#found out we couldnt open it and it was like early February so it was COLD and windy and there were geese in the parking lot

[bunnyb34r]

I wonder if arm crutches would help me fatigue and pain wise... like that's a step between cane and wheelchair kinda? Maybe that would help take some pressure off my spine and legs 🤔

[simply-sams-things]

The Game Of Life (part 2)

-Createing a part 2 cuase why not💁

-Warnings:Cuteness and yelling so yeah let me know what you think

-Also I might go ahead a few weeks in the next chapter so sorry about that.

-Sorry about bad spelling I'm doing this on my phone cause I dont own a computer and I'm sure my mom dosent want to see this on hers.

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February 17,2019 (9 weeks)

You and Joe were finally telling both of your family's about the baby. Last week you confirmed the pregnancy and you, being a big baby as you called yourself, cried. Not sad tears. Happy tears because well you were actually happy. Joe was there next to you with a big smile on his face and right then and there you knew life was good.

You knew Joes mom was going to be excited,but your parents on the other hand were going to have a big fit and kick you,Joe,and the baby out of their lives.

Growing up in a Catholic home was hard for you. You never imaged your parents being so rude until your sister,Amber,got pregnant in her early 30s which would have been fine in a normal home but in your house it was a disgrace against God because she wasn't married,but she was engaged. Amber was 32 and you where 16,your parents had waited a few years before having you,when she was kicked from your life but that never stopped you. Both of you had MySpace so you could talk and see pictures of your Niece and Nephew,but it scared you.

"Whats on your mind?"Joe asked as you guys were getting into the car.

"Nothing"you said

"Yes there is Y/N,I know that look"he replied starting the car

"I-Its my parents" you said with a stutter "remember what I told about my sister when she got pregnant with the twins?"He nodded. "Well I'm worried it might happen too us"You said touching your belly that had a little bit of a bump.

"Hey-"He started but you turned away "hey dont worrie about it. If they do we can just leave and go be a little family"he said as he grabbed your face and turned it facing him. You wanted to kiss his soft lips but he turned back and started driving towards his moms house,so you turned back to the window and looked outside.

----------------------------------------------

Joes Moms house

As you guys walked up the long paved path you felt Joe slid his hand into yours mainly so you wouldn't fall cuase it was dark. He felt you tense up and simply told you it was going to be okay and that you had nothing to worry about.

He knocked on the door and imedeatly his mother opened the door with a big smile on her face. It has been awhile since you saw her last and she grabbed you and joe for a big hug and said a lot of hello's and hugs and side kisses.

After talking for a bit about life and what was going on you sat down to eat and she left out to the garage saying she was getting some wine and once the door closed Joe said "hey its okay I know you're nervous but she is going to be happy!". You smiled and before you could say a little joke she came back in with some red wine that looked divine to you but you then remembered that you were pregnant and frowned.

"I've been saving this for awhile!"She said grabbing wine glasses."So who wants some wine?"she asked almost anxiously.

"I do!"Joe said and then they both looked at you.

"I wish I could but-" You started but then you looked at Joe and he said "Y/N and I-well we wanted to wait until the perfect moment to tell you that-"

"We're pregnant" You both said and then immediately looked down at your plates. Thats when it started that sickness,that started to boil up inside and you thought that mabye if you looked at something else it would go away so you looked at Joe's shoes,but it made it worse and as you were about to say that you were going the restroom you had to jump up and dart down the hallway only to rush into the bathroom and closing the door as you barely made it to the toilet. Joe and his mother followed behind,Joe rushing faster to check if you were okay.

"Y/N are you okay?Whats wrong?Can I help?" He asked with a very concerned voice while knocking. He walked in only to see you sitting next to the bowl with a pale and dazed face and he quickly asked his mom to get you some water and she rushed to the kitchen to get it.

"Hey" You said "sorry I did that and I'm sorry I ruined the moment"

"Dont be" He said "we all get nervous"

You heard his mom laugh with you and she walked in and gave you some water. You gave a weak smile in return. "Joe she has morning sickness" she said with a little laugh.

"Morning sickness?But isn't that supposed to be in the mornings?"

"No silly it happens whenever the name is just an old wives tale" you said still in shock over what happened.

A little after that happend you layed on the couch while Joe helped his mom with dinner and you could hear them talking but couldn't make out what they were saying. Joe then came over and said that it was time to leave and as you said your goodbyes Joes mom gave you a hug and said "I will send you some recipes to make cuase your having a Mazzello and Mazzellos like everything they see so be carful and drive safe".

You were happy and as you got into the car you gave Joe a big toothy smile and he asked what was going on with you.

"I'm just happy that went well"you said joyously.

"Me too and tomorrow we tell your parents" he said "don't be scared I will be there every second and if they say something to insult you,me,or the little coco bean,we will just get up and leave".

"CoCo Bean?"You ask with a little suprise.

"Yeah I read that at eight weeks the baby is the size of a CoCo Bean!"He said

"First of all I'm nine weeks"You said and his face grew a bit sad "but i like that nickname for it" you said to make him feel better, but you did like it.

-----------------------------------------------

February 18,2019

You woke up feeling like you hadn't slept in years and as you got up you saw some water next to you and you took a big gulp to try and keep last nights dinner down. When you walked out of your room you smelt bacon. Mmmmm bacon you thought and you saw Joe, with his pajamas that you stole from him a few years ago,on.

"Good morning you stayed the night?" you said walking over to lean on the counter.

"Good morning to you too,yeah I did cuase I wanted to make sure you were okay"He said walking over to the give you a little bit of bacon. Joe makes the best bacon you thought.

"Thank you and thanks for making breakfast you didnt have too I could have found some cereal"you told him.

After you said that you realised you had to go to the bathroom so you went and after you walked out Joe had put breakfast on the table and your heart skipped a beat. You imagined a little Joe waiting for his father to give him some food and you smiled to the thought.

You and Joe didnt really talk while you were eating,but as you got up to start clearing the table since he made the food,he looked at you and he thought about telling you how he felt.

After you gave him that peck on the lips he felt the same way you did,but you didnt know that. He wanted to tell you how he has loved you since the day you meet and how that when you told him that you were pregnant that you were the only one he wanted a family with and how he will never stop loving you.

"Hey Y/N can I talk to you about something before you shower?"He asked nervously.

"Yeah whats up?"You replied

"Umm okay so I understand if you-"he started but then there was a knock on the door.

As you opened the door together you see your parents standing there.

"Mom? Dad? what are you doing here?"

"Y/N! Joe! We wanted to say hi before we left for the weekend and what we cant see our own daughter?" Your dad said pulling you and Joe into a hug.

"No no no!You can definitely come by whenever but whats the trip your talking about?" You asked.

"Your father is taking me to Vermont for the weekend as a little get away!" Your mom explained.

"That sounds fun!" Joe said with a little smile and moved out of the way to let them in. It wasnt wired for your parents to see Joe in your apartment but with night clothes on that was strange for them but they kept quiet.

You talked about you losing your job and that made your mom and dad frown but they understood and your dad said that you could work for him as a joke band you all laughed. Joe talked about how much his life has changed in the past year and how he couldnt wait to see what life has in store for the next. That was the signal to get ready to break the news.

"Mom...Dad Joe and I have something to tell you." You said moving closer to Joe as if he was going to protect you.

"What is it?" Your dad asked with big eyes. "Is everything okay?" Joe was looking down at his shoes at this point and both of you had red cheeks.

"I'm-I'm pregnant" You said in low voice hoping that they couldn't hear you, but you knew they had becuase your fathers face turnd a dark red and the room became a lot more tense.

Your mom couldn't comprehend to the fact that you were pregnant and your father began the yelling which was making you so scared that you turned your head and placed it on Joe's back.

"How could you do this !?" He asked looking straight at you and pointing, at this point you grew mad and were about to yell back until-"and you" he said pointing at Joe "how could you do this to my daughter!?".

"How could I!?" Joe said finally having enough of the yelling "I have not only been calling and making sure she is okay every single day that I've known her but also been there for her when she calls me saying you didn't call her on her birthday or call her on Christmas and wish her those happy greetings, but I also care about her more then you obviously do becuase not only am I having a baby with her I also am going to there for both of them when you don't call and wish them happy birthdays or Merry Christmas!".

"Joe!" You said very angrly "Both of stop it I've had enough. I wanted this to be like a normal conversation between adults. Joe thank you for sticking up for me. Dad I wish you understood that traditions are not how they used to be as much as I wished I was married and with a guy, that is not how this situation is I love you a lot but you need to understand that the world is not how it was when I was born."

"Mom why aren't you saying anything"

Your mom was silent the whole time. She looked at your Father and then said

"Are duaghter is right you need to come to process the fact that the world is different and that its not the same I wish you could let them be adults for once and that you could act like one with out having your head up your ass." She said calmly. This suprised you and Joe to the point were both of you sat down.

"I don't want to push the last bit of family we have out of our lives." She continued "we lost Amber and the twins so I don't want to lose Y/N and the baby and hell even Joe" She finished looking at you both and sat down. Your father at this point was trying to process everything and after awhile he grabbed his keys and left.

"He'll come around its not over you two. just know he loves you three a lot and that its hard for him to process this all" Your mother said before leaving going after your dad.

Joe looked at you and saw tears in your eyes and he ran over to catch you before you collapsed into his arms sobbing.

"Hey hey its going to be okay" He said

"I-" You started but immediately a sob came and took over you and you buried your head into his shirt holding him tightly never wanting to let him go and he felt the same way.

"Joe" You started "Joe I think I-I love you" you said after a long intense 20 minutes of crying.

"Y/N are you sure?" He asked hoping you say yes.

"Yes I'm sure I never have been so sure"

"Y/N I love you too" he said kissing your head before picking you up bridal style and taking you to your room to lay you on the bed so you could sleep.

"Joe dont leave me" You said "please"

"I will never leave you" he moved to the other side and got into the bed with you and pulled you close to him.

After awhile both of you drifted into a long awaited sleep.

-----------------------------------------------

So glad im finshed this took me a long time to make, so feed back is always encouraged!

Tag list

@committed-no-crime

[retrogameessays]

Living the Life of a Horror Hero in Zombies Ate My Neighbors

25 Years Later, Zombies Ate My Neighbors still provides a unique take on horror

LucasArts, founded as Lucasfilm Games in 1982, didn't make its first Star Wars game until Star Wars for the NES in February of 1991. The primary reason for the delay was that the Star Wars brand had been licensed to other development companies (Atari had the rights to Star Wars in 1982). The more romantic perspective is that George Lucas didn't want his company to just make games based on the Star Wars and Indiana Jones properties, but to make more ambitious, technologically advanced works. The early efforts of Lucasfilm Games support this point of view. Habitat, in particular, was released in 1986 and was a way-ahead-of-its-time, graphical, massively-multiplayer online game, that allowed for customization of player avatars, bartering for resources, marriage, and even player-versus-player violence. Either way, the fact that Lucasfilm Games was unable to make Star Wars titles opened the door for the slew of critically-acclaimed adventure games the company became known for. In his keynote speech at Pax Australia 2013, Monkey Island creator Ron Gilbert said that, “Had we been able to make Star Wars games, I’m sure that’s all we would have made. Not being able to make those games creatively freed us in ways I don’t think we understood at the time. Without that freedom, there would be no Maniac Mansion, or Grim Fandango, or Monkey Island, or Loom.”

Zombies Ate My Neighbors for Super Nintendo and Sega Genesis is very much cut from the same creative cloth as those titles, and yet serves as proof that adventure games were not necessarily the mandate at LucasArts. It's difficult to even say exactly what kind of game Zombies is. It's a top-down, free-scrolling shooter wherein the player must rescue at least one and as many as ten “neighbors” per level from (usually) infinitely spawning monsters. If a monster touches a neighbor before the player does, the neighbor dies. As with a player's lives, the number of neighbors saved carries over to the next level. If the player runs out of lives or neighbors, the game is over. Zombies is similar to Gauntlet in that it's an action game with maze-like level layouts, but also contains shades of Defender in that it's a shooter that requires the player to save victims while defending themselves against an endless onslaught of monsters.

I find your lack of panic disturbing

The game that specifically inspired Zombies Ate My Neighbors' creator, Michael Ebert, was an obscure arcade title named Kyros from Alpha Denshi Corp (better known as ADK and for their collaborations with SNK). Kyros is a top-down, vertically scrolling arcade brawler in which the player must fight through endlessly spawning hordes of monsters to reach the top of a haunted mansion. The visual resemblance is striking; both games use the same perspective and contrast a horror-movie theme with a bright color palette. The gameplay differs greatly in that Kyros is a fairly straightforward brawler while Zombies is a shooter with victims to rescue, but both games include power-ups to augment the player's abilities and fast-paced, relentless action.

In addition to being influenced by Kyros, Ebert told Gamasutra in 2007 that Robotron and Smash TV, which were also arcade titles, were two of his favorite games. The influence of these two games may not be as direct, but both were critically-acclaimed shooters and Robotron included saving humans as a play-mechanic. Action games dominated arcades in the late eighties, so it was only natural that as consoles began to take off in the early nineties, game designers like Ebert would try to replicate those experiences for the home market.

The influence of these arcade games is evident not only in Zombies Ate My Neighbors' play mechanics, but in the game's difficulty. Most monsters spawn indefinitely and randomly, making it virtually impossible to get through any one level unscathed. Enemies will occasionally even spawn near a neighbor that the player cannot reach, making them impossible to save. In arcade games, intentionally random design conventions are meant to coax more quarters out of patrons, but without some way to balance out the randomness, they can be frustrating for console gamers who have already invested 200 or more quarters in buying a game at retail price.

Zombies' designers balanced the game's difficulty by using another relic of arcade games, the player's score. For every 40,000 points scored, the player gets another neighbor to replace any that have been lost, and if the player already has the maximum of 10 neighbors, they receive an extra life. The concept of a score had become less relevant in console games of the time because beating the game had become the point of playing rather than earning a high-score. Zombies brilliantly takes a somewhat outdated concept and makes it relevant again by weaving it into the fiber of the game's design, and in doing so created a risk-reward cycle that adds depth. Exploring every corner of a level can yield bonus point pick-ups and more ammo, but at the risk of taking too much damage or wasting too much ammo in defense.

While the arcade influence is somewhat subtle, the influence of classic horror movies is overt. Every bit of the game's visuals and audio pay homage to horror. Level titles are often parodies of classic horror titles (“Evening of the Undead” vs. Night of the Living Dead), enemies include both classic Universal Pictures monsters and more modern frights (ax-throwing dolls reminiscent of Child's Play and a chainsaw-wielding maniac that combines Leatherface with Jason Vorhees' hockey mask), and the music uses surf guitar and howling theremin samples to evoke a spooky-sixties atmosphere. (Incidentally, if there is a connection between Star Wars and Zombies, it's that Peter Cushing, who played Grand Moff Tarkin in Star Wars, appeared in a number of the British Hammer Horror Films.)

More childhood nostalgia: mowing the lawn

The combination of Ebert's nostalgia for eighties arcade games and horror films create a uniquely terrifying experience. The aforementioned difficulty in saving all the neighbors is part of the game's horror atmosphere. There should be a sense of anxiety and loss because that is indeed what happens in a horror movie; people die. Victims are even assigned point values based (subjectively) on how likely a movie-going audience would be to sympathize with their death. Cheerleaders, babies, and dogs are at the top of the list, while men and schoolteachers are at the bottom. In Zombies Ate My Neighbors, the player becomes the protagonist of a horror film. Monsters appear from unexpected places, weapons are fashioned from household items, and sometimes a victim just can't be saved.

George Lucas has always had a talent for creating experiences that connect with people and capture their imaginations, often by riffing on the films and shows that captured his own imagination in the past. Whether it was by his influence or coincidence (or perhaps a bit of both) the game studio that he founded has had a similar knack for capturing gamers' imaginations. If there is a connection between Zombies Ate My Neighbors and Lucas' two most famous franchises, its that they were all born of their creators' nostalgia. In the same way that Star Wars was Lucas doing Flash Gordon and Indiana Jones was Lucas and Spielberg modernizing the movie serials of the '30s and 40's, Zombies was Mike Ebert combining his love for arcade brawlers and shooters of the '80s with horror film nostalgia. It is a testament to the importance of history and shared experiences in pop culture. Someone who plays Zombies may not have the same affection that Mike Ebert has for horror films and eighties arcade games (and almost certainly has not played Kyros), but Ebert's experiences, like Lucas' love for Flash Gordon, are passed along through his art.

Sources:

Kalata, Kurt (October 19, 2012) Kyros/Desolator/Kyros no Yakata. Retrieved from https://hg101.kontek.net/kyros/kyros.htm

Kuchera, Ben (July 19, 2013) Adventure Games Took Off Because Ron Gilbert Couldn't Make Star Wars Games. Retrieved from https://web.archive.org/web/20130721093143/http://www.penny-arcade.com/report/article/ron-gilbert-was-saved-because-he-couldnt-make-star-wars-games

Szczepaniak, John and Derboo, Sam (October 19, 2012) Zombies Ate My Neighbors Legacy. Retrieved from https://hg101.kontek.net/zamn/zamn1.htm

Wallis, Alistair (January 11, 2007) Playing Catch Up: Zombies Ate My Neighbors' Mike Ebert. Retrieved from http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=12360

[gravitydeflation]

journal 8th aug:

Early on i remember you sliding on the ice and at night we'd walk down to the construction site where they were building the aparments and we'd hang out on the slabs and sometimes we'd walk in the woods down the hill. i remember the first time u swam you were so afraid of the water but i threw u in because i knew youd love it and eventually u did, of course. Later i remember our morning walks through the hills when i'd smoke weed and find scorpions and toss stupid ideas around. I worried about your feet from all the rocks. Later when we moved into an apartment for a few months we found trails and open spaces close by with shrubs like a maze to chase each other around in. Then we moved to the city and all my friends loved you but no one could remember to close the door and youd always find a way out! I'd get so mad at everyone and terrified that you were gone forever each time but u always turned up. When things got rough we had to move back home into a crowded house with family it was so stressed sometimes but we took epic walks and drives everyday just to get away. You loved just riding around seeing things. We'd try to find parks we'd never been to and we had our favorites. we piled up hours at these places just being funny creatures of the earth.  Finally i saved up enough to get our own place again and it was thrilling even though it was small and i hated leaving u there alone while i went to work. But again we walked everyday and though there were few friends left we made do with the beauty of the surroundings and the frequent trips to the lake for boat rides. Things were good. But then, one day i began to notice something strange off and on. You had a seizure shortly after. And then another. And then something was wrong with your stomach and you couldnt walk too far anymore. The doctor had worse news. Your heart was failing and there was really no cure. And so here we were. At that place i'd always knew we'd arrive at. They put you on medications and you got better so fast it was almost surreal and i thought maybe it was a fluke. I changed your diet and cooked for you when i could and things were pretty good. They said you had a year and a half left at best. I fell in love with someone and she loved you too, of course. And I was grateful, yet a deep sadness had taken root because you just weren't you even though your mind was better than ever and you understood so much. i hated to see your joys taken from you and at times i saw you suffer terribly. I wanted to take it for you i wanted to learn the ancient secrets of the universe just so i could make it stop. but life and death are a fucking train that runs on infinity and you cant just stop it. At least not here. Not right now. And not then either. You fought it so hard. I saw that. We changed dosages time and time again. Sometimes you slept so deep i thought you were gone. we pushed on for awhile but i knew u were getting close. I tried to prepare my mind. I failed at love and it was just us again for awhile and i began to hate that. Just us alone dueling with the inevitable. It seemed everything was falling apart and one day in mid February after a rough christmas and few weeks after, you stopped eating and just went to sleep and i knew it was finally over. Life as we knew it for the past 11 years was over. I spent one last night and morning with you sitting by your side with all my heart hating the world and i felt your compassion and love then and all your confusion and suffering nearing its end and as the birds sang in the early morning and your own light shining through one last time. i wrote a poem for your greatness and told you some secrets. You took your last ride with best friends and you barked the whole world away that day, man. And on this day i say happy birthday again and again and thank you for teaching me so much. i miss our walks and adventures and all the funny shit that happened everyday you were around. I cherish it so much i'd never even want to go back and fuck it up in anyway. But i do hope to find your essence again one day wherever you are and we can howl to the galaxies that tore us asunder and breath in the eternal winds like gods forever and ever

[moderndayshinigami]

Ugh. 4am insomnia rant to help clear my anxiety

My landlord is being so fuckin sketchy. Landlord showed up in February for a walk through for resigning our half of the duplex. That's fine, except landlord was 30 minutes early while B was still in a Zoom meeting and I was trying to last minute clean. Our bedroom was full of about 3 months worth of dirty clothes and I had just finished scooping literboxes without any smell masks like candles, insense, or air freshener. So like. The apartment stank. I get that. Landlord messages us a week later giving us 45 days to clean up and get rid of the smell. Fine. Can do. So while I'm working 6 days a week, my one day off weekly has been spent cleaning every inch of the apartment to get rid of whatever smell.

Well, at the end of April, our neighbor says there's a gag worthy smell somewhere in the shared basement. B takes her down to identify where but she can't place it and it had faded within 40 minutes. Within a conversation with Landlord, I suggest sewage gas as they have been working on the sewer down the street for a month now. In January, the sewer had backed up into the basement which I had documented and informed landlord, so it is a plausible thing.

2 days later landlord notifies us that landlord's nephew will be stopping by to mow and asked if any of us could help him unload the mower. He didn't show up that day.

Less than a week after the mysterious gag smell incident, landlord sends us a picture of a letter saying landlord and "friends" as well as nephew (who I havent seen and grass hasnt been mowed) had been around the apartment "a couple of days ago" and smelled a strong odor coming from our side, permeating onto the screen porch and even to the shared basement under the apartment. With that landlord sent a text saying "I'm open to doing your walk through before the 15th if you'd like"

Now, I've been scrubbing this place within an inch of its life for a month, changed cat liter to stronger smell catching stuff, put up numerous airfresheners, including on the porch and down stairs and haven't seen anyone on our security camera at the front door. I'll give the stank in February. I fell behind with cleaning when we had the Plague(tm) in January and hadn't quite gotten caught back up with laundry because that is the hardest for me to do because of how long it takes. But since then? This place is clean. Dishes done, laundry down stairs, cat boxes scooped every other day, trash out every 3 days. Swept, mopped, dusted, febreezed (i hate febreeze), baking soda'd, dusted again because baking soda dust, bed linens washed and rewashed, caprets sprayed, taken out and beaten, some thrown away. WHAT FUCKING SMELL, LANDLORD?? TELL ME SO I CAN FIX IT

Or, are you just trying to give an excuse for us not to resign with you? Like. Just say, "I'm not planning to offer the lease again. Sorry." You don't need to mentally abuse me into thinking my entire house reeks so much no one can stand it 'cause that shit is going to stick with me for the rest of my life. Thanks.

Cool. Part two because everything happens so much. While dealing with landlord, Bossman has been trying to pull some shit at work too.

Monday before Gag Smell, he pulls me and ny bff coworker into the office and basically says this karate school branch isnt making enough, so we need to cut you(me) to part time. My coworker was already on part time so they couldnt reduce her hours any more. It would be 4 days of about 6 hours. They also were going to have another head instructor come in on the day I was off since were open 5 days. This head instructor has the OPPOSITE teaching style from me. It's not bad, he's a great instructor, but he tends to NOT GIVE A FUCK about how anyone around him is feeling or how some students react. I have several students with diagnosed anxiety and/or autism that his style would just nerf them.

Coworker talks to me after meeting to say that she is going to put her 2 weeks in now because she was less than 24 hours from hearing if she had gotten the other job she had applied for (which she did. It's a great fit and she's super happy). That way I can keep my full time. I agree since she talked it out with her family and was planning to give it anyway.

On top of that I write a letter explaining that Other Instructor needs to listen to how I teach and be aware of stepping on my toes, how I'm going to need a raise because I'm doing the work of two full time employees and that i need a few days to actually think about staying at that job because there's a lot of bullshit going on and I'm not a fan.

Bossman asks for a meeting, which, fine, we do need to talk. He spends most of it saying "we're going to authorize over time and you'll get double bonuses and Other Instructor will do his best" and I'm like. You're paying head instructor at 3rd location $22/hour. Pay me that much for 2 jobs. I'll let Other Instructor work with me but he's going to be my bitch when he's here and I'll work over time when it's needed, whether you authorize it or not but telling me that it's ok with you doesnt give me more money per hour. And I hope to hell I'm getting double bonus. I'm doing all the work.

I gave them a week to give me solid numbers about the raise etc. That was this monday. I asked for a $5.68/hour raise to match the same position at another location. I got the $0.68 and that was a struggle. I'm on the (paid) days off for my decsion and honestly, if B hadn't just gotten a raise and new position at his work, I'd have said let's pack up and move across the country like we've talked about. The job and apartment are falling apart so it's time to leave.

Part of me wants to go. Let that school fall apart after i inherited it 1 month before the pandemic hit and kept it afloat the whole time, part of which, I did single handedly (without a pay raise or bonus) because coworker had lost a family member and was out for 3 months. Let landlord try to find a new tenant. It's cheaper to buy a house and pay a mortage right now anyway.

Oh, and tomfuckery part 3. The car situation. I had found a new car that looked great! Good specs, sorta in my price range (a bit high but doable) my favorite color. Electric. Good for the environment. The money I'd save on gas would balance the extra montly payments. Cool.

Yeah. Got approved by the bank! No time to actually go get the vehicle from chicago where it was being sold.

Then, last tuesday, the sway bar on my shitmobile snapped. $300 dollar repair. It's a good thing I just got my tax return.

So. My life has been falling apart. I'm pining for someone who doesn't know I like them that way (B is cool with it. He likes them too in his own way) and I'm about at the end of my rope for shit I can deal with.

It'll all be fine in the end. If its not fine; It's not the end.

I fuckin hope so....

[garlique]

all the things i would tell my mom if i went back to my ten year old self with what i know now

under a cut because it got really really long i guess i have a lot to say to her lol

1. hi mom i know i look like yr ten year old but im actually yr 19 year old. im gonna tell u some things i need from u and i need u to write these down and remember them

2. im fucking transgender, i found this out for myself at like 14 or 15. im going to change my name twice; both of my h names are deadnames. my gender is also a lot more complex than i’ll realize it is but with you and dad, i will settle on the name miles and he/him pronouns. please please actually take me to get new clothes when i come out i might tell you i don’t need it but i really really want it. also you and dad for years have nasty habit of calling me the wrong name and pronouns when you get mad at me. i don’t know if it’s because you genuinely want to hurt me by doing it or if it’s just that you still think of me as a girl named ****** and can’t hide it when you’re emotional but jesus christ does it fuck me up. dont do that shit. also pls dont leave me to transition on my own. im a child with a lot of issues and because you help me so little with my transition i’ve been yet unable to get top surgery. im incapable because

3. i am really fucked in the head and idk how much of it is nature vs nurture. i have adhd, am autistic, have *, believe i’ve been depressed my entire life, and have been having panic attacks since i was around 6. i also have cptsd; i dont know if telling you this will make that better, because im already really traumatized. but my first memory in my entire life was sitting on the closed toilet late at night while you brushed your teeth, sobbing because i was having a panic attack and you brushed me off and sent me back to bed where i continued to have a panic attack until i wore myself out enough that i couldnt physically keep my eyes open. which brings me to my next point

4. i need MORE from you. as a 19 year old before this i have SO many issues with trusting people and getting help. i have a form of ptsd which i believe is partly due to what i consider your emotional neglect. i dont know what you can do to make it better because if i did i probably would have asked for it in this timeline. but it really is not my responsibility to make sure YOU can parent me effectively. how are you so unaware of my emotional needs?

5. YOU need to receive mental help. by the time i’m like 15 or 16 you seem from my perspective to hate your life and you LOVE to unload it onto me. i remember telling you SO MANY TIMES that you should see a therapist (i started therapy freshman year) and every single time i suggested it you will say “no i dont need therapy” . which is because you used ME as your therapist. please dont fucking do that to me. you can tell me about your life and your day to day but holy shit the amount of breakdowns i had because of what you told me? please for the love of god you have so much fucking trauma please please please get help this is how generational cycles begin and is the main reason i decided at like 17 to never have kids.

6. in either 5th or 6th grade im going to get lyme disease and im not going to tell you because you told me when i was very young that you hated taking me to the doctors and so im not going to tell you for months that i can’t use one of my arms or that i can’t put weight on one of my legs. if i remember right it first showed up in my right shoulder abt 3 months after YOU injure your shoulder and so when i first tell you my shoulder hurts you tell me that it doesn’t and that i’m just mimicking you. please just take me to the doctor in like february instead of june. im basically fucking crippled as a 19 year old and i think it is in large part because of the lyme disease

7. please for the love of god please please fucking take me to the dentist regularly

8. in 9th grade early/mid december im going to confess to a friend that i am feeling suicidal and she and basically everyone else in my life who finds out is going to handle it terribly. im going to attempt suicide again in the spring of my sophomore year and it’s going to be awful for everybody again. after that attempt you don’t let me shower by myself for three months. i know it’s because you’re scared to lose me but i’m going to tell you a little secret: im terrified of dying. i dont Actually want to die. i just have so little control of my brain that dying or sleeping for a long long time is the only way i can see to get my shit under control. in 8th grade i make friends who are terrible for me and spend my nights talking them out of suicide. here is where i learn how to keep people alive lol. i dont know what you can do to help me that won’t make me hate or resent you but i’m telling you now so that maybe if you have the time you can prepare.

9. abt my mental health: pls take me to get autism/adhd tests n diagnoses. my * diagnosis will b impossible to get before i turn 18 and i am going to try to keep it from u . i promise u tho raising an autistic kid is not as hard as it seems and by now im so fucking traumatized that i’ve already learned to internalize everything

10. when im in high school i forget what year you severely injure yourself and spend a really long time in the hospital and rehab. this is what i feel most guilty about in my entire life: that the time you were gone was literally the easiest few months of my life. right abt two weeks before you do that is when i decide that you weren’t a good parent to me and that i am no longer safe around u; maybe if we can deal with some shit now we can have a better experience. btw i feel like it would b cruel if i didnt tell you so here r the brief details of yr injury **

11. by the time im in college i have constant panic attacks and dissociate heavily for the weeks before i have to leave college to come home. you need to take me seriously, i don’t know what else i can say to make this believable. i’m already real fucked up; you need to change the future for me or it WILL affect me for the rest of my life. i latch on to every woman who’s older than me who’s nicer to me; i think that’s the definition of mommy issues

12. i came back to tell you this because i really do believe you can change. if i thought there was no hope i wouldn’t have bothered telling you this. i think you can change because you DO love me (speaking of which telling me i love you but i don’t like you is? kinda fucked up? maybe don’t say that to a child ever again although i think by now you’ve stopped saying it because that will set me up with some fucked up ideas of love until i really begin to be loved by other people) and i think you want the best for me and i think you would want to change so that i could have a better life. i love you and i believe in you

[cheswirls]

a quick sum-up of che’s future career plans, bc reasons

im halfway through the dive!! anime show that came out this summer season, and i’m having a lot of thoughts, and plus i finished going through all the footage i missed today of skate america while i was at a bball game, and it’s made me realize different things i guess? 

it might be mid-long length so its going under a cut, but to gain intereststart off, this is all about my desire to be an athletic trainer for the usa olympic center at colorado springs, co !

ive been an at(now when you see that abb. you know what it means hah!! not assistant teacher hmm) student since my freshman year of high school, and i’ve loved it a whole bunch. back then i was set on going to columbia U for their writing program, and i wanted to major in graphic design afterwards/during/it wasnt super planned out i was a fr. i didnt know what bfa or mfa stood for yet. it wasnt until end of sophomore year than i thought about being an at for realsies.

but i also still loved gd. so there was a confliction there.

junior year i took a break from working volleyball in the fall and did my one and only year of football and it was terrible primarily bc the team i worked with didnt know how to function as a group and half the group were selfless bitch whores but like thats another storyyy, secondly bc i jus really discovered i didnt care abt football at all. it was mostly for the experience and i gained it and i liked it bc i hung out w a lot of people from helping out w varsity (i was one of two our of the five juniors that had been there since my fr year and was only on jv bc it was my first year w football, but one of the seniors had to work a bunch so when they needed an extra person i was the one w the most experience so i was w them a lot,) point was it was fun!!! and you have fun w ppl you like that you dont work w all the time and i shouldnt say fun bc lots of times it was awful,

basically! it was fun being w the varsity trainers which were the seniors and the other junior that had been around since fr year. volleyball was fun but it had always been a one-at-student-per-team sport , so it was different jus being w other ats that shared the same team and not the same sport(which in the us is made up of at least three different teams, a fr,jv,and varsity). it was a more open environment and so it inspired a lot of talk with the at grad students we had that semester (we got 3-4 every semester in a partnership w the D1 uni in town, it was always cool to hear stories from them!) and anyway i remember talking w a couple of the grads one practice and we were discussing all the different occupations athletic trainers could have, and what they wanted to work with in the future, and the topic veered towards professional sports and the olympics.

i thought it was really cool when we were talking about it, and then we got busy and it flew out of my mind. i dont remember when it came back and became a focus, but sometime before my senior year, i had decided i wanted to work at the olympic level.

real quick i mentioned gd and the struggle, so to bring that into focus, my junior year i took a whole bunch of different tech classes (gd&i, compsci, webtech) and in one of those, i had the opportunity to go to a ... i cant remember what the term was for it, but it was kinda an event for gd students and it had a little competition and stuff, and it was really fun! nd you got a lot of info abt the community college hosting it and i learned their program was really good, so the gd versus at internal struggle continued, and i remember talking to my sponsor teacher (she actually taught all three of my tech classes that year aaa i loved her) about how i didnt know what to do and shit and i dunno what she told me but like, i think she was trying to be encouraging but she basically said it was up to me, like she didnt try and nod me into a direction, that i can recall.

so SOMEHOW bc i honestly cannot remember, by senior year i’ve decided that im gonna jus fuck it and pick BOTH and double major in gd and athletic training. AND i had it all planned out, where i was gonna get a degree in gd and open up an online business, and then go into a masters program for at and then enter into the olympic field. 

by this point creative writing is still cool and a great hobby but i couldnt possibly double major AND have a minor that’d be too much. id still love to take a cw course tho one day.

basically a buncha crazy stuff happened that first semester but by winter break i had an acceptance letter to a uni a couple hours north of home with a good accredited undergrad program (accredited basically means you graduate w a masters in four years so its fasttracked which woulda been great but uh..) and by the time i found out that next semester that they were doing away with the accredited program i was already too emotionally invested to consider panic-switching(panic bc it was february and id already been admitted hah...) but i decided it’d be okay. basically if you dont remember/werent around one of my school’s head ats died in a car crash died around early october ‘16. she went to undergrad where i go now, and i’d talked to her about it september that semester wondering if she knew anything abt their program and uh surprise, she’d done the same program small world. after the funeral in november and a ton of thought i applied there. (november was.. crazy in general last year. rly crazy)

may was when i started adding on sports to the future olympics job, bc i started thinking about it and after finally getting a friend to watch yuri on ice, he started making his was through all of sochi’s figure skating stuff, and then the 2010 vancouver olympics, and i decided i wanted to recap a bit on that too.

the 2010 olympics was really my first experience with figure skating. i’m a west texas gal and so theres not a lot out here to get exposed to, so seeing these best-of-the-best class sports was fun, and the earliest experience i can remember of such. i was in fifth grade so i dont remember a ton, but i do remember being captivated by korea’s yuna kim, who won gold that year in fs. shes an fs legend at this point, so if you’re into figure skating and don’t know who she is, go look her up. you wont be disappointed.

in 2012 was the london olympics. i remember a lot from it, like watching the opening ceremony with my parents and seeing the queen jump out of a helicoptor(which is like,, still cool to this day wow) and being fascinated my michael phelps and all the swimming he did so grandly. it was also my first real exposure to diving. the oldest i could recall anything abt the sport was at a pizza hut somewhere.. in town i think, and i was w my best friend at the time and my mom was there so i think maybe we were on the way back from the lake??? sounds right, i think. and we were talking abt how i always held my nose when i went underwater bc i didnt know how to not get water all up my nostrils and be underwter(and i still dont to this day aha) and she mentioned like, joining a diving team would be cool! would help me get over it and all! and i like recalling it dunno what she was talking abt bc we lived in dirt city nothing so i highly doubt there was or is any sort of diving sport happening. swimming, yeah maybe, there were lessons at pools and bodyworks areas around town, competitive teams im not sure tho, but not diving like at all so??? dunno.

so my next and technically first real experience with it was watching the london olympics. and i thought, wow, this is so neat!! i watched from that one day like the opening events, and i think i was old enough to search online like yea i had a laptop by then so i looked up the schedule for the things i wanted to see most of, and i ended up watching i think most of the diving events (i missed a couple for.. archery, i think? maybe?) and absolutely loving it. iunno what it was, maybe something i never thought i could do?(bc not hold my nose?? while i dove???????? scaryy) but i enjoyed it a bunch.

i was older when sochi was a thing, my 8th grade year. i was able to appreciate things a lot more. when i tuned into events, tony hawk and snowboarding were the main focus, but figure skating was on a lot as well. i had a tv in my room by that point, so if i didnt like what was playing on the main tv, i could go watch another event. i learned a lot of names and faces through that, and so while my bff was watching it our senior year if i was with him id point out skaters and their nationalities and stuff, like yuzuru hanyus always been a modern day household name w figure skating, but i leanred abt him BECAUSE of the sochi olympics, and he was one of the ones i’ve never forgotten. i really really liked it, so much that i watched worlds after, and around the same time my fr year, i tuned in to just the worlds championship again. i didn’t pick up trying to watch grand prix(which is their regular season, for those unaware) season until my junior year, and most of it was day-or-two-late videos from youtube, since the ice channel i think it a paid-for thing (i still dont know much abt it hah) and nothing was on tv otherwise, aside from the skate america event. but since that first time after sochi, ive always been around watching worlds fs near the beg of each year. i’d familiarized myself by senior year with the fs world, and actually,

early (i think march?) of my junior year, i searched up trying to find a figure skating anime at the time. and what did i find?? ginban, the only figure skating anime at the time. i watched like maybe all of one episode, it was abt a girl who shared her body w the ghost of a former figure skater while she was competing in events, and it was.. okay? lackluster, in the animation dept, but it was a 2005 show so.. yeah.

so after that i was like kk that wasnt good lets find another. and i didnt. not yet, anyway. instead, i found an announcement for violet evergarden’s animated adaptation, and yuri on ice, a realistic adaptation of the sport of figure skating. thats bolded bc its important. i found that shit abt yoi before it even had a promo poster, certainly before the pv came around that got everyone hyped up. i found it bc i was looking for figure skating in the first place. in fact, i think when the pv came out and got popular, i didnt even relate it to the upcoming fs anime i’d read about previously. it took me a bit to connect the dots. 

watching yuri on ice at the same time as the gp 2016 season was surreal, but really interesting. i got my bff into it before the second to last episode came out, and i only remember that bc he finally showed any interest when he found something on twitter abt it being gay (newsflash/// hes gay, and before yoi his fav show was no6 bc that was as close as it got. he still rly likes it, we both do, but his solid favc is now definitely yoi. representation matters and all) and was like well now i HAVE to watch it and i was all yes it ends soon so pls. and he watched it twice in a weekend, and thrice before the finale came out, and then a few more times after that, iunno how many times but certainly more thn i have(i went back after the .. maybe ep 10? w/e ending had the after party reveal that changed everything, so i went back to analyze everything before the next ep) and between the week of 11 and finale 12, he started watching the sochi fs competition, and then the 2010 after the show ended w ep 12. 

seeing this great fs show and getting a friend into the world of figure skating really renewed my love for it all. before the semester went out i went back and watched the reruns of the sochi fs stuff. and by may i’d decided i wanted to cosider that to be the sport i worked with.

with diving, it took a similar twist. in the form of the rio 16 olympics. i was all over that shit, i downloaded an nbc app on my phone so i could watch events live while i traveled with volleyball to a tournament in dallas and while i was at practice w them at home and generally jus away from the house and a tv. i planned that shit out had a schedule and everything for what i was watching live, and a lot of it was swimming, but a whoooole lot of live stuff was the diving. 

in the hotel room in dallas the tv would always be on to w/e olympics events were airing at the time, either track or diving tho, one or the other, or recaps. quite a few girls ended up in the room in the evening and we’d all do stuff and watch in passing at the same time, and it was suuuuuper fun. watching the chinese women perform flawlessly and walk away w all the gold was fun, but finding a good commentator to actually say such was a disheartening challenge( one of the most memorable moments w live commentary that year was hearing a woman say of one of the chinese ladies that she’d done better before, after they revealed her personal best score ever like rly cmon be unbiased and jus passionate abt the sport youre covering pls.

ive always been super fond of the diving scene. it may not be as much as fs, but honestly, i wish i grew up in an area w a diving team now, or wish i could try it out now, bc thats how much fun it seems. i still wanna go up to the big city like 30min away from uni and learn to ice skate in the civic center there, but hands down if i had to pick a sport to join tomorrow or die i’d pick diving. 

so also by may, and throughout the culmination of senior year, diving was the second sport on the olympic to-train-for list. you get a five-year contract w the olympics, now i think it’s usa as a whole and i think its by center so say, if i get a job in colorado springs i cant apply in another five years to chula vista or even like lake placid, but iunno for sure. the five-year thing is involved somehow bc i’ve heard it from a physical therapist and trainer-that-works-in-a-sports-med-clinic duo in one body named sarah, who’s been contracted out from the clinic by my high school since junior year also, bc she knows people who’ve worked w the olympics, and then another from church that worked w olympics that knows my family uh iunno how well but i know of him, i think he also works in the clinic as some sort of on-hand surgeon but a diff person than who sarah knew. so its five years somehow and then i’ll take my bfa in gd and open my online business and do that from a studio at home and look after my owl/cat pet combo.

since may, it had been ‘olympics, with either figure skating or diving’. and it stayed that for a long time. now, since a couple weeks ago, and this is again while gp season is happening for fs, its diving. i wanna work w the usa olympic diving team as their team athletic trainer, and i cant do it this summer bc i have to have completed two years of uni, instead of a certain standing, like be a junior, but so NEXT summer, before my senior year of uni, (i came in a sopho so 6 sem only ah) i’m applying for an internship at the center in colorado springs, and that’s the team i hope i work with. 

now i tell people, diving, but if i get offered figure skating, i’ll take it, but diving is the goal now. if i love it and wanna continue professionally, great, i can do that and have an online gd shop. and if i decide i want something different? i’ll work olympics and then join w a professional-level figure skating i actually dunno how it works. coach, and their skater in turn. coach, with multiple skaters under them. a culmination of diff usa skaters. w/e, something in the professional fs world.

and thats uh, thats it! dive has been so much fun to watch, and i realize i talk a lot on here about working w basketball and being an at student in general and the vast majority have no idea what i mean, so hopefully this clarifies. thank you!!

[jamieloveharris]

four words.

“there’s no heartbeat today. i’m so sorry.” 

those four words. the weight they hold and the heartbreak they bring. you just don’t think it will happen to you, especially not two times in a row. that’s not how our God works right? he won’t put us through this again. what did we do to deserve this? why us? why can teenagers get pregnant on accident who don’t even want the baby and people who couldn’t want it more have to suffer like this? it just seems so unfair. i understand how unhealthy it is to think this way, but it’s also just the reality of the situation and the real thoughts you have. it’s hard to find a starting point to talk about this because emotionally, you’re all over the place. sadness, anger, confusion, unfairness, bitterness, selfish, devastated. it’s hard to compartmentalize how you feel when you feel so many different things all at once. you’re never taught how to deal with grief and honestly, i think we all deal with it very differently. and there’s not a right or wrong way.

let me back up and start from the beginning. writing has always been an outlet for me (not that I do it much, but in my head I’ve written a ton ;) ) . I don’t know that it’s the right time to share our story, but is there ever? i feel like miscarriage is a topic that’s not talked about enough because it’s just hard. what do you say to someone dealing with it? how do you deal with it if you’re the one going through it? why does it happen? why can’t they give me an answer? a lot of times i think as humans, we avoid hard discussions because it’s just easier. and i know i’m guilty of that a hundred times over but now that i’m in this position, it’s become more important to be open about it even if it’s hard and even if it’s very raw emotion. chris & i knew we wanted kids quickly after we got married. we weren’t trying super hard, but we weren’t not trying either. when we found on february 7th, i was in complete shock and even more excitement. waiting for him to get home that day truly felt like the longest day of my life because i had to keep it to myself alllll day long (like literally from about 9am until 8pm when he got home from a work event). we had plans to go to the Biltmore Estate the next day and all weekend we couldn’t stop talking about it. planning out our future, and how the rest of 2019 would look. there’s just no words to explain it. fast forward a week and all of our plans were shattered just that quick. Sorry for TMI, but I started bleeding and hurting, and didn’t stop. I knew what was happening right away. I went to the dr as soon as I could and it was true. we weren’t going to have a baby anymore. you truly feel like your heart is ripped right out of you. we only knew a WEEK, but the love you develop that quickly for a child you’ve never met cannot be explained. you just instinctively make every decision from the moment you find out to do what’s best for your child. then it’s gone. it was confirmed on valentines day and the next 5-7 days were just pure hell in all honesty. physically and emotionally. you don’t know what to say or do or think. you also realize how common it is, and for all the stories you’ve heard of those people you know, and those you don’t who have gone through this, you realize you are now one of them. i TRULY believe that unless you have actually gone through it you cannot understand. you can empathize, hurt for someone, be unbelievably sad and sorry for them, but you cant fully understand. and i say that from experience of having so many friends and/or family go through it. you say all the right things but it doesn’t help. yes, you know “it’ll be okay one day,” and “i’m so sorry, we’re thinking of you”, and you do appreciate all of the love and support you get but you’re also just so sad. 

fast forward again to march 22. we were close to closing on a new house and moving. i had not had a cycle yet, but that wasn’t abnormal since it can take your body 4-6 weeks to get back to “normal.” I had a pregnancy test in the closet from last time and just randomly took it. I really don’t know why and had exactly zero reasons to think i was pregnant. i put it down and started packing and kind of forgotten i had taken it. i walked back in and almost fell out on the floor. there was NO WAY. I mean, not a chance right? pregnant?!? I hadn’t even had a cycle and it had just been a few weeks. google, google, google. okay it can happen. what the WHAT? gosh we are so blessed, God knew i needed something to keep me going. these are the thoughts you have. again, i had to wait for chris to get home. i laid it on the table and when he looked at it, i actually got kind of upset because he thought i was lying and playing a joke on him (for reference: this would never be a funny joke to anyone, EVER. please dont try and do aprils fools jokes about pregnancy.) he’s like, we have to go to the store right now and buy 10 more tests, this can’t be right, it’s probably “leftover” from last time (lol, good try but no). so we went and it was true. i immediately called the dr and scheduled an appointment because I needed extra confirmation. and it was true, we were having a baby! due the week of thanksgiving. how THANKFUL are we? the holidays are amazing enough, but with a new baby? what a blessing. 

you go through a lot of anxiety after you come down from the high. every day you’re nervous. every day you think you’re going to lose it again. every time you go to the bathroom you pray you’re not bleeding. you want to enjoy it and soak it all up, but you also want to protect yourself from heartbreak again. i didn’t tell many people. i wouldn’t even let chris tell his mom or sister because I didn’t want to “jinx” it. sounds crazy and I get that, but you truly try and do anything you can to make sure it doesn’t happen again. you know that doesnt really prevent it but you just can’t help it. then it happens, and all of your worst fears come true again. it was last thursday afternoon and again, i started bleeding but just a little. and no pain. i was terrified and called the dr immediately and said I need to come in today. i don’t care what has to happen but i just need to know everything is okay. it wasn’t okay. i rushed there as quickly as I could. they tried to find the heartbeat on the doppler from the outside of my stomach but i was early still, almost 11 weeks, so she wasn’t concerned at all since you normally can’t hear it externally yet anyway. i saw a dr (not my normal one) - she checked me and said my cervix was completely closed and i was most likely completely fine, “sometimes pregnant women just bleed.” WHEW, WE’RE OKAY. then i went to ultrasound feeling pretty optimistic. i felt so silly rushing down there because i was totally fine right. they tried to find the baby from the outside but my uterus is tilted so it was blocking it. they did a vaginal ultrasound and then i heard the four words. i was in shock. I didn’t say anything for probably 30 seconds and even then, i just cried. she took me back to the drs office and we just cried together for a long time. i just couldn’t believe it was real. but we had to talk about next steps and I had to have a D&C. it was late in the afternoon and scheduling was gone for the day so i would have to wait until monday. i couldn’t imagine waiting 4 days knowing what was going on inside of me but i didn’t have a choice. i dont even remember driving the hour home. i just cried. first thing friday i called scheduling and thankfully they were able to get me in that afternoon. it sounds very harsh, but i couldn’t help but feeling like i just wanted it out of me. i couldnt deal with the pain i had last time all weekend. i couldnt deal with the mental side of it for 4 days. and in just a few hours, i’m getting wheeled back into surgery and 11 minutes later, there is no longer a baby inside of me. and then in another hour, we’re on the way home and it’s just back to normal life but no more holiday baby, and no more telling everyone the good news. mother’s day is this weekend, and we had planned to tell chris’ mom. we COULDNT WAIT. just the night before I miscarried, i got on etsy and ordered cute little “big cousin” shirts for my nieces and nephew.they came in today. i can’t bring myself to open them, so i just put them in the closet. i was starting to feel a little less anxious last week, because i was so close to being out of the first trimester. i just knew it was going to be okay this time and all that we had hoped for was going to happen. 

i wish this was a happy ending, inspiring post on why to not give up. i wish i could say the things like, “we now understand why we had to go through all of this pain,” or “all the heartbreak was worth it for our miracle”, and the list goes on. i’m not there. I don’t understand why. It doesn’t make sense to me right now. what I can say is that ONE DAY, i do think it will, and i do think we’ll be able to say those words but that day is not today. i think so often when people share their stories, it’s after they’re healed (as much as you can heal after something like this), and they have a happy story to report. i think it’s so important to understand there is an in between period as well and that it’s okay to not be okay in that time. i truly don’t know what’s next. i can’t say that we will ever be able to tell that happy story with certainty. i do hope & pray every day we can but the truth is that i don’t know. i’ve found myself almost feeling guilty for sharing this, because so many couples go through so much more and still may not have their miracle. so many have 10 miscarriages, and spend thousands and thousands on IVF, and their bodies are basically a needle cushion from all of the shots, and their life revolves around trying to create a life that they so badly want and here we are, having suffered through 2 miscarriages and i am writing like we’ve had it so bad.on the flip side, the truth is that a loss is a loss. whether it’s one baby when you were 6 weeks pregnant, or 8 babies when you were 12 weeks pregnant, the heartache is the same. i am so so sorry for all of those women who have gone through this, for those who are currently going through it, and for those who will go through it in the future. you are not alone. 

i was so nervous to reach out and share with people, even those i know had gone through it. i can’t explain how much it helps to just talk about it and allow someone to listen to you, even if they don’t have the words to comfort you or make it better. truthfully, nothing will make it better except maybe time. maybe this time next month i’ll be a little less sad, maybe i won’t cry when i think about it. but maybe i will - and that’s okay too. 

for whatever reason i also feel like it’s important for me to say that i’m choosing to share this because i hope that maybe just one person will read it, and feel encouraged to talk about what they’re going through or know that people do love you, and are always there for you even when you feel like you couldn’t be more alone. if there is someone experiencing what I have, I hope they’ll reach out and I hope that I can pay it forward to someone what so many have done for me during these last few months. i can say with 100% fact that you are truly not going through this by yourself and no one should ever have to. i could never put into words how thankful i am for my support system and those who have known about this journey and who have checked in on me everyday, and prayed for us, and cried with us. it does not go unnoticed. so if you have been a part of that this far - thank you :) 

[extremelyaverageincrediblynormal]

I think its time to update this thing with everything that has been going on. A lot of beautiful things have happened the past 6 months, but when i look back, its a supercut of mental breakdowns and self harm. Surprisingly, i havent seriously thought about killing myself, but I am definitely putting a strain on my mental health, and i dont think i saw the signs until i was 4-5 months deep. until i was at the hospital. until i was crying in my work bathroom every day for 5 days. and even then, i still tried to keep telling myself if i give up, i am mentally weak. i still tell myself that know, as i try to get myself out of this situation. so lets explain the situation. I will try my best to go back to may and bring you up to speed.

I started working at this job... lets call it, the hellpit. I started in February, and they agreed to give me time off in april to go to japan. I was pretty happy about that, but i remember about a month and a half in, i seriously considered quitting, and that seemed early. I was annoyed at the lack of organization with the products we were selling, and the extra stress it put on the front of house employees. The job ITSELF wasnt so bad, it was simple tasks that were sometimes fun. But the customers were the worst. This is a private club, so we see the exact same people every single day, and i work in a half grab&go half diner. And we get treated like we are nothing. most of the time, we dont even get a “hi” or “thank you”, but we are required to smile and be polite, tell the customers to have a nice day. One girl got fired because she didnt smile enough and was kind of a quiet person. oops. But then i got my best friend hired, and i started enjoying my days a bit more. Japan gave me some perspective on life and i was running off that energy for about a month. I was also moving at the end of may so that took most of my focus. I was then asked to work in the poolside snack bar/ actual bar. I was excited, it sounded like a fun, fast-paced environment. I feel dissapointed writing that because I was so wrong. It makes me feel sad.

I would be working closer to the actual manager. Now, there is drama going on with that. there was 2 managers, R and C. R had been there for 13 years, had close relationships with the people in my workplace. she was even sister-in-laws with someone there. And then C comes in, and sees that there is a lot wrong with how the cafe is running. she wasnt totally wrong, but she has a large personality and isnt afraid to shit talk people. she came in and tried to change everything, and I dont know exactly what happened behind the scenes but R left on a 3 month stress leave, came back for 3 weeks and quit. If that doesnt tell you something about what it’s like to work along C, ive got more. 

So this poolside hellbox was usually run by some other managers in the club, but C insisted on running it herself, putting her employees in it, etc. it was going to be the best year the poolside hellbox has ever seen. it was small, but it needed at least 3 people to run properly. Sure, it could be slow on cold days, but on hot days, it was a nightmare if there was only 2 people. Because we had to do everything; open, stock all the food, take orders, make orders, and pass them off, and close. it was truly exhausting and our days were always 9-10 hours, no breaks. She also stopped putting 3 people, brought it down to 2, usually 1. it was incredibly stressful. I tried to talk to her about my concerns, and she completely agreed. so i thought things would change. they did not. after some time, i injured my rotator cuff, and that lasted about a week until my entire back seized up and i had to go to the doctor. i was physically burnt out. and she had to work one of my shifts because i was medically ordered to take a break from work. writing this is making my back hurt.... funny how that works. anyways, i came back and she told me about how HARD of a day she had when she had to be in there for 6 hours. I thought to myself, good, she will finally understand. She never did. put me back in it, working 6 days a week, no tips, no breaks, 9 hours. there was a day where the air quality was so bad that my coworker with asthma expressed how ill the smoke makes him feel and that he cant breath, and she made sure he felt guilty for not telling her before hand. and then when we werent even making money that day, she blamed the people upstairs for not making the call to close it. i cant believe it.

the PSH finally closed for the year, but she wanted one more day to make a bunch of money. So there is another key player here. J. J has the title of supervisor but doesnt always act like it. C expresses how she feels about J often, and shes the only one who has the power to do something about it but does she? No. 

So on this day, C is not at the Bad place, so in any other situation, J would be in charge. But C insisted that I text her and listen to what SHE said. and she said she wanted to open the PSH 2 hours early. J said it was too busy and we needed coverage. I listened to J. The fact that we didnt open 2 hours earlier really upset C. she was so mad at J for making that call, and i was upset that i was put in a position where i had no idea who to listen to. 

So that was the day i decided i couldnt be there next summer. I needed to leave before the PSH opened again. 

And since then, there has been a lot of hostility towards me. I remember C telling me that people might not like me because she likes me, and people dont like her. that should have been my first red flag to get the fuck out. I honestly thought she was a woman of her word, and that sticking with her was the right decision. she made me all these empty promises, like i’ll be getting a raise in September, or that she has big plans for me and my career there, or even that we were getting a company-paid night to reward us for all our hard work. and what has unfolded? nothing. 

since then, it has been a series of bullshit. she comes down, yells at everyone and everything thats wrong, comments on how terrible the communication is, and how this doesnt look right, and how stupid everything is and how no one knows how to do their job, “except for you, this isnt directed towards you.” I have a feeling it may not be IN THAT MOMENT, but im sure it has been directed at me at some point. Shes manipulative, and takes advantage of people for her own personal gain, and completely lacks empathy. If it doesnt affect her, why does she care. If someone cant help her, why does she need them. that is her mentality, and she is a psycho. she wants complete control, but does nothing to change anything. She wants people to do certain things, but never tells them. She is by far, the worst manager i have ever had. not to mention she puts out the schedule thursday night-friday for the upcoming monday. so, yes, 3 days in advance. I feel betrayed, i feel disspointed, i feel burnt out. 

She also made a sarcastic remark about how i could “never disappoint her”, which was the last straw for me. That was the day i decided i need to get out of there. 

So, thats whats been going on at work, but behind the scenes, i have been unraveling. My manager has qualities that remind me of my mother, and not in a positive way. it’s very triggering in a way, and when i feel like i have disappointed her, i have the same feeling i would get when my mother would be disappointed in me. when she is completely unsympathetic to me being burnt out, i remember all the times my mom told me to stop feeling sorry for myself when i would cry. so i deal with daily triggers that i have a hard time shaking. there are also some things that go on in that club that really disturb my core values. I am a caring, inclusive person and these people treat us like dirt. I think most people are used to it, i even feel like im less sensitive to it as time goes by. 

But i have been having mental breakdowns at least once a week. they were worse back in june or july, i remember completely trashing my room, throwing my books around and slamming my book case on the ground, and the colapsing and hyperventalating on the ground until my roommate found me. I remember scratching myself until i bled. I remember running to a park and crying in a field. I remember crying on the bathroom floor naked. I remember not being able to get out of bed. i remember punching a wall so hard i almost broke my fingers. this all happened withing 3 months. and after the big explosions came depression and giving up. I cry in the work bathroom often, i dont care about being on time, i dont care about my job, i dont care about my health or being in pain. i am in a constant fog, im exhausted and angry and i have a beautiful partner who loves me so much and i cant feel any of it, because i think i shut down everything so i can make it through the day. I’ve gained weight, i hate my body again, and i feel stuck. i feel ugly, i feel useless, i feel trapped. i need help. i need help getting out of this. i am so exhausted mentally, i do nothing with my day because im too tired. i am so incredibly miserable, i get those depression headaches every single day. I have a surgery coming up that i am not willing to compromise. maybe ill take some extra days off then? look for a job? rest my mind and prepare to job hunt and grind for a job that i might not hate? maybe i should leave now, go work at starbucks, see if i can get the time. maybe i should find a part time job, but will my manager hate me for it? does she already hate me for it? i just want to survive. i just dont want to get to the point where suicide feels like the only option again. I am not there yet, but its on the horizon, and that’s why i am scared.             

[theconservativebrief]

Authorities allowed a proven harasser to get by; ‘You don’t need another law for that…’

Photo by joshlopezphoto (CC)

(Scott Dance, The Baltimore Sun) Although Maryland has some of the most restrictive gun laws in the country, none could have prevented the massacre of five people in The Capital newsroom Thursday, policymakers said.

The weapon used in the attack has been described by police as a pump-action shotgun. While “long guns” like shotguns and rifles are less tightly regulated than handguns, a purchaser nonetheless must undergo a criminal background check to buy one from a dealer, as Jarrod W. Ramos did. But Ramos was never convicted of a crime serious enough to bar such a purchase.

He pleaded guilty in 2011 to harassing a woman he had known in high school, but harassment isn’t among the misdemeanors that prohibit gun ownership under state or federal law.

Maryland has a new law, which becomes effective in October, that will allow judges to seize guns from a person deemed a danger to themselves or others. But the group of people who can petition for such an order is narrow — it includes only spouses, dating partners and close relatives.

So even had the law been in effect and had there been a threat, neither Capital staff nor the woman he once harassed would have been able to file a “red flag” petition about the alleged shooter, experts said.

The Capital shooting has already caused some lawmakers to begin talking about ways to tighten gun laws as others discuss how best to strengthen mental health services — anything to enact protections to deter another mass shooting.

“If someone is intent on doing something like the tragedy that occurred, maybe we can’t prevent it,” said Del. Dereck E. Davis, a Prince George’s County Democrat. “But that doesn’t mean we don’t keep trying.”

At a Saturday night rally in Baltimore for Democratic gubernatorial candidate Ben Jealous, U.S. Sen. Ben Cardin said the Annapolis shooting was a reminder of why Congress also needs to revisit the issue of more restrictive gun laws.

“Our hearts are heavy about what happened in Annapolis,” Cardin said. “We need to pass sensible gun safety legislation.”

Gun rights advocates say there is no law that could have prevented the targeted rampage on the Annapolis newsroom, but that existing criminal laws — if followed — can effectively prevent dangerous individuals from buying weapons.

Mark Pennak, president of Maryland Shall Issue, blamed prosecutors for failing to use existing criminal laws to effectively punish Ramos for his past actions, and keep him from buying a firearm.

Police say Ramos’ anger with the Capital stemmed from a July 2011 article detailing his harassment of the woman he knew in high school. Ramos pleaded guilty to harassing her, received a 90-day suspended sentence with 18 months’ probation and was required to receive psychological treatment. Had he been convicted of stalking — considered a more serious misdemeanor than harassment — Ramos could have been prevented from buying the shotgun he purchased last year, Pennak said.

The authorities allowed a proven harasser “to get by,” he said. “You don’t need another law for that.”

Anne Arundel County State’s Attorney Wes Adams, who was not in office at the time of Ramos’ harassment conviction, declined to comment. Frank Weathersbee, who held the office at the time, died in 2015.

Ramos, 38, has been charged with five counts of first-degree murder. He is accused of killing five Capital employees: editor and columnist Rob Hiaasen, 59; reporter Wendi Winters, 65; editorial page editor Gerald Fischman, 61; editor and sports writer John McNamara, 56; and sales assistant Rebecca Smith, 34. Two other staff members, Rachael Pacella and Janel Cooley, were injured during the attack. They have been released from the hospital.

Police encountered the Laurel man as early as 2010, when the woman told officers Ramos’ messages to her had turned “vulgar,” court documents say.

A judge approved a restraining order in 2011 and Ramos pleaded guilty. (The conviction was later expunged.)

Court records show Ramos’ aggression did not stop. The same woman received two more restraining orders against him in 2012 and 2013. He was also sending aggressive messages to staff at The Capital.

The newspaper met with county police in 2013 to discuss Ramos, a police report shows. The report said his messages mentioned phrases like “murderous rampage,” “journalist hell” and “open season.” An officer concluded he “did not believe that Mr. Ramos was a threat to employees for The Capital.”

As recently as 2014, Ramos wrote in court filing that he had “sworn a legal oath” to kill Eric Hartley, The Capital columnist who had written about his harassment case.

None of that prevented a licensed firearms dealer from selling Ramos a 12-gauge pump-action shotgun in 2017.

Shotguns and rifles are not on a list of “regulated firearms” under state law. But buying one does require a person to pass a federal background check. Buyers are disqualified if they are found to be drug abusers, fugitives or convicted domestic abusers, for example. Anyone convicted of federal crimes punishable by at least a year in prison are also barred from buying firearms.

Only active protective orders prevent a federally regulated firearms purchase. The most recent order against Ramos expired in March 2014, court records show.

Convictions for state crimes also disqualify people under the federal background check system, but only for offenses punishable by at least two years in prison.

A first offense of harassment carries a maximum penalty of up to 90 days, the punishment Ramos received. But stalking, a similar and often simultaneous charge, warrants up to a 5-year sentence.

While a judge could not have predicted an outburst of violence seven years in the future, in hindsight suggests that state laws may not be adequately preventing dangerous people from obtaining guns, said Sen. Robert A. Zirkin, a Baltimore County Democrat.

He said he and Senate colleagues have begun discussing how to prevent another tragedy like The Capital shooting.

“That’s the type of an individual that you at least want to have the judge have some discretion on taking away gun rights,” Zirkin said.

The General Assembly passed the “red flag” law this year to do just that.

As of October, Maryland will be one of 11 states that authorize “extreme risk protection orders,” giving judges authority to strip firearms from individuals shown to be a threat to themselves or others, even if they are not accused or convicted criminals. Six of those state laws were signed in the wake of the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Florida in February.

The laws vary by state — in Maryland, only blood relatives, spouses, dating partners, co-parents or legal guardians can file “red flag” petitions. Lawmakers narrowed that privilege based on concerns that the petitions could be filed vindictively.

Zirkin questioned why the opportunity was not extended to any person who has been granted a protective order or the target of a convicted stalker.

“That seems like a modification we will take a look at,” he said. “That seems like a modification that should be made.”

Maryland is routinely ranked among states with the toughest laws regulating gun sales and ownership. Major gun legislation has included prohibiting the sale of some assault weapons and granting law enforcement discretion over denying applications to wear or carry handguns.

Maryland also requires that a background check be conducted before the sale of all regulated firearms — mostly handguns — even in private sales. Because shotguns and rifles aren’t regulated under that state law, a background check isn’t conducted when they are sold privately.

Next year, lawmakers could revisit whether the sale of long guns should receive that scrutiny, Davis said. Past attempts to add shotguns and rifles to the list of regulated firearms in Maryland have failed — largely out of concerns that they are used commonly by hunters and farmers, but rarely in crimes. Davis has proposed such bills in the past, and said he will explore similar legislation before next year’s General Assembly session.

Others say they will instead continue to look at mental health issues. Republican Sen. J.B. Jennings, the Senate minority leader, said mental health reforms are more important than gun laws.

“This guy was sick and he needed help,” Jennings said. “Somebody should have called or the courts should have intervened and put this guy away.”

©2018 The Baltimore Sun. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

Original Source -> Liberal Maryland’s Strict Gun Laws Couldn’t Stop Newspaper Shooting

via The Conservative Brief

[topsolarpanels]

The Tea Party leader taking a stand for solar energy: ‘I will do what’s right’

Debbie Dooley is a self-described crusader for solar power in Florida, where she is up against major public power utilities. But she has already won a similar battle in Georgia, and she says her message is that of a true conservative

Debbie Dooley is a firebrand Republican and an outspoken founding member of the Tea Party. But in a fast-intensifying battle over the future of solar power in Florida, she is not on the side you might expect.

Along with a diverse grassroots citizens coalition including environmentalists and other left-leaning activists, Dooley is taking on Big Energy and its big-spending conservative backers in an intriguing fight that puts her toe-to-toe with her onetime political allies.

She is at the spearhead of a campaign to place an initiative before Florida voters next year that would give consumers the freedom to choose to buy their solar energy from smaller private companies and bypass the mega-bucks utilities.

Its Floridas solar eclipse, says Dooley, who points to statistics she claims are proof that the Sunshine State is trailing the nation in utilising its most plentiful natural resource.

If the initiative is successful, Florida would no longer be one of only four states that prohibits so-called third-party power purchase agreements (PPA), which, in basic terms, refer to a consumer allowing a company to install solar panels with no upfront cost, then paying the company for electricity that the panels generate.

As things stand, only those who can afford the substantial initial outlay can power up from the sun, a situation Dooley says is unacceptable. With Florida 14th in the country in terms of installed solar capacity, only $63m was spent on new installations statewide in 2014, according to the Solar Energy Industries Association.

Lets remove the barriers, remove the shackles that protect the monopolies and allow consumer choice and freedom, said Dooley, whose Green Tea coalition of environmentally conscious conservatives is a key component of the Floridians for Solar Choice amalgam.

Unsurprisingly, the big public power utilities dont like the message being pushed by the activists as they tour the state attempting to collect the 683,000 signatures needed by February to get the initiative on Novembers ballot. So companies including Florida Power and Light, Duke Energy, Tampa Electric and Gulf Power are among the donors who have ploughed millions of dollars into a rival group, Consumers for Smart Solar, which is promoting its own initiative that would enshrine in the states constitution their exclusive right to sell solar power.

Their argument is that opening up the industry the way the citizens coalition wants would lead to less regulation and extra expense for traditional consumers in subsidies for the solar industry.

As the duel has become more caustic in recent months, so have the attacks from rightwingers on Dooley, who has driven thousands of miles across Florida with her partner Jason to speak at rallies, lunches and other engagements in support of a new direction for solar power. Some have called her a fake conservative and say she has betrayed her Republican roots. Others have branded her eccentric and dismissed her travels as a solar-powered clown show as she shills for the industry.

I dont worry about the attacks because I understand the political reality, which is theyre afraid of you, Dooley told the Guardian after a recent speaking engagement before the League of Women Voters of Palm Beach County.

If youre not being successful, theyre going to ignore you, so Im really getting under someones skin. I have to laugh at that.

Back in 2009, feeling that the Republican party had lost its way, Dooley joined up with 21 like-minded supporters to give the Tea Party movement its first organised structure. I was tired of politics as usual, tired of big money controlling everything, she said, explaining why she became a director of the Tea Party Patriots.

Now, she says, she finds it ironic that much of the criticism comes from rightwing groups who shared her beliefs, including the Koch brothers-funded American Legislative Exchange Council, but which take an opposite stance on clean energy.

True conservatives champion free-market choice, not government-created monopolies that stifle competition. she said. Trying to protect monopolies from competition is not free market. You should be bound by your principles and develop your position on issues based on your principles, not who your financial donors are.

The presence of Dooley, a pastors daughter from Bogalusa, Louisiana, in the midst of the Florida battle could prove to be a trump card, according to Stephen Smith, executive director of the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy.

Here in Florida, the political leadership is conservative, so having a voice like Debbies and others on the conservative side to be able to stand up for solar is very critical to the success of running this ballot initiative, he said.

Additionally, this is a conflict Dooley has fought and won before. She says the arguments in Florida, and the tactics employed, are similar to those that existed two years ago in Georgia, another red state wrestling with the solar power issue. Despite heavy opposition from the utilities there, and what she says was its $10m war chest against the organisation, Dooleys grassroots coalition won the day, with a third-party solar bill clearing the legislature this April.

If you mentioned solar in Georgia, it was always, No way, no how, but we won that fight with people power, Dooley said. We couldnt match them in money, so we built a coalition, we got free media, we got our message out there. It was easier for us to get press coverage because people were amazed you had these conservative groups, Tea Party groups, the Sierra Club, elected officials, all joining forces to oppose this.

We all had different messages, the different groups, but we were working for the same goal. If we agree solar is the way to go, we come together and ignore issues we may disagree on while respecting the right of everyone to believe and advocate for them. But come together and stay focused. There are many different roads into Atlanta, where I live, and you make your choice depending on which direction youre coming from. What matters is that you end up there.

Debbie Dooley in Atlanta: We won that fight with people power. Photograph: Tom Pietrasik for the Guardian

Even as a little girl, Dooley refused to be put in a box. When her grandfather bought her a dress-up cowgirl costume as a Christmas gift when she was just seven, the self-confessed tomboy complained loudly.

I dont want that. I dont want be a cowgirl. I want a cowboy outfit, Dooley recalls shouting at her relatives. I was so upset, they took it right back and got me the cowboy outfit. Theyd assumed because I was a girl that was what I wanted. But I was not afraid to challenge the norms.

Dooley says her early years following her fathers preachings in Louisiana, Tennessee and Florida helped to shape her political leanings and turned her into the driven character she is today at the age of 57.

I learned at a very early age to speak up and not be taken advantage of. I had no issue doing that, she said. My daddy prepared me well: he was strong, not afraid to take a step out, and I get a lot of my traits from him.

I will do whats right and damn the torpedoes kind of thing. If you know a preachers kid, you know they can be rebellious. People have preconceived notions about you and you fight to show its not like that. You grow up tough, you grow up to be independent.

Any pastor will tell you, you can have 100 in your congregation and only a portion of them will be happy at any one time. You understand that not everyone will be happy; you just do your best and stand for whats right.

Dooley, however, insists that taking a stand does not always have to be a politically charged move. I became a crusader for solar and Im appealing to conservatives, [but] I believe being good stewards of the environment God gave us should not be a partisan issue, she says, pointing out that it was the ultra-conservative president Ronald Reagan who championed the 1987 Montreal Protocol that phased out chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) from aerosols to protect the ozone layer.

I believe in clean energy. Ive always cared about clean air and a clean environment. Ive always been like that, she said.

I have a grandson, Aiden, who is seven. Hell know I fought for energy choice and freedom, hell know I fought for a clean environment for him, so he wouldnt have a polluted world. I see it is my legacy to him.

Unfortunately, the legacy of some of my fellow Republicans is that they simply denied that we were damaging our environment because they were greedy for economic reasons.

Read more: www.theguardian.com

The post The Tea Party leader taking a stand for solar energy: ‘I will do what’s right’ appeared first on Top Rated Solar Panels.

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[fsfantasy95]

Taiwan February 2017

Hi is it I’m going to post something about brent again. My tumblr has nothing left but my obsession with that guy HAHAHA. Waiting for the day I walk out to something or someone better ;)

But meanwhile i’m glad this time in taipei didn’t end in such a shit way like last time (screw you asshole woman). Anyway I took 3.5 days leave because I really wanted a holiday on top of the events - which was a good choice because I escaped a really huge debris-clearing operation at Pulau Ubin. Planned to drop by Hsinchu to eat the hsinchu beehoon & visit NTHU but ya changed my mind at the airport because i couldnt imagine myself lugging the 7kg backpack AND a 3kg DSLR lens throughout so i decided to make my way directly to Changhua where my accommodation was. Found lockers at taoyuan station so I walked around a bit and ate beef noodles in an attempt to feed myself well during the trip (end up I still survived on convenience stores after that). It was then to my horror that there were no seats left on the southbound train so I had to stand throughout the 2hours journey....self reminder to book early next time.

Already dark when I reached Changhua and I went to dump my barangs at the hostel. I don’t like winters because it turns dark so early and I feel like the days are all shortened urgh. I was on budget as usual so I got a dormitory and everyone else had already checked in leaving me with the highest bunk in which I had difficulty getting my things up........... I ate the Pesto sauce spaghetti from 7-11 for dinner and shopped my whole night away at Guangnan. Oh yeah not forgetting me trying to order iced milk tea without ice. Went back to hostel early cos there was absolutely nothing to do in that ulu town (I am visiting only because it is one of the few towns left which I haven’t been to) and I hid at my top bunk scrolling my phone (tindering) while the dorm mates who were kids chirped away about their upcoming art exam. I totally couldn’t blend but no one gave a shit.

Day 2 I left the dorm at 10+am because I was waiting for all the mates to leave first in order to minimize interaction. Yes I am socially awkward af. Well I still had ample time to visit the few attractions at changhua, okay actually I only planned to visit the fan-shaped train garage & the eight trigrams mountain. Got to the foot of the mountain via U-bike, cycling like the roads were my grandfather’s and I climbed the shit up expecting a nice view which I didn’t get. Basically no shit there it was like a place for the retired to chill but I was quite fascinated by the beware of tree branches signs. The fan-shaped garage was much more touristy, not too bad.

Took a train up to taichung then and had to transfer a few buses to my accom near fengjia because the bus frequencies were so abnormal. One thing I like about being in taichung is that the bus trips are almost always free hehe. Anyway I really liked my accomm here cos it’s those capsule rooms and it is perfect for socially awkward individuals like laoniang me. Went to dimdimsum’s taichung branch (actually I don’t know why I still go there because I already have nothing left with the boss) and ordered boluo baos which I waited until I grew mould for. I was honestly quite annoyed because I had to rush to the other venue for xiaoyu’s musical. Haha I really enjoyed it because I just chilled at the last row of the cheapest section drinking my heated can of maixiang. Felt a tinge of regret over the poor seat location cos I couldnt see the stage clearly when Yu made his appearance in ONLY boxers. He was probably the least professional out of the rest but it was good enough I guess. After that I went back to fengjia night market, ate my frozen banana which got me shivering, one chicken roll and a cup of red bean milk. I think the night market is starting to lose its appeal to me hmmms. Walked back along the cold deserted streets and I was actually scared for a while because I suddenly recalled the incident in which the little girl’s head got chopped off ._. 

Saturday - I really didn’t want to leave the capsule but I did and made my way up to Taipei. Bloody bus frequencies didnt match so I had to walk a distance to chaoma station with my barangs ._. kns. And my neck was aching terribly on the bus I couldn’t sleep. Met Mans at bannan line starbucks and she was exclaiming about a random guy sitting opposite who looked like po-chen LOL wtf. I swear I have a phobia of crowds and the book fair was the epitome of it gtfo people. Lol the event was damn stupid we just watched people going on stage to take photos. And we realised we kinda overestimated the abilities of our DSLR lens from this. Also I have to mention that I was very suay because we were rotting away at the entrance for so long and during that short 5 minutes I left for the toilet to clear my contacts from my watering eyes the boys arrived and I missed it all hahahaha congratulations to myself.

There were so many people queueing at Miramar that night already -.- the extent of overnight queueing in TW is so much worse than SG��s. I might consider doing this few years back, but at my age now I don’t fancy sacrificing my sleep shivering in the cold. I fancy a soft bed with warm covers and plenty of rest ;) went to shihlin to get food and there were firecrackers everywhere AND the horrific weekend crowds. Oh right I forgot to describe how we couldnt access our accomm at XMD because there was the TW version of chingay going on and the roads were all blocked and the places were all jammed with people ARGH thus we had to loop a really huge circle to get back.

Anyway the big day and I was tasked with buying all the books since my bias wasnt gonna be at the airport. It was an APOCALYPSE when the mall doors opened at 11am. Should be quite a sight, probably something like train from busan. Anyway skip all the complications and we got the books. Actually don’t even need to queue since there were leftovers. We just cut into some random row before the event started and it wasnt too bad, got a pretty acceptable view with the stools, albeit slightly too at the side. Which actually isnt a bad thing because you can be more certain the 鏡頭照s are yours and not mistaken from some other fan similarly concentrated in the middle of the sardine can. Ok I seldom praise him (from the bottom of my heart, I always tell lies when I post on fansite HAHA sorry) but he really looks good in the suit *v* I am damn sorry I was lost for words and didnt reply appropriately when he asked if I looked forward to his china show HAHAHAHA my true self revealed. but i really might just not watch it lolzers. didn’t say much despite going up stage 2 times but its ok i’m decently satisfied that he still recognises this poor lupsup overseas fan and looked genuinely happy on stage, thanks <3 好久不見了我也開心謝謝你

That was one whole day gone and the books were heavy AF no kidding. I enjoyed some solitude with my beer that night and wtf i actually woke up early enough to make it to the airport. If not for the possibility of mj flying and xj coming back i’d be sleeping until check-out time TT and turns out he didnt fly but i had fun being a paparazzi. Haha back to town to do some last minute buys and eat DDX - met ahwei there and I admit i was quite excited but... he has a wife now and that changes things hmm. Then back to airport again for our own flight, didn’t get to see jaydaone and exceeded flight baggage weight tmd. Just wanted to get home because i had to work tomorrow. **** working life . I need another holiday again. Till next time.

Miss you my boy HAHA wtf gonna be single forever at this rate

[viralhottopics]

OscarsSoWhite: Chris Rock exposed the depths of the industry’s race problem

Rock had a tough gig at this years Oscars, trying to deal with the protests against Hollywoods diversity problem, but he inadvertently revealed the tip of an even greater iceberg

At the 88th Academy Awards on Sunday night, host Chris Rock moderated a discussion of race as it should be conducted in the United States: uncomfortably and without any easy resolution in just a few hours. And like most such attempts, it wasnt as successful at solving anything, as it was inadvertently exposing the breadth of the problem through comedy.

Rock had an extremely difficult task in front of him, having agreed to host the show before the all-white acting nods were announced, which prompted boycotts and a re-emergence of #OscarsSoWhite. He certainly didnt know that a Justice for Flint fundraiser would be happening on the same evening, or that hed unwittingly prove how much more Hollywood cares about Girl Scout cookies than it does about drinking water for black people.

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Chris Rock tackles Oscars diversity row head on during opening monologue

During the opening montage of films from the past year, I found myself engaging in the age-old pastime I call counting Negroes wondering if the Academy was fitting in as many black faces as it could, despite none of those actors being nominated. I was relieved when Rock began his introduction similarly: Man, I counted at least 15 black people on that montage. I was thrilled when he bluntly said: Is Hollywood racist? Youre damn right Hollywood is racist.

Rock kept black people at the forefront throughout the night, which was a cultural win of sorts. But his monologue like his efforts overall to challenge the racism of Hollywood was hit and miss. I was glad to see the audience confronted in the Dolby theatre, but it wasnt exactly enjoyable. For example, Rock joked about telling Barack Obama at a Hollywood fundraiser: Mr President, you see all these writers and producers and actors? They dont hire black people, and theyre the nicest, white people on earth! Theyre liberals!

But it made me cringe to see those nice, powerful white people laughing at how they withhold jobs and power from black people, then walking away with gold. Earlier that evening, more than 2,000 miles away, it was equally cringeworthy to watch the comedian Hannibal Buress as he joked to a crowd in Flint, Michigan, about being checked into his hotel regular style, and being given a key without any warning. Theres nothing else you want to tell me? Buress wondered. Like, Hey, the water is poison right now? Watching Buress joke to the people of Flint about being poisoned with lead was as uncomfortable (and brilliant) as his infamous routine about Bill Cosby. Buress was performing at the Justice for Flint fundraiser that black directors Ava DuVernay (snubbed for Selma last year) and Ryan Coogler (snubbed for Creed) had scheduled for the same night as the Oscars. Watching Buress joke about racism in its most deadly form to an audience of black people affected by it was uncomfortable in a very different way to watching Rock yuk it up with powerful white folks.

Rock punched down a couple times in disappointing ways. First, he said that black people didnt protest the Oscars in the early 1960s because we had real things to protest; you know, were too busy being raped and lynched to care about who won best cinematographer. This is not true NPRs Gene Demby has written about a protest in 1962 and implies black people who care about representation in the media cant also care about the lynching and raping of black people today.

Rock ended his monologue taking a swipe at the #AskHerMore campaign pushing for journalists to ask women film-makers about more than what they are wearing by saying: Everythings not sexism, everythings not racism. It was an unnecessary dismissal of sexism in a business so sexist that 93% of top films are directed by men.

Where Rock succeeded was in keeping the audience nervous about race throughout the night. The highlight was when he subversively introduced the Academys new director of the minority outreach, Clueless actor and Fox News contributor Stacey Dash. Dash, who has called for the abolition of Black History Month, came on stage to say, awkwardly: I cannot wait to help my people out. Happy Black History Month! The clueless and nearly silent white people at the Dolby theatre didnt know whether to laugh, clap or hide from the revolution. To black America, and especially black Twitter, Dashs appearance couldnt have provoked an angrier reaction than if Jamie Foxx came on stage to say black Oscar hopefuls needed to #actbetter for a fair shot. But in bringing out the Republican Dash, Rock skewered how meaningless attempts at diversity usually are.

As the ceremony wore on, the disconnect between black America outside and inside the Dolby theatre grew increasingly obvious, no more so than when Rock walked into the audience to sell Girl Scout cookies for his daughters troop. Shaking down the participants for cookie orders, Hollywoods wealthiest waived bills at little black Girl Scouts to the tune of $65,243. Meanwhile, despite a head start on the air and trending on Twitter, the Justice for Flint fundraiser had, at the same time, raised just $52,000.

Ava DuVernay (@AVAETC) February 29, 2016

Oscar audience raises $65k for cookies. Can we raise $100k for folks poisoned by their own water? Text JUSTICE to 83224! #JusticeForFlint

For all the ways in which the Academy desperately did not want to come off as racist this year, no one mentioned Flint, nor the fundraiser that Academy brethren were hosting at the same time. Unwittingly, Rock showed that the Academy cares more about the Girl Scout cookie sales of a black stars daughter than it does about getting water to the poisoned black people of Flint.

Despite winners cause-filled speeches, the Academy is not about changing society or championing social justice. Its about consolidating power, and its awards show is mostly about trying to expand its power without necessarily sharing it. Yes, not all the winners were white this year, including Mexican-born director Alejandro Gonzlez Irritu, who won best director for a second year in a row for The Revenant. (Fortunately, no one even yelled Who gave this sonofabitch his green card? when he won this time, as Sean Penn did last year.)

After Spotlight won best picture and Rock signed off with shout-outs to Black Lives Matter, Brooklyn and cookies, the weirdest juxtaposition came as Public Enemys Fight the Power was played over the credits. It was a craven play to black viewers. The Oscars are at the tip of the iceberg of cultural power in America, so how can they invoke Public Enemy to call for fighting … themselves?

This rests upon an Academy that is 91% white and 76% male, whose membership is drawn from an entertainment industry which, according to recent studies, is a straight, white boys club where women, people of colour and those identifying as LGBT are not represented on screen or behind the camera. This also reflected in US academia and journalism media. When Melissa Harris-Perry walked off her show on the left-leaning MSNBC network last week, writing that it had been taken away from her, her removal stoked fears that, as the Obama years wind down, people of colour will be pushed out of media positions after making modest gains. A few days before the Oscars, the New York Times published a report describing the faces of American power as being nearly as white as the Oscar nominees.

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Lady Gaga performs with sexual assault survivors during the Oscars

In keeping us uncomfortable as we talked about it, and in showing how the Academy loves his children more than Flints, Rock made us confront Hollywoods racism and how difficult, if not impossible, it will be to eradicate without changing the whole damn system.

Read more: http://bit.ly/2ii5Ae8

from OscarsSoWhite: Chris Rock exposed the depths of the industry’s race problem