#fig likes ordering stuff she's never tried before and if she happens to not like it she just switches w gorgug

[xiewho]

for the art reqs: fig and gorgug drinking smoothies after band practice? :D

they're on their 5th smoothie i think

[bartholomewmacmillan]

You'll need a boutonniere. Actress Kathryn Harrold is 66.

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[jq37]

The Report Card – Fantasy High Sophomore Year Ep 2

Boggy the Froggy!

Welcome back, ya’ll! We jump back in with our Bad Kids (or 4/6 of them anyway) the very next day. Fabian sends Gilear out on a coffee run on the threat of bodily harm. His mom–who, if you remember is low-key a total badass–tells Fabian that if Gilear doesn’t come back from the quest alive, she’s going to duel him to the death on top of the house. Yikes. At Chez Thistlespring, Gorgug’s parents give him another very detailed sex talk and then remind him that he lives in a world where magic is very real so any and all dreams he remembers should be treated as omens. 

At the haunted house, Adaine wakes up having had portentous dreams like everyone else which is doubly concerning I have to imagine considering (1) she is the eleven oracle and (2) as a full elf she’s supposed to trance, not sleep and dream. Luckily for her nerves, she cast Find Familiar the night before and summoned an emotional support familiar which she gave the amazing name Bogariel Frogariel aka: Boggy the Froggy. 

Meanwhile (and I needed to switch paragraphs because Kristen is doing the D&D equivalent of playing Twister while everyone else is playing Checkers as she is wont to do) Kristen is talking to Tracker about changing Yes? again because she is filled with doubt about her god of doubt but the one thing she clearly doesn’t have doubt about is her relationship with Tracker because it’s been less than a year and she already sees wedding bells in their future. Wild. She also invites Tracker on the quest, rectifying what I thought was a wild oversight last week. 

Everyone meets up and they realize Fig and Riz are missing. They (specifically Fabian) can’t get Riz on the phone (which has never happened before) and all of Fig’s stuff is missing. They head over to Riz’s office to see if they can find him but, before that, Tracker cancels the church of Yes? because, sure. 

There are signs of a struggle at Riz’s office, but no blood. They find a picture of Riz’s super-spy dad (Pok) with his arm around someone who appears invisible to them (though the spot is circled in red). They also find claw marks going up to a mirror. Adaine stops Gorgug from touching the mirror which would have driven him insane and had him attack the group. She sees a twisted version of Riz in the mirror which no one else can see until she describes it (suspicious). Then, she dispels magic and the Riz appears in the room…and attacks them (roll for initiative baybee)!

Fabian is flipped the F out. Kristen decides to chill out and drink Riz’s coffee–much to the incredulousness of everyone else (she’s on those chill existential dread vibes). Adaine and Gorgug are stricken by fear but they’re able to snap out of it quickly. Once they’re sure it’s not Riz (the doppelganger is going full creepy horror movie monster with the head twisting and biting and junk), they start going full throttle but Kristen gets a clutch roll and lands a banishment on Nightmare Riz (who was invisible at the time). Also, Adaine finds a gun but no one is down with her packing heat without proper firearms training so she reluctantly puts it back. They confer with Sandra-Lynn and they find out Fig has, for some reason, gone to Bastion City (the capital) and Gorthalax is missing. Also, because Emily is Emily whether she’s present or not, they find out that Fig has decided to multiclass and she is now a bard/warlock with her demon dad as her patron. Those might be connected because, as her patron, Gorthalax can now find Fig at all times.  

Sklonda, in the meantime, has been investigating a robbery at the mall. They end up there too because Gilear (who is back from his coffee run) said he saw Fig’s bus in the area. They tell Ragh to meet them there and then head over (Gorgug in the old family car which he buys from them for 30 gold (the cost of a pony)–the amount Adaine suggests after the Thistlesprings reject his insane offer of 1000 gold). Also, Kristen leaves her brothers some gold secretly which is sad and also I think not the best way to handle that, but the intention is good. The robbery was of a gem–non-magical I believe–called the Devil’s Heart. [Edit: And apparently Fig’s doing.] Fabian shows up, tries to be helpful, and then eats glass. Normal stuff. 

The group tries to figure out what’s going on with Fig by calling the hotel she’s at and basically doing a straight improv comedy routine, each passing the phone around with a bad story until Adaine just hangs the phone up. Then, they find out from Sklonda that Pok’s partner is a tabaxi (cat person) named Kalina and she is in the empty space in the photo. Sklonda and Sandra-Lynn can see it even though the Bad Kids can’t. 

With that information gathered, the group leaves Elmville for the first time on the way to the Hotel Cavalier in Bastion City and, hopefully, Fig. 

Detention

Fabian for Intern Abuse

Poor Gilear. Fabian solicits increasingly complicated coffee orders from his friends to make Gilear’s job harder and tries to get them to threaten Gilear on their behalf. Even Sandra-Lynn was like, bro. Lay off the guy. Bad form, sir. (Hilarious, but bad). 

Honor Roll

Adaine for Rocking Her Portent Rolls

Adaine had a 19 and a 4 for her portent rolls this session and she used them very judiciously. The first was her 19 which she gave to Gorgug who was about to fail his saving throw and touch the mirror which would have led to him attacking everyone (she has a vision of his beheading her in a rage–sidenote love that Brennan makes her portent rolls actual visions instead of just having the mechanical effect of changing the roll happen). The second was a 4 which she gave to Brennan who was rolling for concentration on Nightmare Riz’s fear spell. What a power move to stare your DM in the face and say, “You roll a 4.” Amazing. Portent rolls are so good you guys. Also, bonus points for coming up with the name Bogariel Frogariel. 

Random Thoughts

Fabian’s response to his mom’s ultimatum that she will fight him if Gilear doesn’t return alive? “Damn, guess I have to fight my mom.”

“MAGIC IS REAL AND SO IS MY FROG.”

Brennan describes Boggy as just the most archetypal looking, round, squishy frog and I want a plush of his yesterday. Or a stress ball! It would go with his whole emotional support thing in game. I love that Siobhan picked not the potentially “useful” or “cool” animal. She went full Marie Kondo and was like, “What’s gonna spark some joy?” Boggy also can give her the help action, which is great!

The episode was great even 2 cast members down, but they were missed. On more than one occasion, I was like, “This is more quiet than usual. I wonder why–ah Emily.” We better get her reaction to Boggy as soon as she’s back.  

Kristen brings up the concept of patenting a god which is wild. We also get an answer to the question I had last week about Tracker’s cleric status–she still is a cleric of the moon goddess. The moon goddess is just chill with her followers not being exclusive. 

Fabian sans Riz is a hilarious mess. For anyone who likes them together as friends and/or romantically there was a lot of Content. Fabian being like, “Idk about Fig but something is def wrong with the Ball because he always answers on the first ring when I call  him.” Him canonically forgetting that he has a name other than The Ball (that’s the name in his phone, obv). And, the coup de grace, him investigating RIz’s office, but only for signs of his name. Him trying to Investigate like Riz, rolling a nat 1, and literally eating glass (“I thought I could taste fingerprints!”). 

“Coffee’s ordered, is the Ball dead?”

Adaine as everyone is clowning on Fabian for possibly making out with the Hangman: The Hangman is much more human than my bitch sister. 

Nightmare Riz, who they still think is actual Riz at this point, pops out of the mirror and Fabian and Adaine’s reactions respectively are, “You can’t do these things!” and, “It’s like 60% of our grade.”

The idea of Gorgug going from a terrified scream into a barbarian rage scream is very funny. Where are the animatics people?

Oh, speaking of people, Fantasy High was trending on tumblr the morning after this stream. Nice job, guys! 

The talk that Gorgug’s parents give him about all dreams being significant is something I always say in movies/books/shows like this. You have protagonists who *know* they live in a magic world and they have weird dreams and it’s not until 2/3rds of the way into the story that they’re like, “Wait. My dreams…mean something?” Bitch, what?

Gorgug’s initial coffee order is Hot Chocolate with a shot of decaf.

Everyone is very chill with Tracker coming onto the quest. Adaine just has one rule: No sex in the tent while they’re also in the tent. Kristen asks like she’s offended Adaine would feel the need to say that but like…come on. 

At first, I thought the invisibility in the photo was similar to the non-Adaine bad kids not being able to see Nightmare Riz until she described him but they still couldn’t see the woman in the photo after Sklonda described her so not sure what was going on with the mirror. 

I went back to the episode where Riz finds the photo of his dad (First Kisses and Last Words at around 1 hour, 27 mins in) and in that photo it’s of his dad and his mom. So either (1) it’s a different photo, (2) Brennan forgot/retconned something, or (3) something seriously screwy is going on. I will also note two observations here. Sklonda mentioned that Kalina doesn’t drink but was holding up her hand in a toast like she was drinking in the photo. That seems too specific a detail to not mean anything. And the second thing is, last ep, we did learn about a servant of the Nightmare King called the Shadow Cat and Kalina (if that is her real name) is a tabaxi so that’s something to think about. 

With all the complicated coffee orders flying around, Adaine just changes hers to a black coffee to try and make Gilear’s life a little easier (her original order was a Peppermint Mocha–sans the threat of violence to Gilear Fabian was offering). I do really love that Adaine seems genuinely concerned about the guy. SOMEONE should be. And it’s consistent with her characterization of just being generally well mannered and empathetic. 

Kristen getting the banishment on Nightmare Riz is something she did after Ally asked for it and Brennan was like, “lol, sure on a 19 or 20.” Boom. Rolled a 19. Just like in the prom fight. So the lesson here folks is don’t give your players a conditional yes and then expect the dice to bail you out. 

Kristen’s existential crisis is so crazy to me because she’s having, like, a prototypical Crisis of Faith™ (and pretty realistically) except, unlike in real life, she has certain knowledge about the existence of gods, life after death, and the means to communicate with those deities in the present day like…I feel like you’re crisis-ing wrong, girl. She’s crisis-ing like she just deconverted from Christianity when I feel like what actually happened is closer to, like, quitting a sorority or realizing you hate your major or changing political parties.  

the nature of humanity is just that every so often someone accidentally invents homestuck helioism again

Ragh had a dream matching up with Gorgug’s (but he didn’t realize it was Gorgug in his dream) which means something and I’m sure we’ll figure out what soon enough. 

The Fabian eating glass scene is another one where you truly need to see it to understand how great it is. Lou is equally game to have Fabian be the coolest person who ever lived or a huge baby and Fabian running away crying because he has glass shards in his tongue is incredible. Hilariously, he runs into Ragh in the food court who has also eaten glass in the past (“Glass is literally invisible.”) and they bro bond over it so hard (“That’s my boy!”) that Tracker and Kristen are like…are they a thing?

The other crazy scene is the gang passing around the phone trying to convince the hotel receptionist to give them info about Fig. Kristen comes up with the name Teddy Guyger (and Zac and I at the same time are like, “Did you get the name Teddy because you have a teddy bear in your inventory rn?”). Fabian tries to drop his dad’s name. Their first move for some reason isn’t to give the phone to Gorgug who is also a part of the band. Adaine just hangs up the phone like Peppa Pig. Exquisite comic timing. 

“I cast bane on Gilear.”

I love the running joke of Adaine having visions throughout the day of her friends in the process of doing dumb BS.

Nightmare Riz going after Fabian’s good eye was big gross. Thanks Brennan, I hate it.  

I wonder if what’s going on with Fig is completely different than what’s going on with Riz. Just because they’re gone for the same reason irl, doesn’t mean they’re gone for the same reason in game. Nightmare Fig could be a fun fight though.

As someone whose fave thing in D&D is not combat, I thought the fight in this episode was great. Interesting concept, good chance for in-character reactions, not too long . 

Ragh upon meeting Tracker: Check it out: I’m gay. (Tracker: Tight.)

Fabian, who has known Cathilda his entire life: Do maids dream?

In this ep, Kristen and Adaine rolled 2 nat 20s each (Kristen rolled one for initiative also but it was lowered by her modifier), and Gorgug and Fabian each rolled 1. Fabian also rolled a nat 1 (which, again, led to him Eating Glass).  

[boisoup-blog]

something more than a favour, chapter 2  /  READ ON AO3  /  CHAPTER 1 fandom: Assassin’s Creed Odyssey pairing: Brasidas/Kassandra additional tags: everyone lives au, fake marriage au, unrequited feelings, slightly nsfw, best read on A03 in case it gets flagged

Kassandra didn’t know where she was, when she got there or how she got there but, regardless. she was enjoying herself. Lying on her back on the surprisingly soft ground, her feet were planted, lifting her hips towards her paramour. She was too enthralled by pleasure to look who was down there but she’s had someone else’s tongue lapping at her clit enough to know what they’re doing. Kassandra is also sure she felt hair scratching the skin around her slit, like a beard.  

One of her hands heads down her body towards her lover, to grab at surprisingly short hair. One thing she deduced was that it was a Spartan down there, a braid prominent on the top of his head. However, her investigation was stilted by a finger pushing through her folds, instantly hooking and dragging along her walls. Her eyes squeezed shut, her hand tightened in his hair, probably messing up the braid, and she moaned, it wasn’t very loud but it was enough for her lover to growl. With that one sound, two things happened, her core tightened as she moaned again, and she figured out who was pleasuring her so.

This must be a dream, she thought to herself, although she ultimately did not want to wake up. Removing her hand from his head, both hands went to his shoulders as she pushed herself up to a sitting position, to look down at Brasidas of Sparta. His eyes were dark, hooded and predatory, the hair along his upper lip covered in her. Her hands slid from his shoulders, (unfortunately his cuirass covers most of his upper body, what a wet dream this is,) to his neck, then up to cup his face, beard soft beneath her fingers.  

Brasidas opened his mouth as if to say something, but instead of words, he barked. And barked again. Every time he barked, it became more and more dog-like, until her eyes shot open, Kassandra finding herself in bed and alone. Spurred by a chorus of dogs, she swung her legs out of bed and ran her hands over her face before she stood up and marched to the window. Two dogs were sat barking at nothing. Absolute. Nothing. Grinding her teeth and scowling, she reached out of the window, grabbed the shutters and slammed them closed.  

Aphrodite must be playing with her; she’s tired, angry and sexually frustrated. Gods watch over whoever angers her today because she’s in the mood to punch someone.  

After getting dressed, Kassandra stomped into the kitchen, Brasidas nowhere in sight, only a selection of fruits and a small loaf of bread sat on a plate. He must’ve thrown something together before leaving to do whatever it is he does in the morning. Stupid Brasidas of Sparta, he manages to make her feel better without even doing anything. Still, she took the bread and a few of figs and apples, managing to carry them outside so she could stuff them in the saddle bag she recently brought for Phobos.  

She wasn’t going to do anyone any good by sitting and letting her frustration fester like an infection in an open wound. Kassandra isn’t some helpless maiden who wallows in self-pity, instead, she’s the kind of woman who goes and beats the shit out of something with a stick. Alexios also happened to be taking care of the Adrestia whilst she completes her duty as a wife, (or deals with "malakas marital bullshit," as her beloved little brother liked to put it.) either way, she knows Alexios would be put for a little sibling rough housing.  

Kassandra rushes through Sparta, the wind nipping at Phobos’ heels as they rode toward Gytheion. Fortunately, the people of Lakonía know how to get out of the way of a pent up misthios and her horse.  

She finds the Adrestia exactly where she left her, Eagle figurehead standing proud (Ikaros also perched on his mirrors head, plucking feathers,) and Barnabas and his men running around the ship. Alexios, however, was stood at the helm leering over the bees working around him. If Kassandra had to guess, he’s been barking orders all day and not doing anything himself, but did she really expect anything else?

She dismounted Phobos and stepped over the gap between the dock and ship, Barnabas chirping at her happily, welcoming her back home. If life hadn’t gone her way and she never spared Nikolaos (and subsequently spared Stentor,) never found her mother and never spared Deimos, the Adrestia would’ve been there to welcome her home. Fortunately, fate, the Gods, whatever it was, smiled on her and everyone came home safe.

“Kassandra, what brings you to my boat?” Alexios greeted with a vicious smile, trying to egg his sister into confrontation as he did. Alexios is not Deimos but, he still clings to parts his former identity; Kassandra thinks it’s like a safety blanket, he has known nothing but violence and when all else fails, resorts to it because it’s what has the highest success rate.

Regardless, Kassandra crossed her arms as she responded, “firstly, this is my ship.” Alexios’ smile got bigger, his eyes narrowed on his sister, getting the rise he wanted. “Secondly, I need to hit something.” Alexios paused for a moment, smile faltering before being replaced by a booming laugh.

“Oh, you can try.” Alexios jumped over the railings from the helm to the deck, a large thud when he landed. One day, either Alexios or Kassandra are going to go straight through the deck down to the rowers. “Marital bullshit finally gone to shit?” He asked, shoving into his sisters' shoulder, forcing her arms to uncross as she grunted a reply to him. If she were anyone else, she would’ve gone flying into the deck. (“Gods blood,” Barnabas probably thought as he tried to usher them off the ship and onto solid land.)

The two of them had unspoken rules about sparring: no weapons, no hair pulling, no kicking private areas and, most importantly, no breaking bones, except noses. As misthios, both of them needed all their bones in working order to do misthios things, like hold a sword, kick someone, count drachmae, etc.  

On solid land, the two of them circled each other, Barnabas off to the side holding all their weapons. Alexios was still very impatient, looking like he was going to pounce any moment but, Kassandra has beaten him before and she’ll be damned if she lets him win today. A smug smirk on her face, she motioned for her brother to come at her with her hands before bawling them back into fists. Apparently, that’s all she needed to do as Alexios charged into her, knocking both of them on the floor.  

For a brief second, Kassandra felt all the air leave her lungs before she gasped for air, throwing her arms over her head to protect it. Alexios immediately tried to prize her arms apart, sitting on top of her so she couldn’t escape.  

“Stop. Being. A. Coward.” Alexios argued, his plans to break down her defences going nowhere. However, being so bull-headed and impatient to win, Alexios made the mistake of bending his head down. Kassandra immediately broke her guard, grappling her brothers head, the inside of her elbow pressing on his neck. Using his neck as leverage, she managed to shake his balance and roll them over so she could let go of him and stand up.

“I’m not a coward, just patient,” Kassandra finally teased, shaking her arms out as Alexios stood up, scowling at his sister. They started circling each other again, Alexios momentarily rubbing the front of his neck, leaving Kassandra snickering. “Did I hurt you, little Alexios?” she teased again, she knew he hated the idea of being belittled, and it spurred him into making mistakes.

As planned, he ran at her, flurrying hit at her as she ducked under his wider swings, jabbing him in the side. However, what she did not expect is him to swing wildly behind him, the backs of his knuckles hitting her straight in the eye. She tumbled to the floor, completely shocked and bewildered, her hands over her eye, as Alexios stopped, concerned before teasing, “Did I hurt you, little Kassandra?”

That's when Kassandra removed her hands from her eye and scowled at Alexios, every ounce of aggression in her body ready to come out at once. “I’m going to make you wish mater was here,” she threatened, “so you could hide behind her skirts!”  

It was sun set when Brasidas finally sat down on the edge of their bed, hands running over his face. It had been a long, long, long, long, long day. Training young Spartans at the ass crack of dawn, rushing off to a military meeting with Archidamos and Agesipolis, then rushing off to another meeting with other Spartan generals. He then had 10 minutes to eat before continuing with his schedule. What made this day so much worse is how he work up this morning.

Kassandra was sound asleep, tucked against his side, hair all across her face, occasionally snoring. At first, he thought he was dreaming but, the more he woke up the more he realised it was real and she was real. His heart started an unbearable pace that kept fading and reappearing at the worst times. He was mid conversation, listening to the young King Agesipolis when the image of Kassandra drifted back into his mind, near enough making his heart skip a beat.

Brasidas finally flopped back on the bed, my mind like an ocean just filled with thoughts of her. This has never happened before, both waking up with her against him and not being able to shake her from his thoughts. He’s always been able to be professional when working, pushing whatever thoughts back to the deep recesses of his mind. But Eros & Aphrodite seemed to making it their mission to plague him with thoughts of her.

He was unsure of how long he just lay there, staring at the ceiling, his thoughts doing backflips, swinging from strategy and war to Kassandra, sleeping peacefully. However, he heard movement downstairs in the entrance, then thudding as if someone was stomping their way through the house. There was only one person who moved like an elephant when they think they’re alone.  

And there she was, Kassandra, with a black eye, looking exceptionally pissed off. Brasidas fought the urge to bolt up off the bed and interrogate her until she told him what happened, instead carefully rising up from his lying position, concern painting his features. “What happened?” he asked, standing up and moving towards her.

“Oh, you know, Alexios,” she said nonchalantly, folding her arms across her chest, as she did, “I felt like hitting someone but, unlike most people, he knows how to hit back.” She was posturing it as if nothing was wrong, however, as a frequent culprit himself, Brasidas knows when there's something wrong. Plus, despite Kassandra’s ardent belief that Alexios and Deimos are different people, Brasidas can’t look at her younger brother, without squeezing the wound on his leg and thinking of Pylos and he can’t even remember what happened at Amphipolis. (Kassandra continually ignores his question of what happened, glancing off to another topic.) Brasidas did not trust Alexios and would personally murder the man if he left Kassandra with any lasting wounds.

However, Brasidas took her word for it, although, he was intrigued as to why she wanted to hit something. He supposed that she is a misthios and fights on a near enough day to day basis, maybe she just wanted to keep herself sharp, just in case. “Let me go get a cloth,” Brasidas said, before briefly going down stairs, grabbing a cloth, soaking it in the bucket of clean water, ringing it out and returning to Kassandra. “Hold it over your eye, it should reduce the swelling.” He told her, folding the cloth and placing it over her eye until she held it herself.

“I could’ve done this myself,” she told him, herself sufficient attitude surfacing. He assumes it something that growing up on Kephallonia taught her, not to rely on others when you can rely on yourself. Whereas Sparta, for all it’s tough love, teaches camaraderie and protecting your fellow soldier. Brasidas sometimes wonders if their relationship would be different if she was raised in Sparta. What would they be? Who would she be?

“Thank you,” Kassandra said, taking the cloth off her eye for a moment, blinking and putting it back on, “for the cloth and for breakfast this morning.” Brasidas, sat back on the edge of the bed, taking his grieves off, looked up at her for a moment and smiled softly.

Between the two of them, they cooked a rabbit for dinner, Kassandra kept trying to tell him that it was going to burn but, Brasidas kept telling her that he had cooked hundreds of rabbits and has never burnt one. It was a little burnt. Throughout dinner, she kept telling him, “I told you so.”  

Brasidas went up to bed first, sitting under the sheets reading war plans to go over tomorrow at a meeting, the candle light making it only just visible. Kassandra soon followed, (her armour removed earlier that evening) and she sat next to him, reading over his shoulder, taking the cloth off her eye. “That’s... a lot of troops,” she said, sounding a little surprised, “are you going to be one of them?”

Brasidas put the plans down, “yes, Archidamos wants experienced Generals to defend Arcadia from Athens.” He knew, that for once, the weakening of Arcadia wasn’t Kassandra’s fault, it was some pesky mercenary that Athens hired. “With luck from the Gods, it shouldn’t take too long.” He sighed, knowing that it would be a difficult campaign, even with Lagos still Archon, but it would be a vital foothold for Sparta.

“Well, if you need help, you know where I am.” Kassandra offered. Brasidas knew how much she had helped (and hindered) Sparta in its conquests, mostly in Megaris, Pylos and supposedly Amphipolis. “For Drachmae, of course,” she teased, elbowing him in the side, chuckling.

“For all you joke, Sparta may actually need you,” he replied, a little seriously for what she was probably expecting. He looked over at her; the black eye, given to her by Alexios, looked as if it was starting to go down. “Let me have a look,” he said as he leaned forward, then looked back, having a different angle but a better look at her eye. “Archidamos will want an exciting story for that black eye,” he warned, a hint of teasing in his voice as he directed the conversation away from battle plans.

“And he’ll get one,” she started, a victorious smile on her face, “of me pommelling my malakas brother!”  

Brasidas let out an unexpected bark of a laugh, the look on Kassandra’s face went from amused to confusion. Was he not meant to find it funny? Did she actually beat her brother into the ground? Either way, Brasidas was sure the change in the look on her face was not a good one, so he asked, “What’s with that look? Was that not meant to be funny.”

Kassandra quickly put herself back together, a placid look on her face, although whatever she was feeling was betrayed by the blood rising to the top of her ears. She lay down, pulled the sheet over herself and abruptly said, “it’s nothing, good night.”  

Brasidas was the epitome of confusion, spending a moment dwelling on what he said, what he did before accepting that he’d never figure it out. He blew out the candle and settled to sleep himself.

[thisislizheather]

Navigating November 2020

Wonderful, another month has come and gone. It’s hard to tell when I’m in a bad mood these days. I feel like all of my moods are sprinkled with bits of sadness since it’s been such a rough year on everyone. It seems hard to be hopeful and optimistic for the coming months because of everything that has gone on already, but I think I’ll continue on with my internal mantra of “fake it ‘til you make it” - that’s healthy, right? In any case, here’s what happened last month:

I usually don’t mention the things that I don’t do, but this one is notable: I didn’t have the Thanksgiving croissant from Milk Bar this year (because I’m in Canada at the moment). So this is really just a reminder to myself to go hog-wild on them next November.

I can’t remember if I’ve mentioned them before, but the ready-made roast beef sandwiches at San Remo’s in Etobicoke? A PERFECT SANDWICH.

I rewatched the original (better) Jumanji and goddamit what a great movie. How did I forget what a perfect movie that was? Miss Robin Williams so much. Which reminds me: I gotta rewatch Jack soon (Coppola’s greatest movie, in my humble opinion). Haven’t seen that one in ages.

Some thoughts on how to have a less expensive Christmas.

Love the new “Oat Milk Latte” nail polish colour at Urban Outfitters. Something about a boring neutral has been really turning me on lately.

The best new hand lotion I’ve used in a long time: this Kiehl’s Hand Salve. I put it on once in the morning and once before bed and it’s crazy how soft it makes them, even if you wash your hands numerous times a day (which, god, I hope you’re doing).

I know that I tend to live in the past at times, but are you ever needing to print some photos fast and don’t know where to get it done? Years ago, they had machines at Shoppers and then they disappeared. And I just discovered that Staples has those print-right-now machines! It takes seconds to print from your phone and it’s crazy cheap. I think you can only get 4 x 6 in size, but still. That’s great!

I’ll always love Cobs Bread (thanks to Marla years ago for introducing me) but I just tried their garlic focaccia and my god. Heavenly. It also makes a great base for any kind of at-home grilled cheese or even an at-home garlic bread using garlic butter.

So I tried the Popeye’s chicken sandwich that people were stabbing each other for and… I fully understand the murdering mentality. It’s an incredible chicken sandwich. I was expecting not to understand the hype, but here I stand before you, four chicken sandwiches deep.

I’ve been consistently using the Luna Night Oil from Sunday Riley (a small version that came with a gift set) and I think it’s really working well. My skin looks amazing in the morning after each use. So I might bite the bullet and buy the full size when I run out.

Just so sad to see Alex Trebek pass away. Favourite clip, followed by second favourite clip.

I simply cannot stop ordering the vegetable fried rice from Fortune Dragon in Mississauga. Can’t and WON’T.

I had such a terrible experience using Skip The Dishes the other night (there was a problem with an order and the restaurant refused to fix the problem and I was on the phone with STD (hahah, can we all call them this from now on PLEASE) for over an hour, just disgusting). So now they’re banned in our house.

And speaking of annoying food experiences, Scaddabush got rid of the best sandwich on their menu. What. the. hell. It was a prosciutto cotto grilled cheese with Italian cured ham, caramelized onions, mozzarella, and fig jam on a focaccia bun and IT IS NO MORE. I did attempt to make it at home one night and it was actually really good, but still. Who wants to spend their evenings caramelizing onions for hours in the kitchen? Well, I do, for one. But regardless! Bad move, Scaddabush.

I came across these actually helpful, fast TikTok beauty tips.

Excited to visit this new food hall in Long Island City one day.

Love these two new Tierra Whack songs.

I love hearing these kinds of butterfly effect stories, always.

This whole listicle made me laugh.

How on earth can someone build a roller coaster in their backyard? People continue to impress me. This is amazing.

It’s pure and complete trash that chihuahuas never win dog shows. 

Look at this beauty from The National Dog Show.

Considering this beautiful palette for purchase even though I have plans to go nowhere, every night, for the rest of time.

I made these fondant potatoes and they were good! Love a new way to cook a potato.

I watched Coneheads for the first time and it was a surprisingly fun movie. It also happens to be the ultimate pro-immigration movie. Loved it.

I watched the Fresh Prince reunion and it was good! It was nice to see Nicky.

If you’re looking for a dog groomer in Mississauga, I can’t say enough good things about You Lucky Dog Grooming. They cut Baby Dog’s nails perfectly for $10 and it took less than five minutes. They were so gentle and caring, definitely only gonna go here from now on.

There were a few massive holes in the ceiling in my parents basement (an estimate said it would be $1000 to fix) so I went to Home Depot, got the supplies and did it myself. This is something I would never even want to do, let alone actually do, so the fact that it’s fixed now is insane. Here's what it looked like.

Above Photo: This whole job cost $17 from Home Depot. Nothing is impossible.

I made my niece Layla watch Sleeping With The Enemy and The Curious Case of Benjamin Button for the first time and I think she liked both, which obviously I love. Love making people I love watch things I love.

Absolutely in love with this song. And this one, too.

So I got fake nails. Here they are.

Yes, I love them. Yes, they look perfect every single day and that’s amazing. But no one tells you the cons, so let me tell you what they are.

Pressing buttons is an annoyance. The buttons of debit machines especially (I’ve incorrectly put in my pin about three times so far), but also remote controls and car radio dials.

Peeling onions or garlic. Or cutting anything on a cutting board in the kitchen, basically.

You know after a shower when you towel off the wet parts of the inside of your ears? Can’t be done.

All zippers and buttons add at least five minutes to your life.

Look, I’m not an animal but sometimes your nose needs a little cleaning when a tissue ain’t gonna cut it. That being said, it is IMPOSSIBLE to pick your nose with these.

Typing at your regular speed.

Peeling clementines is simply out of the question (which is annoying because they’re so in season right now).

Putting on and taking off necklaces.

And most of all, yes you can still scratch parts of your body, but it’s an unfulfilling scratch. These nails aren’t as sharp as my real ones, so the scratch is lackluster.

That being said, I do love them. I’m not sure if I’ll get them again, but they’re beautiful and I can definitely see the appeal.

I watched a few episodes of Somebody Feed Phil with my brother Robbie and it’s a pretty cute show. I only watched the New York, New Orleans, Venice & San Francisco episodes, but I’m sure I’ll watch the rest soon. I think I liked it because the host really lets the guests be the charming, endearing ones, and most TV hosts aren’t very good at that.

So since we missed both Thanksgivings this year, we picked a random day to do our turkey dinner and this year I did the rub for the bird (Mom handled all the gross stuff) and it came out amazing! Also made my favourite salad dressing (love a shallot in a dressing), this perfect cranberry sauce and best garlic bread. And instead of a whole pie, we just got mini pumpkin tarts from Whole Foods. The next day, I finally made the moist maker sandwich (from Friends) and it turned out really well.

Best tweets of the month can be found over here.

Some things that I’m looking forward to this month: watching the new season of Big Mouth, doing the Polar Drive experience, there have been only two snowstorms so far and I can’t wait for more to come, and I’ve already started baking the chocolate chip Nutella cookies that I love to make this time of year but I want to try something new as well so I’m thinking about giving these ones a try. Christmas will of course be different this year, it’s looking like it’ll be me, my parents (since I’ve been staying here since October), Nathan & Baby Dog on Christmas morning, which actually seems like it might be kind of intimate and nice. It’ll feel wrong in certain ways because I love having my entire family here, but I’m going to try and make the most of it.

If you’ve got any interest in reading last month’s roundup, you can see what went down in October over here.

[easyfoodnetwork]

Who Will Save the Food Timeline?

The internet’s most comprehensive archive of food history — a passion project of one dedicated librarian — predates Wikipedia. Now, it needs a new custodian.

In the long timeline of human civilization, here’s roughly how things shook out: First, there was fire, water, ice, and salt. Then we started cooking up and chowing down on oysters, scallops, horsemeat, mushrooms, insects, and frogs, in that general chronological order. Fatty almonds and sweet cherries found their way into our diet before walnuts and apples did, but it would be a couple thousand years until we figured out how to make ice cream or a truly good apple pie. Challah (first century), hot dogs (15th century), Fig Newtons (1891), and Meyer lemons (1908) landed in our kitchens long before Red Bull (1984), but they all arrived late to the marshmallow party — we’d been eating one version or another of those fluffy guys since 2000 B.C.

This is, more or less, the history of human eating habits for 20,000 years, and right now, you can find it all cataloged on the Food Timeline, an archival trove of food history hiding in plain sight on a website so lo-fi you’d be forgiven for thinking it was a GeoCities fanpage. When you look past the Times Roman font and taupe background, the Food Timeline happens to be the single most comprehensive inventory of food knowledge on the internet, with thousands upon thousands of pages of primary sources, cross-checked research, and obsessively detailed food history presented in chronological order. Every entry on the Food Timeline, which begins with “water” in pre-17,000 B.C. and ends with “test tube burgers” in 2013, is sourced from “old cook books, newspapers, magazines, National Historic Parks, government agencies, universities, cultural organizations, culinary historians, and company/restaurant web sites.” There is history, context, and commentary on everything from Taylor pork roll to Scottish tablet to “cowboy cooking.”

A couple of years ago, I landed on the humble authority of the Food Timeline while doing research on bread soup, a kind of austerity cuisine found in countless cultures. The entry for soup alone spans more than 70,000 words (The Great Gatsby doesn’t break 50,000), with excerpts from sources like Maguelonne Toussaint-Samat’s A History of Food, John Ayto’s An A-Z of Food and Drink, and D. Eleanor Scully and Terence Scully’s Early French Cookery. Before long, I fell into the emotional condition known as an internet K-hole, following link after link after link for hours on end. From olla podrida to hodge podge to cassava to taro to Chex Mix to Johnnycakes, the Food Timeline covered everything. Did you know that mozzarella sticks go as far back as the Middle Ages, but back then they called them “pipefarces”? I bookmarked the site and returned to it time and time again, when I was researching, writing, or just bored and hungry.

Despite the Food Timeline’s incredible utility, few people I spoke to had ever heard of it. Those who had always marveled at its breadth. “Oh my god, it’s nirvana,” Taste of the Past podcast host Linda Pelaccio said to herself when she first stumbled onto the Food Timeline. Sandy Oliver, a food historian and fellow fan, was stunned by its completeness and simplicity. “It was one of the most accessible ways of getting into food history — especially if you were a beginner — because it was just so easy to use,” she told me. “It didn’t have a hyperacademic approach, which would be off-putting.”

When Oliver learned that the thousands of pages and countless resources on the Food Timeline were compiled and updated entirely by one woman, she couldn’t believe it. “Oh my lord,” she thought. “This is an obsessed person.”

The Food Timeline, in all its comprehensive splendor, was indeed the work of an obsessed person: a New Jersey reference librarian named Lynne Olver. Olver launched the site in 1999, two years before Wikipedia debuted, and maintained it, with little additional help, for more than 15 years. By 2014, it had reached 35 million readers and Olver had personally answered 25,000 questions from fans who were writing history papers or wondering about the origins of family recipes. Olver populated the pages with well-researched answers to these questions, making a resource so thorough that a full scroll to the bottom of the Food Timeline takes several labored seconds.

For nearly two decades, Olver’s work was everyone else’s gain. In April of 2015, she passed away after a seven-month struggle with leukemia, a tragedy acknowledged briefly at the bottom of the site. “The Food Timeline was created and maintained solely by Lynne Olver (1958-2015, her obituary), reference librarian with a passion for food history.”

In the wake of Olver’s death, no one has come forward to take over her complex project, leaving a void in the internet that has yet to be filled — and worse, her noble contribution to a world lacking in accurate information and teeming with fake news is now in danger of being lost forever.

It isn’t often that we are tasked with thinking about the history of the food that we eat, unless it shows up in a Jeopardy! question or we ask our informal family historians to detail whose mother passed down this or that version of pound cake. But there are plenty of reasons to pay close attention: for curiosity’s sake; for deepening an appreciation of and respect for cooks, food, and technique; and for gathering perspective on what came before us. “Very few (if any) foods are invented. Most are contemporary twists on traditional themes,” Olver wrote on the Food Timeline. “Today’s grilled cheese sandwich is connected to ancient cooks who melted cheese on bread. 1950s meatloaf is connected to ground cooked meat products promoted at the turn of the 20th century, which are, in turn related to ancient Roman minces.”

The problem is that these days we’re overloaded with bad information that can be accessed instantaneously, with few intermediaries running quality control. “I think it’s a little too easy to turn to the web,” Oliver, who was also a longtime friend of Olver’s, told me as we talked about the legacy of Food Timeline. “What I worry about is that people aren’t learning critical thinking skills. Once in a while I run into someone who has never used a primary source — wouldn’t know it if it hit them on the head. Libraries are where you’d find that stuff. It’s not the same as using a Wikipedia page at all.” Or, if not a library, a mammoth resource compiled by a certified reference librarian herself. Whenever a reader would write in asking a question, or when Olver herself would become interested in the provenance of a certain food, she’d turn to her personal library of thousands of food books, and her litany of professional resources and skills, and write out detailed answers with sources cited on her website.

As Olver emphasized proudly in a 2013 interview on Pelaccio’s Taste of the Past podcast, when you Google “food history,” the Food Timeline appears first in the search results, even though she never “paid search engines for premium placement, solicited reciprocal links, partnered with book vendors, or sold advertising.” Over the years, thousands of emails poured in asking Olver for help finding the specific information they were looking for, like the history of a weird cheese or a grandmother’s pie recipe.

“One of my favorite groupings of people are those who are looking to recover family recipes,” Olver explained to Pelaccio. “I love that! As long as you can give me a little bit of context, then I have some direction.” She would often cook the recipes people sent her so she could gain a better understanding of the legacy of certain foods. Occasionally, she would struggle to come up with an answer to readers’ questions. “If anybody out there knows the answer to this, please let me know,” she began on Pelaccio’s podcast. “I’ve been asked repeatedly over the years for a recipe for ‘guildmaster sauce.’ It is mentioned on some of the old railroad menus and on fancy dining car menus, but we are not coming up with a recipe or other references.” She never got the answer.

“One of the reasons she wanted people to learn about food was for the simple basic fundamental fact that it kept people alive,” Sara Weissman, a fellow reference librarian at the Morris County Public Library and occasional Food Timeline collaborator, told me. “It was that simple. There was no pretension about it.” Olver found food to be a universal subject of interest — everyone had something to share and everyone had something to learn.

“Yesterday I took the entire day off from work because I wanted to research seitan wheat meat,” Olver told Pelaccio. “My whole site is really driven by my readers. What is it that they want to know?”

The Olvers’ former family home is a modest colonial that sits on a shady suburban street in Randolph, New Jersey, about 10 minutes from the Morris County Public Library, where Lynne worked for more than 25 years. It is fastidiously clean and welcoming, and Olver’s library was still the focal point of the house when I visited a little more than a year ago. As she amassed primary sources to build out the Food Timeline, the sitting room filled up with bookshelves to house her more than 2,300 books — some dating to the 17th century — as well as thousands of brochures and vintage magazines, and a disarrayed collection of other food ephemera, like plastic cups from Pat’s and Geno’s and a tin of Spam. “One of 10 top iconic American manufactured foods, SPAM holds a special place on our national table & culinary folklore,” Olver wrote on the Timeline.

Despite Olver’s intense fondness for it as an object of inquiry, Spam did not hold a special place on her palate; she never tried it. A picky eater, she detested lima beans, pistachio ice cream, calamari, slimy textures, and anything that even edged on raw. When she was in high school in the early ’70s, her favorite dish to make was something she called “peas with cheese,” which is as simple as it sounds. “She would take frozen peas and she’d melt cheese on it, mostly Swiss,” then cover the messy pile in Worcestershire sauce, Olver’s sister, Janice Martin, recalled. “We called Worcestershire sauce ‘life’s blood.’ It was coursing through our veins.” (Sadly, the Timeline does not include an entry for peas with cheese.)

Making peas with cheese as a teenager was the beginning of what would become a lifelong interest in food for Olver. Libraries also captured her attention early on: At 16, she took her first job as a clerk in the Bryant Library in Roslyn, New York, shelving books in the children’s department. There, she was mentored by two older librarians, whom she loved. “She was an introvert,” Olver’s sister told me. “When it came to research, she was fascinated by ferreting out information that nobody else could find.” In 1980, she graduated with a degree in library science from Albany State University, where she also worked as a short-order cook, making sandwiches for students and faculty at a university canteen.

“Libraries are where you’d find that stuff. It’s not the same as using a Wikipedia page at all.”

Olver and her future husband, Gordon, met at Albany State and married the year after Olver graduated, in 1981, after which they worked in Manhattan (Lynne at a law library, Gordon in reinsurance), then Connecticut. They eventually had two children — Sarah and Jason — and settled in New Jersey in 1991, where Olver found a job as a reference librarian at the Morris County Public Library, eventually becoming the head of reference, and finally director of the library.

It was during Olver’s time as a reference librarian that the seed was planted for the Food Timeline. It began as an assignment to explain the origins of Thanksgiving dinner to children, to be published on an early incarnation of the library’s website. Around the same time, Olver was asked to write a monthly print newsletter to share library news, which she named Eureka!. One section of the newsletter was devoted to “Hot Topics,” as Olver and her colleague Sharon Javer wrote in the first dispatch. “Each month, this lead feature will focus on a particular theme: holidays, New Jersey events sources, census data, and so on. Included in this sizzling section will be answers to arduous questions, practical pointers and many marvelous morsels of information.”

Eureka!, in a sign of things to come, began to take over her life. “I remember one time saying to her, ‘How come we’re buying all this colored paper?’” Gordon, her husband, told me. “The library wouldn’t pay for the paper, so she was buying it on her own. When the library realized it was taking so much of her time, they asked her to stop. Meanwhile, she had put so much time and effort into it that she said to them, ‘Just pass it over to me, I’ll take it.’”

When the family got a Gateway computer in the late ’90s, Olver began teaching herself HTML, and by 1999, she was combining her interest in the Thanksgiving dinner project and the Eureka! answers column into a hybrid website she called the Food Timeline, where she could focus on providing well-researched food history on her own time. An archived version of the 1999 Food Timeline still exists and looks — unsurprisingly — more or less the same as the one now. “We still hand code html & today’s readers comment the site is ‘ugly,’” Olver wrote under the site’s “Market Strategy.” “We acknowledge: what was cutting edge in 1999 is now stale. Conversley? [sic] FT looks so old it’s become vintage.”

Olver wrote everything on the Food Timeline with a royal “we,” including her responses to readers’ emails, despite the fact the project was largely hers, with an occasional assist from others. “‘I don’t want anyone to know that it’s just me,’’’ Sarah recalled her mom saying. “She wanted people to believe that it was a network of volunteers,” because she felt that it lent the site more credibility.

“We acknowledge: what was cutting edge in 1999 is now stale.”

While Olver worked at the county library by day, by night she was creating an online resource for anyone who wanted to know more about Johnny Appleseed or chuck wagon stew or the origins of Sauce Robert. By the website’s first anniversary, Olver was already spending upwards of 30 hours a week on the Food Timeline, compiling and posting all the information she was digging up and answering readers’ questions about the origins of their grandmothers’ crumble recipes. “If you came in the house and you wanted to know where she was, and she wasn’t cooking, she was in the office on the computer,” Gordon recalled.

Eventually, even the cooking fell behind. Olver’s children came to expect burnt grilled cheese sandwiches at meals Sarah said. “She would be like, ��I’ll leave these [on the stove] and go do my work,’ and then she would forget because she was so into what she was doing.”

Over time, the audience for the site expanded, and Olver’s subtle form of fame grew with it. She was named a winner of the New York Times Librarian Award in 2002, and, in 2004, Saveur put the Food Timeline on its Saveur 100 list of the best food finds that year. In the mid-2010s, she was asked to contribute to the Oxford Encyclopedia of Food and Drink in America and consult for America’s Test Kitchen.

Sarah and Jason recalled taking their mother to a cooking class at the Institute of Culinary Education in Manhattan during that time period. “She was so excited about the teacher of this class because she had heard of her through her research,” Sarah told me. “When we got there, the teacher was like, ‘I’m looking at my roster of students and I see that Lynne Olver is here. Where is Lynne Olver?’ Mom kind of timidly raised her hand, and this chef was like, ‘I’ve been dying to meet you!’” The chef who left Olver starstruck was just as starstruck to meet Olver.

For years, Olver lived something of a double life. As the director of a mid-size suburban library, she was known to hand out PayDay candy bars to her staff on pay day and shovel snow from the building walkway during snowstorms, while as the founder of Food Timeline, she brought her computer on vacation, dutifully responding to readers’ food history questions within the promised 48-hour window. “I think she started on the internet as a way to reach a lot of people,” her sister said. “A lot of people who wouldn’t go into the library.”

The night before her wedding, in September 2014, Olver’s daughter, Sarah, noticed that her mom wasn’t acting like herself. While the family was sitting all together in the living room, Olver got up to go to the bathroom; minutes later, she was in the throes of a seizure. Sarah called 911, and Olver was taken to the hospital. The family stayed with her until doctors sent them home in the early hours of Sarah’s wedding day. The wedding had to go on, though Olver was too sick to attend. Doctors diagnosed her with leukemia the next day.

Olver had known for a while that she was sick, but didn’t want to ruin the wedding, so she had put off telling anyone. “She’d be like, ‘I’m dying, but let me put everyone else first,’” Sarah said. Olver was kept in the hospital for two months, but fought hard to be home for Thanksgiving. “It was my first time cooking Thanksgiving dinner because she wasn’t feeling up to cooking — and I ruined it,” Sarah said. “The turkey shrunk off the bone. That was one of the only things that made her laugh in a really long time.”

“Knowledge is power, but sharing knowledge is the best.”

When she was diagnosed with leukemia, Olver used the Food Timeline’s Twitter account to grumble about the food in the ICU at Morristown Medical Center, where she stayed until she was transferred to specialists in Hackensack two months later. “It was a chicken cutlet with some kind of sauce on it,” Gordon recalled; the post has since been taken down by the family. “She said, ‘This sauce, I don’t know what it is, I’m not eating it. It doesn’t look very good. It’s not a natural color.’”

Following her stay at the hospital in Hackensack, Olver returned home to wait for a bone marrow transplant. “She had to use a walker because balance was a problem, but very shortly after getting back from the hospital, she was walking around and doing all of her Food Timeline stuff again,” Gordon explained. She was responding to emails, diving back into her research. “On her birthday, March 10, she said, ‘I had a glorious day.’”

The reason? “Someone had written in with a question that she liked.”

A little over a month later, Lynne died of leukemia, only one year short of her retirement from the library. She had been planning to spend her retirement working on it full time: Earlier that year, she had renewed the Food Timeline domain for 10 more years.

A year after Olver’s death, her family began to discuss what would happen to the Food Timeline and who could take it over. “What we know is that we couldn’t do it justice ourselves,” Sarah said.

To anyone willing and able to maintain Olver’s vision of an ad-free, simply designed, easy-to-access resource on food history, the family members say that the website and her library are theirs, for free. A couple of people have put forward their names, but the family felt that their hearts weren’t in the right place. “One woman had shown us what she had done with her website and it was just full of banner advertisements,” Gordon said.

“It has to uphold her vision,” Sarah added.

Olver’s book collection — if a price were to be put on it — would be worth tens of thousands of dollars, Gordon estimates. So far, there have been no takers for either the books or the task of keeping the site going.

“The Culinary Institute of America initially expressed interest,” Gordon said. “But three months later, they came back and said, ‘We don’t really have the ability to take that volume of texts and dedicate [the task of updating the site] to a specific person. I said they were missing the point; I wasn’t looking to give them the books unless they wanted the website, too.”

The Food Timeline was — and still is — a great democratizing force. “I think Lynne liked that the internet was for everybody and by everybody. Knowledge is power, but sharing knowledge is the best,” Lynne’s sister, Janice, told me. “If you hold the knowledge and you can help everybody get it, that’s where it’s at.” Lynne Olver, an award-winning reference librarian, wanted everybody to know exactly what she knew.

“I would second anybody who says that they want Food Timeline to be brought up to date, who know how to keep that valuable digitized information where people can get their hands or their minds on it,” Sandy Oliver told me. “I’d hate to think Lynne had spent all those hours doing all that work and have it just slide into oblivion. I’d love to see it continue in whatever useful form it can.”

Dayna Evans is a freelance writer currently based in Paris. She last wrote for Eater about the rise of community fridges across the country. D’Ara Nazaryan is an art director & illustrator living in Los Angeles. Fact checked by Samantha Schuyler

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The internet’s most comprehensive archive of food history — a passion project of one dedicated librarian — predates Wikipedia. Now, it needs a new custodian.

In the long timeline of human civilization, here’s roughly how things shook out: First, there was fire, water, ice, and salt. Then we started cooking up and chowing down on oysters, scallops, horsemeat, mushrooms, insects, and frogs, in that general chronological order. Fatty almonds and sweet cherries found their way into our diet before walnuts and apples did, but it would be a couple thousand years until we figured out how to make ice cream or a truly good apple pie. Challah (first century), hot dogs (15th century), Fig Newtons (1891), and Meyer lemons (1908) landed in our kitchens long before Red Bull (1984), but they all arrived late to the marshmallow party — we’d been eating one version or another of those fluffy guys since 2000 B.C.

This is, more or less, the history of human eating habits for 20,000 years, and right now, you can find it all cataloged on the Food Timeline, an archival trove of food history hiding in plain sight on a website so lo-fi you’d be forgiven for thinking it was a GeoCities fanpage. When you look past the Times Roman font and taupe background, the Food Timeline happens to be the single most comprehensive inventory of food knowledge on the internet, with thousands upon thousands of pages of primary sources, cross-checked research, and obsessively detailed food history presented in chronological order. Every entry on the Food Timeline, which begins with “water” in pre-17,000 B.C. and ends with “test tube burgers” in 2013, is sourced from “old cook books, newspapers, magazines, National Historic Parks, government agencies, universities, cultural organizations, culinary historians, and company/restaurant web sites.” There is history, context, and commentary on everything from Taylor pork roll to Scottish tablet to “cowboy cooking.”

A couple of years ago, I landed on the humble authority of the Food Timeline while doing research on bread soup, a kind of austerity cuisine found in countless cultures. The entry for soup alone spans more than 70,000 words (The Great Gatsby doesn’t break 50,000), with excerpts from sources like Maguelonne Toussaint-Samat’s A History of Food, John Ayto’s An A-Z of Food and Drink, and D. Eleanor Scully and Terence Scully’s Early French Cookery. Before long, I fell into the emotional condition known as an internet K-hole, following link after link after link for hours on end. From olla podrida to hodge podge to cassava to taro to Chex Mix to Johnnycakes, the Food Timeline covered everything. Did you know that mozzarella sticks go as far back as the Middle Ages, but back then they called them “pipefarces”? I bookmarked the site and returned to it time and time again, when I was researching, writing, or just bored and hungry.

Despite the Food Timeline’s incredible utility, few people I spoke to had ever heard of it. Those who had always marveled at its breadth. “Oh my god, it’s nirvana,” Taste of the Past podcast host Linda Pelaccio said to herself when she first stumbled onto the Food Timeline. Sandy Oliver, a food historian and fellow fan, was stunned by its completeness and simplicity. “It was one of the most accessible ways of getting into food history — especially if you were a beginner — because it was just so easy to use,” she told me. “It didn’t have a hyperacademic approach, which would be off-putting.”

When Oliver learned that the thousands of pages and countless resources on the Food Timeline were compiled and updated entirely by one woman, she couldn’t believe it. “Oh my lord,” she thought. “This is an obsessed person.”

The Food Timeline, in all its comprehensive splendor, was indeed the work of an obsessed person: a New Jersey reference librarian named Lynne Olver. Olver launched the site in 1999, two years before Wikipedia debuted, and maintained it, with little additional help, for more than 15 years. By 2014, it had reached 35 million readers and Olver had personally answered 25,000 questions from fans who were writing history papers or wondering about the origins of family recipes. Olver populated the pages with well-researched answers to these questions, making a resource so thorough that a full scroll to the bottom of the Food Timeline takes several labored seconds.

For nearly two decades, Olver’s work was everyone else’s gain. In April of 2015, she passed away after a seven-month struggle with leukemia, a tragedy acknowledged briefly at the bottom of the site. “The Food Timeline was created and maintained solely by Lynne Olver (1958-2015, her obituary), reference librarian with a passion for food history.”

In the wake of Olver’s death, no one has come forward to take over her complex project, leaving a void in the internet that has yet to be filled — and worse, her noble contribution to a world lacking in accurate information and teeming with fake news is now in danger of being lost forever.

It isn’t often that we are tasked with thinking about the history of the food that we eat, unless it shows up in a Jeopardy! question or we ask our informal family historians to detail whose mother passed down this or that version of pound cake. But there are plenty of reasons to pay close attention: for curiosity’s sake; for deepening an appreciation of and respect for cooks, food, and technique; and for gathering perspective on what came before us. “Very few (if any) foods are invented. Most are contemporary twists on traditional themes,” Olver wrote on the Food Timeline. “Today’s grilled cheese sandwich is connected to ancient cooks who melted cheese on bread. 1950s meatloaf is connected to ground cooked meat products promoted at the turn of the 20th century, which are, in turn related to ancient Roman minces.”

The problem is that these days we’re overloaded with bad information that can be accessed instantaneously, with few intermediaries running quality control. “I think it’s a little too easy to turn to the web,” Oliver, who was also a longtime friend of Olver’s, told me as we talked about the legacy of Food Timeline. “What I worry about is that people aren’t learning critical thinking skills. Once in a while I run into someone who has never used a primary source — wouldn’t know it if it hit them on the head. Libraries are where you’d find that stuff. It’s not the same as using a Wikipedia page at all.” Or, if not a library, a mammoth resource compiled by a certified reference librarian herself. Whenever a reader would write in asking a question, or when Olver herself would become interested in the provenance of a certain food, she’d turn to her personal library of thousands of food books, and her litany of professional resources and skills, and write out detailed answers with sources cited on her website.

As Olver emphasized proudly in a 2013 interview on Pelaccio’s Taste of the Past podcast, when you Google “food history,” the Food Timeline appears first in the search results, even though she never “paid search engines for premium placement, solicited reciprocal links, partnered with book vendors, or sold advertising.” Over the years, thousands of emails poured in asking Olver for help finding the specific information they were looking for, like the history of a weird cheese or a grandmother’s pie recipe.

“One of my favorite groupings of people are those who are looking to recover family recipes,” Olver explained to Pelaccio. “I love that! As long as you can give me a little bit of context, then I have some direction.” She would often cook the recipes people sent her so she could gain a better understanding of the legacy of certain foods. Occasionally, she would struggle to come up with an answer to readers’ questions. “If anybody out there knows the answer to this, please let me know,” she began on Pelaccio’s podcast. “I’ve been asked repeatedly over the years for a recipe for ‘guildmaster sauce.’ It is mentioned on some of the old railroad menus and on fancy dining car menus, but we are not coming up with a recipe or other references.” She never got the answer.

“One of the reasons she wanted people to learn about food was for the simple basic fundamental fact that it kept people alive,” Sara Weissman, a fellow reference librarian at the Morris County Public Library and occasional Food Timeline collaborator, told me. “It was that simple. There was no pretension about it.” Olver found food to be a universal subject of interest — everyone had something to share and everyone had something to learn.

“Yesterday I took the entire day off from work because I wanted to research seitan wheat meat,” Olver told Pelaccio. “My whole site is really driven by my readers. What is it that they want to know?”

The Olvers’ former family home is a modest colonial that sits on a shady suburban street in Randolph, New Jersey, about 10 minutes from the Morris County Public Library, where Lynne worked for more than 25 years. It is fastidiously clean and welcoming, and Olver’s library was still the focal point of the house when I visited a little more than a year ago. As she amassed primary sources to build out the Food Timeline, the sitting room filled up with bookshelves to house her more than 2,300 books — some dating to the 17th century — as well as thousands of brochures and vintage magazines, and a disarrayed collection of other food ephemera, like plastic cups from Pat’s and Geno’s and a tin of Spam. “One of 10 top iconic American manufactured foods, SPAM holds a special place on our national table & culinary folklore,” Olver wrote on the Timeline.

Despite Olver’s intense fondness for it as an object of inquiry, Spam did not hold a special place on her palate; she never tried it. A picky eater, she detested lima beans, pistachio ice cream, calamari, slimy textures, and anything that even edged on raw. When she was in high school in the early ’70s, her favorite dish to make was something she called “peas with cheese,” which is as simple as it sounds. “She would take frozen peas and she’d melt cheese on it, mostly Swiss,” then cover the messy pile in Worcestershire sauce, Olver’s sister, Janice Martin, recalled. “We called Worcestershire sauce ‘life’s blood.’ It was coursing through our veins.” (Sadly, the Timeline does not include an entry for peas with cheese.)

Making peas with cheese as a teenager was the beginning of what would become a lifelong interest in food for Olver. Libraries also captured her attention early on: At 16, she took her first job as a clerk in the Bryant Library in Roslyn, New York, shelving books in the children’s department. There, she was mentored by two older librarians, whom she loved. “She was an introvert,” Olver’s sister told me. “When it came to research, she was fascinated by ferreting out information that nobody else could find.” In 1980, she graduated with a degree in library science from Albany State University, where she also worked as a short-order cook, making sandwiches for students and faculty at a university canteen.

“Libraries are where you’d find that stuff. It’s not the same as using a Wikipedia page at all.”

Olver and her future husband, Gordon, met at Albany State and married the year after Olver graduated, in 1981, after which they worked in Manhattan (Lynne at a law library, Gordon in reinsurance), then Connecticut. They eventually had two children — Sarah and Jason — and settled in New Jersey in 1991, where Olver found a job as a reference librarian at the Morris County Public Library, eventually becoming the head of reference, and finally director of the library.

It was during Olver’s time as a reference librarian that the seed was planted for the Food Timeline. It began as an assignment to explain the origins of Thanksgiving dinner to children, to be published on an early incarnation of the library’s website. Around the same time, Olver was asked to write a monthly print newsletter to share library news, which she named Eureka!. One section of the newsletter was devoted to “Hot Topics,” as Olver and her colleague Sharon Javer wrote in the first dispatch. “Each month, this lead feature will focus on a particular theme: holidays, New Jersey events sources, census data, and so on. Included in this sizzling section will be answers to arduous questions, practical pointers and many marvelous morsels of information.”

Eureka!, in a sign of things to come, began to take over her life. “I remember one time saying to her, ‘How come we’re buying all this colored paper?’” Gordon, her husband, told me. “The library wouldn’t pay for the paper, so she was buying it on her own. When the library realized it was taking so much of her time, they asked her to stop. Meanwhile, she had put so much time and effort into it that she said to them, ‘Just pass it over to me, I’ll take it.’”

When the family got a Gateway computer in the late ’90s, Olver began teaching herself HTML, and by 1999, she was combining her interest in the Thanksgiving dinner project and the Eureka! answers column into a hybrid website she called the Food Timeline, where she could focus on providing well-researched food history on her own time. An archived version of the 1999 Food Timeline still exists and looks — unsurprisingly — more or less the same as the one now. “We still hand code html & today’s readers comment the site is ‘ugly,’” Olver wrote under the site’s “Market Strategy.” “We acknowledge: what was cutting edge in 1999 is now stale. Conversley? [sic] FT looks so old it’s become vintage.”

Olver wrote everything on the Food Timeline with a royal “we,” including her responses to readers’ emails, despite the fact the project was largely hers, with an occasional assist from others. “‘I don’t want anyone to know that it’s just me,’’’ Sarah recalled her mom saying. “She wanted people to believe that it was a network of volunteers,” because she felt that it lent the site more credibility.

“We acknowledge: what was cutting edge in 1999 is now stale.”

While Olver worked at the county library by day, by night she was creating an online resource for anyone who wanted to know more about Johnny Appleseed or chuck wagon stew or the origins of Sauce Robert. By the website’s first anniversary, Olver was already spending upwards of 30 hours a week on the Food Timeline, compiling and posting all the information she was digging up and answering readers’ questions about the origins of their grandmothers’ crumble recipes. “If you came in the house and you wanted to know where she was, and she wasn’t cooking, she was in the office on the computer,” Gordon recalled.

Eventually, even the cooking fell behind. Olver’s children came to expect burnt grilled cheese sandwiches at meals Sarah said. “She would be like, ‘I’ll leave these [on the stove] and go do my work,’ and then she would forget because she was so into what she was doing.”

Over time, the audience for the site expanded, and Olver’s subtle form of fame grew with it. She was named a winner of the New York Times Librarian Award in 2002, and, in 2004, Saveur put the Food Timeline on its Saveur 100 list of the best food finds that year. In the mid-2010s, she was asked to contribute to the Oxford Encyclopedia of Food and Drink in America and consult for America’s Test Kitchen.

Sarah and Jason recalled taking their mother to a cooking class at the Institute of Culinary Education in Manhattan during that time period. “She was so excited about the teacher of this class because she had heard of her through her research,” Sarah told me. “When we got there, the teacher was like, ‘I’m looking at my roster of students and I see that Lynne Olver is here. Where is Lynne Olver?’ Mom kind of timidly raised her hand, and this chef was like, ‘I’ve been dying to meet you!’” The chef who left Olver starstruck was just as starstruck to meet Olver.

For years, Olver lived something of a double life. As the director of a mid-size suburban library, she was known to hand out PayDay candy bars to her staff on pay day and shovel snow from the building walkway during snowstorms, while as the founder of Food Timeline, she brought her computer on vacation, dutifully responding to readers’ food history questions within the promised 48-hour window. “I think she started on the internet as a way to reach a lot of people,” her sister said. “A lot of people who wouldn’t go into the library.”

The night before her wedding, in September 2014, Olver’s daughter, Sarah, noticed that her mom wasn’t acting like herself. While the family was sitting all together in the living room, Olver got up to go to the bathroom; minutes later, she was in the throes of a seizure. Sarah called 911, and Olver was taken to the hospital. The family stayed with her until doctors sent them home in the early hours of Sarah’s wedding day. The wedding had to go on, though Olver was too sick to attend. Doctors diagnosed her with leukemia the next day.

Olver had known for a while that she was sick, but didn’t want to ruin the wedding, so she had put off telling anyone. “She’d be like, ‘I’m dying, but let me put everyone else first,’” Sarah said. Olver was kept in the hospital for two months, but fought hard to be home for Thanksgiving. “It was my first time cooking Thanksgiving dinner because she wasn’t feeling up to cooking — and I ruined it,” Sarah said. “The turkey shrunk off the bone. That was one of the only things that made her laugh in a really long time.”

“Knowledge is power, but sharing knowledge is the best.”

When she was diagnosed with leukemia, Olver used the Food Timeline’s Twitter account to grumble about the food in the ICU at Morristown Medical Center, where she stayed until she was transferred to specialists in Hackensack two months later. “It was a chicken cutlet with some kind of sauce on it,” Gordon recalled; the post has since been taken down by the family. “She said, ‘This sauce, I don’t know what it is, I’m not eating it. It doesn’t look very good. It’s not a natural color.’”

Following her stay at the hospital in Hackensack, Olver returned home to wait for a bone marrow transplant. “She had to use a walker because balance was a problem, but very shortly after getting back from the hospital, she was walking around and doing all of her Food Timeline stuff again,” Gordon explained. She was responding to emails, diving back into her research. “On her birthday, March 10, she said, ‘I had a glorious day.’”

The reason? “Someone had written in with a question that she liked.”

A little over a month later, Lynne died of leukemia, only one year short of her retirement from the library. She had been planning to spend her retirement working on it full time: Earlier that year, she had renewed the Food Timeline domain for 10 more years.

A year after Olver’s death, her family began to discuss what would happen to the Food Timeline and who could take it over. “What we know is that we couldn’t do it justice ourselves,” Sarah said.

To anyone willing and able to maintain Olver’s vision of an ad-free, simply designed, easy-to-access resource on food history, the family members say that the website and her library are theirs, for free. A couple of people have put forward their names, but the family felt that their hearts weren’t in the right place. “One woman had shown us what she had done with her website and it was just full of banner advertisements,” Gordon said.

“It has to uphold her vision,” Sarah added.

Olver’s book collection — if a price were to be put on it — would be worth tens of thousands of dollars, Gordon estimates. So far, there have been no takers for either the books or the task of keeping the site going.

“The Culinary Institute of America initially expressed interest,” Gordon said. “But three months later, they came back and said, ‘We don’t really have the ability to take that volume of texts and dedicate [the task of updating the site] to a specific person. I said they were missing the point; I wasn’t looking to give them the books unless they wanted the website, too.”

The Food Timeline was — and still is — a great democratizing force. “I think Lynne liked that the internet was for everybody and by everybody. Knowledge is power, but sharing knowledge is the best,” Lynne’s sister, Janice, told me. “If you hold the knowledge and you can help everybody get it, that’s where it’s at.” Lynne Olver, an award-winning reference librarian, wanted everybody to know exactly what she knew.

“I would second anybody who says that they want Food Timeline to be brought up to date, who know how to keep that valuable digitized information where people can get their hands or their minds on it,” Sandy Oliver told me. “I’d hate to think Lynne had spent all those hours doing all that work and have it just slide into oblivion. I’d love to see it continue in whatever useful form it can.”

Dayna Evans is a freelance writer currently based in Paris. She last wrote for Eater about the rise of community fridges across the country. D’Ara Nazaryan is an art director & illustrator living in Los Angeles. Fact checked by Samantha Schuyler

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[miachanelparker]

Title: Baby Carter Update!  Involved: Mia Carter and Tyler Carter  Posted: Monday, March 23rd,  2020 Subscribers: 1,201 Views: 215 Likes: 10 Dislikes: 6 Video #: 2 Description Box: 

I’m back with a update on Baby Carter and some very helpful tips and tricks for getting through your first trimester. I got you girl! 

Watch: https://miachanelparker.tumblr.com/post/611602148480942080/title-intro-to-baby-carter-and-mommy-mcvlogs

Instagram: @mrscarter_ Twitter: @mrscarter_  Facebook: Mia Carter  Snapchat: @mrscarter_ (new user)

Products Mentioned: 

B6 Vitamins: https://www.amazon.com/Natures-Bounty-Supplement-Supports-Metabolism

Smoothie Ingredients: 

Banana Peanut Butter Whey Protein Cacao Almond Milk Honey 1/4 cup Greek Yogurt 

Boutique Location: Maison Jolie @ 003 Westheimer Rd b, Houston, TX 77027

[ Friday, March 20th, 2020 ]

Mia stood in their guest bedroom as she held up the light camera, flipping the screen up to be able to watch herself properly. “Hey guys, it is” she breathed stopping as she picked her up phone and checked the date “it’s March 20th” she told them “a Friday and it’s 11:20 am” she announced “and we are currently in the new set up my husband designed for me” she said with a giggle. “He just up and surprised me with all of this” she said looking around the room showing them a bit of the behind the scenes of her sit down set up. “I am so very grateful; you guys have no idea” she stressed as she walked out of the room her long hair swinging behind her. “I was shocked too” she added a she moved towards their kitchen “he got everything for it, set it up, he even got me this camera” she said looking at them “which is very light, very clear” she emphasized. “Well what do you guys think?” she asked them “I think it’s pretty freakin’ clear” she told him. “I love it, it’s small and sleek. And it fits right in the majority of my purses, which is a bonus because I can incorporate more vlogs outside of the house now too, without the hassle” she breathed.

Mia grabbed her baby pink and gold glass bottle unscrewing it’s top, she placed it against the fridge door filling it with cold water for her to drink while she worked today. “So, I am going to take you guys in there, show you an overview of it” she told him as she thought about it. “I have pregnancy brain” she said shaking her head a little. “I am going to show you guys the room, oh!” she said as she pulled the bottle away. “I want to give you guys an update on the baby, show you some new products that I think has helped me during my first trimester” she told them “they aren’t too new, but I think they will help some of you other first time mother’s” she said as she moved back towards the room. Mia closed the door behind her and set the camera up making sure she connected it to the large monitor they had now, before she sat down guzzling down the water thirstily.

Mia stopped to catch her breath and she sat the bottle down screwing its top back on it before she grabbed her phone and said “so as of right now I am exactly 10 weeks” she said as she looked at the app that was on her phone. Mia picked up her phone and showed the little imagery from the app “it says I am 10 weeks” she said looking at herself in the monitor. “It tells me baby Carter is 1 inch and weighs 0.25 ounces” she said with a smirk “that’s crazy” she chuckled her other hand resting on her knee. “Baby is the size of a fig” she also added before she lowered the phone closing it and sitting it aside. “I don’t have any cravings right now, but I no longer like the smell of broccoli, which is weird. Because I used to love it but now it’s a major turn off” she told the camera with a headshake.

“So, for a personal update” she said clasping her hands together gently “I will say truthfully my biggest trial during this first trimester has been conquering my morning sickness” she told them. “I am technically 3 months pregnant” she told them “I will be entering my second trimester shortly and I hear about how much easier it gets for women when they do” she chuckled. “So, we will see” she told them, giving the camera a knowing look. “But my husband and I found some awesome stuff that I feel really helped with my morning sickness” she told them. “We had a doctor’s appointment to check in on our pumpkin” she said as she reached down beside herself picking up the items she wanted to discuss. “We had some concerns” she told them “nothing bad” she added before she said “mine were my morning sickness definitely, I wanted to know if my doctor had any recommendations for me considering I had tried several different things. But crackers, ginger-ale, and soup just weren’t cutting it honestly. And my husband’s concern was night sweats…” she said using air quotes. “I wasn’t aware of it myself but that’s a whole thing and I am completely transparent on this channel so, yeah” she said shrugging. “I can say we do live in Texas; it’s starting to warm up a lot here and it’s about 75 degrees at 8 and 9 o’clock at night so” she shrugged once more.  “Your girl apparently sweats like a stripper in church at night and before anyone drops below in the comments any fat jokes” she said pausing for a long time her head tilted as she looked at the camera. The edited clip is zoomed in slowly before it snaps back and Mia says “I’m fat, get over it” she said before she moved back to the items.

“For the night sweats, I simply wear less clothing to bed. Drop the temperature at night. My doctor said due to the hormones and increase blood flow etcetera pregnant women sweat and there’s that. Not much you can really do to combat it” she told the lens. “If anything, I tend to keep this bottle” she said raising it into the camera view “filled with water on the nightstand and it stays pretty cold, so it cools me down throughout the night when I drink from it,” she told them. “For the morning sickness however” she told them sitting the bottle down again my doctor suggested vitamin B6, caffeine free herbal teas, resting more, eating less greasy foods, and eating smaller portions” she told them. “My husband ordered a few bottles of the vitamin B6, which I take along with my regular prenatal vitamins. I am not going to speak on these much because collectively I can’t say that the vitamins work phenomenally on their own or if it’s the collection of things that I do, that has helped me. If you get what I mean” she told them showing them the bottle before she sat them down. “But I have noticed a difference, I say a vitamin never hurts, and you should give it a try if it has the potential of helping you. My husband said he ordered them from Amazon” she said giving them a knowing look. “Which isn’t a shocker we are the Amazon freaking family in this complex” she chuckled.

“I bought these herbal teas from our local whole foods” Mia said as she lifts the boxes, holding one of each in hands as she showed them. I have peppermint and ginger flavor. Out of the two I lean towards the peppermint one, but I do enjoy the ginger more during the day honestly” she told them. “I will usually drink the peppermint in the evening or at night” she told them “and the ginger during the day” she sighed. “I try to limit myself, but I could drink 3 cups of peppermint tea a day. I try not to though” she reiterated. “I only sweeten it with raw honey from whole foods” she added “and really I hardly use it in the ginger one” she breathed. “These help soothe my stomach greatly and I would 10/10 recommend trying this method of just hot teas, I don’t feel the brand matters these are Yogi, just steep it as instructed and drink it down” she told them sitting the boxes aside.

“I get as much rest as I can. I am a full-time student, that’s better said than done any day” she told them. “But I am not shy to naps right now honestly. I think I nap after every class or every time I eat” she chuckled. “Especially after…” she said sipping her invisible glass of tea. “Which might I add the morning sickness is like” she breathed weighing things with her hand “neck and neck with the sex* drive. I don’t get it” she said shaking her head “imagine having to throw up during sex*” she said blurting the word in the final cut. “It’s not cute” she said tucking her lips in as she shook her head once more. “Anyhow” she said changing the subject “I did cut back on grease, which wasn’t hard because truthfully I did not eat that bad beforehand. I am addicted to Chickfila and McDonald’s fries, but I didn’t eat much of it during the day considering I do like to cook, and I do cook often” she told them. “Far as portion controls go, I did make them smaller and just added healthier snacks in between. Not to mention” she said having a thought. “I make this amazing smoothie, of which I have become addict to, and I drink that every day now” she told them.

“I will drop the ingredients in the description box. But it mainly has banana, peanut butter, almond milk, ice of course, cacao, a little of my husband’s whey protein” she said measuring on her fingers and she thought to herself before she said “yes I will definitely drop it below because I am drawing a blank, but there’s other stuff I add” she told them. “It is so good” she told them, “so that’s like one of my sweet treats of the day and that will hold me for some time so that cuts down on what I intake in the morning” she breathed. Mia lifted her bottle unscrewed it and began to drink down its contents before she closed it and sat it back down. “I try to cook breakfast every morning, I was raised that it is an important meal of the day and I feel like it kicks starts me having a productive one. So, if I can I try to make us breakfast every morning” she said “today I did not” she snorted chuckling. “I woke up super late, so I had my smoothie” she told them.

“We also got me some bra’s recently, which I really needed. I went up in my sizing” she told them. “I just happened to notice when we were in Paris, I was so uncomfortable in all of the bras that I had at that time” she breathed “so a lot of what I wore I think I just said F it and didn’t wear one because my boobs were just so freaking tender and sore all the time” she told them. “When we got home, I went to a regular department store and got sized. So, I went from a 46 double D to a 46 triple D or E rather” she told them camera before she picked a bra up. “So, with that we ended buying a bunch, it was more so my husband than me” she chuckled. “We went to two separate locations” she told them “retailed they are like 50 plus dollars apiece, I think he bought me like 20 to 40 of them” she said not too sure. “He bought varieties” she told them, “regular bras, sports bras, nursing bras, and so on” she listed. “The boutique we went to was a little ways out but I can say it was worth it, I love the quality of the bras and the feel of them” she nodded. “I will be sure to drop the boutique name and location in the description box as well” she told them as she placed the bra aside.

“I will show you guys some more of the other bras” she told them as she moved to stand up and she grabbed the camera moving into the massive walk-in closet turning the light on. “This is the walk-in closet in our place” she walked over to the middle drawers and opened one showing the other bras “here are the other bras we picked up, I have so plain nude ones and black ones” she said showing them as she flipped through the bras. “And some cute and decorative ones” she said the camera angled at the bra drawer and she combed through the various ones. “So that’s that” Mia said closing the drawer with her hip and she turned back around moving to exit the closet, turning the light back off. Mia moved toward the kitchen, King trotting behind her as she did, and she panned the camera to him “look at who’s following me” she chuckled as she knelt down closer to King. “Hey” she said as she scratched his head playfully “hi baby” she said happily as cooed over him before she stood back up and continued to walk Mia turned the camera to herself and she said to the camera “okay so I am going to take King out for a little quick walk” she said looking down at him “and I am going to feed him, make sure his bowl has water and stuff and then I’ll be back to give you guys and overview of the room” she told them before she placed her hand over the camera.  

[ Saturday, March 21st, 2020 ]

“Hey guys!” Mia said cheerfully as she rested in her bed, her hair tied and face freshly washed. “Today is Saturday, March 21st” she said. “I totally ended yesterday’s vlog with me walking King and I had all intentions of coming back, but I got busy and sidetracked with a group project I had to get done” she said rolling her eyes. “So, I had to stroll all the way to the campus and met up with some 3 of my classmates to get the project done completely” she said rubbing her eyes and her forehead. “It took forever, I have always hated group projects and assignments because truthfully” she shrugged “Not everyone has good work ethics. I think I left the campus at about 7 or 8 pm which was crazy to me” she said shaking her head. “But it’s done, there’s no stressing over that anymore. I am happy” she told them as she moved to get up out of the bed and the camera caught a very small glimpse of Tyler’s outline beneath the sheets lying in bed in the background as she moved towards their kitchen “it’s” she breathed softly as she walked towards the stove and she panned the camera to the time “9:30 am” she told them tiredly. “And I am about to make me a smoothie, my husband a protein shake” she breathed setting the camera up on the counter.

“I think I am going to make spinach and cheese eggs, some turkey sausage, and a little fruit” she shrugged. “He’s laying down, he’s probably already had some cereal or something” she said scratching her arm idly. “He woke up very earlier today, he’s an artist. So, I can say his creative flow happens either first thing in the morning or late, late at night” she told them.

In this clip of the video, it is speed up as you watch Mia cook around the kitchen in a Ethika pull over camo bra and staple shorts. Never mind the fact that the spandex held Mia in all of the right places as she moved around.

“Okay, so breakfast is served” Mia said as the camera is zoomed in onto their plated meals before she turned the camera to herself and says. “So, we are going to eat, and I’ll be back shortly” she told them, placing her hand over the camera.

“Okay so it’s about 10:45 am” Mia says looking at her phone screen for the time as she held the camera up to her face. “I am going to now show you the overview of the room” she told them as she sat her phone on the cleaned kitchen counter and she walked down the hallway passing a large mirror. “I changed after we ate, I just have on this Pretty Little Thing basic white V-neck and some of their lounge or sports wear pants” she said turning to the side. “My husband likes when I wear these” she said pulling her shirt up a bit as she angled her ass just right “any who” she chuckled before she opened the door to the room. She stood in the door way and said “this is how it’s looking right now, don’t mind those boxes over there in the corner” she pointed out “those are amazon packages I need to open with a few little things I want to try inside them” she said.

“Um, it does look like a lot of equipment and stuff. But it isn’t, we didn’t want to go overboard. This is just a two-bedroom place. We will have to move me out of this space eventually to turn this into a nursery” she told them. “I know some people asked about that on the last video, what we were going to do once the baby did come and we decided on a nursery layout” she breathed. “I think I will move my step up into the living room or maybe we get rid of a dining table” she shrugged. “You guys haven’t seen this, because I haven’t taken you guys in that space, but we have two massive tables with 20 plus chairs at them and honestly” she chuckled “even with both sides of the family together one table is large enough to accompany everyone. So, I may ask my husband can we remove that table or sell it or something. I don’t know” she said moving her hand to her mouth as she thought to herself.

“But this is the set up” Mia said getting back on topic “I have a backdrop; I have the other fabric choices in the closet for right now. I have 2 soft box lights” she said moving around the room now to show each item. “I took the chair and the side tables you saw in the first video out. He bought me a longer table to rest my laptop and stuff on. We got rid of the obvious bed in here. I think he sold that; I am not sure. I came home and it was gone” she told them. “I have a new chair, which I love” she said showing the baby pink chair to them. “Everything in here is pink, gold, and white. Very much cut aesthetically pleasing” she told them. “I have small decorative pieces here and there to add to the look, but again outside of a plant I didn’t add much in here only because I know it has to change anyway. Now we don’t know the sex of the baby, but if it is a girl some of this stuff can double as décor for her, if not. Well like I said it’s moving” she told them as she slowly panned the room “that’s my large monitor” she said as she continued to move past it slowly.

“Checking in” Mia said as she looked to the camera set up on the table near the kitchen. “It is 1 pm in the afternoon. I just made myself some lunch, my husband is gone. He’s out working and stuff” she breathed. “And I made a salmon burger” she told them, “I will have to show you guys my recipe one day. I had that, sweet potatoes fries, and water” she said lifting her bottle for them to see how much of the water in 1-liter bottle was left. Mia panned the camera to the textbooks and her notes “so I am studying now and doing some homework. We will be on Spring break soon, so I am trying to finish strong” she told them. “And I am going to set you guys up to watch my techniques a bit” she said. Mia sat the camera up and she began taking notes, using various colored gel pens and various colored highlighters, she wrote in very neat and legible handwriting as she showed them how her brain worked to process what she was reading and studying. Mia focused on the textbook flipping the page, she didn’t skim she read the book word for word before she scribbled something down quickly each time. She stopped and scrolled her MacBook before she moved back to her textbook and continued to write up her notes. The video then begins to speed up, showing you each hour that passed as she completed her assignments both online and in her notebooks. She moved back and forth before she reached the 4-hour mark and stopped the time-lap.

“Okay, so I managed to type up some work. I started an essay. I finished 4 assignments and I studied for one of my finance classes, I study hard because those kick my ass* the most” she said the word being bleeped out. “Now King is whining by the door, so I am going to take him out and let him get some fresh air. I am going to feed him; give him some water and I’ll check in a little later” Mia said with a smile before she placed her hand over the camera.

[ Sunday, March 22nd, 2020 ]

“What’s up people” Mia said as the camera facing her in a full face of makeup and her hair down her back. “I just got back from church” she said truthfully. “If I can I make sure I get my butt up every Sunday and go to church” she told them. “After I left there, I stopped by the store to get groceries and I am going to tell you guys what I got” she said. “I changed out of my church clothes” she told them, showing herself in a mirror. “I am nice and comfy now. On Sunday’s I try to bathe King, clean the house. House cleaning is definitely on Sunday’s for me, that is when I am the least busy” she told them. “My husband is out; he doesn’t go to church with me” she notified.

She turned the camera towards the bags of groceries, “it seems like a lot, but honestly I needed stuff to make today’s dinner and we needed to buy actual stuff for the house. It had been a while” she told them. “So, I stopped at whole foods” she said setting the camera up angled at the bags.

Mia has everything set up on the counter, and she held the camera that was facing the food for right now. “I sat it all out and I am just going to name each item for you�� she told them “I think I am going to make my famous lasagna, which I have not made for my husband yet. So, I am excited to see how he’ll react to it. If he’ll like it or not” she told them. While either pointing or touching each item Mia began to list off across the countertop “there is lasagna noodles, olive oil, ground turkey instead of ground beef simply because I am trying to cut back on greasy and fatty foods like my doctor said” she breathed. “Fresh garlic, oregano, marinara sauce which I got 2 jars of because I like to make my lasagna with at least 4 or 5 layers” she said with a hand gesture, moving it side to side. “Ricotta, no particular brand” she shrugged though they couldn’t see her. “Parmesan, parsley, mozzarella, baby spinach mix, Caesar dressing, cherry tomatoes, mushrooms, bacon, organic honey, lemon, oranges, bananas, organic peanut butter, chia seeds, cacao nibs, whey protein mainly for my husband who does workout often” she said inhaling deeply before she said “salmon, avocado, everything but the bagel seasoning. For my avocado toast, y’all have to try it” she said plugging the item in.

“Bagels, whole wheat bread, coconut water, orange juice, naked drinks, garlic bread, regular lemonade and raspberry lemonade. Because my husband loves juice, he’s a juice guy. I have to keep juice in the house for him, I can live off water and tea and be fine. A little OJ here and there, but he loves juice” she said turning the camera back to herself now. “So that gives you guys a little idea of what our cart looks like when we go shopping for groceries” she told them as she moved around the kitchen to begin putting the items up in their rightful places. “I am slowly building up some things that I love to cook with in here, far as seasonings and everything goes. While we were still dating my husband lived in our home and he didn’t do much cooking at all, so it was very minimal things in here, but I have added a lot of the necessities for me to cook with in here” she smirked. “I am in the process of organizing our pantry right here” she showed them. “I have all the containers” she told them as she showed each one “and their labels are already on, I hand wrote them. I didn’t mind doing so” she said easily. “I have a few matching baskets for his chips, granola bars, protein bars, and stuff” she said showing a few things. “All of his cereal is in those containers up there. He loves” she emphasized “cereal so it’s a variety” she said panning over it. Mia closed the door and moved to set the camera back up on the countertop.

“I used to pick up a bottle of 2 of wine each time I shopped to keep our wine cellar full but since I can’t drink, I have just left that be” she said gesturing towards that area of the house with her hand. “So, I am going to put these things up fully, and I will be back when I start to clean the place up. It’s only about 1:30 pm right now and I won’t start cooking until about 5 or 6” she told them. “So, during that time, I clean and all those other things I told you guys before” she said.

“So, this is King” Mia said holding the puppy up to the camera hugging him to her face happily before she pecked his head. “He’s only a month old” she said looking at him as the puppy licked her fingers. “He’s not quite a big boy yet, so I bathe him in the sink for now” she told them. “All the things I use for him” she said as she positioned him in a laying position in her arms “I keep in this baby blue basket, that I have labeled King” she said lifting it with one hand for them to see. “I keep it in the laundry room along with his food and any extra stuff for him, toys, leash, etcetera” she said. “In here I have his small little measuring cup” she said “this is mainly to rinse him off and as quickly as possible before he makes a huge mess” she showed. “Here’s his brush and comb” she said picking up each item for them to see. “His puppy soap, a small little towel just for him, and an essential oil. It helps maintain a fresh scent and they are not harmful to dogs at all, I use the rose or lemongrass ones” she told them. “Pits don’t have strong odors at all, so it just for the heck of it honestly” she shrugged.

The video begins to speed up showing Mia bathing King gently and rinsing him before she dries him off and brushed his fur, she rubs some oil into him before she picks him up in his towel and cuddles him gently to her chest.

Mia held the camera in her hand, and she rested King in his bed in their room, still wrapped in his little towel before she moved to clean the bathroom up. “So now I am going to clean up” she told them, sitting the camera back down. “I am starting with the bathroom, then I am going to clean our bedroom. I use all organic and very clean products especially because of King. If you are cleaning with Bleach or any other harsh products with a dog, just keep in mind they have sensitive noses people” she said looking at the camera. “I use either Method, Thieves, or Meyers” she listed out for them. “Okay so let’s get this started” Mia said before the video began to speed up once more.

Mia is shown grabbing all the mats and walking out of the room before she returns with a Swiffer and broom. She places those two items aside before she begins to clean the shower and the tub in the shower. She took the stand in their shower out and set it aside before she moved back to clean out the tub first and then moving to clean the entire shower itself. She got on her hands and knees and began to scrub the tile with a brush cleaner, when she was done with each section, she used the bucket she had to pour water against it to clear the tile of its suds. When she was done with that she set everything back into place before she began to clean the sinks and the toilet before she then began to sweep and Swiffer the bathroom floors clean.

Mia is then shown setting the camera up in the room, where she sat King and his bed on their already made up bed. She began to clean up their bedroom putting things in their proper places again before she took, cups and bottles back in their kitchen to be washed. The fast-paced Mia moved to straighten the nightstands up on both their sides before she began to vacuum the rug in their room. Making sure she took King out of the room beforehand did due to his sensitive ears. The plus-sized woman moved around the rug twice before she turned that off and put it away. When Mia returned, she sat King and his bed on the floor in their room again before she cleaned the sitting area up in the room as well.

“I am all done cleaning now” Mia said as she held the camera up “whew” she breathed out as she licked her lips slowly. “I cleaned our room, the bathroom, the living room, and our kitchen” she told them as she stood in the kitchen now, it being the last place that she cleaned. Mia purposefully left out the other areas of the room assuming Tyler wouldn’t want all of their space exposed, though she hadn’t asked him that yet. “After I finished all of the cleaning. I washed my face clean of all that makeup I had on and I bathed” she said pointing to the camera. “Now I am going to start dinner, my husband is finally back home. He’s in the living room right now so I am going to get started…” she told them as she began to take the items she needed out and placed them on the counter. She set the camera up on the counter again before she said “I am going to cook the lasagna and I think I am going to have a side salad and garlic bread” she told them as she moved.

The video begins to speed up and Mia starts to grab the pan she needs for her lasagna before she began to prepare the dish completely. Mia moved step by step making the dish in its now speed up pace.

“Here’s the lasagna all cooked and ready, I have garlic bread here, and I made a salad with that spinach mix” she said to the camera as she pointed to each individual dish. “Babe!” Mia called out loudly for Tyler from the kitchen where she was standing.

Tyler sat in the living room, his feet propped up on the ottoman as he watched the TV closely, following the storyline to a T. As Mia called him, he responded “yeah, babe?” loudly, his eyes not once leaving the TV as he stood up from the couch, without waiting for her response. He slowly began to walk out of the room, stumbling over his two feet a bit as he continued to look at the screen. Once he was at an angle where he really couldn’t see it anymore, he turned his body walking normal, his socked feet sliding against the hardwood.

“Baby come here” Mia called out to him as she grabbed a large spoon and dipped it in the pan for him to try her recipe. The food was still hot, but it wasn’t hot enough to burn his mouth when he ate it. “Come try this baby” she said as she heard him turning to the side as she held the spoon out. She blew the food a little before she said “I want to see if you like my lasagna recipe baby” the camera still rolling, she looked to King resting at her feet in the kitchen before she looked up at him.

Tyler looked at Mia as she spoke and he nodded slowly as he walked closer, leaning in a little, his chest in the camera view unknowingly. He opened his mouth and accepted the spoon full of lasagna. “Mmm,” he hummed out as he chewed it. “That’s real good babe,” he told her as he wrapped her up in his arms, pulling her to his chest, his hands sliding down to her ass, gripping her there, in front of the camera.

As Tyler accepted, she smiled knowingly, you could see her in the camera view but not him which she found amusing. As he tasted the sample and told her it was good, she smiled “you really like it?” Mia asked him.

Tyler held Mia close, cupping her by her ass and he squeezed. “Of course,” he told her as he finished swallowing. “You know everything you cook is damn good,” he complimented her, dropping a kiss on her lips.

The video began to speed up as the two of them spoke and chuckled with each other. Tyler is seen patting her butt, kissing her lips a few times, making his plate and moving out of the camera view with his dinner.

Mia sits and she eats dinner next to Tyler and she licks her lips of the string of cheese that covered it before she said. “I think I am going to try to upload once or twice a week” biting her lip, and she turned to Tyler even though he wasn’t in the screen at and all and ask, “babe what do you think?” curiously.

Tyler leaned forward, his elbows on the counter as he ate. At Mia’s words, Tyler nodded slowly. “I think that’s good, steady content promotes more followers,” he said easily, licking his lips.

Mia chuckled at his response, always the supportive one “you are right” she told him as she leaned over her head on his arm for a moment before she sits back upright forking some more food into her mouth.

“Okay guys, I am going to go cuddle up with the hubby and we are going to watch a movie. A little later I am probably just going to study which you guys saw me do in… yesterday’s vlog” she said with a smile. “So I am going to log out” she said with a smirk a she rested against the kitchen counter “make sure you guys subscribe, like, comment below, and press that little bell button so that you are notified of any future videos from the Carter clan” she said before she placed her hand over the camera again.

[nic-and-annie-in-france]

Counting my blessings 💝

Recent purchases that have made me happy:

The new Beaujolais. Beaujolais is a kind of wine that is only fermented for a few weeks before it is sold, and each year’s batch is released on the third Thursday of November. We grabbed a bottle the day after it came out. I don’t like wine too much so I didn’t care for it, but it felt like a rite of passage for us to try.

Mint chocolate chip ice cream. There are only ever five or fewer flavors to choose from at the grocery, and aside from chocolate, they are mediocre at best. We spotted the mint chip this time and just had to buy it.

Chicken noodle soup. I’m not sure why we never discovered or bought this last year, but we found a carton of soup called “poule au pot” or “hen in the pot,” which is basically the French version of chicken noodle soup. I think the name of it is so cute, and it makes a wonderful comfort food as the weather gets chillier!

Fig bread. Figs and fig-related products are more common in France, and I’ve been loving it. I spotted a loaf of fig spice bread in the refrigerated section of the grocery store, hidden among rows and rows of foie gras. I wanted it to be akin to pumpkin bread or banana bread, but was afraid it would be more like a fruitcake. We took a risk on it and it tastes just like a Fig Newton but in cake form. So good.

Roasted chestnuts. All the Christmas markets we went to last year seemed to have tons of roasted chestnut vendors. I decided I finally wanted to try them, since they were so popular. We got some at the Chambéry Christmas market. In my opinion, they were just okay, and tasted more like potatoes than I was expecting. I was glad to have tried them, even if I didn’t like them. 

Our Thanksgiving dinner. The holiday for us consisted of an American-ish Thanksgiving meal and watching TV in bed. Nicolas cooked us a rotisserie chicken, green beans, baked sweet potatoes, bread, and squash soup. For dessert we had an apple pastry with vanilla ice cream. It was only a rough approximation of turkey and pumpkin pie, but it was enough for us.

Air freshener. Our apartment is small and has no ventilation to speak of, even in the kitchen and the bathroom. We finally got around to buying a lavender-scented spray, and it does so much to freshen up our little studio.

Social interactions that have brightened my day:

Kindnesses from teachers. I’ve had no problems with my teachers so far this year, and a few of them have gone the extra mile to make me feel welcome. A few highlights: 

One teacher, M, requested a lesson on Thanksgiving. I did the lesson, and then the next week, three other teachers said to me, “We heard you did a lesson on Thanksgiving with M, could you do that with my class next lesson?” From this I gather that M liked my lesson enough to speak highly of it to the other teachers when I wasn’t there. 

I was reading a graphic novel in the break room during a free period when a teacher who was walking by asked what I was reading. I showed him the book, and he told me that he really liked that author. He told me about another book the author wrote and offered to let me borrow it.

I have to take a bus to and from one of my schools each week, and one of the teachers at that school has organized a ride home for me several times so I don’t have to ride the bus.

Most of the time everyone calls me Ann and pronounces it the French way, but I have one teacher who tries his hardest to pronounce it the American way, and has gotten all his kids to do that too. The way they say Ann rhymes with “rain” and “Spain,” but I appreciate the effort anyway. This teacher has also asked if I like it here, given me the rundown of the fun things to do in the area, and told me that he’s available to help if I ever need anything.

A dinner invitation. Another teacher invited me to his house to work on lesson plans and to have dinner last weekend. With my stranger danger instincts kicking in, I said, “I’ll have to check with my husband and see when I’m free,” to which he replied, “Bring him too!” So last Saturday Nicolas and I had dinner with the teacher and his family. I was anxious about it, but it was a lot of fun and the family was really gracious. They served us a dinner in several courses, as is more common in France. This was a special treat for us, because our budget doesn’t allow us to eat multi-course meals in restaurants. They served wine and crackers as an apéritif, chicken tajine (a North African dish that is really common here) with an endive salad, a cheese plate (we even tried the stinky ones!), a homemade after-dinner beverage called génépi that tasted like alcoholic mouthwash (it was better than it sounds), a Spanish version of crème brûlée, and an herbal tea. One of the teacher’s sons speaks good English and he and I were both able to translate for Nicolas. So often we only get to see French culture from the outside, but our evening at their house felt like one of those rare opportunities to see it from the inside.

Bumping into a fellow assistant. During training and orientation, I met an assistant, B, who is working in three other primary schools in Aix. I hadn’t seen him since then, so I was curious how his school year was going. I happened to see him from across the street as I walked home for my lunch break on Tuesday, so I called over to him to say hi. We only chatted for a minute, but as I had just had a rough morning at school, it was really nice to talk to an English speaker, trade complaints, and trade encouragement.

Crafting with fifth graders. One of my classes is making Christmas decorations to sell at the Christmas market in order to raise funds for a field trip. Even though this meant my English lessons were canceled, the teacher told me to come anyway and I could speak English with them while they worked. When I got there, she put me in charge of a glue gun. I didn’t speak too much English really, but it was fun to just make stuff with the kids. And they were super polite: “Ann, could you put a little bit of hot glue there, please? Yes, that’s good. Thank you!”

Things we’ve crossed off the to-do list:

Finding a routine. I finally feel like I have my work schedule down, and I feel much more comfortable walking into each classroom. Now that I know what to expect in each class, it’s not so scary to go to work each day.

Getting Nicolas signed up for a French class. We went to the Red Cross three times in an attempt to get Nicolas signed up for the free French lessons they have. The first two times they were closed, and on the third time it was open but the person in charge of signup wasn’t there. On the fourth attempt, Nicolas had to go by himself because I was at work, but the person in charge was finally there to get him signed up. He can tell you all about it in his upcoming post.

Finding a language partner for me. One of my big goals for the year was to find someone to practice French with on a regular basis, so that I could have a safe, designated time to really practice my conversation skills without feeling like I am imposing on someone at work or at a social gathering. In a conversation before class with one teacher, I mentioned that I had this goal, and she said, “Well, why not me?” And that was all it took! She takes me to her house, talks to me for an hour in French, and then I talk with her daughter (who is in high school) in English for an hour in exchange. I was so worried that it would be awkward, or that I would say something embarrassing, but it has turned out to be very pleasant and I feel like I get a lot of good practice.

Medical visits. A couple of weeks ago, we each had to go to two medical appointments as part of the visa validation process. We were able to go at the same time to both of them, which saved a lot of hassle as we had to go to Chambéry for one and to Grenoble for the other. I was able to do some of the talking for both of us, but Nicolas did fine in the parts he had to do by himself. We both got to see X-rays of our lungs and got screened for a few diseases (all negative), and our visas are now validated! 

Other happy things:

A day off work. Yesterday was the first day of a multi-industry strike protesting some proposed reforms to the retirement system in France. The public bus and train systems are striking for an undetermined amount of time—some people guess it will only last for the weekend, while others think it could go on until Christmas. Many teachers were on strike yesterday as well (and yesterday only, they don’t plan to continue), and my school was closed as a result. So, I’m excited to have an extra-long weekend, and I’m grateful we don’t have any travel planned for the immediate future.

Christmas decorations. Storefronts in our town are now decorated with Christmas trees and fake snow, and men have been out in cherrypickers stringing lights across the cute pedestrian streets. The Christmas market opened on Sunday so we hope to check it out soon too.

Two thrift shops on my to-visit list. On one of our visits to the Red Cross, we discovered that our local branch also functions as a thrift shop. We looked around  the store briefly as we tried to find an employee to talk to, but I’m eager to go back and see if they have any good bargains. There’s also a similar place called Emmaüs I’d like to explore soon. I know that eventually I’m going to feel the urge to browse around a Goodwill, so I’m glad that I’ll have those two places to scratch that itch.

[randomnameless]

Chapter 7 - Darna to Alster!

Seliph finally finishes this Naga forsaken map and says good bye to the Desert.

RETCONS RETCONS WHO WANTS RETCONS?

(joking, FE4 happened before FE5 so FE5 is the retcon game but)

Ares wants to talk to his friend - the reason why he turned blue to begin with 

but an idiot is here, blocking the doors.

so the only thing he can do in this situation, since he’s grey and can’t move, is talk to the guy.

don’t ask that

no “it is I, Ares the Black Knight”? Vengeance leaves no place to theatrics.

uh... yeah? Siggy couldn’t kill Eldie even if he wanted, he didn’t have the stats for that!

Poor Graine. Here you see miscommunication at its finest, granted, given how Eldie ignored his wife/son to run to his sister’s side and Siggy’s help, I understand why Grainne never got the true side of the story. Her version, and I believe the version of most Agustrians is “Siggy led an invasion in Agustria, Eldie died while defending his homeland and his King” which isn’t that far from reality actually! I love how Ares calls his mother “noble” and not just, my mother. Seliph is of course completely clueless, no one bothered him to keep him in touch with the Augstrian campaign - Aidean what were you doing?

uh... well, i’m sure they hold no hard feelings against each other because they were knights and knights simply do what they’re told, if they hate someone it’s the king who orders them to fight, but Eldie wasn’t totally happy at Siggy’s invasion/occupation. Hopefully Siggy went all “i’m just listening to orders i’m trying to write a letter to Azmur don’t worry” and Eldie believed him. If Chagall wasn’t such a douche the blame could be shared, but hey, we have the most perfect scapegoat so let us all blame Chagall, it makes the Augustrian campaign less catastrophic.

haha Seliph doesn’t understand a thing, Ares is the son of dad’s friend so we can be friends, right? It’s still kind of insensitive to call Ares’ lifelong grudge a “misunderstanding”, OTOH it’s clever because Seliph isn’t calling Ares’ “noble” mother a liar to his face!

Genealogy of the Holy War : sons must pay for the grudges of their fathers? S

Subverted here, Ares drops his grudge. If only we could have asked Brian or even Scipio to do the same :) But their dads had ugly sprites, so they couldn’t be Siggy’s friends so we don’t give figs about them :)

Not totally subverted though, Ares still has doubts and will murder Seliph if he lied.

i cringe a little at this line from Seliph tbh, the fate of the world resides on your shoulders (lel) because you’re the only Naga alive (lelel) F!Lewyn said so, and you’re willing to die just to please Ares? Seliph no :’(

hey you know what you could have met him when you were 3 weeks old if Eldie wasn’t such a douche and didn’t ignore his son and wife. During the occupation he could have sent them to say “hello” to Siggy and his family (or invited them at his place) before Chagall became a douche, but no, Eldie never gave a crap about his family - save for Raquie.

Once he is finished with Seliph Ares pushes him and runs to find his true friend

Here she is! He worries about her, how cute.

:’(

Ares apologises and calls himself a fool, poor Ares. And Lene confesses that she isn’t alright but she still trusted him even after he made himself a fool with that “killing Seliph” nonsense.

Daw! Why IS didn’t give them any lover convo?

Of course he won’t! He will take you home to Agustry! and then you’ll be eaten alive by the agustrian court

“are you the guy Ares wanted to kill?”

“Ares told me about you, he said “move imbecile i have to rescue Lene” when i tried to talk to him earlier”

No dancers in Isaach? 

i don’t know if that would be the word i’d use. Seliph is flustered seeing scantily clad women. Granted, any scantily clad woman would have been captured in Dozel!Isaach so...

and now for the retcon: Raquie’s children!

“who are you random knight?”

what are you talking about? Wait you didn’t knew you had a bro? But in FE5...

that’s understandable - save the part where Lewyn only tells you now that you have a sibling but fig that guy.

off screen, crawling after Shanan and Oifey because they said they could only carry one child and that one child was Seliph

hoho, so Nanna’s Leonster born, it fits with the timeline. The thing that doesn’t is Nanna still ignoring she has a bro :’(

is it me or FE4!Nanna seems to miss Raquie more than FE5!Nanna?

??? I thought you said you didn’t know you had a bro and now Raquie told you she left to meet him in Isaach??

Poor Nanna, she waited to see her, she had no mother figure during all those years

only kaga knows

she took her horse and fled with her horse in the desert with figging sand and it’s not like Quan did the same mistake but no 

meanwhile, two cousins chat

at least - well yeah at least because he had to backtrack to Darna and it took around 15 turns or something (thanks Naga for Lana’s warp staff)

prelude indeed, since Arvis hired Travant and co to assist in his coup

bad Leif, you forget how Travant first set your home in flames and only afterwards Blume arrived. You were sleeping during Finn’s history time or what?!

“my knight Finn” sounds... not strange, but I can’t see FE5!Leif calling Finn “his knight”. Finn is his father figure, he is Finn, not a knight. Heck I doubt FE5!Leif would even call Carrion and co “his knights”. August/Dorias would.

this is so... well, not strange because in FE5 Leif says retaking Leonster was his dream (Finn’s dream) but before chapter 6 he was happy living as a peasant in Fiana with his sisters (and Jugdral’s best mom) killing pirates. Maybe that’s not something you can tell to your kingly cousin, so it’s better to say that he wanted to fight since the beginning...

pff would you have helped against Raydrick when he stoned Eyvel - i mean when Dorias and co tried their multiple attempts at murdering Blume in his sleep? I don’t think so but it’s something Seliph has to say. He doesn’t have to apologise per se but... Well, the way Leif told his story we could think we should be berating Seliph/Siggy for the BBQ’s aftermath that impacted Leonster - in that regard Seliph HAS to apologise.

but this vision, of course, throws Travant in the “ignored” trashcan.

But Leif quickly apologises, it wasn’t his intention to put the blame on Seliph. It’s squarely his fault. RIP Dorias :’( (well Miranda has to share the blame too)

?? Of course he was worthy of being dubbed a knight of Nova he was a crusader. But Leif bragging about being the son of Quan? Heck, that’s something Finn/Dorias would say “don’t lose hope prince you’re the son of quan”, the words of support Ced shared with him when he was down! FE4!Leif is so... confident and assertive, it’s super... weird considering my only Leif experience was FE5!Leif.

It’s so weird that I don’t recall FE5!Leif saying something like that, or reclaiming himself of Quan’s legacy even once. 

“Marty, Othin, pack your things we’re going with Seliph now. Lifis too.”

“But Lord Leif, we’re returning to Fiana now” “don’t you dare i said we’re leaving.” Haha, restoring honor to Granvalle? It’s not about stopping the child hunts and stopping Loptyr’s resurrection? this is so un - FE5!Leif - like! remember the guy who screamed about honor and glory? he would have said those lines!

uh... sure, Quan helped Siggy a lot. And given how Quan died for/because/ during his quest to help Siggy, their deaths are linked.

OMG OMG OMG SOMEONE REMEMBERS

Indeed, but i can’t totally ignore the fact that maybe Ethlyn, even if she wasn’t a Chalpy anymore, wanted to restore her “birth” house’s name clean too, and was also worried about her dad - who didn’t even mention her but that’s how we roll in Jugdral daughters are worthless.

Again, Seliph apologises. Not for Leonster’s fate, but for Quan and Ethlyn on the behalf of his dad.

yes, the stories August told me said that Siggy manage to pierce Arvis’ plans before everyone else! He was a wise man!

As do I? What about “don’t hate the people, only the evil in their hearts?” “oh fig it”. 

pff hahaha if only you knew what were your dads’ last wishes! it was only about restoring chalphy’s good name!

he already said he was going to lend you his scrubs!

“damn that new blade shoots beams of light it’s so cool!”

“I GAVE YOU THOSE RIBBONS!” “hilda did and told me to hang myself with them it’s not a kindness”

hey look, it’s the imperial princess!

“Fear me else I’ll tell everything to daddy and he will Valflame you to oblivion”

because...

“THE MYSTELTAINN CRAVES THE BLOOD OF MEN”

but i thought Julius wanted to throw his party there? You can’t just rewarp in it, it’d be lame!

Wow no mercy for Blume? But yeah, per Aidean’s history lesson, when a baron escapes he will return to piss you off again until you kill him.

it could have been helped if we put men to block the exits, re you really a strategist? or maybe Blume just rewarped when Ares was busy screaming his finishing line for the finishing blow...

??? They’re happier than the Isaachians you fred from Danan’s rule? I honestly can’t believe it.

a real hope, not a joke like Leif’s failed attempts^^

yeah, they’re all stronger than you. Even your wife Larcei!

“have you seen that kid with Leif’s group? She can steal stuff with a magical staff!”

“just as planned and if you don’t i have a backup plan involving a minor character with naga blood”

lol Julia isn’t part of any plan.

[funkymeihem-fiction]

Chapter 10

She dreamed that the sun was coming up in the middle of the night, rising from the horizon and consuming the stars with its light, smothering them one by one. Its rays fell across her and she could feel its glow burning her from the inside. Hot. It was too hot. She thrashed slightly, trying to kick away the top of her sleeping bag, pushing at the heavy fabric, but found that she was quite unable to move. She felt pinned, like a vice had been fastened around her middle, and the more she moved the tighter it became. Snapping from her slumber with a little squeak of alarm, she blinked rapidly and tried to focus…finding both the source of the uncomfortable pressure and the heat that plagued her.

Junkrat was nestled against her side, curled almost in a fetal position with one arm locked around her sleeping bag and his head bowed, breath a muffled high-pitched little wheeze of a snore as he snuggled deeper into the fabric. She groaned, finally managing to slither one arm out of his grip, finding her glasses and shoving them on. Irritation turned to concern when she saw that he had apparently abandoned his bedroll completely and was sleeping on bare, cold sand. He was shivering, and without his maniac grin and twisted expressions…he looked almost pitiable, just a dirty and malnourished young man seeking any source of warmth and comfort he could find, even while dreaming.

He probably would have taken offense to her pity if he’d been awake, she knew. The junkers were not the type who liked to show weakness.

But he wasn’t awake.

She tried not to disturb him, and shifted slightly under his arm, still pinned in the wad of fabric as she spotted movement out of the corner of her eye. Roadhog was apparently up and about already, and Mei cleared her throat a little, lifting her voice to a loud whisper. “Roadhog! Mr. Hog! Uh…help?”

There was a rumbling breath, something she could have sworn was an exasperated sigh as the giant man trundled over. He was a bit more brusque about the matter than she, one gloved hand gripping his smaller partner’s arm, the other closing around Mei’s shoulder before he simply pulled the two apart. Junkrat’s arm was shoved downward and Mei was pulled up out of her sleeping bag like a spring daisy, popping free as he hauled her upright and set her down lightly. Jamison’s expression tightened and he made a strange little noise she couldn’t quite put her finger on, an almost angry whimper, before Roadhog simply wedged one foot under his middle and unceremoniously rolled him off the sand and on top of Mei’s bag. She watched this happen with wide eyes, completely expecting him to wake up and start swinging or swearing at them both, but he remained soundly asleep, curling back up with his face tucked into his arms. She took her coat and tried to drape it over his bare chest, but could only watch as his seeking fingers curled into the fabric and promptly pulled it right back off him, hugging the bundled fabric like a stuffed bear and burying his face into it once more.

She gave Roadhog a helpless look and gestured to the still-sleeping Junkrat with a baffled air, but the larger man simply shrugged his broad shoulders and turned away. She abandoned her coat in Junkrat’s death grip, moving over to his original bedroll and pulling off his patched and ragged blanket, wrinkling her nose at its state before turning and covering his skinny form. He muttered something obscene under his breath before stilling once more, and Mei left him to meander after his bodyguard.

She fell into step beside the much larger man. “Is that normal?”

“He does that.”

“To you too? Does he try to…what is the word…cuddle, you?”

“Mm. Nearly put his lights out the first time he did it. You get used to it. Not his fault how he is.” He leaned down to pick up the massive metal hook by his bike, attaching it to the length of chain and testing its heft before turning and abruptly starting to wander away from their campsite.

Mei glanced back at Jamison. “Where are you going? Shouldn’t we stay and watch him?”

“Breakfast. Proper breakfast. He’ll be fine. Come on.”

That gave her pause. Roadhog was inviting her somewhere? He had paid her little attention so far and she had not pressed the matter. But the elder junker was already turning the bend into the next gulch, and she finished pulling her boots on before hurrying after him. “Oh! Okay, wait for me!”

He still wasn’t the chatty type, and the two walked along in relative silence save for his labored breathing. There wasn’t much to see in the canyons, little but rocky red walls towering on both sides of them against the yellow-pink of the morning sky, the occasional trash or graffiti from campers before them, and the little scrubby shrubs growing in the relative comfort of the canyon’s provided shade. She kept hoping he might strike up some sort of conversation, but after nearly a half-hour of silence, she decided it was time she took the initiative.

“What did you mean earlier?”

“Hm?”

“You said it wasn’t his fault how he is. Was he not always like…how he is?”

Hog shrugged a massive shoulder. “I’ve only known him a few years, when he approached with his ‘business deal’. Outback had taken a toll on him by then. He might have been different before. It’s not his fault.” He leaned down, throwing down one knee as his dirty fingertips inspected the ground, snorting before changing direction and heading further into a nearby gully.

She dutifully followed after him, arms folded behind her as she trailed him. “The radiation?”

“The omnium blew when he was just a child. It got into his head when he was still young. Still not sure how he survived, his stories always change. I don’t think he remembers.”

“I remember seeing the news about it when I was younger. They said terrorists had blown the reactor core. It was so terrible, I still remember feeling so helpless when they were showing all those awful pictures. Wo de tian na, all those poor people…”

Roadhog was quiet for a very long time, still trudging steadily ahead before answering, “Yeah…”

He turned and approached a divot in the sandy gulch bottom, gesturing her forward as he knelt down. Mei watched as he examined the greenish-yellow shrub before lifting its branches up to reveal the small magenta berries beneath. “Ruby saltbush… looks ripe enough. Take these.”

“Oh…We’re foraging! That’s what we’re doing!” Mei snapped her fingers before kneeling down next to him, starting to pluck the berries from their stems.

“What did you think we were doing?”

“I thought…I don’t know, maybe you wanted to talk to me?” She trailed off lamely, pretending to be suddenly very interested in the saltbush. “But, that’s okay. It might not be weather-related, but it’s interesting to see how people survive in the outback.”

“Your MREs taste like shit. And I’ve eaten a lot of bad things in my time.”

“Well..I.. I didn’t choose them! Jamison and I even asked for the better quality stuff, but this was considered a non-essential mission so they gave us the cheap ones. But I ordered extra just in case so we wouldn’t go hungry, plus we don’t- Where are you going now?”

“Rock fig, pick that one next.” He grunted in reply, pointing to another nearby plant as he strode forward once more. “And I did want to talk to you.”

“Oh?” She paused to examine the plant, what he had called a rock fig, a hardy-looking scrub growing straight out of the rockface, dotted with tiny orange and brown fruits. Waiting for his reply, she got to picking, tucking them into the makeshift basket in the fabric of her shirt.

“Are you flirting with Fawkes just so he’ll help with your mission. Or just because he's around.”

Mei froze, one hand halfway out to pick another berry. A very pregnant silence hung in the air before finally her head swiveled to look his way. Her jaw tightened, lips moving as she tried to find words, her voice finally cracking through with uncharacteristic hostility. “H-how! How could you say that!”

Roadhog seemed unphased as ever, the white lenses of his mask unflinching. “Doing my job.”

She sputtered with righteous indignation, counting to ten before she even attempted an answer. “I’m t-trying to understand your…concern. B-but I would never do something like that and I don’t appreciate the insinuation. This operation is important to me, but I would never do that to any of my teammates. Especially him!” She was on the verge of tears despite doing her best to be calm. Confrontation was not one of her strong suits, especially when she couldn’t ice-block her way out of it. “I know he’s not…He’s not like most people. But he’s himself, and he can be really nice, and he’s smart! And also strangely more sensitive than I had thought! And I would never, ever-”

He held up one gigantic hand. “Just checking.”

She gestured a palm to him in disbelief. “Just checking? I do not appreciate being accused of something like that.”

“Don’t want to deal with the fallout once we go back to base if you start pretending not to know him again. I think we’ve both been exposed to enough fallout. And I don’t like complications.”

She started to answer when he paused and grasped his hook, stomping one huge metal-spiked boot into the ground and he grunted and heaved, the heavy metal weapon spinning through the air. There was a screeching noise from further up the rocky valley, which turned into a wet gurgle. A moment later he began pulling on the chain, winding it back as he reeled in a large black and gray lizard, smearing blood on the sand where the hook had pierced its sternum.

She stared at the still-twitching body, argument caught in her throat before she swallowed it down and whispered, “W-was that just a threat?”

He looked down at her, calmly going to pry the carcass off his hook before wiping it on the ground. “No. This is a meal. It has nothing to do with my question. I don’t bother with threats.”

She tried to calm herself, placing a hand to her chest. She had to give him that one. The old junker was normally the silent type, and while Junkrat was the sort to spit extremely creative threats and descriptions of bodily harm at his foes, she’d never heard the bodyguard do the same. True, he would bellow and laugh after a particularly gruesome kill, but he was always very…straight-forward, as far as his rampages went.

“Well I…I also wouldn’t do something like that either. That would just be cruel. But we’re not…you know, I mean, we haven’t…Er…” She stared down blankly at the assortment of berries in her shirt. “I don’t know what it is. But I’m not some…liáng xīn bèi gŏu chī le. I am not going to hurt him. And I hope he won’t do the same.”

“All right.”

“…All right? That’s it?”

“Mm.” He finished tying the dead goanna to the side of his belt before trundling off again. “Just wanted an answer. Come up here, there’s another saltbush. I’ll show you how to prepare them so you won’t get the runs.”

She gave him a look that was half reproach and half confusion. “Er…okay. Thanks? And I hope we’re both on the same page now? Everything is good, right?”

“Mm. For now.”

They returned to their campsite later on in the morning, after the sky had long since turned from the yellow of morning to the brilliant blue of day. Junkrat had already awakened and was sitting on his blanket tinkering with his grenade launcher, Mei’s coat tied loosely around his shoulders. He had just finished applying a new coat of yellow paint and several new smiley-faces to the gun when he spotted his teammates arriving. “Oi! Where’d you two get off to!”

She held up one of the berries from her collection. “We decided to let you sleep in. Mr. Roadhog was teaching me about outback foraging. There should still be time for a late breakfast if you’re interested…”

“Foraging? Didja get anything good? Heh, that Roadie can be a fuckin’ chatterbox if you let ‘im, eh? What’d you talk about, Roadie?”

Roadhog grunted.

Jamison swung upright, loping over in his uneven gait to greet Mei instead, slithering behind her and wrapping his lanky arms around her neck as he inspected the mess of fruits in her shirt. “Bush tucker berries? Lemme tell ya, those things make for some shitty smoothies. I’ve tried. Er…Also, think I might’ve stolen your bag at some point, woke up in there. And then I think I stole your coat. I mighta stolen some other things too, I forget.”

“Oh. It’s fine. I was a little cold this morning is all, so I asked if you’d move nearby. You were so sleepy you probably don’t remember.” She offered him a half-smile, hoping her little white lie would spare an awkward conversation about his sleep-cuddling. They could deal with that later. “How are you feeling?”

“Better after a good night’s rest! And would feel real good if, ya know, maybe a lil’…” He pursed his lips and made a few exaggerated kissing sounds as he started to lean down towards her face.

“Nice try,” she smirked, reaching up with her free hand to take his chin and guide his lips to land on her cheek instead.

“Aw, Mei! Shoot a bloke right through the heart, why don’t ya.”

“I have a feeling you’ll live. Besides, Mr. Roadhog has something for you to do.”

Roadhog rumbled from behind them. “Cook this.”

“Huh?” He barely had time to turn about before the dead goanna was hurtling through the air, smacking him in the face as he fell backwards. “AUGH!”

He landed in a tangle of gangly limbs, peeling the lizard off him as his usual grin spread across his face. Holding it up by the tail, he dangled it in front of Mei. “See! Roadie’s got the idea of it! This here’s a proper breakfast! You sure you don’t want? I’ll save you the best paaaarts.” He jiggled the dead animal back and forth temptingly.

She gave him an unimpressed look. “Vegetarian. Wǒ bu chī ròu. No thank you.”

He had already found a knife and before she could even protest, he proceeded to lean down and slit the slain goanna straight up the middle, digging a hand inside the red wet pulp inside and holding up a palm full of small white eggs in his stained palm, thrusting them under her nose. “You sure? Look, it was a lady sort, comes with some prime outback caviar!”

Mei turned a shade greener than usual, shaking her head quickly and clapping a hand over her mouth. “Would you mind doing that behind the van?”

He looked at her blankly for a moment before her reaction seemed to hit home, nodding furiously. “Oh! Oh, roight, the veggie thing! Suppose I shouldn’t be smearing this dead animal all upside your face and whatnot!”

“Thank you.”

Junkrat was practically doing a jig as he went to finish his butchery. She sat down with Roadhog instead, who had approached her with a bowl of water. He lowered his immense weight to thud down next to her, and helped her along as they sorted the assortments of berries. He spoke little, occasionally muttering a correction or a new instruction as he showed her how to tell the ripe apart from the unripe, throw away the ones with the black spots, and how to carefully peel the bitter outer layers from the tiny desert fig berries. It was almost a pleasant task, mindlessly peeling and washing the stacks of forage fruit.

She couldn’t help but fret slightly, remembering his words from earlier. They still burned. She hadn’t really thought ahead to any repurcussions from her and Jamison’s little kisses. Had Roadhog genuinely been concerned that she would ‘dump him’ as soon as the operation was over? Could you even dump someone if you weren’t together? Were they together? She couldn’t at all be sure that she and Jamison were working on the same terms of what kisses could mean or what a relationship was. Did she intend to continue things after they had returned to Gibraltar? She would have to explain to everyone what she was doing with a known agent of destruction and chaos. She’d have to deal with his strange mannerisms out in the real world. She’d have to be involved…Oh no, had Roadhog’s concerns been completely warranted?

The giant junker took notice as she stopped peeling. He tilted his masked head down at her slightly, noticing her stricken expression before simply grunting and lifting himself off the ground with some trouble. “Finish these. I’ll get the rest started.”

He took the camp stove with him, leaving Mei there on the blanket with nothing but the bowl, the berries, and her thoughts.

It had been a spur of the moment thing. They had been getting along better than usual, had become closer through strife and then physically closer when they had kissed. And she had been sincere when she spoke of his better qualities. He could be kind, he could be generous, and he was exceedingly smart. Smarter than she had first suspected when meeting him. But for all their little tête–à–tête around the campfire, things would change once they left Australia…once they returned to the real world and real society and real people. For all his good traits, he had more than his share of bad ones. He had a temper that could change on a dime, a forgetfulness that bordered on amnesia at times, an undeniable love of pyrotechnics and destruction, and a disregard for human life that she simply could not share. She would have to be involved every time he got himself into trouble, and she had neither the physical prowess nor the silent patience of Roadhog.

She shook her head slightly, trying to clear it as she blankly resumed peeling and washing their morning’s forage.

She knew the way he looked at her, but what if that was merely infatuation? Another one of his phases? For all she knew, he had fixated on and treated numerous other crushes the same way. Maybe he bothered them the way he bothered her. Like that time he had been worried about her and took half a kitchen’s worth of food with him to make sure she was eating all right? All those goofy little jokes he always threw at her in an attempt to get her to smile for him? Or making her her favorite flavor teas on the offchance she’d want to drink with him, or comforting her after her mistakes with the dog back in the valley breeze, or his promises that no matter what happened or what troubles they would face, he would be there with her no matter what?…

She glanced up as she heard his high-pitched giggles from behind the van, followed by Roadhog’s booming chuckle. They sounded happy.

She had told Roadhog that she was not a cruel person and had become more than a little indignant at the very thought of it, but he had been completely right to worry. She shouldn’t make promises she wasn’t sure she could keep. It was easy to forget that they were on official business for Overwatch, that once they left this sun-blasted desert, they would have to return to reality. Reality was where Junkrat performed poorly. Doubt was a reasonable thing to have. She was talking about a man whose idea of a good time was replacing Lucio’s birthday candles with little sticks of dynamite. Which had, in all honesty, been very amusing up until she had had to help clean it all up.

She would have to sit down with Jamison and talk to him. Really, really talk to him, about what had happened. Maybe about what shouldn’t have happened at all…

“Oi, Mei! You got any of that sanitizey stuff? That goanna was a real sticky one!” He rounded the corner, holding up his bloody hands, but paused when he saw the distressed posture and expression of the woman sitting with the berry bowl. “Mei…Hey, you okay? You’re looking right stonkered.”

She turned to him with her brows furrowed. “Jamison…I think we might need to talk.”

Literally anybody else would have had the social accumen to realize the heavy weight those words always carried. Junkrat was not anybody else. He blinked owlishly at her, then his grin returned as he turned and started wiping his red-soaked hands off on a nearby rag. “Oh, sure! Ya wanna talk, we can do it after brekkie.”

“Jamie…”

“Come on come on, Roadie’s waitin’ on ya. Best get on it and eat because trust me, he will go ahead and eat it without ya and you’ll have to eat them diarrhea-bag meals all by your lonesome.” He jabbed a stained thumb back behind him.

At a loss, Mei picked up her bowl full of figs and berries and followed him to their makeshift cooking area. She knew by now that the more observant Roadhog had probably guessed at her agitation, but he said nothing as he took the bowl from her, scattering the figs into a dented porridge pot he had set up over the little stove and nearly emptying an entire honeybear into it after.

Junkrat snorted. “Yeah, that’s nice and all, but you will also notice that I split that goanna from skull to clacker and we are finally having a proper barbecue!” He gestured grandly to the campfire, where the butchered lizard was roasting on a makeshift metal spit. “Now that’s brekkie! You two can have your figgy sludge.”

“I caught it, I get half the lizard too,” Roadhog answered flatly. “That’s brekkie.”

“Oi, rack off!”

Mei smiled despite herself as she watched the pair dissolve into another argument, calmly ladling the porridge meal into her bowl and taking a bite. The fresh figs were slightly gritty in texture, but their natural sweetness was a godsend after the cloying preservative tastes of their other options. She went back for seconds, and even a portion of thirds, whilst listening to the two junkers fight over the lizard. Roadhog eventually settled for the rest of the fig oatmeal and a smaller chunk of the lizard meat. Mei noticed that this time he didn’t turn away from them as he ate, simply lifting up his pig mask to reveal a wide rounded chin, peppered with white-gray beard hairs and severely burnt on one side, his chapped and scarred lips blindly reaching out for the spoonfuls of food he couldn’t really see. It was a little strange to see even that sliver of his real face, surprisingly so, as she had become so used to the expressionless pig mask that she sometimes forgot he was a real person underneath it.

Junkrat hunched over his own meal like a covetous vulture, tearing off steaming bits of flesh with his hands and shoving them into his jaws. It was all a bit primal for Mei’s liking, but at least he had stopped offering the slaughtered animal to her. She was more content with her fig and honey meal, followed by the salty-sweet ruby berries they had gathered earlier. She would have to write about their foraging adventure later, and take notes about this Australian method of survival.

In fact, she had almost forgotten about her notes altogether.

She set her bowl aside, moving to the back of the van and digging around. “Have either of you seen my phone?”

Junkrat looked up, his mouth full of lizard. “Hh?”

“My phone, where is it?”

“Oh, yeah! I forgot to tell ya! Your little robot thing and your phone started beepin’ a lot, and it got real annoying and I yelled at it to shut up, but it wouldn’t, but I knew you’d be pissed if I shut it up all the way, so I just threw them in that box there and put stuff on top so they’d be quiet!”

Mei paused, then resumed her search in earnest, literally throwing things out of the back of the van. “What!? When!”

“Oh, I dunno. Hours back. Woke me up, so I just put ‘em-”

“Oh no. Oh no no no no…” She could hear the beeping now, pulling off mounds of blankets, tarps, and other supplies from one of the larger boxes as the sound got louder and louder. A moment later as she tossed another blanket aside, Snowball immediately hovered out and circled around her, still shrilling an alert call. She grabbed onto it with one arm, as if trying to comfort the little bot as she flicked on her phone. The screen was flashing red and still beeping with the mandarin signals for WARNING scrolling past. She immediately opened it up and began reading through the backlogged messages. “Jamie! You should have told me earlier!”

“What, that your robot was being an annoying cunt and wakin’ people up?”

“Snowball was trying to warn us! Look, it’s more than just my assistant drone, Snowball has short range weather-reading capabilities too…it’s picked something up.” She adjusted her glasses, still scrolling through the messages.

Junkrat rocked back and forth uneasily as he watched Mei’s expression turn more and more alarmed. “Uh…I didn’t…I didn’t know.”

She threw her phone aside and hurried back towards the camp, waving her arms. “Roadhog! Get up, get up, get up, pack everything you can! We have to go NOW.”

[hales-bellls]

Touch Base

Figured I'd do a check in with my grief work in hopes that someone in a similar set of circumstances can benefit from it.

Back story: I was widowed last July, I turn 30 in a few weeks and I'm on a journey of learning how to do this "self-love" crap.

Immediately post-accident, I was kept busy with all the "final affairs". Phone calls, paperwork, trips to the DMV, bank, city hall; notarize this, copy that, mail this, review that. After a few months, things started to settle. There wasn't much left on the to-do list, work started to level out again; but we all know what happens when the quiet sets in. I tried dating again, what a joke that was. You think I was ready for vulnerability? Ha. So off to therapy I went. Nothing like the death of a spouse and being a nurse in a pandemic to set the tone for a first appointment.

First few sessions were just information sharing. I thought myself an average emotional nutcase but I assumed she'd need the big picture in order to help me dig into my BS. I started to see a theme come out of me as the sessions went on. I'm sure it's something common, but the weight of it kind of slapped me in the face. I just want to be happy but I have no idea what that means.  I thought by the time I turn 30 I'd have a few things under my belt, one of them being knowing what I want and how to go after them. To find out after all this time just how clueless I am at what makes me happy is extremely disappointing. Nonetheless, I've decided on a path for my next phase of life. Lord knows I've got my work cut out for me.

Step 1: Evaluate the situation.

As every research study or quality improvement project starts, one has to assess where they're currently at. In my eyes, I have a cool job, an amazing set of family and friends, a decent house and 3 doggos that keep said house full of love. I'm set. Sure. I've got this.  I'mmmmmm happy. Yup. Happy. Sure, the recent loss of my spouse is painting everything in shades of gray, but I have all the things in my life to be okay. So why am I not okay? Therapy helped connect some dots. Happiness isn't a checklist. Happiness isn't a country you move to and set up shop. Life is a winding road up a mountain side with potholes where you're trying to drive with a muddy windshield and your wipers are old and falling apart. Happiness is what happens when you switch out the wipers and clean the windshield, get heavy duty tires for the potholes and enjoy the view off the mountain side. Happiness is the habits you do on a daily basis and the mindset you nurture through all the difficult times you face.  

So far in my winding road of life, I've been purely reactionary. If I give people everything they could ever want, then they'd love me and I'd be happy.  However, all this did was lead me into unhealthy relationships with broken people who just want someone on their team. I'd give all of myself to the "team" thinking they would appreciate my sacrifice and reciprocate. Hello codependent, thy name is yours truly. I was always left the only person on that team. For my next chapter of life, I can't better myself without acknowledging the truth of my past relationships. I have to heal my wounds, develop healthier views of love and become whole myself before I can be with someone else. I owe it to my future relationships to be the best me I can be. However, in order to do that, I have to switch from being reactive to proactive. And what a habit to break when you've had 30 years of practice.  I thought if I did all the things I'm supposed to do, I'll be happy. I was a good girl in high school. I went to college and got a degree. I bought a big house. I was reactive to society's checklist of "Things to Get to Be Happy".  So why is it not working? Let's flip back to my original statement of "Happiness is a mindset and your daily habits."

My job is a lot. A lot physically, a lot emotionally. It's heavy, it's dark, it's not everyone's cup of tea. I'm a trauma ICU nurse at a major Midwest hospital. If you're obliterated in a car wreck, lit up by a Glock, or elderly on a ladder trying to clean out your gutters; there's a good chance you woke up in my unit to my lovely face.  My job is to take care of people in their worst nightmare.  However, my job is inspirational. I work alongside some the strongest people I'll ever meet. They're people who are always in search of bettering our care, wanting the best for our patients, and always striving for new ways to save lives. I learn new things every day, I'm challenged and I'm tried and I'm certainly never bored. I get daily reminders of how important it is to value the time we have.  There's no place else I'd rather be.  Happiness is a mindset that you have to nurture daily, so I started practicing.  I practiced at my place of employment, but I also found the urge to practice at my place of rest.

My house was one of the first things I tackled post-accident. I'm sure it was my spirit trying to protect me against the tsunami of grief that was heading my way but I had this huge surge of energy in the weeks following his death. Sunrise to sunset I was either scrubbing, sorting, painting, shopping, reorganizing, trashing; the list goes on. I painted walls bright colors, I hung pictures that made me laugh, I threw away stuff that sat in boxes since we moved in a few years ago. I couldn't stop. I noticed something though. I felt…peace.  I felt joy even. Whenever I enter my bedroom to the bright yellow wall behind my bed, I can't help but smile whenever I see it. When I see the renaissance paintings of my three pups, my Star Wars art in my living room, or my quirky plants in my window sills, I feel joy.  I never understood the value of home décor, I thought it was frivolous and a waste of money.  For the first time in a long time however, my house was my haven. It was easier to find the desire to clean because I was motivated to maintain the sanctuary I built. I felt joy putting in the work of the daily house scrub because it was mine. I felt joy knowing my house is where my family can gather on holidays and where people can crash when they need an escape.  It's something I've built for myself, and a first major step in cultivating the happiness I've been seeking my whole life thus far.

Step 2: Nixing the Nay's.

So, you've evaluated your situation. Time to get rid of what's no longer serving you. Seems simple right? Just take out the trash, no biggie. I'm not just talking about stuff though. There's a meme going around that says something like, "If it doesn't bring me joy, money, or orgasms; I want nothing to do with it." It usually gives everyone a superficial chuckle, but think about it. How much stuff do we carry around with us in our day to day life just because it's uncomfortable to change? Jobs, relationships, thoughts, feelings, habits; everyone at some point has held on to these way past their expiration date because its uncomfortable to change them.  For me, it was my thoughts. I've struggled forever with negative self-talk because I thought it was normal. I thought those thoughts were part of being a human being. I didn't know it could be different. Therapy swoops in again, showing me that inner monologues are actually reactionary habits that we learned as a child and that with active attention paid to them, one can change the darkness the thoughts bring.  It still seems unbelievable how I've been given the power to change something that seems so engrained in my DNA. This definitely has become a spiritual mountain to climb. These thoughts have to go, though. They're holding me back from being my most fabulous self, and I deserve better. SO DO YOU. Nix the nays, no matter what form they take.  

Step 3: Nourish the Yay's.

So, this one was confusing for me. It's easy to acknowledge what makes you feel uncomfortable. Uncomfortable is a very clear feeling, it's very distinguishable from a resting state. Joy, however, can take many forms. Of course, joy is clear when you're on a beach with a margarita. It's clear when you're with people you love, when you're laughing, etc. I'm talking about the daily habit of joy though. Doing the dishes doesn't bring joy. Going to the DMV doesn't bring joy. Having dog drool land on your face as your alarm clock at 0500 does not bring joy. So someone like me, someone currently in a low part of life, finds herself scratching her head at this whole joy concept. I always filed it away under "do the hard stuff now, then you'll get a margarita on the beach in a few years. That'll top me off for another few years of suffering." This can't be it though. Life can't be army-crawling through fields of glass and lemon juice in hopes of making it to an all-inclusive once every few years. I had some work to do.

I had done some of the work already through reorganizing/decorating my house post-accident. The yellow in my master bedroom, the renaissance paintings of my dogs both make me laugh aloud with joy whenever I see them. This spills over into my daily life too, giving me the rule while I'm shopping that if it doesn't make me feel like the yellow wall or the dog paintings, it ain't worth having it (thank you, Marie Kondo). Overall, making one's house a place of peace and spiritual harmony is a good place to start in finding daily joy.

Another thing that brings me joy I've discovered in the recent years has been cultivating a green thumb. At the beginning of lockdown, I got my first plant; a Fiddle-Leaf Fig I named Janet. She was a few inches tall and after some research, I learned she's going to be quite high-maintenance. However, with society closed down for the foreseeable future, what else was I going to do with my time? So here we went, finding the right window, working out the right watering schedule etc. When I woke up one morning and found a little green leaf sprouting off her stalk, it was like Christmas. Something so silly made me feel so proud. I made a living thing feel like they could grow, and I needed more of that. Some people do heroin, I do plants. A high is a high is a high, eh? Janet is now as tall as me in a pot on the floor with leaves as big as my dog. I've got a whole wall of windows in my dining room full of different plants with different routines, all with new growth and new rushes for me to enjoy. I've even started planting things outside.  Sure, plants aren't for everyone. The point is that you have to try new things. If they make you feel like that little leaf made me feel, you have to keep doing it. If that little leaf didn't have me doing cartwheels, I'm sure the motivation would have gone right out the window and Janet would have been laid to rest in my trash can after some time.

Probably one of the most earth-shattering discoveries I've found is one I thought I'd never do.  Fitness was not something cherished in my house growing up. I was a naturally thin lass who wasn't into sports, so I didn't have a need to maintain a frame on the daily anyway. Once I hit 25 and discovered existential dread, the gut started to rear its ugly head. I played it off for a few years, tried the whole "body positivity" thing but it was a ploy. I could blame it on the accident, sure, but my weight gain was from something much deeper than that. I just wasn't "woke" enough to see it yet.  In this same timeline, my best friend gets engaged and starts "sweating for the wedding". Being that I'm a regular at her and her fiancé's dinner table, I often got the "you should totally go to this gym with us!" After several months of eye rolls and lame excuses, I caved. I figured if I just go once, they'll leave me alone about it. Something strange happened though. After the workout I felt…good?  I felt motivated? I went home and did several chores my depression had been putting off? And I did them to…music? What? Who am I? What is this? Why did Britney Spears leave us? I digress. In the name of joy research, I had to try this workout thing again to make sure it wasn't a fluke. It wasn't. I started going twice a week, and I found myself dancing and slaying my to-do list after every session.  I found myself sleeping better. I found myself saying, "I should probably start going more days throughout the week so I can be more productive."  Even in therapy, I found myself struggling to find things to share with my therapist because overall, I felt better. It wasn't until a family member I was sharing this all with dug deep and asked me what I think is different this time. In my 29 years, I had tried several gyms with all different set ups, all of them lastin the one "free-trial" session then I was able to talk myself out of needing to continue so I could get back on my couch.  So, what was different this time?  Therapy once again put on its cape and responded to my bat signal.  I was given the tools to see the problem for what it was: weight gain was a symptom, not the problem.  It was a symptom among many others like it of how I felt about myself.  I got in a habit over the years of putting myself at the bottom of my priority list. There was always a person, place or situation that was more worthy of my attention/energy.  Now that I'm in a place in my life where I can/want to focus on myself, I can see just how poorly I was doing so.  I think the motivation to go to the gym is different this time because I changed the goal the gym was helping me achieve. Before, the gym was always discouraging because everyone else there was in shape, knew what they were doing, had matching fancy workout clothes etc. I always felt out of place or like I was being judged. The gym I'm going to now has people of all shapes and sizes, the staff's goal is to just get you in the door and they are so motivated to make you succeed all while loving you along the way. Most importantly, I was going to the gym because of how it made me FEEL afterwards. I wasn't going to get thin, squat "X" amount of lbs, or find my next beau; I was going so afterwards I could bask in my glory and endorphins. The performance pressure was gone and it completely changed the game. I stumbled upon a "Yay" and I nourished it.

I know I still have a long way to go in my spiritual journey. I hope that what I'm doing can give others in similar circumstances some direction, insight, and/or hope to better and brighter things. It's always better knowing you're not alone. Take care of yourself. Go to therapy if you can. Most importantly, start where you are. Find your right "window" and "watering routine" and watch the new leaf grow on your stalk. You deserve it.

[therewillalwaysbeapril]

Chapter 3: The Alaskan Desert

The linseed oil gave off a strange odor as April poured it into the small plastic casino coin bucket. The viscous, honey colored liquid made vulgar noises as it hit the plastic bottom, folding in on itself, bubbles forming on the surface. The smell was one that reeked of a mixture of stale fish, imitation pine scents, and peat. Its acrid fumes irritated my nasal passages, burning them as my face involuntarily twitched and my eyes began to water.

 “Shouldn’t you be wearing a mask for this?” I enunciated my words with half-forced annoyance and disgust, carefully hiding my concern. 

“Nope.” 

Clouds began to form outside over the gray January day. The windows whistled as a breeze poked through a crack in the shutter. Light pitter-patters filtered through the ceiling as the neighborhood squirrels began to seek shelter; a storm was on its way. 

 Nimble and wiry, her well-practiced fingers skillfully began to pour red chalk into the pail. As the red powder began to run out, April hesitated for a moment, then reached for the container of blue. Colored dust began to lightly cloud, bringing a slightly ethereal quality to its immediate surrounding. April swirled the mixture confidently and deliberately. It began to take on a muddy shade of reddish brown ochre. With a palette knife, she began to lob the newly made oil paint onto the canvas in large, generous chunks. A bizarre desert scene of grime and clay began to take form, dripping with muck.

 “I thought this was supposed to be Alaska. Where’s all the snow?”

Wiping the palette knife, she dropped it back onto the table with a clatter. “Oil paint is expensive. I’m just using this homemade junk for the bottom layer”

 “So, are we going to talk about this?”

“What is there to talk about? I’m busy.”

“You know exactly what this is about. I could just leave if you don’t want me here.”

“Of course I want you here. I told you, I always want you next to me. Anyway, let’s eat.”

 She briskly stood up and switched off the light, giving me a dry kiss as she walked out of the dark room. Hesitating, I followed.

•••

The arid hazel colored landscape was cracked in some places, with the overall texture of tree bark. April silently scratched at the surface with a dry paintbrush, adding bits of blue and white little by little. The room was completely quiet aside from rough scraping noises of April’s brush. She sat wordlessly on the floor cross-legged in front of the massive 6 foot wide canvas, only pausing to clean her brush every fifteen minutes or so. I also sat on the floor in the corner of the room, atop an old understuffed pillow, working on my laptop. It has been three days since the two of us stretched canvas over the thin frame April built from plywood that we purchased from a nearby Home Depot. The mud colored impasto layer of home made oil paint has dried and she has decided to begin applying the first layer of color. 

“By the way, I’m sorry.”

 April continued lightly applying the white paint without looking up, making light scratching noises that seemed to harmonize in rhythm with the ticking wall clock. 

“I just wanted some sense of control, ok?” She paused for a moment, picking up the tube of white and squeezing a small amount directly onto her brush not unlike applying toothpaste.

“Okay, maybe I can kind of get it, the part where you started hiding the ball date pictures. And maybe you blocking my friends on Facebook too. But going around telling people you’re ‘technically single’?! What the hell is up with that?”

“I don’t know, alright?! Shit…” Grabbing a rag, April irately rubbed the spot on the floor that had been freshly stained with paint. Cursing, she tried to compose herself as she folded the rag neatly into a square and set it back on the table.

 “Well do you want to be with me? Do you really love me?”

“Yes!”

“But...you were happier telling people you were single…?”

“I wasn’t sure okay?”

“Of—”

“Like, I love you so much but what if I got with you, which I did, and made it Facebook official and then all my friends saw and then we end up breaking up right after and then I have to change it back to single and thats so embarrassing!”

She stopped painting and turned around, her face a sudden shade of vibrant vermillion. “And it wasn’t just any ball! It was the Taiwan Airforce Christmas Ball! You have to be invited! Do you know how long the waitlist for something like that is? I barely even know the guy I went with! He’s my friend’s friend and I would’ve much rather it had been you!”

April paused and took a breath. She was clearly angry now.

“I just hid them from you on Facebook because you were so annoyed about it and I just wanted some breathing room!”

“Well that still doesn’t make it okay! Did you have to act so shady about it? Is this what happened between you and Levon—”

I knew I shouldn’t have said that. Immediately April stormed out of the room in the direction of the garage, stomping more loudly than I thought physically possible for someone of her petite frame.

“I’ll be back, I just want some air.” 

It was dark when April returned. I sat in the living room with the lights off, glowering, drinking the scotch she had given me as a gift the week prior. It was a bottle of 16 year old Lagavulin — a generously flavored whisky that burned with a powerful taste of not only peat and oak, but also sweet scents of figs and vanilla. Complex, like this girl whose turbulent temper I have only just discovered. The stillness was abruptly cut by the sound of the garage door opening and the pippy rattling of the damaged Mini Cooper’s engine as it parked. Angry footsteps stomped up the stairs. The door slammed shut.

The door was locked. 

“Go away.”

 I knocked.

 “Go away I’m eating fries!”

 I paused for a moment, unsure of what to say. 

“I want fries too…”

 The door opened. April’s hair was extremely messy, flyaways in all directions. Ungracefully, she shoved a paper bag into my arms. IN-N-OUT BURGER, it said in large friendly red letters.

“I’m still mad at you.”, she said.

“Then why are there two orders of fries?” I gently put a hand on her shoulder.

April abruptly pulled me into a tight hug, burying her face in my shirt. After a long while she gave me a kiss.

“You shouldn’t drink when you’re mad.” she said. “You drink too much. I don’t like it when my dad drinks either.”

“I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have mentioned Levon. I know you had your problems with him.”

We ate our fries in silence as April continued scratching white paint onto the muddy surface. The bottom half of the painting was now a rocky white, still unfinished, but unmistakably a chunky, snowy terrain with indications of dirt, bootprints, and even a slight reflection of clouds. It was still somewhat translucent; the muddy bottom layers still peeked through and disturbed the surface, dirtying the texture.

“There’s something I have to tell you.” I could only see her back as she painted, now adding shades of blue to the upper portion of the canvas.

“I didn’t really want to be your girlfriend at first”

“Wait, what? How do you mean—”

“Well, I got in a big fight with Levon and he said he was going to go date somebody else, and I said, fine, me too! And then I went on the dating site and met you. Like, you seemed like the last person I would go out with, so I thought it would make him really mad, so I went out with you—”

“What the fuck man, you mean—”

“I didn’t lie to you! Really! We kept hanging out and I just liked you more and more, and then I guess I fell in love with you, but I didn’t really know what to do…”

I stood up and walked out of the room. April followed.

“So, you mean this was all a joke to you? I was just your punch line?!”

“Come on. No. Of course it wasn’t like that!”

“I thought I had found someone truly special, April. I guess I was wrong”

“No, please, you have no idea! I really do love you.”

“Then why would you do something like this? Is this something you’d do to me?!”

“No! Really, you don’t know — he was such a jerk…”

 We sat down on the couch as the sounds of light rain falling pattered through the patio door.

 “Like I told you before, I met him on Chatroulette a bit after high school graduation, and I really liked talking to him. He was this Armenian guy living in Sweden and he’s the same age as me and he was so nice to me and after a few months he said he was in love with me. So, I guess...he was kind of like my boyfriend? Like an online boyfriend?”

“....okay…”

“And he couldn’t decide what he wanted to study and I told him about my family wanting me to marry a doctor so he decided to pursue dental school. But he never studied well and I spent so much time trying to help him! I even look over his schoolwork for him all the time on top of my own stuff, and UCLA is really hard by the way!” April angrily grabbed a piece of chocolate from the coffee table, tearing off its wrapper. 

 “And then one time, he had this really important exam he was supposed to be studying for…” She chewed her candy violently, swallowing it with a loud gulp. “...and then I found out he went clubbing, and he took pictures together with so many other girls! I was so mad! I’m working so hard to help him, and he’s being such an asshole! He said he loved me and wanted to study hard and come here and take care of me, but I can’t even depend on him for something like that. It was so unfair!”

“...so you decided to go online and look for a lucky loser to make him jealous, huh? I guess that sucker was me.”

“I’m sorry…”

“And the pictures on Facebook? That was part of the ploy too?”

I sighed and stood up. “I need to think”, I said, walking back to the studio.

Over the course of the next couple of hours, April began to add more detail to her Alaskan landscape. Slowly and gradually a picture began to form. Patches of grayish white became a field of snow, clumps of blueish brown formed boulders. A red spot became a barn as a blob of brown was shaped into a moose. It was a magnificent scene, charming and cinematic. The scale of the painting was grand, bolstered by the large canvas size. However, the view was decidedly empty and desolate. It was a lonely scene, uninhabited save for the single moose and empty barn. Even the snowy mountains in the background were distant and mute, despite their artistry. As April painted, I sat next to her, reading, occasionally drifting in and out of sleep. Every now and then, she would hold my hand for a few minutes, while she painted with her right. At other times she would lean her head against my shoulder for a moment. I remained silent.

•••

The following morning, we hauled the still-wet painting downstairs. “Will this fit in your car? I can’t drive this to school in my Mini”. April looked over at my Toyota GT86. Was it a larger vehicle than her Mini Cooper Coupe? With its sweeping lines and shark-like aerodynamic styling, it was a much longer car. However, the rear hatch would be a problem. As a compact sports car, its trunk was barely four feet wide. 

“Maybe we could tie it to the top?” 

As the painting wobbled dangerously, teetering over the sloping roof of the 86, the car’s shark fin antenna pushed up the middle of the painting, denting it. We would have no choice but to tie it to the roof of the Mini. 

“Are you sure about this? What if it rains again?” “Do you have a better idea? This painting is due tomorrow — I shouldn’t have procrastinated, but you’re the one who wanted to take me to your friend’s party last weekend” “Alright, let’s try this.” 

Retrieving a roll of wax paper from the kitchen, I began to wrap the canvas as April tied and secured the knots. Leaves flew by in front of the garage.

“We’ll have to take surface roads to Westwood”, I said. “This thing’s going to blow off if we take the freeway.”

I drove slowly and wordlessly as the air whistled through the gap in the windows where we threaded the ropes. I began to feel painfully aware of the number of cracks and potholes in the road as I drove. Cars honked as they passed us by, clearly annoyed by the sluggish buggy that impeded them. An hour passed this way, with either of us holding our breath as we approached each stoplight hoping that the canvas would not tip forward. 

“Can you say something?”, April asked as we drove through Echo Park on Sunset Boulevard. “What is there to say? I’m still thinking.” Traffic began to worsen, deadening to stop-and-go driving as we traveled closer to East Hollywood. Rain began to fall outside. Droplets made wandering paths as they trickled down the windshield. I felt a slight tickle on the back of my hand. April had reached out and lightly caressed it with her little finger. She looked at me and smiled.

It was a sheepish, bashful grin reminiscent of the way a child would simper at a parent at the end of a stern punishment. Against my will, I accidentally smiled back, quickly forcing it back into a frown. “I see you smiling there! Don’t try and hide it!” April grabbed my right hand and held it against her face, kissing it as I drove with my left. “I love you, okay? I really do.”

Another hour passed before we arrived at the UCLA art building. Parking in the loading bay, we unthreaded the painting and carried it up the freight elevator to the studio space. The painting was ruined. The snow was flattened in some places, pushed up against the trees and the barn in others. The blue of the sky dripped into the mountains, sullying its pristine white caps. The moose looked less like a moose and more like a melted klondike bar. 

“April, I’m so sorry”, I said. “Let’s figure something out, maybe I can run over to Michael’s, find another canvas…” My voice trailed off. I was only being hopeful. She had worked on this all week long.

A strange glow appeared on April’s face. A smile so warm that it was as the heaters had come on in this empty Sunday classroom studio. “Sit tight, give me twenty minutes.” Grabbing a set of palette knives, she got to work, setting the painting on the floor and carving away. Within fifteen minutes the painting began to take form and definition again and by the time I returned with coffee, it was even better than before.

“Good as new”, she said. “Nothing that can’t be fixed!”

The rain continued to fall outside.

[ramrodd]

Who was Pontius Pilate? - Historical Proof and Legends

COMMENTARY:

I see a costume that Miley Cyrus wears at some point in her break-out tour in your Rorschach ink blot. I went to Vietnam to make sure Miley Cyrus could motivate the troops in such a classic fashion. It's like a Round Eye USO show, instead of a Philippine cover band with a lead singer who could emote Linda Ronstadt singing "Willin'" in Atlanta. Miley is a part of that tradition. You can see Miley on stage with Alison Crause and Mary Travers and Pearl, fitting right in, harmonizing with Emmylou Harris. When I got back from Vietnam in 1971, back to the World, she was singing at "The Childe Harold" north of Dupont Circle and she was like a singer in a USO show.

That's a flash-back. You set off a Miley-Cyrus adult entertainment trigger in my libido. I went to Vietnam to make sure the 19th Amendment is fully implemented, globally, as my focus in the Great Commission. Moses corrupted the 9 Laws he was given on Sinai in order to claim property rights on the uterus, universally. The 7th of the 10 Commandments and the 10th Commandment were originally one commandment to the effect "Thou shalt not adulter the law to possess unjustly that which you covet of your neighbor" to "Thou shalt not commit adultry" in order to reduce the status of women to animal husbandry: Woman as Breeding Stock. And the 10th Commandment "Thou Shalt Not Covet" has become a weasle word like "Honor" in the commerce of the world. The world of the 10 Commandments.

If you begin with Melchizadek, the numerology is all wrong. 10 base numerology is the numerology of capitalism and it's historic artifact is the abacus. Narrative is the evidence of the Logos in operation in a human population, but music as an expression of the fushion of the Mythos and the Logos is what separates homo sapien from the Neanderthal.

History is a reconstruction of the human condition as if music didn't exist. History is a room filled with echoes of the past. History is further evidence of the operation of the Logos in the world, but without the Mythos that surrounds us eternally. The mythos surrounded the Neanderthal but it just frightened them. They had no way to transmit moral qualities, culturally, such as "courage" and "endurance" and "future". Song helped launch Logos out of the Mythos. History is cleaning up after the main event.

The "10" of the "10" commandments is what the 19th Amendment fixies in the Human Condition. In the Beginning, was the Word, but before the Word was, Number IS and the Great I AM are one. And the 9 base numerology is what Melchizadek gave Abram. 19 is literally the Alpha and Omega of divine numerology. The "0" symbol, "Zero", is an artifact of the process theology in operation from Melchizadek throughout the Mediterranean Basin that achieved the critical mass in 70 and produced the US Constitution. Along the way, Khadijah opened a divine portal for Mohammad that produced the Meccan Suras in the Quran and, when she died, that portal closed, but Mohammad pretended it didn't happen while he wrapped himself in the silk of his child bride's night gowns, trying to find the key to the portal only Khadijah could open in him. Islam is a Gnostic religion: for all intents and purposes, the Quran is the hymnal for the Gospel of Thomas. Allah is the demi-urge that stalks Moses in the mountain lodge and is the Spirit of the Lord in Genesis 1:2. And the intellectual rigors of Islam, as bent out of shape as they are. produce Zed and the X Commandments becomes understood as the 10 Commandments and there has been a very low volume but persistent subject of inquiry in the Torah regarding why 10 commandments when the lesson of Joseph's accurate interpretation of the dreams of Pharaoh employing Melchizadek's 9 base numerology. The basis for most Kabbalah mystery on the Tree of Life is the 10 base numerology of Moses 2nd version of what he had been given on Sinai.

A question of the sort of speculative theology like Richard Dawson and Richard Carrier. The reason why they are getting any traction at all is because of the post-modern deconstructive forensics dialectic of the Students for a Democratic Society that took over Columbia University because they were scared shitless of going to Vietnam. It's the Oliver Stone version of Vietnam. You are letting assholes like Richard Carrier interfer with the proposition that the Holy Ghost is a capitalist tool in the economics of Jesus as explicated by Adam Smith.

Of course, so is the Pro-Life heresy based on the corruption of the 9 Commandments. The 19th Amendment is absolute, existential, historic proof of the Logos at work in the affairs of America and, by our example, humankind. Robert Jeffress's Pro-Life heresy violates the 19th Amendment as a reflection of the Hand of God.

So, that's what I saw in your Rorschach blot. But, then, I am always Evangelicals to introduce sex into the sermon at some point. It helps to get the juices flowing before you pass around the collection plate. It's like you came on stage in jogging shorts over panty hose and heels and pulled on a garter for gentlemen to stuff bills of various denominations in, except it's a family show, so it has a certain Godspell-era Campus Crusade for Christ schtick to it. Baseball summer camp evangelism.

Cornelius is in the room with Jesus and Pilate. Jesus is in full-Jihadist mode: for all intents and purposes, lit a match when He withered the fig tree and, like the Zippo Monk, is just waiting for the Romans to dump a couple of jerry cans of gasoline over him. The Jewish lynch mob lights the spiritual fuse leading to the destruction of the Temple by demanding Jesus Barabbas instead of Jesus of Nazareth: Revelation is a very radical literary narrative of the spiritual time line from Mark 15:38 to 70.

But Cornelius knows Jesus, personally: he had become aware of Him as part ebb and flow of the religious community in Capernaum. We know this from Acts X. You might ask yourself, as a dedicated historic Jesus sleuth, what is a high-ranking Roman soldier doing, hanging out at a synagogue.

Well, Capernaum is on the trade route coming in from Persia and Asia to cross the land bridge into Africa. As a senior intelligence officer, the Capernaum is a useful listening post of the local situation. Pilate's core mission was to keep these trade routes open and free of the sort of Free Market piracy that operated as a counter-point to Pax Romana.  It made sense for Cornelius to become a common sight on the Sabbath to listen from the Gentiles Court of the synagogue of the war stories of the Torah and Judges and Prophets. Because of Melchizedek, the Roman Republic found it expedient to make God Fearers as ecumenical as possible. Large system governance was right at the end of the transition of the theocracies of the Aesthetic to the secular republics of the Ethic. Melchizedek had set this transition in motion throughout the Mediterranean Basin at the same time. It all came to a head in a cluster of events, the composition of Revelation, which is the bookend of the age of Melchizedek in the Bible, the composition of Hebrews, and the destruction of the Temple as a cultural dead end resulting from Moses corruption of the IX Commandments to the X Commandments. The Emperor Worship that rose to prominence in the 1st Century reflects the last gasp of the pre-historic theocracies of the Aesthetic Age and the dominance of the secular rule of law of the Ethic Age evolving eventually to the US Constitution and Democratic Socialism as the core technology of American-British constitutional capitalism. As a centurion, Cornelius was on the leading edge of the Industrial Age and, consequently, his behavior as a professional soldier is predictable and eternal and being an intelligence agent for Rome while absorbing the spiritual values consistent with his own ethical construct from the local culture reflects my own experience as a republican war fighter in Vietnam. Same mud, same blood.

And Cornelius knew Jesus was big medicine before He was remanded to his custody right at the Vernal Equinox and in the middle of an annual exercise in crowd control and political suppression in Israel and Judah. There are a lot of theories for Pilate's behavior in the 4 Gospels, but a factor is the Sajanus plot. Pilate was largely a very successful regional manager for Rome, but he was a little gun shy from missteps he had made with the Jews that weren't worth the trouble for purely commercial reasons: the Roman empire never recovered from the destruction of Jerusalem as a very potent money pump. Revelation provides an inventory of the luxury items Jerusalem distributed throughout all the world. One way or another, Pilate survived the purge after 31. The unkown factor is, was Jesus crucified before or after Sajanus was discovered? History tells us that the Roman nickname for the Jewish followers of Jesus “Christians” went to Rome before it went to Antioch and to Antioch before it got to Jerusalem, although Roman solders roamed all over the region. We know, historically, that Felix knew all about the local Christians, which the local Christians called The Way in Acts 24:22. Cornelius's presence, and involvement in the Capernaum synagogue was part of the network that informed Felix about The Way, only Cornelius knew about The Word before it became The Way and had created what became the Q source to keep track of it, the Word,  without knowing Jesus would land in front of him and Pilate for disposition as a bit of political expedience. If He had just died and disappeared, the Gospel of Mark would never have had any military urgency it had after the Resurrection. And copies of everything Cornelius collected in the intelligence files of the Q source ended up in the hands of Theophilus in Rome while they tried to reverse engineer Resurrection and the other super powers of Jesus of Nazareth. The result is Hebrews and Acts 10:34 – 43 is the textual origin of the Apostle's Creed.

Pilate's role was to make sure word of The Word went up the chain of command to the Roman-equivalent of the Pentagon and State Department, the Praetorian Guard represented by Theophilus. That's why Pilate is mentioned in the Apostle's creed, to establish the Roman provenance of the Gospel of Mark and the Q source.

Speaking from a patreon.com/tmbh perspective, it would be interesting for you to explore the music you associate with any given pericope. For example, during the initial moments of the flirtation between Jesus and the Samaritan woman in John 4, I hear Shania Twain's “That don't impress me much”. She's flirting with Him and He's enjoying her company. She's come to the well in the middle of the day to get pregnant like Tamar with Judah. When He starts talking about “living waters” she assumes He's good to go and begins to press Him to get down to business. The music I hear here is Ace of Bass “All that she wants (is another baby)” and then He makes her pregnant by immaculate conception and the music stops. And then the Disciples return and break the spell and she runs home to announce the Messiah to Natalie Merchant's Kind and Generous.

Try that idea out and see if it doesn't begin to fill in your historical grid of Jesus in a delightful new way.

Merry Boxing Day 2019.

[365-money-diary]

DAYS 49 - 55

DAY FORTY-NINE

8:30 AM - My boss left a subtle comment on my instagram about never having tried vegan cookies, so I bring the rest to the office.

9:15 AM - I do the toast and toddy thing while colleagues eat cookies for breakfast. They are into them!

12:00 PM - I eat a cookie. They’re way better the second day. How does that even happen?

12:45 PM - I run to Sprouts super quick (Short way - It’s almost 100 degrees outside.) and grab a veggie sandwich along with a kombucha for good measure, and precooked brown rice because I forgot to do that yesterday. $9.83

1:15 PM - I dig into my broth and sandwich and leave my kombucha for later.

3:00 PM - There is a house in my neighborhood that burned down today due to a busted transformer. The homeowners are my friend’s parents and they don’t have homeowners insurance. I feel really frustrated by this, but I still donate. $20 

5:15 PM - Apparently the power has been out in my neighborhood this entire time because of the fire, so I’m not sure what I’ll get into when I arrive home.

5:45 PM - Power’s actually on, but the internet is out. I talk to my mom for a while and then realize BFF Connor has texted to hang. I drive to Taste to meet him and buy a cider. Our meeting’s good. We talk about his ex and my ex from three years ago and all sorts of feelings. $6

7:45 PM - I call my boyfriend who says he already ate so I swing by Blaze and grab a pizza to eat at home. More bread should really help my situation (not). $8.92

8:45 PM - I am so so full and the internet is still out. Boyfriend is feeling down, but he feels encouraged enough to go on a bike ride. We end up biking to the house that burned down to see tons of APS trucks fixing the broken line and replacing the transformer. My boyfriend gets an idea to bike to 40th and University so we can watch the planes take off and land at Phoenix Sky Harbor. It’s very romantic, but we run out of planes to watch because it’s late.

10:00 PM - On our way back, I hit a bump and it instantly flattens my back tire. Boyfriend walks with me to a gas station and I wait there for him to bike home and pick me up. I didn’t bring a phone or money or anything with me, so I examine my tire to see if I can find a puncture until boyfriend comes with the car.

11:00 PM - Our internet is still out, so we hook up boyfriend’s basic channel antenna to the TV in the bedroom and watch Pawn Stars until we both pass out.

DAY FORTY-NINE TOTAL: $44.75

DAY FIFTY 

8:30 AM - Up and at ‘em. I end up chatting with my neighbor for a while about her sunflowers and then head to Cartel where a friend is celebrating her last day of employment there. I run into the girl who graduated as well and we make plans for me to drop her off at the airport in the AM. She passes me a free coffee, I say hi/bye to my other friend who is quitting and head to work.

9:30 AM - I have eaten way too much gluten over the past week / day so today I’m not touching my toast.

11:30 AM - I walk the long way to Sprouts even though it’s pushing 100 and catch some Pokemon. I still have a ton of salad stuff at the office so I only have to buy kale today. $1.01 

12:00 PM - I make my salad and broth and kill a bunch of my salad ingredients including my salad dressing, tomatoes, and onion in the process. It feels good to actually eat all the food I buy instead of not being able to finish them and then have to throw them away.

3:00 PM - I accidentally open my colleague’s kombucha instead of the one I bought and she offers to split it with me.

4:15 PM - Not eating breakfast just caught up with me. I poke around and discover that I still have this bag of tortilla chips I opened a couple months ago. Sounds gross, but stuff doesn’t really go that stale out here in Arizona. I try one and they’re definitely edible so I continue to much.

5:15 PM - I stop for gas on the way home at QT. $23.86

5:45 PM - I dig into some crackers and probiotic cheese while we watch the Cavs v. Celtics. I forgot I even bought this stuff.

7:00 PM - At halftime, we run to a nearby pizza place and my boyfriend picks up food. I opt to make food at home out of what we have -- which isn’t much. I end up with nutritional yeasty noodles and a couple Gardein crabless cakes.

9:00 PM - Cavs win, but it was a really fun game to watch. We chill for the rest of the night and I watch a couple episodes of Master Chef Junior. Go Jasmine!

DAY FIFTY TOTAL: $24.87

DAY FIFTY-ONE

9:30 AM - I roll into work a little late. My boss is out of town, so we usually take our sweet time coming in.

11:45 AM - Since the boss is gone and I’m leaving town tomorrow, I don’t really feel like restocking my salad stuff. We head to Even Stevens and I buy a breakfast burrito and a side of chips. $9.33

4:15 PM - I’m still casually digging for music to add to that set I did earlier this month. I find a really rad single by a band called the Mo-Dettes and place an order for it on Discogs. I also cave and buy their LP too and cringe at international shipping prices. $24.42

5:30 PM - I arrive home a little before my boyfriend and heat up the little leftovers I have of the nutritional yeasty noodles I made yesterday and a pita with Earth Balance.

7:00 PM - We run to State Rideshop to get my bike a new tube. And then to AZ Mills. Boyfriend buys a couple pairs of kicks and a backpack. I walk out empty handed. $17.30

9:00 PM - We go for a bike ride and end up near Tempe Marketplace before deciding to swing back around. On the way back, I notice my back tire is acting funny again. Turns out I have another flat.

10:00 PM - I walk my bike to the Tempe Beach Park parking lot and wait for my boyfriend to bike home and grab his car so he can get me. While I’m examining my tire this time, I find a thorn and pull it out.

10:15 PM - Home! Since we’re leaving town tomorrow, we both clean a little bit. I am pretty detached and upset for the rest of the night for unknown reasons. I try to shake it by falling asleep early but I have a really rocky night’s sleep.

DAY FIFTY-ONE TOTAL: $51.05

DAY FIFTY-TWO

9:05 AM - I wake up. Whoops. This is definitely a bad look for me.

9:30 AM - I arrive at the office and make myself toddy and avocado toast.

12:15 PM - Determined not to leave for lunch because I’m trying to get out of here ASAP, I heat up the rest of my broth & brown rice. I’m going to have to make another batch when I come back from Dallas.

2:00 PM - I’m done with work! On my way home, I stop at the Tempe Farmers Market and grab two containers of vegan cashew mac -- one spicy, one regular. $8.12

3:30 PM - I dig into my food while watching an episode of Master Chef Junior and then turn to packing.

5:15 PM - I write a check for my boyfriend’s brother who is watching Katy. Boyfriend will reimburse me for half when he writes his rent check. $80

6:00 PM - I check my bag. Normally I wouldn’t do this if I had to pay for it, but we didn’t pay for our flights. (Thank you boyfriend’s parents!) $25

8:00 PM - We’re airborne. I eat half my pretzels and give the other half to my boyfriend. I also open a twin pack of Costco fig bars and share that with my boyfriend too.

11:45 PM - We land in Dallas and while waiting for our bags, I bump into a friend from highschool who I used to play golf with. It’s been a good 7 years since I’ve seen her and we are  both so surprised!

12:00 AM - We arrive at my boyfriend’s parents’ house. They’ve always been super good about accommodating my diet and we’re both hungry. Boyfriend’s mom got us Amy’s burritos and we eat those with chips & salsa while watching a the Cavs v. Celtics on DVR. None of us can stay awake past the first quarter and call it a night.

DAY FIFTY-TWO TOTAL: $113.12

DAY FIFTY-THREE 

9:30 AM - We’re pretty tired, but we roll out of bed and greet the parents. They offer us coffee and we help ourselves to bagels. They even bought me Tofutti cream cheese!

12:30 PM - It takes us a while leave the house, but we’re hungry again, so we stop at Torchy’s Tacos with my boyfriend’s mom. I get two tacos and she covers our bill. So so sweet! 

2:00 PM - We stop by Central Market to get some supplies for dinner. I also get a 4 pack of cherry cider and a kombucha. Boyfriend’s mom insists on buying everything.

3:30 PM - We drop the groceries at “home” and pick up boyfriend’s dad. The four of us make the tiny trek to Grapevine Mills. I end up buying a wallet from the Coach outlet. It’s 50% off. $48.17

5:30 PM - We arrive back at home and my boyfriend and his mom make dinner while we all watch the rest of the Cavs v. Celtics game. Cavs won and will advance to the finals v. The Warriors and we spend the rest of the evening enjoying veggie fried rice and kabobs.

10:00 PM - We try to go to bed, but that doesn’t pan out for a few more hours. This happened last year too.

DAY FIFTY-THREE TOTAL: $48.17

DAY FIFTY-FOUR

8:45 AM - Boyfriend’s dad wakes us up and we get ready for the day, pack our bags, and toss them in the car. We’re heading to Austin for the night.

10:30 AM - We stop at Einsteins on our way out of town. I get an everything bagel double toasted with hummus and a cold brew. It’s pretty gross so I make it less gross with soy milk. Boyfriend’s parents pay.

1:30 PM - It’s worth mentioning that we stop at Buck-ee’s. I don’t buy anything but the bathrooms were really clean. 

2:30 PM - We get to the hotel and check-in. Boyfriend’s dad travels a lot for work and accrues points with the Marriott, so he doesn’t have to pay for the rooms and neither do we! We drop our stuff off in our room and I meet the parents in the lobby while my boyfriend washes up for a beer in the lobby.

4:00 PM - We stumble across this place called Franks which has options for everyone. I get a vegan sausage with blueberry BBQ sauce and crumbled Voodoo chips and a cider.

5:00 PM - We walk up and down 6th Street and I show the family SXSW stomping grounds (I have been many many times) and then take them down to Waterloo Records, Book People, and Whole Foods.

6:00 PM - At this point boyfriend’s parents are tired so they head back. We cab it (Boyfriend pays)  over to another area and meet my friend at Spiderhouse. We both get Topo Chicos and split a toddy and catch up with my friend. We’re eventually met by my other friend who surprises me with my favorite Austin meal - The Protein 2000 from Veggie Heaven. $11.39 

8:30 PM - We cab it back to downtown with my other friend and stop by the hotel to freshen up. $14 

9:00 PM - We head up 6th St. to stop at a bar. Other friend treats us to drinks and we catch up before splitting to watch Dillinger Escape Plan at The Mohawk.

10:45 PM - We arrive just in time to watch their set. We’re on the guest list as my boyfriend works closely with the band’s tour agency. 

12:15 AM - We walk back to the hotel. Boyfriend’s hungry and didn’t eat Veggie Heaven, so we stop at a food truck and he buys a falafel pita, some fries, and some hummus and pita. We make it back to the hotel, and I help a little with the sides.

12:45 AM - We fall asleep watching Forensic Files.

DAY FIFTY-FOUR TOTAL: $25.39

DAY FIFTY-FIVE

9:00 AM - Our alarms go off. I’m pretty tired, but I peel myself out of bed and hop into the shower. We need to leave town before 1:00 to make sure we pick up their family dog at the boarding facility.

10:30 AM - While boyfriend’s parents visit the LBJ museum, (I’ve actually been before.) we meet up with a childhood friend of my boyfriend’s and her husband. Since we’re in a hurry, they pick us up coffee and call in our food order to the taco place. I get two “Freakin’ Vegan” tacos. They’re really nice and I’m super glad we were able to spend time with them. They drop us back off at the hotel and boyfriend slips them some cash to cover our portion of the coffee and tacos.

12:15 PM - We’re back on the road! We stop along the way for gas and so boyfriend’s mom can buy kolaches. Once we hit Ft. Worth I start to feel kind of woozy from the car ride. We make it in time to pick up the family dog.

3:45 PM - We’re home and I’m really hungry. I eat some “healthy vegan bites” (Which I really want to make at home) and some veggies and hummus.

4:00 PM - We end up laying down and falling asleep for an hour or so for different reasons - I’m carsick and boyfriend is tired from yesterday day knocking him out and also him not being able to really sleep previous nights.

6:30 PM - We continue our taco trend and go back to Torchy’s. I am not super hungry, but I somehow end up eating like an asshole. I guess this is what vacations are for.

7:30 PM - We end up showing boyfriend’s parents Moonrise Kingdom.

10:00 PM - Everyone decides to go to bed. We lay down and watch Seinfeld on the iPad for a few hours before actually passing out.

DAY FIFTY-FIVE TOTAL: $0

[easyfoodnetwork]

The internet’s most comprehensive archive of food history — a passion project of one dedicated librarian — predates Wikipedia. Now, it needs a new custodian. In the long timeline of human civilization, here’s roughly how things shook out: First, there was fire, water, ice, and salt. Then we started cooking up and chowing down on oysters, scallops, horsemeat, mushrooms, insects, and frogs, in that general chronological order. Fatty almonds and sweet cherries found their way into our diet before walnuts and apples did, but it would be a couple thousand years until we figured out how to make ice cream or a truly good apple pie. Challah (first century), hot dogs (15th century), Fig Newtons (1891), and Meyer lemons (1908) landed in our kitchens long before Red Bull (1984), but they all arrived late to the marshmallow party — we’d been eating one version or another of those fluffy guys since 2000 B.C. This is, more or less, the history of human eating habits for 20,000 years, and right now, you can find it all cataloged on the Food Timeline, an archival trove of food history hiding in plain sight on a website so lo-fi you’d be forgiven for thinking it was a GeoCities fanpage. When you look past the Times Roman font and taupe background, the Food Timeline happens to be the single most comprehensive inventory of food knowledge on the internet, with thousands upon thousands of pages of primary sources, cross-checked research, and obsessively detailed food history presented in chronological order. Every entry on the Food Timeline, which begins with “water” in pre-17,000 B.C. and ends with “test tube burgers” in 2013, is sourced from “old cook books, newspapers, magazines, National Historic Parks, government agencies, universities, cultural organizations, culinary historians, and company/restaurant web sites.” There is history, context, and commentary on everything from Taylor pork roll to Scottish tablet to “cowboy cooking.” A couple of years ago, I landed on the humble authority of the Food Timeline while doing research on bread soup, a kind of austerity cuisine found in countless cultures. The entry for soup alone spans more than 70,000 words (The Great Gatsby doesn’t break 50,000), with excerpts from sources like Maguelonne Toussaint-Samat’s A History of Food, John Ayto’s An A-Z of Food and Drink, and D. Eleanor Scully and Terence Scully’s Early French Cookery. Before long, I fell into the emotional condition known as an internet K-hole, following link after link after link for hours on end. From olla podrida to hodge podge to cassava to taro to Chex Mix to Johnnycakes, the Food Timeline covered everything. Did you know that mozzarella sticks go as far back as the Middle Ages, but back then they called them “pipefarces”? I bookmarked the site and returned to it time and time again, when I was researching, writing, or just bored and hungry. Despite the Food Timeline’s incredible utility, few people I spoke to had ever heard of it. Those who had always marveled at its breadth. “Oh my god, it’s nirvana,” Taste of the Past podcast host Linda Pelaccio said to herself when she first stumbled onto the Food Timeline. Sandy Oliver, a food historian and fellow fan, was stunned by its completeness and simplicity. “It was one of the most accessible ways of getting into food history — especially if you were a beginner — because it was just so easy to use,” she told me. “It didn’t have a hyperacademic approach, which would be off-putting.” When Oliver learned that the thousands of pages and countless resources on the Food Timeline were compiled and updated entirely by one woman, she couldn’t believe it. “Oh my lord,” she thought. “This is an obsessed person.” The Food Timeline, in all its comprehensive splendor, was indeed the work of an obsessed person: a New Jersey reference librarian named Lynne Olver. Olver launched the site in 1999, two years before Wikipedia debuted, and maintained it, with little additional help, for more than 15 years. By 2014, it had reached 35 million readers and Olver had personally answered 25,000 questions from fans who were writing history papers or wondering about the origins of family recipes. Olver populated the pages with well-researched answers to these questions, making a resource so thorough that a full scroll to the bottom of the Food Timeline takes several labored seconds. For nearly two decades, Olver’s work was everyone else’s gain. In April of 2015, she passed away after a seven-month struggle with leukemia, a tragedy acknowledged briefly at the bottom of the site. “The Food Timeline was created and maintained solely by Lynne Olver (1958-2015, her obituary), reference librarian with a passion for food history.” In the wake of Olver’s death, no one has come forward to take over her complex project, leaving a void in the internet that has yet to be filled — and worse, her noble contribution to a world lacking in accurate information and teeming with fake news is now in danger of being lost forever. It isn’t often that we are tasked with thinking about the history of the food that we eat, unless it shows up in a Jeopardy! question or we ask our informal family historians to detail whose mother passed down this or that version of pound cake. But there are plenty of reasons to pay close attention: for curiosity’s sake; for deepening an appreciation of and respect for cooks, food, and technique; and for gathering perspective on what came before us. “Very few (if any) foods are invented. Most are contemporary twists on traditional themes,” Olver wrote on the Food Timeline. “Today’s grilled cheese sandwich is connected to ancient cooks who melted cheese on bread. 1950s meatloaf is connected to ground cooked meat products promoted at the turn of the 20th century, which are, in turn related to ancient Roman minces.” The problem is that these days we’re overloaded with bad information that can be accessed instantaneously, with few intermediaries running quality control. “I think it’s a little too easy to turn to the web,” Oliver, who was also a longtime friend of Olver’s, told me as we talked about the legacy of Food Timeline. “What I worry about is that people aren’t learning critical thinking skills. Once in a while I run into someone who has never used a primary source — wouldn’t know it if it hit them on the head. Libraries are where you’d find that stuff. It’s not the same as using a Wikipedia page at all.” Or, if not a library, a mammoth resource compiled by a certified reference librarian herself. Whenever a reader would write in asking a question, or when Olver herself would become interested in the provenance of a certain food, she’d turn to her personal library of thousands of food books, and her litany of professional resources and skills, and write out detailed answers with sources cited on her website. As Olver emphasized proudly in a 2013 interview on Pelaccio’s Taste of the Past podcast, when you Google “food history,” the Food Timeline appears first in the search results, even though she never “paid search engines for premium placement, solicited reciprocal links, partnered with book vendors, or sold advertising.” Over the years, thousands of emails poured in asking Olver for help finding the specific information they were looking for, like the history of a weird cheese or a grandmother’s pie recipe. “One of my favorite groupings of people are those who are looking to recover family recipes,” Olver explained to Pelaccio. “I love that! As long as you can give me a little bit of context, then I have some direction.” She would often cook the recipes people sent her so she could gain a better understanding of the legacy of certain foods. Occasionally, she would struggle to come up with an answer to readers’ questions. “If anybody out there knows the answer to this, please let me know,” she began on Pelaccio’s podcast. “I’ve been asked repeatedly over the years for a recipe for ‘guildmaster sauce.’ It is mentioned on some of the old railroad menus and on fancy dining car menus, but we are not coming up with a recipe or other references.” She never got the answer. “One of the reasons she wanted people to learn about food was for the simple basic fundamental fact that it kept people alive,” Sara Weissman, a fellow reference librarian at the Morris County Public Library and occasional Food Timeline collaborator, told me. “It was that simple. There was no pretension about it.” Olver found food to be a universal subject of interest — everyone had something to share and everyone had something to learn. “Yesterday I took the entire day off from work because I wanted to research seitan wheat meat,” Olver told Pelaccio. “My whole site is really driven by my readers. What is it that they want to know?” The Olvers’ former family home is a modest colonial that sits on a shady suburban street in Randolph, New Jersey, about 10 minutes from the Morris County Public Library, where Lynne worked for more than 25 years. It is fastidiously clean and welcoming, and Olver’s library was still the focal point of the house when I visited a little more than a year ago. As she amassed primary sources to build out the Food Timeline, the sitting room filled up with bookshelves to house her more than 2,300 books — some dating to the 17th century — as well as thousands of brochures and vintage magazines, and a disarrayed collection of other food ephemera, like plastic cups from Pat’s and Geno’s and a tin of Spam. “One of 10 top iconic American manufactured foods, SPAM holds a special place on our national table & culinary folklore,” Olver wrote on the Timeline. Despite Olver’s intense fondness for it as an object of inquiry, Spam did not hold a special place on her palate; she never tried it. A picky eater, she detested lima beans, pistachio ice cream, calamari, slimy textures, and anything that even edged on raw. When she was in high school in the early ’70s, her favorite dish to make was something she called “peas with cheese,” which is as simple as it sounds. “She would take frozen peas and she’d melt cheese on it, mostly Swiss,” then cover the messy pile in Worcestershire sauce, Olver’s sister, Janice Martin, recalled. “We called Worcestershire sauce ‘life’s blood.’ It was coursing through our veins.” (Sadly, the Timeline does not include an entry for peas with cheese.) Making peas with cheese as a teenager was the beginning of what would become a lifelong interest in food for Olver. Libraries also captured her attention early on: At 16, she took her first job as a clerk in the Bryant Library in Roslyn, New York, shelving books in the children’s department. There, she was mentored by two older librarians, whom she loved. “She was an introvert,” Olver’s sister told me. “When it came to research, she was fascinated by ferreting out information that nobody else could find.” In 1980, she graduated with a degree in library science from Albany State University, where she also worked as a short-order cook, making sandwiches for students and faculty at a university canteen. “Libraries are where you’d find that stuff. It’s not the same as using a Wikipedia page at all.” Olver and her future husband, Gordon, met at Albany State and married the year after Olver graduated, in 1981, after which they worked in Manhattan (Lynne at a law library, Gordon in reinsurance), then Connecticut. They eventually had two children — Sarah and Jason — and settled in New Jersey in 1991, where Olver found a job as a reference librarian at the Morris County Public Library, eventually becoming the head of reference, and finally director of the library. It was during Olver’s time as a reference librarian that the seed was planted for the Food Timeline. It began as an assignment to explain the origins of Thanksgiving dinner to children, to be published on an early incarnation of the library’s website. Around the same time, Olver was asked to write a monthly print newsletter to share library news, which she named Eureka!. One section of the newsletter was devoted to “Hot Topics,” as Olver and her colleague Sharon Javer wrote in the first dispatch. “Each month, this lead feature will focus on a particular theme: holidays, New Jersey events sources, census data, and so on. Included in this sizzling section will be answers to arduous questions, practical pointers and many marvelous morsels of information.” Eureka!, in a sign of things to come, began to take over her life. “I remember one time saying to her, ‘How come we’re buying all this colored paper?’” Gordon, her husband, told me. “The library wouldn’t pay for the paper, so she was buying it on her own. When the library realized it was taking so much of her time, they asked her to stop. Meanwhile, she had put so much time and effort into it that she said to them, ‘Just pass it over to me, I’ll take it.’” When the family got a Gateway computer in the late ’90s, Olver began teaching herself HTML, and by 1999, she was combining her interest in the Thanksgiving dinner project and the Eureka! answers column into a hybrid website she called the Food Timeline, where she could focus on providing well-researched food history on her own time. An archived version of the 1999 Food Timeline still exists and looks — unsurprisingly — more or less the same as the one now. “We still hand code html & today’s readers comment the site is ‘ugly,’” Olver wrote under the site’s “Market Strategy.” “We acknowledge: what was cutting edge in 1999 is now stale. Conversley? [sic] FT looks so old it’s become vintage.” Olver wrote everything on the Food Timeline with a royal “we,” including her responses to readers’ emails, despite the fact the project was largely hers, with an occasional assist from others. “‘I don’t want anyone to know that it’s just me,’’’ Sarah recalled her mom saying. “She wanted people to believe that it was a network of volunteers,” because she felt that it lent the site more credibility. “We acknowledge: what was cutting edge in 1999 is now stale.” While Olver worked at the county library by day, by night she was creating an online resource for anyone who wanted to know more about Johnny Appleseed or chuck wagon stew or the origins of Sauce Robert. By the website’s first anniversary, Olver was already spending upwards of 30 hours a week on the Food Timeline, compiling and posting all the information she was digging up and answering readers’ questions about the origins of their grandmothers’ crumble recipes. “If you came in the house and you wanted to know where she was, and she wasn’t cooking, she was in the office on the computer,” Gordon recalled. Eventually, even the cooking fell behind. Olver’s children came to expect burnt grilled cheese sandwiches at meals Sarah said. “She would be like, ‘I’ll leave these [on the stove] and go do my work,’ and then she would forget because she was so into what she was doing.” Over time, the audience for the site expanded, and Olver’s subtle form of fame grew with it. She was named a winner of the New York Times Librarian Award in 2002, and, in 2004, Saveur put the Food Timeline on its Saveur 100 list of the best food finds that year. In the mid-2010s, she was asked to contribute to the Oxford Encyclopedia of Food and Drink in America and consult for America’s Test Kitchen. Sarah and Jason recalled taking their mother to a cooking class at the Institute of Culinary Education in Manhattan during that time period. “She was so excited about the teacher of this class because she had heard of her through her research,” Sarah told me. “When we got there, the teacher was like, ‘I’m looking at my roster of students and I see that Lynne Olver is here. Where is Lynne Olver?’ Mom kind of timidly raised her hand, and this chef was like, ‘I’ve been dying to meet you!’” The chef who left Olver starstruck was just as starstruck to meet Olver. For years, Olver lived something of a double life. As the director of a mid-size suburban library, she was known to hand out PayDay candy bars to her staff on pay day and shovel snow from the building walkway during snowstorms, while as the founder of Food Timeline, she brought her computer on vacation, dutifully responding to readers’ food history questions within the promised 48-hour window. “I think she started on the internet as a way to reach a lot of people,” her sister said. “A lot of people who wouldn’t go into the library.” The night before her wedding, in September 2014, Olver’s daughter, Sarah, noticed that her mom wasn’t acting like herself. While the family was sitting all together in the living room, Olver got up to go to the bathroom; minutes later, she was in the throes of a seizure. Sarah called 911, and Olver was taken to the hospital. The family stayed with her until doctors sent them home in the early hours of Sarah’s wedding day. The wedding had to go on, though Olver was too sick to attend. Doctors diagnosed her with leukemia the next day. Olver had known for a while that she was sick, but didn’t want to ruin the wedding, so she had put off telling anyone. “She’d be like, ‘I’m dying, but let me put everyone else first,’” Sarah said. Olver was kept in the hospital for two months, but fought hard to be home for Thanksgiving. “It was my first time cooking Thanksgiving dinner because she wasn’t feeling up to cooking — and I ruined it,” Sarah said. “The turkey shrunk off the bone. That was one of the only things that made her laugh in a really long time.” “Knowledge is power, but sharing knowledge is the best.” When she was diagnosed with leukemia, Olver used the Food Timeline’s Twitter account to grumble about the food in the ICU at Morristown Medical Center, where she stayed until she was transferred to specialists in Hackensack two months later. “It was a chicken cutlet with some kind of sauce on it,” Gordon recalled; the post has since been taken down by the family. “She said, ‘This sauce, I don’t know what it is, I’m not eating it. It doesn’t look very good. It’s not a natural color.’” Following her stay at the hospital in Hackensack, Olver returned home to wait for a bone marrow transplant. “She had to use a walker because balance was a problem, but very shortly after getting back from the hospital, she was walking around and doing all of her Food Timeline stuff again,” Gordon explained. She was responding to emails, diving back into her research. “On her birthday, March 10, she said, ‘I had a glorious day.’” The reason? “Someone had written in with a question that she liked.” A little over a month later, Lynne died of leukemia, only one year short of her retirement from the library. She had been planning to spend her retirement working on it full time: Earlier that year, she had renewed the Food Timeline domain for 10 more years. A year after Olver’s death, her family began to discuss what would happen to the Food Timeline and who could take it over. “What we know is that we couldn’t do it justice ourselves,” Sarah said. To anyone willing and able to maintain Olver’s vision of an ad-free, simply designed, easy-to-access resource on food history, the family members say that the website and her library are theirs, for free. A couple of people have put forward their names, but the family felt that their hearts weren’t in the right place. “One woman had shown us what she had done with her website and it was just full of banner advertisements,” Gordon said. “It has to uphold her vision,” Sarah added. Olver’s book collection — if a price were to be put on it — would be worth tens of thousands of dollars, Gordon estimates. So far, there have been no takers for either the books or the task of keeping the site going. “The Culinary Institute of America initially expressed interest,” Gordon said. “But three months later, they came back and said, ‘We don’t really have the ability to take that volume of texts and dedicate [the task of updating the site] to a specific person. I said they were missing the point; I wasn’t looking to give them the books unless they wanted the website, too.” The Food Timeline was — and still is — a great democratizing force. “I think Lynne liked that the internet was for everybody and by everybody. Knowledge is power, but sharing knowledge is the best,” Lynne’s sister, Janice, told me. “If you hold the knowledge and you can help everybody get it, that’s where it’s at.” Lynne Olver, an award-winning reference librarian, wanted everybody to know exactly what she knew. “I would second anybody who says that they want Food Timeline to be brought up to date, who know how to keep that valuable digitized information where people can get their hands or their minds on it,” Sandy Oliver told me. “I’d hate to think Lynne had spent all those hours doing all that work and have it just slide into oblivion. I’d love to see it continue in whatever useful form it can.” Dayna Evans is a freelance writer currently based in Paris. She last wrote for Eater about the rise of community fridges across the country. D’Ara Nazaryan is an art director & illustrator living in Los Angeles. Fact checked by Samantha Schuyler from Eater - All https://ift.tt/2AEYzmX

http://easyfoodnetwork.blogspot.com/2020/07/who-will-save-food-timeline.html

[divinelydivorced]

Divorce: Sex

Don’t worry.  I am not going to reveal the intimate details of what happened in our bedroom, only one painful conversation we had.  I also want to talk about sex within a marriage and how many of us, including my ex and I, go wrong.  Raised very Christian, sex was not a topic that was openly discussed.  Around the time I was going through puberty, in a twenty minute car ride home from grocery shopping, my mom told me about the factual components of having sex.  I was so embarrassed I wanted to crawl inside one of the plastic Walmart bags jiggling around in back, open the package of Fig Newtons, scoop out one cookie’s filling, and smoosh myself between the soft cake-like edging that remained.  Besides being literally impossible, I was an overweight kid and it would have never worked.  Instead I listened and when my mom asked if I had questions, I said an affirmative “NO.”  

If I ever had questions about sex, (“what’s a condom?” or “can I pretend my Barbie dolls have sex?”), I’d wait until my mom was in the bathroom or doing my sister’s therapy, so she couldn’t get up or make eye contact.  This would allow me to quickly shout my question, with a wall between us, hear her answer, and then run and hide for hours, hoping enough time had elapsed and she’d forgotten about it.  Needless to say, it was well after college before I lost my virginity.

By then, all I’d seen about sex was on TV or in movies…and even then, I’d still look away out of fear my parents were four rows back watching the same thing and I’d be caught. I didn’t even understand how the logistics worked.  In my mind, it was all so mechanical, you’d just stand in front of each other, proclaim to the universe “Now we shall have intercourse!,” our clothes would magically fly off, and one of God’s angels would push us together for twenty seconds. I also was terrified of getting AIDS or anything that made me scratch a lot.  If a guy ever crawled on top of me, fully clothed, while we kissed, I was 98% positive I was pregnant when my period was two days late.  I was an idiot…an uninformed idiot.

Luckily several friends quickly scooped me under their wings and gave me the in’s and out’s.  By the time I got married, I was not well experienced but I got the gist of it all.  Yet, for some reason, sex in marriage seems to…well…suck.  This is one area where entertainment does not exaggerate. Many of my friends stopped shaving their legs, most wear less attractive under garments than they used to, and several talk about never having time anymore for “that.”  The stigma of sex in marriage, especially Christian marriage, is that it is off-topic.  It’s supposed to be boring because if it’s exciting it’s wrong.  Worse, it’s intended for men, not women.  As a result, many married women don’t enjoy sex and they view it as a chore.  The cliché of “letting yourself go” is also very true.  Taking care of ourselves physically after marriage seems to be a luxury, not a necessity.  Therefore, not feeling attractive in our bodies, many people lose sexual desire. Plus, once you’ve been with someone for so long, it’s as if you no longer quite want what you can easily have.

While this is what many couples experience, I was in the minority.  Because once I finally discovered what sex actually was and what it could be, I was all in!  The actress in me has always loved exploring the idea of more.  I always want to experience it all, in every possible way.  Once married, the God-guilt went away, and now I was ready to indulge in a 24/7 sex marathon for eternity.  In fact, I wasn’t even embarrassed to talk about it anymore.

I joked with my friends about sex, wanted to exchange secrets and tips, and I wanted to play and have fun in the bedroom.  It definitely took some getting used to, some bravery at first, but I wasn’t afraid to say “let’s try this” or “what if we did this instead.”  I don’t know.  Maybe everyone does all that stuff in their teens and college years so by the time they get married, it’s old news.  But for me, I was just getting started.  Or maybe I was just wired different than many females.  In fact, many friends have told me I was more the male in the relationship when it came to the physical component.

For me, sex was a way to feel closer to someone, yes, but it also offered a huge stress relief.  I once had someone tell me, “if you’re ever mad at me and won’t shut up, I’m just going to take your pants off.”  He was right-worked every time.  Sex was everything.  It was love, lust, anger, frustration, fun, excitement, and sometimes best when simply bored with nothing else to do.  But my partner didn’t see it the same.

Here’s where we go wrong in many marriages, particularly the Christian ones.  Most marriages are made up of two people with very different sexual needs.  Some of us not only can have sex when we are mad but need to in order to channel that energy.  Others, when fighting, the last thing they desire is for physical closeness.  I imagine, in the latter state of mind, sex can add insult to injury.  Yet we don’t talk about it.  Talking about sex in marriage seems so faux pas that we resort back to the same embarrassment we felt when our parents had “the talk” with us in our minivan years ago. So, inevitably, someone’s needs go unmet.  Those who are less sexual think it’s okay to deny our partners sex as they need to understand where we are coming from…yet those in need of sex, as a result, never get a chance to be understood either.  No one’s needs are getting met…in fact, they are getting completely denied and shut down.

In my marriage, we talked about this.  I tried explaining where I was coming from and what my needs were, how sex for me translated to love.  Without it, I felt undesired, unwanted, and uncared for.  I was often met with shrugs or rash explanations of not being that sexual. It was a “don’t know what to tell you” and “I’m not going to even try” situation.  Again, I don’t think this is uncommon in most marriages today.

This is where my resentment came into play.  I’d waited so long to physically be with someone and now I was being denied.  At this point, too, I was still young, in great shape, and adventurous…isn’t that what men desire?  After years of begging, pleading, flirting, and cajoling my husband into making love to me, I was exhausted.  It got to the point where I’d ask and be turned down so often, it was humiliating to even try.  So, I tried another route and said, “I want us to consider having an open marriage.” An open marriage is usually when one partner is given permission to have a sexual relationship outside the marriage. There are all sorts of variations, opinions, and rules on this, but what I was proposing was a simple opportunity to get my sexual needs met elsewhere.  We’d take the pressure off of him to provide me with what I needed. After all, he was allowed to go out with friends who met his social needs, go to work to get his self-esteem needs met, or go to the gym to get a physical boost.  Why couldn’t I do the same in this area?

But, really, I was bluffing. I had no desire to go elsewhere. I stood in front of him, physically shaking.  Never had I been so nervous or vulnerable when making the proposition.  I said through tears, “It’s no secret my needs aren’t getting met.  Sometimes I feel shameful because I’m built different.  But sex makes me feel loved and I don’t want to be embarrassed to ask you for it.    So, if you won’t have sex with me, will you please allow me to have sex with someone else?  For this to be one thing we don’t have to argue about.  Please don’t misunderstand.  I desire you.  I want you.  I don’t want anyone else.  I want to have sex with you, my husband, so that I feel closer to you and loved by you. So I can show you what you mean to me.  It makes me anxious to even ask this of you because I don’t want this to be the final straw that drives us apart.  So, please, think long and hard about this.  Because if you don’t want me with someone else, I’d love to hear you say that. And I’d love to try together to fix this part of our marriage.  Nothing would make me happier.”

He stared at me with cold, distant eyes.  Then, without even looking away said, “You should definitely start sleeping with other people.  I don’t need to think about it because I don’t care.”  And he walked out of the room and began preparing our dinner.