discussing moving to Florida before then? Wouldn’t it be stupid to move if you still need to work?” I asked him.

He shrugged and said, “We’ll always be doing stupid.”

LOL, this is so true for us adventurers, and at 28° I’m definitely ready to do stupid again for the first time in 11 years! Even so, it’s going to take some time and planning. We still have to think about where we want to go, how we want to get there, and what we want to do when we do get there. Having to scramble to get doctors with pre-existing conditions is a little scary, but luckily, we’re not on meds which are an immediate matter of life and death. If we were, I wouldn’t skip my meds every now and then. But still, you know how hard it is to get insurance in this country, and with him being both older and white, it could not only take several months for him to find work, but the insurance could take half a year to kick in as well.

Now for my most interesting news of the day but that didn’t come with some bad news. As suspected, Kathleen was calling about an insurance issue. The insurance company declined to pay for any of my partial crowns so now we have to pay an additional $411. :-(

Really worried about my shittily enameled teeth as insurance companies keep dropping more and more procedures. We can afford crowns now but what happens if we’re broke again? I’m bound to end up needing most if not all of my teeth crowned throughout the rest of my life. So what happens when we can’t afford it? Do I go back to the county quack? In that case, I would rather Tom just pull my damn teeth with a pair of pliers! In this country, I knew they would always prevent everyone from being covered. What I didn’t know was that they would fight to get covered people uncovered. WTF is wrong with this country these days? Should we just go to Spain or Portugal instead of Florida? South America? Hell, I can read both Spanish and Portuguese so maybe we should consider it. I don’t want to keep being told that such and such a procedure is covered just to later find out that it’s not. There should be a law against that shit.

Okay, let me try to check my frustration so I can focus on Kathleen. We ended up chatting for a surprising half an hour! Yes, you read correctly. It was funny, surprising, interesting, and just a very nice conversation overall. She really wiped my anxiety out which meant a lot to me since Tom was at work. I was being stabbed in the chest with anxiety when I returned her call and I hung up smiling happily and feeling calmer. I really appreciated it, too.

I’m going to jump on the skier while I finish this entry. There’s something about being on nights that make me lazier and I don’t want to get diabetes. Tom laughed at that one and said that at this point in my life, he doubts I’ll get it and that I couldn’t be inactive if someone paid me to be for more than a few days at a time. Haha, that’s true. I hate sitting still for long.

Definitely going FO on this one and will drop Tammy a private copy on Facebook. I rarely hear from her and I don’t know if she’ll see it but it will be there. Kathleen is one reason I’ve gotten to be a little more private with my journal. The more friends I make, the more neighbors I meet, the more recognition I gain from writing, the more cautious I am with personal info. Not because I’m shy or care what people think in general, but more out of respect for those I care for. To me, a journal is supposed to be about our lives, including those that affect them. Well, Kathleen has been a little part of my life and probably will become a bigger part of it, and I don’t want her to feel uncomfortable stumbling upon my blog and then reading about herself, even if it’s all good stuff. :-)

When Kathleen came to work for my dentist in the fall of 2015, I knew instantly that she liked me whereas I didn’t know right away with Stacey. I don’t think Stacey liked me right away, though. At first, we were so focused on my anxiety, but the more she got to know me and I improved with EMDR therapy, the more she came to see me in a different light. My point is that my intuition has always been right on. There have been those that I assumed didn’t like me that I later found out actually did, but never have I thought someone liked me that I later learned I got wrong. As they say, trust your gut instinct. It’s usually correct.

Now don’t get me wrong. I trust Kathleen and I don’t expect her to ever do anything I wouldn’t want her to do, and it’s not like I’m looking to do things I shouldn’t be doing. If we were single, sure, why not? Just to make that clear upfront, well, it’s different with women than with guys. It’s harder for a lot of guys to be just friends, but remember, she and I are older. We’re not in our 20s. In fact, she’s a lot older than I thought! Really, I was dumbfounded to learn she’s damn near old enough to be my mother.

At the beginning of the conversation, I thought I was doing a fine job of sounding chipper and you know, just “normal.” But then I told her I had to cancel my checkup for now because I have other appointments which may spawn other appointments and there was only so much I could juggle at once.

Then she comes out and asks if I’m okay. Caught off guard by her amazing perceptiveness, I said that I was but I wasn’t but would still be okay, LOL. Then she asked if it was female-related stuff. For a minute I wondered if she’d been reading around since I do have some content on Blogger and resumed the daily updates there in case of another PB outage. But then I did make jokes with the dentist about wishing the hot flashes would occur when I needed them since she keeps her place as cold as a freezer. So when she came out and told me that her daughter was going through the same thing, I started doing the math in my head and was like, okay, how can a woman who’s about 50 have a daughter around the same age that’s going through this? I then asked her how old she was and she astonished me by saying she was 65 and was going to retire next year! I was like, OMG, OMG, OMG! She told me I didn’t look my age either and looked 32 years old, haha. Well, I don’t know about that, but I’ve always looked younger than I am and lighter than I weigh as well.

So we talked about a lot of things. She told me her daughter is into aromatherapy as I am and recommended that and she also asked if I was on Prozac. As I told her, the stuff made me want to kill myself, so no. I told her I’ve only needed one lorazepam since last July so I am improving but in the meantime, I do what I can to get by whether it’s aromatherapy, tea, breathing techniques, etc. It would be nice if there was a pill I could swallow that would take it all away in just a matter of minutes like an ibuprofen can with pain and without the side effects, but that’s just not a reality for me. Anti-anxiety drugs leave me drowsy, and as Stacey said, they don’t always keep on masking the symptoms as you get used to them. My lorazepam is about to expire and I’m probably not going to request a refill either but we’ll see. My doctor is always just a message away if I feel I need it.

We got to talking about places we’ve lived and she’s originally from Idaho and she even lived in Phoenix for a few years back in the 70s.

She’s had anxiety before too, she said, like when she would have to speak in church and teach and all that. That was the one negative word I did hear from her, LOL. Church. As a liberal agnostic, I’m definitely not eager to hang with the religious/God believers, though Kathleen doesn’t seem like the pushy type.

She and her husband sold their house in Folsom and got one in Roseville so she could be closer to where she works.

When I told her that we were thinking of moving to Florida and that may happen sooner than originally planned, she said she definitely “didn’t want to lose me” and “let’s keep in touch.” So this was when I told her that I had been hoping these last few months that she would contact me on Facebook but figured there was some kind of policy preventing her from doing that since she does kind of work for me even if it’s not the same way the dentist does. Then she told me she didn’t do Facebook which may or may not be true. No problem either way. If she has a Facebook account she wants to keep private for just family and friends, that’s fine. The reason I thought she could be lying about the Facebook account was because of the way I once told her to feel free to look me up on Facebook and she said she would. Why would you say that if you didn’t have a Facebook account? On the other hand, I never could find her on Holly or Shannan’s friend list. Either way, she has my number and email and I would actually prefer that to Facebook these days.

It was funny because she was asking me about my books and telling me how she was just amazed by me and all that. Not sure I consider myself all that accomplished or amazing, LOL, but I appreciate the compliment.

We also talked a little about exercise and she said something about how we tend to walk stiffer with age but that she can tell I take care of myself and that I move with fluid movements. Didn’t know she was studying my movements, LOL, but yeah I get around okay for one who’s getting up there in years.

When I thanked her for making me feel better since Tom was at work, she said she could tell how supportive he was and that he adores me, etc. Very true!

What I don’t get is how did she have a half-hour to chat with me. I’ve been there enough times. That phone is always ringing up a storm.

It was hard to read her when I mentioned my books and being liberal and trying to have a diverse set of characters. When she asked me about what my last book was about, I warned her that some of them contain violence as well as explicit scenes, but she didn’t press for more info and I’m not sure if that’s because she didn’t mind reading that sort of thing or because she doesn’t agree with/like that sort of thing. A part of me hopes she’s not curious enough to buy any, especially the ones with characters based on her physical appearance lest she figures that out. Maybe she would have been flattered if she knew beforehand that I was going to base some characters on her but after the fact?

Then again, she’s not the only tall blue-eyed blonde, and maybe she’s the first one I have all wrong. Maybe the fact that she didn’t have much to say about my liberalness and diverse characters is because she’s actually against that and not for it, much less attracted to me. After all, she did mention the church and the vast majority of churchgoers seem to be pretty prejudiced.

Nonetheless, I think I’m going to pull Kinky Katrina even though people say they’re interested in my books a lot more often than they buy them and Kathleen will likely never buy any. Hell, Stacey knows a character was based on her yet she’s still not interested, so I doubt Kathleen would be curious enough to buy anything. “Flora” in Stepping into Psycho has more of a physical description that’s closer to Kathleen’s, but “Katrina’s” story bears more of a resemblance to reality (town names, working for a doctor with a private practice).

TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 20, 2018 Kathleen left a message while I was sleeping at 1:15… Dammit. So I’ve heard from Palma, Stacey and now Kathleen. Life’s getting interesting for sure. I doubt she’s calling just to say hi, though. However…it’s awfully far in advance of my next appointment to be calling for the only reason she could be calling and that’s to reschedule me. I only beat the clock by 20 minutes and got up at 7:40, But I can stay up until 8:00 and call her then.

Maybe she’s calling to tell me the dentist retired. But then why not just send everybody letters like the joke of an endo I had did when she moved?

My second guess would be that she’s calling about something pertaining to billing or insurance. She didn’t sound any different. She got right to the point and sounded businesslike but not urgent or anything like that. Well, I’ll find out in 10 hours.

I remember quite a bit from last night’s dreams. I entered a large basement that had a few rooms and realized it was so quiet because I had blown a fuse while cooking earlier. Then I realized I didn’t have some air cleaner or fan running in the middle of the place that I usually had running. So I went and turned it on and then I got some kind of a card from my dead uncle Marty. I drafted a reply in my mind beginning with a simple thank you to something a bit more elaborate.

Then I dreamed that I was asleep in some summer vacation rental with Andy and his friend Michelle. This was after I dreamed of cleaning Andy’s place. A vibration woke me up. I then remembered that Andy walked like an elephant. So I got up and walked out of the bedroom I was staying in to where they sat playing cards at a table between the kitchen and living room.

I went to open a cabinet to get coffee and there was some of Andy’s dirty laundry. I said that I would find a place for our dirty laundry so that it didn’t have to sit on my coffee. I decided to throw it on a closet floor. Then he said something about whether or not I would be okay with the “holes” in some of his clothes which I knew he created to make his clothes roomier because he was heavy. I said I didn’t care.

Then I went to ask Alexa what the date was, afraid it wasn’t even mid-August and already wanting to go home even though it seemed we had plans to stay there all summer. Instead of getting an answer from her, though, a male voice spoke instead and said something that had nothing to do with my question.

MONDAY, FEBRUARY 19, 2018 Just signing in on this torturously cold night. We’re going to be getting down to 28° tonight. I swear I can’t get out of the state fast enough! At least I was able to sleep okay on Sunday and Monday. This was probably only because it was too cold for motorcycles and there was no trash collection.

I sent the office an email giving them a piece of my mind about the insanely loud motorcycle situation, but not surprisingly, I never heard back from them. I don’t know that I’d want to anyway. All they would tell me was that there was “nothing they could do about it because it’s a form of transportation” which really means we don’t give a shit and we don’t want to do anything about it, even though it’s our park and they weren’t allowed in the past and there are certainly less intrusive means of transportation.

The anxiety has continued to get less frequent and I feel confident that I’m through the worst of the perimenopause. I didn’t skip my meds the last time I felt anxious yet it went away on its own so that’s a good sign right there pointing away from the meds. I sometimes feel a bit PMSy, like my body is trying and then stopping, trying and stopping to kick off a period.

Someone asked me what I thought of the gun situation here in the US, and personally, I think guns should only be available to women unless you’re in law enforcement. I know men could still get a hold of them but given the fact that women are in need of protection more than men, and men are almost always the ones responsible for the massacres, I feel men should be banned from guns altogether. I don’t think guns should be banned entirely because when you take the guns away from the bad guys, then the innocent women out there can’t protect themselves or their children if they have any. If I were a mother with children to protect, I would want to be able to get a gun and not have that right taken away just because some people abuse them. If we take away everything that was ever abused in any way, we would be left with nothing.

We haven’t been sick in years yet Tom now has a head cold. It’s been pretty mild so far. I thought I woke up with a scratchy throat but after I had some hot tea, it was fine. I do feel very rundown now, though, despite sleeping better but I don’t know if that’s because my body is trying to generate a period or a cold. I have an autoimmune disease, though, so my body will likely kill it if it is a cold or at least most of it.

We ordered his cold medicine really early yesterday morning before he left for work through Amazon’s same-day delivery. He also got some vitamin C and I splurged on some candy and blueberry K-Cups.

SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 18, 2018 Okay, here’s the latest shit going on here and what we hope to do about it. Beware of lots of swearing in this long rant! My husband is the heaviest sleeper and the most noise-tolerant guy I know yet the fucking motorcycles even woke him up on Saturday when he was taking a nap.

At that point I said, okay, we definitely have to seriously start thinking about moving. After 4.5 years of this shit, I’ve had enough! I’m too old for all these sleep disturbances. Damn the fucking park for allowing these things in here! But do they care that some of us have sleep disorders that cause us to sleep during the daytime? No, of course not. That’s not the whole point, though. Even if I were on days every day… daily motorcycles and landscaping is NO excuse and UNnecessary! It’s no place for a writer whose concentration is easily broken.

I wish to hell I had telekinetic powers! I swear I’d possess and send every single fucking motorcycle flying at 100 MPH right into the office that allows these damn things in here! Tom said he thinks it was a group of four or five motorcycles that came tearing through here and that it still would have been too loud and woken me up even if it had been a block away.

Okay, my sleep has been cursed basically all my life. I get that. That much was obvious decades ago. But, I have slept better in other places. Years ago, had you given me a list of all the places Tom and I would live in and asked me to guess which one I would sleep the worst in, a retirement community would be my absolute last guess. These places are almost not worth it. The only things you don’t have here are screaming kids and barking dogs.

Thinking back to other places I’ve lived in and the vehicles that would pass by the places, some sat there idling loudly for a while, some would be annoying because they would gun the engines, and then there were the car stereos, of course, but I honestly can’t think of any vehicles that were so damn loud that they stand out in my mind. Conveniently, the loud vehicle trend must have started right before we moved in here, almost as if something knew I would be sleeping barely 10 feet from the street and that this would be a great way to fuck with my sleep. I do remember that after Jesse got drunk and totaled a quiet pickup he had (although he claimed a deer ran out in front of him), he got a truck that was surprisingly loud. I was surprised because it didn’t seem that old. Plus he had a friend that visited and they also had a loud vehicle. So I guess that became a thing during our trailer years.

So we looked around at various options… apartments, condos, houses, manufactured homes, houseboats, and high-rises, even though those are more of an LA thing and not common in the West. The problem is that if we stay in the state there is very little we could afford because of the way it is so damn expensive here, yet we can’t afford to take off without a job lined up while he’s under 62. Your average 2-bedroom apartment here starts at $1,600. There’s a 2-bedroom, 1-bath house that’s only 784 square feet yet it’s $110,000. It’s just fucking ridiculous here. Your average home starts at a quarter million. Just because you may make more money here doesn’t mean it’s easy to afford to live here. Even something half this size that’s much older and dumpier in a scummy park would be more than we paid for this place because the economy isn’t as shitty as it was in 2013. Also, if they’re going to allow motorcycles to roar in and out of a luxury community, those that aren’t as nice are certainly going to have the same problem.

Anyway, we thought of staying here, going to Hawaii, going to Nebraska where Aly is, and going to Florida where I have family, and each place has its pros and cons. The only cons I can think of to Florida are that they too, have tons of loud motorcycles, and of course there’s the humidity. Nebraska is cold and snowy, California is expensive, and Hawaii is even more expensive. If money was no object and it came down to strictly climate, I would go to Hawaii. But the most feasible place with the best climate is Florida. Plus, there’s the fact that I not only have family there but also that Aly may very well end up there someday herself.

The thing is… If my sleep is going to be cursed anyway no matter where I go, let’s have it be cursed in a warmer climate, and perhaps not quite as cursed if we can get our bedroom out of the damn street.

So we decided that he’s going to retire when he’s 62 and we’re going to get the fuck out of here probably in 2020. Here’s the catch, though I can assure you it’s totally worth it. We would struggle financially and he would have to get a part-time job once we got to what I’m guessing right now is going to be Fort Lauderdale. I don’t think we’re going to be able to afford Tammy’s area, but after all the shit I’ve been through, money isn’t anywhere near as important as it used to be to me. I’d rather be poor and live well than have money and not be able to sleep so much of the time. As long as we’re healthy and I’m not suffering from the severe anxiety I was suffering from, I’ve had my “rich” days, I’ve gone on my shopping sprees, I’ve had my vacations, and basically, I’ve collected a whole lot of junk I would rather not have to dust. So as long as we can pay for the necessities, I don’t care if we don’t have extra money. As long as we’ve got each other, our health, and I can get some decent sleep most of the time, I don’t need to have the fancy wind chime I might spot in the store or the beautiful dress I may see online or anything like that. The most important thing is being healthy and able to sleep. Being woken up two to three times a week is very hard on the body and it can take its toll on a person after a while, especially if they’re older.

I don’t want anyone reading this to get their hopes up. This is not a definite, 100%-for-sure plan. It’s just something we’re seriously considering right now because the thought of staying here another 5 to 10 years makes me want to beat my head into the wall. If the sounds were more consistent, I would probably be able to adapt to sleeping through them. If I knew that something was going to come blasting through every half hour or so that may actually make it easier than when it’s at random times, with weekends being worse.

I know it won’t do me any good or change the rules, but I do intend to give the office a piece of my mind. The noise levels here are just way out of control. Never have I lived where there was such loud landscaping equipment that could be heard nearly every day, and I’ve lived in plenty of other places where there were trees, shrubs, grass and similar vegetation. There’s just no need, reason or excuse for this shit. I never expected to live in complete silence but it really is too bad that retirement communities aren’t about what I thought they’d be about. I really thought they were for having a quiet, peaceful place to live but apparently, they’re more about being with others your own age. At least here it is.

I know Bob, Virginia and the Twenties aren’t going to be happy about us leaving in a couple of years, but hopefully, we’ll have neighbors as nice as them wherever we end up. Since I’m not expecting that we can go straight to a home, I’m hoping we can find a rental in a high-rise so I can at least enjoy the view while we’re waiting. I think Fort Lauderdale will be the closest we can get to the coast that we can afford. I don’t want to go to Miami because it’s further from Tammy and I’ve heard bad things about the place. I think Fort Lauderdale would be a little safer. Tammy will no doubt be happy to guide us when the time comes, though I don’t know how familiar she is with Fort Lauderdale.

Another thing that makes Fort Lauderdale appealing is that I still hesitate to get that close to Tammy and the girls. Not just because of a potential fallout but because I don’t know that I could trust Tammy enough not to come barging in on us unannounced. She may find it easier to pressure us to do more things with her if we were that close, and while it will certainly be nice to be closer to family, we don’t want to be pestered either. I could be totally wrong about her. Maybe she wouldn’t do any of these things. I just don’t want to have to find out the hard way. It’s kind of too bad, though, because I really liked Stuart and there would be fewer people there, even if it wouldn’t be quite as warm. There are only 15,000 people in Stuart and the median age is 45. There are 83,000 people here and the median age is 35. It’s a few years older in Fort Lauderdale but with a population of 173,000. Springfield now has 153,000 people, and of course, there are over 1 million in Phoenix and over 3 million in Los Angeles. Ugh, I can just imagine the plane activity over LA, since the bigger the city, the more they tend to fly. Hopefully, they wouldn’t be as bad in Fort Lauderdale being on the coast which would mean that half of the place would be water and therefore nothing to fly over. This may actually prevent them from circling round and round as much, and I think “them” are pigs.

I swear it’s almost as noisy here as in Phoenix! I was only able to sleep better there because the bedroom was farther from the road and the place had brick walls and a concrete foundation. But instead of kids and dogs, you hear landscaping and vehicles here. Both places have loud car stereos but that was definitely more of an issue in other places. Sometimes a part of me wishes we were still crammed into Jesse’s tiny trailer even though his mutts would bark for hours and hours at a time. At least they could be drowned out by sound machines. No matter how loud I blast the sound machine when I go to sleep, the loud engines still manage to override it. I was able to get caught up on my sleep, however, because we’re having a cool spell. Tom said there were no motorcycles but just one loud truck that kind of crashed into the speed bump.

If something is cursing my sleep, how convenient that it happens to hit 70° on a Saturday when the motorcycles are more likely to be an issue, huh?

So now we have some thinking to do. Do we do the roof before we go? Do we get a new oven? I’m thinking we’ll probably get the oven but we’re not sure about the roof. We’ve got a couple of months to decide because we’re still in the rainy season. It’s almost over, though. I wish I knew if I was right about suspecting that the drought is going to continue for many years to come. If it is, then it’s not worth doing the roof. But all it takes is one wet and windy winter like what we had last winter and we could have a problem.

The next two years may be the last two years that we have decent money, so we need to spend it wisely. I’m thinking we might still go ahead and add two of the murals we wanted to add because we’ll still be here long enough to enjoy them. Besides, this way I get to experiment with a few different types of scenes so I have a better idea of what to get in our next home.

Again, I could be totally wrong, so please don’t take this literally or get your hopes up too high, but yes, I am officially considering this the beginning of the end and now looking at this house as a place we’re staying temporarily and no longer a “home” in the traditional sense. To be honest, I knew we were making a mistake when we moved in here as soon as I looked at the map and saw the streets wrapping around it and so closely, but we were desperate to get out of the trailer. We wanted more space, we wanted something newer, and I wanted to get away from the dogs. We knew the economy wasn’t going to stay shitty forever so we wanted to take advantage of it while we could and the deal we got on this place. But less than a week or two in this place I knew we’d made a mistake and that we wouldn’t be here forever. It’s just way too noisy for what it is. We would eventually move even if it was quiet here because tropical is one climate we haven’t lived in yet and that I would definitely like to be in, but in that case, we may have waited for another 5 to 10 years.

In other news, I was a little surprised but definitely pleased to hear from Stacey on Facebook. She thanked me for letting her know what’s been going on in my life and said she wasn’t sure if I got her previous message and wished me the best. Has she sent other messages that I didn’t get? It wouldn’t surprise me if she had. There have been many times when I’ve wondered if people have gotten my messages and if they’ve sent anything I didn’t get because I know how screwed up Facebook can be at times. I replied letting her know that that was the only message I’ve gotten from her, that I was glad she got my message, and wished her the best as well.

Writers Cafe has proven to be rather dead and inactive, so I will be publishing with the UK Authors site again so people can look for any errors or discrepancies that need fixing before my stories are submitted for publication on Amazon. I broke Campus Games into 4 parts and 2 just published. On Friday, the other 2 parts will be published. They only publish on Mondays and Fridays.

Tom went out yesterday morning and tightened some circuit breakers and that seems to have helped the flickering a lot. It’s not perfect but it’s much better than it was.

A couple of nights ago I had hip pain that was bad enough to need ibuprofen, but that seems to be doing better. My upper stomach pain comes and goes and I still have rashes here and there but nothing critical.

Having fun exchanging messages with Aly who went on a weekend trip to Boone, Iowa. We don’t know why, but Kim’s lying to her by saying she’s not on Prosebox. I think Kim is just a born liar. Anyway, Aly wants to join again and do some writing projects. Hopefully, it won’t be all about food as she seems almost as obsessed with it as Andy was.

Curious Cat is pretty dead. Oh, they have no problem whatsoever with answering questions, alright, but they sure don’t want to have to ask any in return.

I’m way behind on Bubbly so I will catch up with tons of posts ranting about this and that sometime soon.

The night before last I dreamed of Jesse who was talking to some other guy. Missing the seclusion of country living (but not the hassles, inconveniences, and sluggish internet), I’m not surprised he showed up in my dreams.

Then I was riding in a car with three other people. I was in the back seat behind the driver when the entire side of the car suddenly disappeared and we were driving through some entrance in which I could reach out and touch the wall. Then I was suddenly on a gurney and being wheeled into a place that had indoor “homes” that were set up side by side inside this giant room. I was placed in a section of the room that had a row of gurneys, all empty at the moment. I sat up, hopped off of the gurney, and began to walk through the place before I realized I had left my hot pink purse on the gurney and doubled back for it.

FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 16, 2018 Okay, now that the laundry is done and Aly has stopped blowing up my phone, I can start writing. I created a new blog separate from other things on Blogger which I’ve scheduled journals to post 100 years after I was born. Not sure anyone will see it or that the blog will even exist in 2065, but it’s still cool to do anyway.

Busy tonight doing several different things.

My new purple sweatpants came and they’re actually a bit loose on me. Very comfortable but in need of hemming. Thinking of hemming them with fabric glue instead of sewing because I hate to sew. Tom offered to do it but I would really like to try the glue.

The house across in back is officially for sale. So now it’s just a matter of dealing with the door slamming as they show and tell and then the traffic for the housewarming party. The only thing that sucks about that particular corner is that visitors would be a little more likely to park on the bedrooms than anyone going to see the Twenties.

So, what will be next around here? I suppose in a few months Lawrence may die or move and then I’ll have to deal with that place turning over, too.

Last night it was quiet in the sky and I didn’t even hear the freeway much. Not much plane activity tonight yet, but I can hear the freeway. We’re having a cold spell so I’m not going to go out running tonight. I don’t even know if I’ll work out indoors because I’m still having that upper stomach pain. I’m having it every day and I’m not sure why but I still don’t think it’s anything to worry about. It’s just annoying. If it gets that bad I can just take an ibuprofen and then it’s gone. Anything is better than anxiety but if I still have it in June when I see my doctor, I’ll ask her about it. It’s definitely too high to be my appendix. If it was lower, then I would be worried.

I stopped spotting for now and lost some of the water I was gaining. I’m sure that sooner or later I’ll accumulate enough estrogen to trigger a period.

I was thinking about how my dad said that they couldn’t eat as much as they used to in their final years and how he went from 220 lbs to 188 lbs. But I think that even if I couldn’t eat as much that still wouldn’t be enough for me to lose any damn weight. Not unless it was an extreme amount. Yet I can’t believe I would ever not be able to have more than 1000 calories a day. That would be wonderful if that was the case but I just don’t see that happening.

I slept better than I thought I would the last couple of days. Yes, the trash collectors did wake me up for a split second today but I was able to fall back asleep relatively quickly.

I’m glad to say that the UK Authors site now lets me submit stories. The site was experiencing difficulties, the administrator told me. I’ve come to like the site and it’s way better than Writers Cafe. Writers Cafe is pretty dead. I’ve gotten absolutely no feedback there whatsoever. But I think I’ll just leave things as is rather than delete that account.

Kim gets stranger by the minute with the things she says she gets yelled at and threatened with having her computer taken away. First, she baffles the hell out of me with going up and down the stairs on one leg and getting bitched out for that, but now they threatened her for not turning the light on when she goes to the bathroom, accusing her of peeing all over the seat that way. Gross! Doesn’t she sit on the seat? I mean, unless you’re sitting on the very edge of the seat you shouldn’t have any issues with aiming your pee if you’re a woman.

Last night I dreamed that I got in some heated argument with Tom and stormed off and up to some attic somewhere. I locked myself in a small dark room in the attic and I guess I wasn’t supposed to be there or I didn’t want the two guys I heard entering the attic to know I was there. That dream was really too vague to elaborate much more on.

Then I dreamed I was walking outdoors on a moonlit night. I was walking through some grassy field on a little narrow path and at first I was enjoying myself until I realized that I could happen upon a big cat along the way. Realizing this, I quickly turned and headed back. As I was coming up the crest of a hill I could see the top curly part of a tail and began to panic at the thought of it being a big cat but then I saw that it was actually a skunk. Not wanting to turn back around, I sort of scooted around it and then made it safely to the house I lived in. I then pulled myself out of this strange kind of wheelchair that I hadn’t been in until that second. Then I punched a code into a coded lock, entered the house and realized I felt much better.

THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 15, 2018 With yet another borrow of Evil Amongst the Evergreens, this time with 368 pages read, I feel even more inspired to write. I always write no matter what because it’s fun and what I like to do, but just when I was considering quitting and thinking it might not be worth the work to submit stuff for publication on Amazon, the rise in sales inspired me to keep on plugging away. I still doubt I’ll ever make much doing it, but it’s nice to get royalty checks that can buy more than a loaf of bread.

I set up house at Writers Cafe because I had issues submitting the first part of Campus Games on the UK site. Hopefully, if I have any errors someone will point them out.

We still have intermittent flickering of our lights in parts of the house and Tom got a tool that beeps when placed within the magnetic field of live wires. This will add extra assurance that he doesn’t go electrocuting himself when he goes to fix it.

There’s talk about them having electric cars and even electric motorcycles. It would be so nice to have quieter vehicles out there, but by the time they get everything changed over, I’ll probably be an old lady if not dead.

Unfortunately, not even the nights are quiet a lot of the time. They’re certainly quieter than the daytime but at night I hear plenty of planes and freeway traffic. That kind of background noise isn’t nearly as annoying as traffic roaring by the bedroom or loud landscaping equipment, but sometimes I just want to hear nothing at all. Yet you almost never hear silence here.

I changed the extensions of my documents to docx so I can use them in both word processors. They both have their pros and cons. The new one is less crashy but I can’t figure out how to stop it from putting a blank character at the start of every paragraph.

So far so good today, but last night I got anxious enough that I started getting frustrated and almost cried. I still worry this is mostly on the pills. Tom says so just skip, and yeah, I can do that but not without suffering first since it’s not like I can know in advance when it’s going to strike. To think I might have to deal with this the rest of my life is pretty damn overwhelming since I can’t exactly quit my meds if it really is on that. I’ve still got quite a ways to go before I find out for sure, too. Still think I have a minimum of 2-3 years before I hit menopause. My body tried and made another botched attempt to generate a period. It will try again and keep trying until It succeeds.

Kind of funny how I have a dream a week or two ago about Aly visiting and cooking us dinner and then she tells me she’s thinking of coming out here.

Last night I dreamed I was rearranging furniture and beds somewhere and it was nighttime. The place was pitch dark. I didn’t have any lights on inside and I was scared that there was an intruder inside the place with me. I went out on the front stoop to wait for Tom and it was also very dark out there.

WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 14, 2018 If PB doesn’t get up and running again soon I’m going to think that he conveniently shut it down because OD has resurrected itself. He’s mentioned having little time and money to manage the site, and this would be a convenient time to get rid of it when I think about it. He may figure that now that people have OD to run to, why not? Not me, though. I’ll stick with Blogger.

I have been busier than ever but it’s all good. I just don’t get why I’m sleeping shitty all over again, waking up at times even when traffic isn’t waking me up. After just a few hours of sleep, I had trouble falling back asleep so I got up and made some Sleepytime tea. Half a cup later I was back out again.

Still spotting and putting on some water, but my boobs aren’t sore yet. My next period is probably still a few weeks away but I would rather just get them if I’m not going to hit menopause anytime soon. Being stuck in the middle is the worst place to be.

I’ll never figure out why some people take so long to blow leaves and shit around their place that you would think they had a whole acre or something. Still don’t get why people park alongside the houses they’re not visiting or working on either.

One of the cool things about editing old stories that I wrote over a decade ago is that it’s been long enough for me to forget many details, so it’s like being surprised by my own stories. Wanted to finish Socio a couple of weeks ago but my busy schedule has delayed this. It seems that more really is better, too. The more books you have, the more you sell. But I don’t want to go too fast and mess things up.

Tom has a late meeting at work but on his way home, he’ll be stopping at Walmart. We made a small grocery order to get the free Valentine’s gift, whatever it is. But by then they may be out of supplies because it’s only while supplies last, of course.

Last night we made an Amazon order and I got another explicit coloring book, purple sweatpants, a pale pink sweatshirt, and a set of 12 colorful washcloths after reading an article about sponges and bath gloves being a breeding ground for bacteria. With lichen planus, my skin would appreciate fresh washcloths, no doubt, for every shower I take. I’ll still keep my back brush that’s on a stick. I’ll use my old bath gloves for cleaning and whatnot.

I recently deleted journals that were scheduled to post when I’m 95 and almost certainly dead, but I decided I might create a separate blog Just for future posts I’ll schedule to start posting 100 years after I was born. I don’t know if it will work or if people will see it but it’s still a neat idea.

I’ve begun backing up journal copies by the day on MD and my private Blogger blog while doing it by the month on Tumblr and then PB, assuming it’s ever coming back. The thing is that it’s a lot more work than I thought it would be. It takes about an hour and a half to post on the same day of every year that I wrote. So all the February 13th’s and February 14th’s took about 3 hours to post. Not sure I want to work that hard.

TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 13, 2018 Great. Just great. Now we’ve got vehicles parking on the bedrooms. Can’t swear to it but I think I might have woken up by a thump at one point. All I know for sure is that I slept okay from about 3 AM to 9 AM, but between 9 AM and noon, I slept like I was in the worst of my peri.

I know the SUV that’s parked back there right now is connected to the house that’s being flipped. The question is how many more fucking weeks are they going to take to prep the place? It’s like, come on already! Just sell the fucking thing so we can get all the door slamming from the open house and then the visitors from the housewarming party over with. Meanwhile, if they keep parking back there I’m going to have to tell them hey, park by your own damn place. There wasn’t a single vehicle in front or alongside their place when I peeked out there. Instead, they were parked on us and Jon and Carolyn. I will never understand why people don’t park by those they are visiting or working on.

Trying to sleep during the daytime here is a huge challenge without people making it worse. It was even easier to sleep in the Phoenix house, for God’s sake! I haven’t been surrounded by so much activity since the NHA. It’s unbelievably noisy here with all the landscaping and traffic. I hope the next place will be quieter! I just want a fucking bedroom that isn’t right smack dab in the middle of so much damn activity! Between nine and noon I heard so many fucking loud vehicles. Just so, so many.

The curtains are going to have to go back up in the bedroom due to light issues. Too much light is seeping through the sides of the back window and it’s very hard to control that with the way the second window sticks into the room. I swear someone either walked across the patio or maybe the sun glinted off a car or something because a flash woke me up. The kind of flash where something passes by something that shines brightly for a split second. The sun hits the bedroom windows in the morning. If someone passed by and momentarily blacked out the bedroom, I would have noticed this through my light and thin eyelids and just being the light sleeper that I am who is a lot more aware of what’s going on while I sleep than most people.

To make matters worse, I started spotting last night. So I guess I’ll do this for a week or two until I get a real period, even though I don’t feel very PMSy other than some fatigue.

Life is so fucking unfair! I’m tired of hearing about so many people who have hit menopause sooner than I have, and wishing I could be like those who can sleep through anything without any sound machine going in the background. The stress of having to struggle to sleep through all this traffic when I’m on days for another 5-10 years does not sit well with me at all.

It’s kind of strange knowing that Curious Cat is just a secret between Aly and me. I used to watch her and Kim drop hints about their secret interactions with one another on various sites and remember how left out I used to feel. Now Kim is the one that’s being left out but she’s not smart enough to know it.

Evil Amongst the Evergreens got downloaded from the KOLL but they’ve only read 32 pages so far.

MONDAY, FEBRUARY 12, 2018 I decided to delete the posts I had scheduled on Blogger for after I die. I guess I just decided I don’t care if my journals live on or not. I’m sure most of what I put on it while I’m alive will, though, and who knows? Maybe they’ll prove to be a fascinating glimpse into the past for some future generations. For now, I don’t care who reads this whether I’m dead or alive. :-)

It was a chilly and windy day but I briefly chatted with the neighbors and went down to the lake to give the ducks some old bread. I swear I’ve never seen so many ducks and geese down there at once!

Aly finally joined Bubbly and I listened to her first post. She sounded a bit shy. She said she might use it for doing karaoke.

She texted me about a site called Curious Cat which is similar to Ask and Formspring only it has a much better and less complicated layout. Still can’t change the background like Andy and I used to do on Ask. But we can change cover and profile pictures. She’s with her nanny family tonight and said she’s going to join tomorrow, and while she hates to be secretive, we agreed not to tell Kim about it because she has a way of hitting us with the same old shit and kind of ruining the fun. I already got one anonymous question asking me if I ever had a crush on a teacher. As with Ask and Form, Cat seems to be dominated by kids.

Last night I had this dream that circumstances beyond our control led us to live in New York. I’m not sure what those circumstances were that got us stuck there, but I told Tom that one way I consoled myself with having to be in such a shitty climate was knowing that I wouldn’t be living in New York forever. I knew we would get out someday. Then I said that had I known we would end up in New York of all places, I would have thought it would be due to somebody framing me for a crime that happened in that state.

So I went out in the cold and snow, heading to wherever. It wasn’t snowing at the moment and was actually sunny. But there were a few inches of snow packed on the ground that crunched under my feet as I walked. Then I was sort of skiing down a road with a slight slope though I don’t know what I was skiing on. It almost seemed like I might have been standing on a mini sled or I had some kind of special shoes on. I passed by a woman who was tall, slender, blonde and maybe in her late thirties. I stopped and asked her if she called to me and she said no. I was then sorry that I stopped because I hadn’t wanted to break my stride.

Then I was at the end of the road in some kind of shed or something, reaching down for a couple of cats that I hoped would get lost because they were a pain in the ass. Then I scratched their heads and felt bad for wishing they would disappear, so I said “Come on,” and started back to the house expecting them to follow me.

In another dream, I was in this room and was afraid of this large dog that was outside trying to break into the room. It was trying to wedge its way between where a window by the door split. Worried it was going to manage to get through, I bravely opened the door a crack to distract it. In this room was a heater that made a bit of a scary spark every time it started and I was afraid it would start a fire.

SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 11, 2018 Yesterday I “accidentally” published my 7th book, Kinky Katrina! I was going to offer it for free but that wasn’t an option. It couldn’t be any less than $0.99. So it’s now available for $0.99!

I forget that Tammy doesn’t always check her email regularly anymore than she checks her Facebook messages regularly. So when I sent a couple of pictures of the doll on Facebook, I assumed that by then she had picked up her email but just didn’t reply. In reply to my Facebook pictures, she said, “What the hell is that?”

LOL, I told her to go check her email. She did and said that I oughta put her in the neighbor’s yard. Haha, Tom and I did joke about her sitting on our bench swing. That would really give Bob and Virginia a real WTF? moment.

I’ve noticed that Palma is on FB regularly, more than she led me to believe. Now that I know this, I wonder if she actually read my message soon after I sent it and just chose to wait to reply so as to make me think she wasn’t on very often. She never replied to the second one.

I was saying to Tom recently that one of the negatives to getting older is that you’ve experienced so much that not much seems new and exciting anymore, and you don’t really expect many more surprises. Well, I guess I need to bitch about that more often because right after I did, I not only heard from Palma, but I may get to meet my cyber bestie!

Yes, my most exciting news is that I may actually be meeting Aly in the fall! She and Jase are thinking about coming out and meeting up with some others as well that are in the Bay Area and they may actually swing up here along the way. I am so excited about that prospect! I would LOVE to meet her, and knowing how well she knows me, I would feel very comfortable with her. In many ways, she knows me better than Tammy and Andy ever did. She’s also very intelligent and she remembers things better than they ever did. At least I wouldn’t have to worry about hiding the doll, haha. But as we also said, we could meet her halfway and save them some mileage if they wanted to as well. If not, I’d love to see her try to lift this doll.

They plan to fly out and then rent a car. She just told me, though, that two of the people they wanted to see would be in Japan at the time, and one of her Fitbit friends is a bit flaky. So they may spend more time closer to us as well as the airport.

We decided not to tell Kim for now because we know she would be jealous and feel left out. It’s just that, as Aly said, she can’t really see herself visiting Kim due to her family situation and since Kim doesn’t drive, so she may not even bother. I can’t see her going to visit Kim even if she wasn’t in the situation she’s in because I can’t believe she’d ever want to go to Connecticut or that she knows many people in the area besides Kim. At least I haven’t heard her mention any before.

This may be stretching it a bit, but a part of me still hopes that we can all meet up in Florida someday. I would love to have a local female friend, and him being retired would be a good time for that. With him working, the weekends are more special and we want to spend it together. But if he’s off 7 days a week, then we wouldn’t lose time together like we would if I had run off to go clothes shopping with Kathleen.

Ah, Kathleen. I’m still both surprised and not surprised that she never contacted me.

There are three levels of the Internet. 6% is the surface web where you can Google things and you don’t need to sign in anywhere to access whatever. Then there’s the deep web which houses things like people’s medical records and stuff they have to sign in for that only they should see. Then 4% of the Internet is the dark web where people either do illegal things or are so paranoid that they want their privacy.

So we downloaded a browser called Tor to see what it was like. It’s super agonizingly slow because of the way it bounces you from router to router to hide your IP. Not worth it to us. We don’t mind who knows what we buy, anyway. We’re not paranoid about being spied on or anything like that and I don’t care who knows my online activity because if you’re not doing anything wrong then you don’t have anything to hide. I wouldn’t even care if the government was snooping into my emails. As long as they didn’t fuck with me, they can look, see, listen, stalk and watch all they want.

I continue to have that light cramping sensation in my upper right stomach but it’s mostly when I first get up. I still think it’s some kind of gas pocket in my intestines.

Where yesterday was rather noisy with freeway traffic and landscaping, today was oddly quiet. Didn’t hear the freeway, didn’t hear landscaping, didn’t really hear much of anything other than some loud car stereos. I wish it could always be like this. The planes got on my nerves Friday night and Saturday morning, too. While they don’t have a set schedule, they definitely do seem more active on weekends. So I set up an air cleaner on my desk like Tom has on his to help drown them out when they get going.

Starting to feel slightly anxious which is really disappointing since it hasn’t even quite been two weeks since my last pill skip. Really hope it doesn’t get worse, but it usually does until I start skipping doses.

My friend Becky was hacked on Facebook so I’ve gone private again because of the way people tend to use your friends to hack you. They made it look like a friend sent her a video that they asked her to log in to view. She stupidly did so and got hacked even though she was able to recover her account quickly. I always try to keep my friend list hidden and things like that. I don’t know why, but it seems like Facebook is what people try to hack the most. I figure the more obscure me and my friends are, the safer we’ll be.

Where it was getting very spring-like weather-wise, the last couple of days have been pretty chilly and cold at night. Yesterday was windy.

I switched the dining room curtains from the Swamp Girl to the Night City and it looks great there. When the light is at a certain level it almost looks like the sunlight is what’s lighting up the windows of the buildings.

Last night I vaguely remember a dream about some guy who may’ve been related to me somehow, having spaghetti sauce all over his face and hands. At least I think that’s what it was. I locked myself in the bathroom, worried about what he might do. I guess he was kinda crazy.

I also dreamed about someone owning a cemetery and suggesting they name it Y’all Come Back, Ya Hear? Then I was staying with my dentist and her husband and writing them stories that they paid me for.

Tom got the oil changed on the car and we went to Rite-Aid where I got pink-red lipstick, blue liquid eyeshadow, gum, a couple of brightly colored dishtowels, and two boxes of fake nails. One of the nails is matte black with gorgeous silvery holographic accents, and the other is bright neon pink-orange with colorful fractal swirl accents.

The lipstick is a cool color but a bit dark for me. It’s the kind you brush on. I decided to pop Suki’s boring nails off and brush some of the lipstick onto her sculpted nails, letting the color stain the “skin.” So now she has her own nail and lip color. Originally I was going to apply a set of fake nails on her, but surprisingly enough, they don’t stick well.

In the book I’m listening to, a girl gets murdered who was selling her used panties online. That’s totally gross but you would think it would be a good way to make extra money. Tom doesn’t think so, though, LOL.

The two things I’ve learned from social media are that most people really don’t have a problem with blacks, whether they favor them or not, and most people seem to think it’s A-OK to come enter the US illegally and stay here. If you haven’t been race-carded and the victim of reverse discrimination, I might be okay with blacks despite their overall behavior, but I don’t get the last one. Not at all.

FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 9, 2018 Yesterday the flippers were annoying on and off by pounding on something and someone was sawing in the opposite direction. The flipper house now has not a for-sale sign but a sign that says “coming soon,” as I saw when I was out walking (it’s almost too warm for walking with a sweatshirt). Good, because I was wondering how many more months they would be working on the place. Since having them here is only delaying the inevitable, let’s get it over with and find out what we’re in for as far as new neighbors go. I’m mostly worried about what kind of vehicle they’re going to have what with how loud so many of them are these days, and of course, California is obsessed with motorcycles.

The apple trees are already beginning to bloom because we’ve had such a mild winter. They don’t usually bloom until March.

No flickering lights today or yesterday, so I don’t know what that was all about or how it managed to fix itself.

Since Kinky Kathleen got over 300 views on the UK Authors site and positive feedback on a few different sites, I was thinking of offering it for free. A lot of people, like me, go looking for freebies in their preferred genres. Well, maybe if they liked it that would entice them to buy my other books. I would just like to change the name Kathleen to something else. That character’s physical appearance is based on someone I know, even though I don’t ever expect them to read it.

Yesterday and today I experienced some lightheadedness. I wonder if it’s because I waited so long to have breakfast. I would feel like this buzzing sensation in my head and then I would feel weak and lightheaded. I’m not diabetic so I’m guessing it’s just getting used to going longer before eating. The thing is I’ve already eaten and I feel a little lightheaded still. Not as much as before, though.

My message to Stacey now says it’s been delivered instead of just sent. So that means the server piped it into her device when she logged in. Even though it doesn’t say it’s been seen, it probably has been.

Same with Palma. She’s been on a few times since I sent my second message, though it’s not appearing as read. She may no longer wish to communicate, but that’s fine. I found her, I thanked her for being a support way back when, and that’s it. I wouldn’t want to be buddies with her even if she lived next door because I don’t think we have much in common. Never expected friends to have everything and anything in common with me, but too much uncommon ground can often call for a serious conflict of interest. As it is, even though Norma hasn’t said as much, at least to me, I can tell she’s coming to dislike me since we’re on different political pages. That’s fine too. I would rather be disliked for who I am than liked for who I’m not.

Many of my messages on Facebook appear to be seen that I don’t get replies to. Are they sending replies that I’m not getting or are they blowing me off?

Like when I asked Marie how things were going with her girlfriend. I noticed the picture of them disappeared from her wall, so maybe this one is already over. No big surprise. With the way Marie is, she’s really doomed when it comes to love. People tend to seek out those that are like them yet two screwed-up people only screw each other up more. Yet she can’t get anyone stable because they’re usually not willing to put up with those who aren’t.

THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 8, 2018 I really, REALLY need to do my best not to eat today. If I can’t starve the entire day away then I need to come as close as I can now that I hit yet another record by waking up at 157. This has got to stop! I’m too short to handle all this weight. It’s really hindering my range of mobility and I can barely sit in the position I would sit in to rock to music anymore. I just hope everything is okay. Tom thinks it is and that I’m just having too much candy. I agree that I still need to cut back on sweets but it still seems a bit extreme that one would gain this much this fast, older or not, dead thyroid or not.

I just need to remind myself that it’s my body. MY body. What size it is, is up to me. Nobody is sitting here forcing food down my throat. The only one that’s doing this to me is ME. The only one that can take control of the situation is me and I need to jump on it or the scale will continue to climb.

Aly was too tired to join Facebook last night under a bogus name as she planned to as she doesn’t want Kim to know about it and because it’s only an account to connect with a few people and follow some groups she likes.

Really hoping she doesn’t join Bubbly and am a little sorry I told her about it because I really like having a place where I can verbally rant without anyone I know hearing it. I think we all need a private playground here and there, even if we’re not doing anything wrong. She said something about issues with the app so I’m hoping she’ll change her mind in the end and not bother, especially since the site is dead and isn’t maintained regularly.

When I got up at 4:30, I saw that Palma had been on 9 hours earlier. I wonder if she’s looking for and perhaps even hoping for another message from me. Well, she’s got one because I decided to send her a second message, this one getting into more detail about how I found her. I told her about Johnson too, hoping she’ll divulge more information about her just out of sheer curiosity, but even if I knew her first name, Johnson is incredibly common like Smith, so I doubt I would find her. Not sure I would want to either as what would I say to her? That I was pissed and hurt that she blew me off but that it turned out to be a good thing in the end?

Last night I dreamed I was in the kitchen with Tom and I was saying how the life I had when we met seems like a separate life from the one I have now as I’ve changed, evolved and grown over the years.

“The lives you had back east were separate from each other as well,” he said, meaning that each place I lived back east was a separate life.

TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 6, 2018 Created an Imgur account to share pics to PB with.

“Hi, Virginia!” I called out to Virginia just as she stepped out of her front door to get her mail, startling her. Yeah, I’m too loud at times, I guess.

She said hello and that they’d been wondering where I was. “Have you seen Jodi?” Virginia said she and Bob asked each other just the other day.

Haha, hiding from the cold, I told her, but now that we’re having very spring-like weather (it’s supposed to reach 72° today) I’m out and about more often, so we’ll catch each other around more. Nice to know they were thinking of me, though, and even a bit concerned.

Some of the lights in the house have been flickering, particularly in the master bedroom, master bath and kitchen. It doesn’t do it all the time, though. The house is getting old so one of the breakers is probably crapping out.

Over the weekend we replaced one of the kitchen plugs that was loose and probably the real cause of the K-Cup coffee maker going out and not the coffee maker itself. So I got a new one for no reason other than that it ended up being a better coffee maker. It was still worth it and it’s still good to have a backup in case one of them breaks for real.

He also turned the front porch light into a smart light. We’ve got it set to white instead of color-changing because most of the time we use it will be if we’re looking for a package after dark.

The toe rings came yesterday and I put two of them on the doll which looks really nice. I’m not impressed with the elastic flower toe rings but the elastic gemstone toe rings are nice. The thing is that they’re a little small for my fingers while probably too big for my toes. I’ll find out later when I take off my running shoes and try one on.

Today I’m expecting my new Turbie Twist towels and some hair accessories.

The flippers are still working on the house but they’ve been doing it quietly. The trellis fence that they put up alongside the carport has solar lights attached to the top of its post that looks nice at night.

I love how I can see how often Palma checks in now that we’re connected. Silly, pointless information but still kind of neat just the same.

Last night I dreamed that while we were still living in an adult community and the Twenties were our neighbors, the layout of the park looked different. Instead of the Twenties being across the street, they were a few houses down. It was only 7:30 in the morning when I heard something loud running, and annoyed, I got up to see what it was. I saw some weird piece of equipment that almost looked like a little tractor parked in front of the Twenties and figured that whatever it was had to be important for them to be running it so early. I walked up to the thing to read the writing on it to get a sense of what it was and what was going on. On the side of the machine, it said Man-Eating Testicles. LOL

In another dream, I remember riding in a car and feeling very cold, and then there was something about Tammy calling me to say something bad about Lisa. It was either something bad that Lisa did or something bad she said about me. I quickly assured Tammy I wanted nothing to do with her.

Hell, I wish Lisa would dump Tammy or at least do something bad enough to drive Tammy away! In this day and age, I just don’t see that happening, though.

MONDAY, FEBRUARY 5, 2018 Got some surprising news! But first I want to go in order of events.

When Sarah left a message on Tammy’s wall thanking both her and Becky for being there for her during hard times, she concluded with, “It’s nice to know who’s there for me and who’s not.”

I couldn’t help but wonder if that was aimed at anyone in particular. Why else would you say that in a case like that? And could she have been referring to me? I wondered this but only briefly before I dismissed the possibility. After all, I’m the one who tried to interact more with them, but understandably, they don’t want an aunt who’s much older than them and that they don’t know well on the other side of the country being that involved in their lives. So no, I’d say it has nothing to do with me.

Yesterday morning we went to the IHOP and while the music wasn’t as loud, somebody just had to bring their brat. It was there when we arrived and I thought to myself, I’m sure it will be there the entire time. It was, too. It was still there when we left. It let out a few shrieks and screams but it could have been worse.

The food was okay. Not as good as I remember it to be the last time because the meat was kind of tough and the french fries were a little dry and overdone. But it was still good.

Today I’m feeling okay but yesterday I was light-headed for some reason. This time a week ago I was pretty anxious so I’m glad I’m not… Until it gets me again in what? A couple of months? A couple of weeks? Maybe even a couple of days? Well, we’ll find out. Again, I hate to think I’ll have to live with it on and off for the rest of my life since it creeps up on me without warning, but I realize that’s a very real possibility.

A few days ago I had a scratchy throat when I woke up, but sure enough, my body fought it off in about 4 hours and kept it from manifesting into a cold.

My next book for publication is likely going to be College Romance, but I want to change the title. The title is lame, and it implies that it’s a romance when it’s actually more suspense than romance. I was thinking I might go with something like Campus Games since Campus Killer or Campus Nightmare seems a little too common sounding.

I’m amazed and pleased with the rise in book sales lately. Maybe more really is better even though I still have no reviews. The fact that there are 3 copies of Evil Amongst the Evergreens being checked out via the lending library, makes me wonder if any of the readers could be connected to Maliheh.

Okay, so here’s my surprising news. I got up, checked my phone, and even though I was still tired, what I saw made me run for my computer. It was a message from Palma! I was surprised alright, but I’m sure she was too, to get a message from a former inmate, framed and vindicated or not. I was also surprised that she didn’t remember me because I not only don’t have many look-alikes, but I wasn’t there for the typical reasons. Most charges are for drugs and prostitution. She may remember me in time just like it suddenly hit me that her first two initials were JM, not JA.

Anyway, it was a nice message. I was definitely surprised when she said it was good to hear from me after all these years, LOL. I don’t expect to exchange messages very often as she is one who tends to keep to herself and is a very busy person, but she said I could remain on her friend page, even though she doesn’t appear to have actually accepted the friend request. She also pointed out that we may not agree on everything, but that’s okay. I know that we’re different in a lot of ways and that’s fine. Her message was very nice and unexpected. She said she left the sheriff’s office as part of a career move she felt she needed to make. She congratulated me on the digital books and said she was glad that I was doing well, thanked me for keeping her in my thoughts all these years, and was glad that she could help make an impression for the better on me during those hard times and how we can achieve things in the face of adversary and things like that. She said she hopes God continues to bless me, LOL. For some reason, I would roll my eyes at just about anyone who said that but it’s okay coming from her.

Tom was a little surprised that I heard from her as well. When I asked him to guess if I heard from her, Stacey or Kathleen, his guess was Stacey. That’s exactly what my guess would have been too, even though I did tell Stacey she didn’t have to get back to me.

Because I was still tired, I took a nap for a little while really early before Tom left for work.

Last night I dreamed Aly flew out to visit us for a weekend and she cooked us dinner. I don’t remember what she cooked, though.

SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 4, 2018 Kim says her SIL is back to threatening to take her things away if she keeps making these grunting sounds she supposedly makes. Okaaayy… the SIL is either crazier than Kim or those are some grunting sounds she’s making!

I touched up Suki’s lips again and they look great. The color may fade over time but it’s easy to apply lipstick on these heads because if I press down on the chin, the mouth opens a bit and makes it easier to apply it.

Ordered a bunch of colorful toe rings and hair accessories, and he got some electronics-related stuff. I also grabbed a pack of Turbie Twist towels, something I really like to have now that I’m growing my hair.

I wonder how many more years the reality TV craze is going to go on. I miss having a variety of shows, but everything is either reality or foreign. If I don’t want to deal with foreign accents I have to choose between murder cases, sex cases, drug cases or prison life if I want to watch something while I eat, something I’ve been in the habit of doing. I just finished the murderous affairs, so I guess maybe the hookers can now entertain me while I eat.

The lack of variety is frustrating. Have people really lost their creativity? Even the different Law & Order series are pretty much the same old, same old. They just happen in different places.

Last night I dreamed I was on a small boat on the ocean with a couple of other people. We were far from the shore and it was nighttime. When we cut the lights on the boat there was pitch blackness all around us and the lights coming from the shore seemed like nothing little specs.

It got up to 70° yesterday and it’s definitely showing signs of spring now that I have to sleep with the fan on when sleeping during the daytime. Except for last winter, we’ve been in a drought for something like half a decade or more. I think this is how it’s going to be most years, though. November was kind of wet, but we barely got a five-minute sprinkle in December and just a few days of rain in January.

SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 3, 2018 RIP Max. He was Tammy’s dog which she adopted from our parents after they died. He was 14, though. Not 16-17 like I thought. She posted the news on Facebook and several people, including myself, commented. She thanked everyone but me for their comments.

Last night I dreamed we were living in an adult community that looked different than this one and I was kind of bummed out that the house next to us of all houses was a rental. I looked out our living room window and saw a stout black woman gazing at one of our plants at the front corner of our yard. There seemed to be more space between the house and the road. I figured she rented the house next door. Then I saw a turquoise pickup leave the front of that house that I knew was driven by a park worker.

Then I dreamed that this guy moved into a house a few houses away and I introduced myself to him and went through this long detailed spiel about where we lived and all that. He then politely smiled and said “Okay” in a tone that suggested that was quite a load of info for him to digest all at once.

I walked away wondering why I couldn’t have kept it short and simple and why I needed to describe something in three or four sentences that could have taken just one. LOL

FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 2, 2018 Wow, congrats to me! I’m now the heaviest I’ve ever woken up at, 156.0. I really need to stop fighting this losing battle and just eat when I’m hungry. I should still try to avoid cholesterol and sugar as much as I can for my health’s sake, but other than that, trying to keep from gaining weight over the years is going to be impossible.

I dreamed I had rats and a guinea pig. I called the rats home by shaking their food container. The guinea pig, not as intelligent, didn’t come when it heard the sound. I called out, “Gabera,” or something like that.

Then I had a dream I was on probation and my slim (dark-haired/eyed?) female probation officer showed up one morning. Tom made a comment about her not coming around so early and when I looked at the clock I realized it was only 6:30 in the morning. The fact that it was light at that time makes me think it was summer. Anyway, the PO seemed completely out of it like she was drunk or high on something. She was unsteady on her feet and could barely speak clearly.

In the last dream, I was at a diner or restaurant of some kind where I was supposed to meet Tammy and the girls. Having mixed emotions about associating with them, I decided to leave an insulting note regarding their weight and said something about them being a bad influence on my own weight. But as I started to walk away, I felt bad for it so I turned and retrieved the note before they could arrive and read it.

THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 1, 2018 Rather than skip a second dose today I decided to cut off my waiting time at 15 minutes instead of 30. Feeling good so far. I was actually back to normal yesterday. Calm and not the least bit nervous about being left alone. My only complaint right now is that stomach pain. It’s mild but just enough to be noticeable and annoying.

Still wondering the same thing I’ve been wondering for years since I started the medication at the same time I went into perimenopause… Is it the medication? Is my thyroid having pocket flares? Is it perimenopause?

Tom thinks it’s a combination and so do I. The fact that backing off the medication as soon as the anxiety kicks in makes it better shows that the pills do indeed have a hand in it. When I used to keep taking the medication when the anxiety would rear up, the anxiety would get worse and worse to the point that I would have a racing heart, the runs, and weight loss. And we know this medication can make me feel beyond horrible without my TSH going below 0. Trying 88 mcg and hitting a 3 proved that. I don’t know how much of the peri is responsible but I definitely suspect pocket flares. When my TSH is high I’m about a 10 but when my numbers are low they’re not much higher than 3, and I think it’s when they get there that I start to feel anxious. The only thing that points away from the pills/gland as the root cause is the lack of lung tightness and mind fuckers as I call them. Right before I would have severe anxiety attacks I would have lung tightness, flashes of dread going through my mind, as well as jitteriness.

Although my heart hasn’t raced or pounded lately, it sometimes does weird things. It doesn’t scare me because I now know that it’s harmless but I still don’t like it when it flutters. I don’t mean for just three or four beats either. Sometimes it flutters for several seconds and the fluttering is quite quick, almost more like a vibration.

I got my banana cream K-cups today and the outside light we ordered for the front arrived today, too. It looks stylish at the same time it looks a bit old-fashioned. It’s square-shaped with frosted glass. The wooden box has some kind of leafy vine carved out of it. It looks like something you might have seen in the 70s yet it’s modern and stylish at the same time.

The clip-on earrings are actually for pierced ears but the dolls can still wear them. Maybe I’ll pierce their ears sometime. They’re not light blue like they said they were either, but they match the blue eyes perfectly so maybe I’ll just leave Gia’s eyes blue. They’re going to stay the way they are at least for a while as I don’t want to mess with the eyes too much and risk damaging the “skin” around the eyes or ruining the eyelashes. The earrings are perfect. They’re exactly what I wanted for them. I didn’t want anything small like a stud that would be hard to see nor did I want anything too long that could get tangled in the hair. I just wish I could move this bitch!

The new bra is weird. You don’t get much support from it and it’s a little uncomfortable pulling on the back of the neck, but I can see where it would do a good job absorbing sweat. It’s going to be a treadmill accessory.

What may be a PBer bought one of my books, and someone’s reading the one I republished through the Kindle lending library. I can tell they’re all in the US but not where in the US. What’s cool about it is that I can track their page-reading progress. They were on page 55 before I went to bed. When I got up they were on page 72. When I checked a little while ago they were on page 85. So 45 more pages to go!

A PBer said that every time she goes a year without a period, she then gets one. This has been happening for 4 years and she’s now 53. I wouldn’t be the least bit surprised if I had more periods to come even though I don’t feel the least bit PMSy at the moment. Just fat. But even so, food really is one of the greatest pleasures in life. So much so that I gave into my sugar withdrawal last night and went to Walgreens to get a sugar fix.

As we were pulling up to the store, the pigs were in the parking lot focused on this one car. At first, I thought they were arresting someone. But then, as I was inside spraying on perfume testers and picking out what sugary naughties to stuff myself with, a cop who barely looked fresh out of high school let alone the police academy asked us if the turquoise Toyota was ours. Tom told him the gray Caddy was ours. Gotta admit the skinny cop seemed so kind and innocent of any kind of corruption but perhaps he just hasn’t been on the force long enough to acquire some of the hardened machoism so many of them end up with.

On the way out, the bacon decided the best place to stop and gab was right smack dab in the middle of the main entrance to the parking lot so we had to make a small detour.

I got a text from Aly saying she didn’t feel well. I guess she and her boyfriend are coming down with colds. She was telling me that Kim had mocked her for being in a poly relationship like she once was and even though we agree she doesn’t mean anything bad by it, the jokes do get old. She doesn’t tell her much anymore because she either doesn’t get it or overdoes the teasing. I’m getting a taste of that on account of the doll, haha. “Does she cook for you? Does she clean for you? Can she make you coffee?”

Last night I dreamed that my teeth fell out. It seemed to be mostly my upper teeth.

Then there was something about some household having a $200 TV package. I think that’s $200 a month they were paying and it might have included music as well.

Then I was in a rectangular shape bedroom and some house with two full-size beds in it. Tom was in one of them and what I think might have been Mary (Miss Perfect) was in the other one.

Sensing that Tom was asleep but Mary was awake and not caring, I told Alexa to turn on the lamp that sat on a tall dresser by the door. When she failed to respond I went out of the room and into the kitchen. A few minutes later I returned to the bedroom and found the light was now on which I assumed Mary had turned on.

Then I started sorting through these clothes that were piled up in the corner of the room between the wall and the bed Mary was lying in. I looked at her as she lay on her side with her back facing me, thinking that there wasn’t much room for me to sleep on my side, though why I wasn’t sleeping in Tom’s bed instead is beyond me.

I knelt down to go through the clothes and noticed something long and skinny that was similar in size to a match. When I touched it I realized it was a bug and it fluttered away.

Later…

Decided to get another pair of brown eyes for the doll heads so I don’t have to change them so often since I’m just not a fan of the blue eyes as realistic and as pretty as they are. As I may have mentioned before, the more I change the eyes, the more likely I am to disturb the eyelashes and tear the “skin.”

My pink vibe broke as I think I also mentioned, so I’m going to be getting a light blue one in place of it sometime. It’s also a USB charging one like the other one.

I went through and picked out a bunch of toe rings for the doll and myself.

I’m new to this ForeverDita diary site. Every now and then I do a search to see what comes up for online diaries and journals and I came across it that way. It’s pretty dead but I’m giving it a try just for fun. This one allows you to insert images easier to decorate the entries with.

The bad news is that in the middle of my day, the anxiety kicked up a bit. Usually, if I’m going to feel anxious, it starts within the first hour or two of my day. Fortunately, I was able to fight it relatively quickly. It started after Tom and I went for a walk. I could feel it in my chest and once again I began to worry that it could be the new me as of 2014 and a permanent problem for the rest of my life with the only question being whether or not I would get it every few days, every few weeks, or every few months. I really really hope it’s the perimenopause and that it’s not a forever thing but I have nothing to really say otherwise until I see what happens. But I did Stacey’s emotional tapping, drank some chamomile tea, ranted on Bubbly, and put lavender oil in my diffuser.

I also got rid of a couple of perfumes I had that I was into when the initial trauma struck. I think most people who go through a traumatic event have some kind of trigger, be it a particular smell, food, song, place, object, etc.

[hailsatanacab]

Ao3

The man’s grin fades as he takes in the scene, slumping out of his triumphant stance with a disgruntled moan. “You’re not the birdie I’m looking for.”

“I’m sorry, Duke, I’m gonna have to call you back. A clown just kicked my door down. For some reason.” Danny says into his phone, before hanging up and dropping it onto the counter next to him, despite Duke’s protests. He’s starting to get the impression that this isn’t the lighthearted joke he thought it was. He turns his attention towards the clown. “And you’re not the pizza delivery boy. Or, at least, I hope you’re not. Won’t be ordering from them again if you are.”

“Oh, a comedian? You best stop it, because that’s my job, and you don’t want to get on my bad side more than you already are.”

“Uh-huh, right. You’re J, then?” Danny holds up the card and gives it a little wave. Birds, Bats, and a guy wearing a really terrible halloween costume. Yeah, he’s starting to put a few things together. 

A spark of anger catches in his belly and he takes a sip of his water to quench it. Best get the full story before he does something he might regret. He’s only just gotten to this city, he really doesn’t want to bring down the ire of its protectors already. Fairly sure he's heard something about "No killing" and "No metas" and "overprotective vigilantes, so don't draw attention to yourself, I mean it, Danny" and shit.

The guy doesn’t answer him, but that’s alright, Danny’s pretty sure this whole box was his doing. He’s never going to let Sam know, but he kinda wishes he’d listened more to her 135 slide PowerPoint presentation—“Staying Safe in Gotham: It’s a Good Job You’re Already Dead, Ya Dingbat”—rather than playing Smash or Pass with Tucker whenever a person came up. Honestly, Danny couldn’t really concentrate on anything after Tucker enthusiastically smashed on Man-Bat. 

Come to think of it, that’s probably why Man-Bat is the only one Danny vividly remembers. Why couldn’t Man-Bat be the one to break into his apartment instead, at least he knows his name! Actually, wait, scratch that—it would be so horrifically awkward if they were to ever meet. Danny’s not one to judge, but there’s no way he’d be able to think about anything else.

“Speaking of being on my bad side,” J mumbles, clearly dismissing him and turning to face the door. He scratches at the back of his head with a crowbar that had been tucked away in his trousers. Gross.

A couple of men burst into the room, both armed with automatic rifles and clad in sinister looking clown-masks. Danny has to assume they’re with J even if they haven’t fully committed to the makeup. 

As soon as they cross the threshold, J swings the crowbar down and knocks the first one on the ground. He writhes, clutching at his head, whimpering as his blood splatters all over Danny’s nice new floor. There goes his security deposit.

“Boss?” The other one asks, not doing the sensible thing and running, which is what Danny would have done. Well, maybe not, Danny's never been particularly sensible.

“I thought you said this is where he lived?”

“He does, boss, I swear it! Duke Marlon Thomas is the name on the lease, it must be him!”

“Really?” J laughs, high and loud and very insane. It sets Danny’s teeth on edge. “Because unless he dresses up as a hate crime every day, this isn’t him!”

Well, sure, Danny’s existence is a crime, but it isn’t a hate crime. He’s back to not being entirely sure what’s happening here, but if he were to guess, this Duke Marlon Thomas is a new bird in the Bat’s vigilante nest and J is here to… Danny turns to take in the bird with the broken wings, hanging limply away from the body, feathers all crushed and bent. Well, J certainly isn’t here to make friends, is he?

“I’m sorry, boss, I—”

“I moved in yesterday, your guys are a little behind with their info. What did you want with Duke? I have his number, I could send him a message to say his mail order clown broke his birthday present. I assume that’s what’s happening here, right?” He shrugs and lifts up his phone, fishing for whatever information he can get. “You do balloon animals?”

“Mail order clown? Balloon animals?”J’s red lips stretch into a macabre grin and Danny is, once again, reminded how much he hates clowns. “Yeah, I’d love to use you as a message. At least someone here knows how to be helpful.”

J punctuates his words with several kicks to the downed man. Danny grimaces at the violence, stomach turning. If this is what the guy does to his lackeys, just what did he have in store for Duke?

“So, what’s your name?" Danny interrupts. "Bobo? Wait, no, it begins with a J… Jingles? That’s more Christmas elf, really. Jolly? Jello, you look like a Jello.”

“Jello?” J stops kicking the poor guy and looks up, confused.

“It’s Jello? Jello the Clown! Good name, really matches your hair. Not gonna lie, hate the aesthetic but kudos to you for sticking to it, I guess.” Danny shrugs again, a congenial smile on his face.

J barks out a laugh, his voice cruel and twisted. “You’re playing a dangerous game, boy, you best remember my name quick.”

“Wait, it’s not Jello?” Danny can’t help but laugh at the affronted look on J’s face. He was right, earlier, Danny really is a comedian. Winding J up is definitely funny. “J… Jester? Jujube? I’m running out of J words. Is it just Jake, is your name Jake? John. Jeffrey! Jeffrey the Clown!”

There’s a brief pause, the only noise J’s panting as he straightens up from beating the poor guy. He slicks his lank, green hair back out of his face and fixes Danny with a grin. Some of his lipstick is smeared over his teeth. Looking at the streaks of blood now decorating his apartment, Danny sure hopes it’s lipstick. Otherwise it’s just nasty. 

“How about this?” J says, all casual and smiles. 

Danny cocks his head to the side and smiles back, humming at him to continue.

J gestures to the goon still standing with his bloody crowbar. Good for him for not running yet, really. That’s professionalism. Idly, Danny wonders just how much money he gets for a gig like this. Whatever the amount, it’s not enough. Gotham really is a different city, huh?

“I’ll have this idiot here tie you up on that chair. I’ll do to you what I was going to do to Gotham’s newest do-gooder, Signal, and when I’m finished…” J wipes the back of his hand across his mouth, smearing sweat and blood across his face. He spits on the floor, keeping eye contact with Danny the whole time. “When I’m finished, I’ll place that little broken bird on your lap and I’ll carve my name into your chest. How about that? Think he’ll get the message then?”

“So what I’m hearing is that it is Jeffrey?” Danny asks, fighting down his own grin.

“Why don’t you just wait and see?”

“Sure! Hey, out of curiosity, what were you planning on doing to Duke?” He keeps his voice light, controlled, but even that is starting to get to the man judging by the flash of anger across his face. Must be used to being feared, he guesses. Sorry, J, but Danny’s seen children scarier than you.

“Show him what it means to join our game, just what exactly he’s getting into. Fight him, beat him, kill him. Take this here crowbar and show his brains to the world.” He taps the crowbar to his chin in mock thought, leaving a thick dab of blood  “Teach him to understand what the Bat’s signal really means, you know?”

“I don’t, sorry.”

“That help always arrives too late. That the good ol’ Bat only ever shows up after I’ve done my business. That you can only count on him to clean up my mess. That I’m going to kill him—you, now, I suppose—and there’s nothing no one can do about it. What do you think, clear enough for our friend Duke now?”

The man laughs again, high and nasally, and Danny turns to put his glass of water on the counter behind him. There’s no amount of water that can quell the raging fire in his belly now. Frost begins to creep around the glass and Jeffrey is really starting to piss him off.

“Do you know how old he is?”

“What does that matter?”

“Humour me. You seem good at that.”

J’s face closes and he leans down to pick up the assault rifle his goon dropped. Poor guy’s not moving, now. He’s just unconscious, Danny can tell, but still. It’s not going to be a pretty recovery.

“Or I could just shoot you now.”

“Or you could just shoot me now.”

J points the gun at the guy on the floor and pulls the trigger.

As the echoes of the shots fade, J cracks into a full-body laugh, clutching onto his stomach and doubling over. 

Danny’s lips curl into a snarl and he has to take a deep breath to calm down. Not yet.

“Children! Teenagers! He thinks he can send kids after me and I won’t fight them? I won’t hurt them? I won’t kill them?”

Danny locks eyes with the other masked goon, trying to motion with them to run away because there’s no way this isn’t going to end in a fight.

"Do you want me to tell you a secret?" His eyes take on a dangerous glint and he waves the gun over to the guy. "It's better when I do.”

But, the guy just stands there, waiting, looking very much like he’s used to his shit. He only moves when his next orders come and the muzzle of the gun knocks against the plastic of the mask. “Tie him up, good and proper.”

Danny doesn’t resist. What’s the point in resisting when he can escape as easily as breathing? Wait, no, as easily as blinking. Sometimes he forgets to breathe.

The man has him sitting in the chair with a rope coiling around his hands when J continues, “I thought I had made my point very clear the first time, and normally, I’m not one to repeat a joke, but I guess he’s too stubborn to learn the lesson. You know what they say: spare the rod, spoil the child. Not that I spared it back then, but still….”

Danny freezes. The goon struggles, straining against the rope to try to bring his hands together again, with no success before Danny remembers that he’s playing compliant right now and lets himself be manhandled again.

“You’ve done this before?”

“You really are new here, aren’t you, kid?”

“You’ve killed one of the vigilantes before?”

J swings the crowbar like a golf club and peers off into the distance as if he’s watching the ball soar through the air, shielding his eyes from an imaginary sun. Then he springs up in mock celebration, fist pumping in the air before bowing at them as if they were giving him a rapturous applause. “Hole! In! One!”

“You killed a child hero.”

“You should have seen his face, calling for his daddy the whole time. It was so sweet,” his voice breaks, he chokes up, and wipes a tear from his eye, “so sad, so emotional. So funny.”

Danny doesn’t say anything.

“Are you going to call for your daddy? I was hoping to make Signal call for his—actually be his namesake and call for big, bad, daddy Bats to come and help him. Really wanted them all to hear it. They couldn’t hear the first one I killed, I think that’s where I went wrong.”

Once the goon is done, he steps back from Danny and moves around the room to stand behind J again. At least he has enough sense to keep himself out of the line of fire. Danny wonders if he’ll run when shit breaks loose. When he breaks loose.

“This was going to really drive it home for all of them, not just the Bats. And then you came in here and ruined it!” J takes the crowbar and pokes at Danny’s chest with it, prodding him hard enough to rock him back on the chair. “So I’m going to ruin you.”

“I mean,” Danny says, pointedly looking at the mess of his front door, “you’re the one that came in here and ruined my perfectly good evening. I was gonna have pizza. Not even gonna get a balloon sword, now.”

Lightning fast, Danny phases through his ropes and snatches at the crowbar when J goes to poke him again. He heaves with just enough strength to knock J off balance while pulling himself to his feet, and dusts off his jeans.

“You’re a meta?” J’s face morphs from surprised to gleeful, another laugh crackling through the air. “Perhaps I was too hasty in—”

“Nope.” Danny rolls his eyes, not seeing the funny side. “Not a meta. I just really hate clowns.”

He pulls on the crowbar again, but J still doesn’t let go, so instead he swings his arm round and forces him on a jaunty little spin if he wants to keep on holding it. They switch places, Danny now near the door and J collapsing into the chair, laughing all the while.

“For the record, I didn’t call for my dad when I died. All I could do was scream.” 

Danny trembles in rage now, holding the crowbar tight against J’s chest, his hand slippery with blood. He doesn’t even think J can hear him, not over the sound of his laughter. 

His death was bad. Painful. Long and unending.

He can’t even imagine what it must have felt like to be lucid enough to call for help.

“You killed a child hero. You came here today to kill a child hero. I can’t let that stand.”

There’s a hitch of a breath behind him, the rattling metal of a gun, and honestly Danny’s a little surprised the guy hasn’t run yet. He turns to face him, keeping the crowbar pressed firmly against J’s chest. He won’t be getting up any time soon.

“Leave. Get out now and you’ll be fine.”

“Yes,” J gasps through his laughter, “get out! He’s mine!”

The man doesn’t need to be told twice. He drops his gun and legs it, so that’s one less thing Danny has to worry about.

Now. What to do with J…

It’s not even a question. He wanted to introduce someone’s brains to the world, didn’t he? Danny kinda doubts he has much of them, but he doesn’t mind obliging. This is one of those favours that he’s happy to help out with.

He takes the crowbar, flips it around in his hand so he’s holding the less bloody side, and starts swinging.

It’s gory. Gruesome. Worst of all, it’s over in a disappointingly short amount of time.

Actually, scratch that, worst of all is that J never stops laughing. It’s weird and more than a little unnerving.

When Danny’s finished, the crowbar clatters to the floor and Danny lets out a long, slow breath. It’s not an elegant solution, not really. Not even fun and from the looks of it, it’s not even going to be a deterrent.

Danny crouches down in front of him, watching as he blows bloody bubbles on the floor with his sputtering breath, giggling as they pop and shower him with spittle. This won’t keep him down for long, of that Danny’s certain.

“You know,” Danny muses, “I don’t agree with child heroes.”

With a snort, he stands, prodding J in the shoulder enough so that he flips over onto his back. “Bit hypocritical of me, right? I mean, I get it. Sometimes you just don’t have a choice. Sometimes you’re the only one that can do something, as fucked as that is.”

The only response he gets is a weak, nasally chuckle. Danny should break his nose, he’s really starting to hate that sound.

Instead, he turns and makes his way over to the box and looks at the bird inside. Danny can’t even imagine what Duke must have been feeling when he put it together. The panic in his voice… 

No matter how much of a beating he’s just given him, J still knows Duke’s name. Knows his family, his friends, his whole life. Sure, Danny was here to spoil his plan this time, but that was pure luck. He won’t be around for the next.

So he’s not really sure what to do now. What’s the protocol for something like this? What’s he meant to do? You can’t put someone like this in a normal jail—even if he managed to stay put, Danny’s sure this won’t be a secret he’ll keep—soon enough, it’ll be open season on Duke Marlon Thomas.

“But it only takes one person, one messed-up, maniacal fruit loop, for it all to come crumbling down. Adults can understand that, they can prepare for that. They know the weight of their actions, they can fully comprehend what they’re getting into. Children…”

Gently, he picks up the bird. The odd angles of the broken wings make the feathers crunch under his fingers and Danny smooths them out as best he can. It fits neatly into his hand, the yellow underbelly still soft and downy. Honestly, Danny’s kind of surprised that there’s not a bomb in it or something equally ridiculous.

“Children shouldn’t need to.”

“You were…” J wheezes from behind him and he can hear the blood catch in his throat. “A child hero?”

“All grown up now.”

J laughs, a wet, bubbling, heaving sound. “Batty doesn’t like to share.”

“Oh, don’t worry about me. With this welcome,” Danny snorts, “Gotham already feels like home. I won’t be giving it up. Besides, I’m retired! He’s got nothing to worry about.”

“Retired?”

“I’m not a hero. I was just someone that didn’t have a choice.” He snaps the beak off the bird with a grimace. “Then my own maniacal fruit loop came in and ruined it.”

That sends J into another fit of laughter, the sound so shrill it sets Danny’s teeth on edge. Clowns. Fucking clowns.

Setting the bird down back in the box, he makes his way back over to J and hooks his foot under his shoulder with enough strength to flip him over. Somehow, his laughter is louder like this. What a dick.

“So I ruined him.”

“You… you think you can ru-ruin me?”

“I know I can ruin you. But…” Danny sighs, crouching down beside him again. “It’s probably a bad idea. As you said, the Bat doesn’t like to share and seeing as he’ll probably be here soon, I’d like to make as much of a good first impression as I can.”

The anger is still raging in his gut, the icy tendrils coiling around his core as he looks down at J. The fear in Duke’s voice rings in his ears. How young he sounded.

“No, I won’t ruin you. But I’m going to make sure you can’t ruin Duke.”

“You can try, you—” he cuts himself off with a crazed laugh.

“You know, I failed English in high school pretty hard. My teacher said I wouldn’t know poetry even if Edgar Allan Poe came back to life and smacked me in the face. I said he already did, but he didn’t get the joke and I got detention for talking back. Still… I’d like to think this is going to be poetic. You see this?” He holds up the beak to him. It starts to glow as he imbues it with a little of his ectoplasm and then encases it in a thin layer of ice for good measure. “This is going to stop you singing like a canary. You won’t be the little bird telling anyone any secrets, because this little bird is going to stop you. That’s poetry, right?”

It’s almost comical, really, watching J trying to push himself away from the beak as Danny brings it closer to him. Danny allows himself a little chuckle, but it’s drowned out by J’s barking laugh, short and sharp, as his fingers slip on the blood and he lands flat on his back. Whatever. Danny grabs at his leg and jerks him back before kneeling on his chest—probably a little harder than he needs to, but that’s okay, he can live with that.

Once J is secure—despite his weak scrabbling against Danny’s knee—Danny leans forward and, thumb resting just under his chin, pushes his head up to bare his throat. J keeps trying to gnash his teeth, bite him, wriggle free, but Danny holds him steady. It’s not like he can go intangible or anything. Really, fighting humans is so boring.

Carefully, gently, Danny brings the beak closer to his throat even as J bucks wildly in response.  His wheezing laughter vibrates against Danny’s hand, spittle flying everywhere. Gross.

It takes a precise hand to phase the beak into J’s voicebox, but Danny’s good at stuff like this. It’s just like working on one of his fiddly inventions, really.

As soon as he lets go of the beak, releasing its intangibility, the cold from his ice bleeds into J’s tissue and he stills. The hands that were beating against Danny’s leg go up to his throat.

“Wh—” he starts, but stops immediately, his Adam’s apple quivering as he wordlessly mouths his question. At least he’s not laughing. 

It takes him a minute of working his throat before he can whisper, hoarse and stuttering, “What did you do?”

Danny’s grin is wolfish, stretching far too wide and showing too many teeth, as he sits back on his heels and admires his handiwork.

“Now, listen up, Jeffrey, you’re going to want to know this. Here’s how it works: that beak will be with you for the rest of your soul’s existence. Believe me when I tell you that there’s no one strong enough that can remove it, in magic or might. So you best watch what you say from now on, because if you don’t…”

He conjures up a splinter of ice between his thumb and pointer finger, and turns it around to catch the light, rainbow fractals bouncing off J on the floor. It would make for a pretty picture, without the clown.

When he’s sure J is watching, he carries on, “If you say anything with the intention to compromise or fatally wound a bat or bird—any vigilante, not just Signal—then that little beak inside your throat will grow.”

The ice shivers longer in his pinched grip as demonstration.

“Now, because I’m a nice person, I’ll give you three chances. Within reason, of course, you can’t just order their deaths and only suffer for it once, I’m not stupid. Don’t bother trying to speak around it, either, it’ll sense your intentions and once your three chances are up…”

It explodes in his hands, growing from the size of a needle to the size of a pickaxe, and falling to the floor with a hefty thunk. J watches it all with wide eyes, a whimpering giggle lodged in the back of his throat.

“You’ll end up like the Titanic. Bye, bye, Bobo.” Danny laughs, standing up. “You know, my mom always said if you can’t say anything nice, don’t say anything at all. Words to live by now, I guess.”

There, that’s a pretty good job, right? That should keep him from spreading Duke’s identity around, shouldn’t it? Like, yeah, sure, Danny’s shaking up the Bat’s turf in a big way by interfering, but surely he can’t be mad at him now, right? He’s fixed the situation! 

“So, Jeffrey, what do you think? Still planning on leaving messages for the birds and the bats?”

“J-Joker…” he gasps, the word sticking in his throat. Heaving in a wet, ragged breath, he tries again, “My name… is Joker.”

“I don’t care.”

Return to sender (dc x dp)

There was a box set right in front of his door. That was already pretty unusual, since Danny had just moved in, and and gotten done with boxes and he knew he hadn't had anything delivered here.

"Let's get you inside," Danny muttered as he got his key out of his pocket.

Unlocking the door, he picked it up and made his way in. He set the box down on the small kitchen table before grabbing a knife from the cabinet. He sat down and set to cutting the tape along the opening.

Peeling back the flaps, he took a peak at the contents only to be faced with a mound of yellow and black sparkly tissue paper, with a letter on top.

"What do we have here?" he muttered to himself, as he took the envelope out of the box.

Ripping it open, he got a small greeting card out. It had a yellow smiley face on it with the word "Smile!" printed above it. He flipped it open, and his eyes fixed on the printed text that said "Because today is your day!" Underneath it, written in chicken-scratch was written the following: "Looks like the bat has a new signal. At least mommy and daddy won't know how fast you replaced them!" it was signed with a simple J and yet another smiley face.

Danny frowned. "Weird."

Then, he peeled back the paper to find a taxidermied yellow-and-black bird Danny couldn't recognize, with its wings broken.

"This is definitely not mine," Danny said as he looked at the bird. Hopefully the real owner of this wasn't going to be too disappointed it had been this damaged in transit.

Danny took up the box to look at the delivery address, only to find that while this was for his apartment, the name of the receiver was marked as "Duke Marlon Thomas". It took one quick google search to find a phone number. Danny thanked whoever the sender was for including a middle name as it narrowed the search greatly. Dialling the number, Danny got up to get himself a glass of water. As he got the glass out, the line connected.

"Hello?" he heard a surprisingly young voice say. Well, assuming apparently made an ass of Danny. Maybe taxidermy really did appeal to all ages.

"Hi, my name's Danny. I think I got your package by accident."

"My package?" The guy on the other side asked, perplexdely.

"Yeah, a big box with a bird in it?" Danny answered. "Listen, man I'm sorry, I think the wings broke during transit, I swear it was already like that when I opened it-"

"What bird?" Now the guy sounded even more confused.

Well now, Danny was starting to get confused. "A taxidermied black-and-yellow bird?" Danny sounded out, then he grabbed the note and let his eyes go over it again. "There was a note too, I opened it, sorry about that." Danny winced, before trying for a joke to hopefully get the guy to soften up on him. "Whoever that J- friend is, he's got a weird sense of humour."

"J- friend?" the voice on the other side of the phone said. Guess, the joke hadn't gone over well, because his voice had gone tense.

"Yeah," Danny answered withholding a sigh, damn his curiosity. Opening other people' letters was not only a gross invasion of privacy but also a federal crime. Hopefully the guy wouldn't stay mad too long. "It was signed with the letter J and a smiley face."

"Whoever you are," said the guy, and the urgency in his voice had Danny straightening up. "You need to get out of here right now."

"What-?"

Just then, the door to Danny's apartment was blown open.

"I hope you're ready, birdie," a voice outside sounded, before a spindly man in a purple suit, green hair and sickly-looking skin walked in.

"Because you and me are going to have so much fun."

[youmissedone]

K-Mart startled, sitting up straighter when she heard the door swing open. Even though she knew she was safe here, she’d learned to always be on her guard. She never knew if one of the undead was coming for her, and she needed to protect herself, so the hypervigilance she’d developed as a result of her PTSD wasn’t necessarily a bad thing in this case.

“No, um, it’s not a bad thing that you answered me so quickly. It’s just… I heard you and Mom arguing again, and I think it might be my fault.” K-Mart briefly glanced out the window. She could see Alice and Claire deep in conversation, but she didn’t make any efforts to listen in. That dynamic seemed simple enough to her. “I don’t want to upset you. I just want to be good.”

K-Mart understood exactly why Claire didn’t want her to get close with Alice. Gaining hope then losing it could hurt more than never hoping at all, but K-Mart was young and sweet. She couldn’t help but hope that there was something substantial in Arcadia, and that Alice was going to take them there. K-Mart had already begun to include Alice in her family dynamic, and she admired the woman greatly.

“Is Alice going to stay here?”

__________

Carlos was sorry to see he’d startled K-Mart, but at the same time, he was glad to see her awareness and instincts were where they should be. He wasn’t about to tell her it was okay or not to be scared because, frankly, there was a lot that was not okay right now, and a lot she should be scared of. Instead, he didn’t draw further attention to it, so as not to embarrass her, and otherwise left it alone. That paranoia could save her life someday, he knew. It was just a sad fact of the world they lived in now.

“No, it’s not your fault. There’s just a lot going on right now. Your mom’s... a little stressed out. We all are. What with the last few members of the convoy we lost with that bird attack, and... well Claire has to manage people’s fears a bit with that and with Alice. Most people here don’t know her, so they’re a little afraid. I’m not sure what you overheard, exactly, but it had nothing to do with you.” And now some levity to lighten the mood... “Unless it’s about you elbowing her in your sleep again last night, ‘cause she did mention something about that...” he joked. While Carlos usually shared a vehicle with L.J. to sleep at night, whenever he wasn’t shacking up with Betty, he knew K-Mart often slept in Claire’s vehicle. 

“You are good, K-Mart. Best daughter I ever had, actually.” Another joke, since she well knew Carlos had no other children, but a good amount of truth mixed in this time. “Don’t worry. Your mom and I are very proud of you. You’re very brave and you help us out a lot every day. Keep up the good work, okay?” he offered, meaning every word.

At her question, Carlos’ head tilted briefly and he sighed. “No, probably not. And that has nothing to do with you either, it’s just... That’s how Alice is. A lot’s happened to her over the years, and she doesn’t want anyone to get hurt because of her. There are some very bad people who would love to get their hands on her, and she’s afraid that her being around all of us will get us into trouble as well. Your mom feels the same way, given what she knows of Alice, from what I’ve told her. She’s wary of what Alice can do, and why, and she’s got the convoy’s safety to think about.”

That was the simplest explanation he could give, and one that didn’t overly involve explaining potential jealousy that might be going on with Claire as well. That part... was Carlos’ problem to handle. “Why do you ask?” he prompted K-Mart, wondering if it had only been a casual question, or if the girl was thinking about something specific.

[mothaltaccount]

Look at the tags before reading for warnings n shit

No images or nothin, and nothings described, it’s just a rant/vent

On second thought some is described, not in graphic detail, it’s just something Ik i wouldn’t want to read so like.. yeah keep that in mind (I’m ass at describing shit)

Are anyone else’s parents just fucking weird? Like mine have ti be properly stupid to not notice some shit

Like “oh, any time i bring up animal death my child gets visibly upset/uncomfortable, i should keep doing that!” Actually fuck off gods

An Like, i fully cannot bring that up with my dad because Ik he’ll borderline make fun of me for it because it’s somehow “childish” to be upset that somethings fucking dead??

Like me and our mother were downstairs looking at the birds at our bird feeder, cause there were juvenile blue tits and they’re really fucking cute, and i said about how tiny blue tits are, and she decides to recount one time where one flew into the window and fucking died, so she had to go pick it’s dead fucking body up out of a plant pot and throw it out

Why the fuck did you think that a) i wanted to know that? And b) that now is the time to recount that?

Like i was having fun, watching the cute lil birds figure out a bird bath, and you decide that nows the time to talk about one fucking dying? What the actual fuck is wrong with you??

Like well done? Now I’m just fucking sad, and pissed because you ruined my mood completely? Why are you so fucking inconsiderate? And i can’t talk to her about that now, because the last time i was upset about something she did, she dragged me out of my room to yell at me, and then guilt trip me, and then rat on me to the father who was then loudly invalidating how i felt

Shocker! Your autistic kid doesn’t wanna come home after a stressful day to find shit in there room has been moved about

It’s almost as though it’s a well known sign of autism, not handling change well

Wow! Your autistic kid is autistic! Who could’ve possibly seen that coming!

And our dad, why the fuck does he feel the need to tell me about roadkill? You’re driving me to the bus station so i can go to school and sit my English gcse, i dont need to know that something mangled in the middle of the road, and you know what’ll really help your kid now that you’ve realised that’s upset them? Tell them about the death of a stranger who had a horrific accident while skydiving! That’ll really fix it! And now that your kid is trying not to cry the morning of their fucking English gcse, now’s the time to ignore the situation entirely!

Great fucking parenting

I’m trying so hard not to name them bc i don’t want people knowing this is me unless they are our parents (which they won’t be bc neither of them use this site)

Like he’s done this when we were a kid too

When we’re on holiday, i dont need to know how many poor fucking creatures have died at the side of the road?

When your driving me to my friends house (while we were still in primary school btw. We were at most 10), you should absolutely describe the exact position their favourite bird is lying dead in on the road (I’m not exaggerating in the slightest btw/srs), and then when you pick them up and you decide to go out for dinner, you should point out that their favourite bird is on the menu, and joke about getting it, and not fucking shut up about it because you think you’re so fucking funny borderline bullying your child

I cant fucking wait to be out of this house some days