#i applied for unemployment but it's taking forever to figure out

[boilingheart]

that's it. im writing a suicide note on linkedin

[vanilladyfics]

Fighting Fate - Ch 1

Read Chapter Two

Ship: Sir Nighteye x GN!Reader

Genre: Angst with a happy ending, Mutual Pining, Office Romance

Warnings: Suicide Themes, Slight Sexuality, Yandere if you squint

Word Count: 1.6k

Author’s Note:  I needed to get this out of my head so I can focus on other projects.  This story takes place after Eri’s rescue where nothing bad happened.

Summary: Nighteye’s quirk predicts his assistant will die before the night’s end, but he’s not about to accept fate this time around.

Do not repost.

-----

Mirai Sasaki was a hero first, man second.  His greatest strength as a hero came not from his precognition, but his control.  A control that, lately, has been slipping.  As a general rule, Sasaki only used his quirk for his hero work.  He only had one shot at it a day, so to waste it on something personal would not only be unprofessional, but could put himself and the people he had sworn to protect at risk should an emergency arise.  And yet, he wanted to use it on you.

Sasaki had no problem with you when you first started as his assistant.  Sure, there were times you needed to be reminded to smile, and his jokes didn't always land with you (which was on you-- his delivery was flawless), but everyone had those days.  Midnight was partially to blame.  Her recent jokes about his tickle torture machine being used for foreplay had been fresh in his mind the first time you needed it to be reminded to smile.  Sasaki had dismissed her comments easily enough.  There was nothing inherently sexual about tickling someone into submission with their hands bound above their head, helpless and vulnerable.  Their hysterical laughter turning into gasps and pants as they struggled for air.  Thighs clamped tightly together as they desperately tried to avoid wetting themselves, begging for release.

Then he put you in those cuffs, saw you writhe against the machine, and he understood.  Seeing you thrash about, pulling against your restraints, your shirt coming untucked from your waistband as you struggled, Sasaki felt... something.  He turned the machine off in a panic the moment he diagnosed what he was feeling.  Kayama was right, and he was a fool.

He hadn't put anyone in the machine since.  He considered taking it down and retiring it all together, but it served as an effective warning that his office would be full of smiles.  Still, he couldn't look at it the same way-- couldn't look at you the same way. He barely looked at you at all, actually.  Each time he did, his mind went to unprofessional places.  He made a point not to treat you any differently from his other employees.  He bought flowers.  Not for you.  For the office. It just happened that the logical place for them was on the front desk-- your desk.  The treats in the break room you liked weren't for you, but for the team.

Technically, Sasaki never instated a rule against dating subordinates.  He managed all of his employees directly, and never thought about any of them romantically, so the thought never occurred to him to implement one.  Asking out his assistant might be legal, but he morally couldn't put you in a position where you might fear for your livelihood.  The right thing to do would have been to get you a job somewhere else, wait until you were settled, and then make a move... but then you'd be so far away.

Sasaki couldn't stay in this limbo between courting and ignoring you forever.  He had a few options.  He could ignore the feelings, keeping you at arms length just to keep in his life.  He could throw all sense of propriety aside and ask you directly, risk losing you completely and forcing him to find a new assistant.  So he decided. If four-o-clock hit and he hadn't used his quirk for the day, he'd use it on you.  If he saw your future together, it was fate, morality and propriety be damned.  If you ended up with someone else, he would be a man step aside.

--

You winced at the pounding in your head, forcing yourself to smile despite the pain.  You couldn't let anyone see you frown in Sir Nighteye's Hero Agency.  The last time you did, you were stuck in that HR nightmare of a contraption until you nearly wet yourself in front of Sir Nighteye himself.  You flushed at the memory.  You needed to get out, and this new influx of emails only confirmed it: Job applications, for your position.  He had caught you looking down once and had been acting strangely ever since.  Now you know it's because he had been sneaking around trying to replace you. You double checked Mr. Sasaki's schedule before confirming the interview times for this first batch of applicants.  You should have seen it coming, but it still hurt to have to help pick out your own replacement.  You saw their resumes.  Many of them had a better education and more experience than you.  They'd be a much better fit at the agency.  They probably wouldn't have to pretend to be happy.

You checked the time.  Four-o-clock.  One more hour and you'd be free to go home and cry yourself to sleep.  You paused.  No.  You still had to pick up groceries, reach out to your doctor about these headaches and starting your medication again, and figure out how to respectfully decline this last arranged marriage meeting.  Somehow, you doubted “Sorry, I but I still have a thing for my boss even though he wants to fire me” was going to cut it.  You added 'apply for jobs' to your mental to-do list.

Mr. Sasaki walked in.  You plastered your best smile on your face to greet him.  “Good evening, sir!”  You would play ignorant.  If he wanted to be sneaky, so could you.

“Good evening, [Y/N].  How are you?”

“I'm doing well... Sir?”  He was looking you in the eye for the first time since the tickle incident.  It felt strange somehow. Serious.

He cleared his throat, pulling a business card from the inner pocket of his blazer.  “Make sure to update Edgeshot's contact information before you leave.”

Your fingers brushed against his as you accepted the card.  “Right away, sir.”

He looked in your eyes, and your future played out in his mind like a strip of film: The stranger harassing you on the train ride home, stepping over the candidacy pictures of potential suitors someone slipped under your door, answering a phone call and arguing until you hung up and threw the phone against the wall.  The tears. The bathtub.  And then...

Nothing.

“My office.  Now.”

Icy dread washed over you as he closed the door behind you.  Just how much had he seen?  You stood at attention under his unnerving gaze.  The man was as handsome as he was intimidating.

“Tell me what's going on.”

You floundered for an answer. “Just... work.”  His grip on your arm tightened.  You winced.  He had to know you were lying-- he clearly saw something in your future he didn't like.  You had to give him something.  “I went ahead and scheduled the interviews for the assistant position next week.  Thank you for my time here.  I'm sorry we weren't a better fit.”

Oh.

He let go of your arm.  He only put out that help wanted ad to be prepared in case you left the agency.  He should have considered your reaction when you found out.  Stupid.  So incredibly stupid.  He was usually so thorough.  Sasaki sat at his desk.  He needed to think, and he couldn't do that standing right next to you.  When he saw your timeline cut short, he never thought he might have contributed to it.  He could change the future.  Fix it.  He'd seen it done before.

“I'm not firing you.”

“It's okay.  I didn't take it personally,” you lied, reminding yourself to smile.  Always smile.

You clearly didn't believe him, but he couldn't bring himself to tell you why he was looking for a new assistant.  Now wasn't the time for a love confession.  How could today have gone so wrong? He needed a plan.

“What are your plans for this evening?”

Was he asking you to stay late?  You shrugged.  “Running errands.  Groceries.  Dinner.”  File for unemployment.  “Normal stuff.”

He nodded, threading his fingers together.  It didn't sound like you were planning on ending things tonight, but he wasn't an expert.  His hero work centered on fighting external threats, like villains or natural disasters, not civilians who were a danger to themselves.  He should let an expert take over, but could he really entrust you to a stranger?  Could he convince you to talk to a crisis center when you couldn't admit anything was wrong?  Would the shame push you over that edge?  And why were you still smiling?

He needed to buy time, and for that, you wouldn't be leaving his sight.  He looked into your future again, but it remained unchanged.  The last push seemed to be that phone call, but he couldn't make out who it was from.  It didn't matter. “Give me your phone.”

His tone brokered no argument, and you handed it over without hesitation.  His thumb brushed over the screen.  It was cracked.  Surely he was paying you enough to have it repaired or replaced outright.  Sasaki frowned, considering.  No phone meant no phone call.  No phone call meant no tears.

He snapped it in half.

“What the hell!?”  You rushed to take the broken pieces from him, but he held them tighter.

“I'll buy you a new one.”

“That's not the point!  It wasn't yours!”

“I need you to work overtime tonight. You are not to leave this building, is that understood?”

Fate could be rewritten.  Sasaki would ensure you made it through tonight, even if you ended up hating him for it.

[mr-entj]

You've mentioned how you easily cut people out of your life a few times now. You are so certain of yourself and your choices whereas, after cutting many people out of my life as well, I have to ask. People make mistakes and can hurt you sometimes, but if everyone is flawed, how do you know which ones to cut out without leaving yourself alone in a lonely way? I ask because my own choices have been feeling muddled for a while when I used to be confident and with no second thought.

Related answers:

I have problems figuring out when I'm using black and white thinking ("this person is a waste of my time, cut contact immediately") and committing myself to stand my ground. i always feel like I'm being too stubborn and unreasonable. how would you face that?

What is your internal checklist for friends?

How do you deal with friends who project their personal weaknesses into your relationship? Are you willing to forgive jealousy, insecurity disguised as competition etc?

To ensure we didn’t misunderstand each other, I want to clarify that “easily cut people out of my life” doesn’t mean I cut them out for minor mistakes, it means that once they make major violations the process of removing them is swift and drama-free. I’m not cutting people out of my life because they like strawberry milk instead of chocolate milk, they don’t read my blog, or they think cats are better than dogs-- I’m cutting them out for severe breaches in my core values (infidelity, disloyalty, malicious sabotage, etc.). I’m not into public, emotional and dramatic shouting matches, scream fests, and social media meltdowns. When the time comes to cut, I explain to the person exactly what they did wrong so there’s no confusion or doubt, why I’m taking this specific action, and (depending on the person) I’ll wish them well before I move on with my life. There’s no perfect formula that if A happens, then you should react with B because anything involving relationships, friendships, and other human beings is an art and not a science. 

The reason I’m confident in my decisions is rooted in how I manage the friendships in my life:

1. I have clearly defined and communicated boundaries. I’m aware of what is and isn’t acceptable to me, I’ve identified my values, and I’ve set my limits. When someone crosses my boundaries, I figure out why they did so and then I look at the entire relationship as a whole to understand patterns of behavior before I take action. Sometimes the issue is that our boundaries and standards are unrealistic, other times the issue is that our boundaries and standards are realistic but everyone around us can’t meet them. Figure out which is your issue. If it’s the first one, talk to many people and get their feedback to calibrate your expectations. If it’s the second one, change your environment. This is how I figure out the difference. 

2. I set realistic expectations based on the person I’m dealing with. There’s a quote: “If you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid.” The same thing applies to people. 

For example, I have a friend named Kevin. Kevin is a nice guy with a good heart and a brilliant mind for sociology, psychology, anthropology, pop culture, and technology. Whenever we catch up, we talk for hours about all sorts of social science topics and bounce ideas off each other. In my friendship with Kevin, I get rewarding intellectual stimulation and great insight on some of my startup ideas. However, Kevin is hopelessly unreliable and flaky, he can’t manage money to save his life, and he has long bouts of unemployment due to laziness and inaction. Based on what I know about Kevin, he’s a great conversation partner and trusted friend, but he would be a disaster roommate or colleague at work. I adjusted my expectations of Kevin based on his personality without compromising my boundaries and we’ve been good friends for over 20 years without many issues. I don’t expect everyone to be great at everything for me, I expect them to be exactly who they are and great at their own strengths.

3. I’m very selective when it comes to choosing close friends which means I don’t need to cut many people out because I don’t let many people in to begin with. I don’t want to be friends with everyone I meet and I’m not too concerned about being liked by everyone who meets me, being acquaintances is just fine, or even less than that. I’d rather keep my door tightly shut and let people into my home one by one only after meeting stringent (but realistic) standards than to swing my door wide open, let everyone off the street into my home, and then have to kick a bunch of people out. 

4. My trust takes a long time and a lot of effort to earn. Becoming friends with me is like playing an RPG video game with multiple levels. As time goes by and we cross new milestones, our friendship levels up and you unlock new perks and new buffs from me. You don’t get all the perks and all the buffs at the beginning of the game. The more I get to know you, the more I interact with you, the more you prove to me that you can be trusted, then the more you get from me such as my time, my loyalty, my knowledge, my connections, etc. The opposite is also true: the more you screw up, the more levels you lose, and the more perks and buffs are taken away. There are many steps before someone is cut out of my life so when it finally happens it’s never a surprise and always after warnings have been given.

5. I love myself. I believe that I deserve happiness and peace of mind in my life without having to compromise my deeply held values or core identity. I will keep searching for the right people to surround myself with until I find them. There’s no such thing as loneliness because I don’t believe you own people forever-- you experience them temporarily in the time you have together. When you’ve outgrown the relationship and it no longer brings happiness, I know it’s time to move on.

[fleetwooded]

it’s not even technically day 1 of unemployment but already i feel STIR CRAZY. i think it’s just the headspace of like. knowing i am not going to work tomorrow and genuinely not knowing how long it’ll be until i go back. this day has felt so loonggg and i have not done anything. all i want to do is go to a brewery w my friends and drown my sorrows like i usually do on a sunday but obviously i cannot do that!! ughhh i definitely need to get my head together and work on healthy practices for this indefinite laid off social distancing period. 

a to do list for today:

- get outside before the sun goes down and take a long walk around the park - pick up some stuff from the pharmacy - make a full dinner, not just annies mac & cheese (marinate tofu right now) - spend this evening reading, journalling, or even watching tv but NOT checking the news every 2 seconds

for the week:

- get my paperwork together and apply for EI - figure out how to get my bike back from my old house (it is locked to a tree and i lost the key) - deep clean/do laundry - finally put up photos/posters/etc and deal with the boxes of stuff that have been sitting around for ages - cancel my credit card that i lost THREE MONTHS AGO and order a new one

just gotta remember that i needed a break anyways!! and at least it is spring and the sun is shining and for now nothing is stopping me from going out on long walks/hikes!! and now is the time to do all of the things i have been putting off forever! i am NOT gonna fall into the depression patterns of past periods of unemployment and i AM going to get through this

[awayfromthedesk]

Navigating Unemployment is, in a word, exhausting. Here's what to expect.

By Marvin Green IV

One look at the California EDD (Employment Development Department) website is enough to induce a migraine. It’s stressful enough to be in a position where you have lost your job and need to file for unemployment, but navigating the paperwork is a whole other level of pressure. 

When you lose your job there are a lot of things you want to get in line. You are likely looking at refurbishing your resume, scouring for available jobs, perhaps even looking for new training or school. But in the meanwhile you will want to get paid from the unemployment pool you paid into as an employed worker.

First, figure out whether you qualify for unemployment benefits. The California EDD website (edd.ca.gov) has four requirements that need to be met. You must be totally or partially unemployed. You must be unemployed by no fault of your own—meaning you weren’t fired for being late, or you didn’t finally work up the courage to tell your boss to shove it. You must be ready, searching for and willing to work—which basically means you understand that unemployment cannot be your income forever. Finally, you must have earned enough money over a 12-month period to file a claim. 

How much is enough? The state’s  Economic Development Department has a roundabout way of explaining (as bureaucracies do). But you need to have made at least $1,300 within a three-month period, or  if you make under $1300 in that time you must make at least $900 within the same time frame with at least $1,124 income overall over 12 months.

If you meet these requirements you may file a claim for unemployment benefits. You will want to go to the website to apply or to print out the forms you have to mail. Next you will click on the “claims” button. On the next screen you will scroll down to the “Unemployment Insurance” section and click “File a new UI claim.”

Two big things have changed as far as requirements for signing up. Previously you had to wait seven  days to file, but this waiting period is currently waived because—you know, we’re in a pandemic. You also are not required to look for work each week to maintain eligibility. Both of these are temporary exceptions until further notice according to the EDD website. 

There are a number of things you will need to be ready to answer  to file your claim:

Personal information, i.e. full name, address, social security number, etc.

Last employer’s information including company name, supervisor’s name, address (mailing and physical location) and phone number;

Last date worked and the reason you are no longer working;

Gross earnings in the last week you worked, beginning with Sunday and ending with your last day of work;

Information on all employers you worked for during the past 18 months, including name, address (mailing and physical location), the dates of employment, gross wages earned, hours worked per week, hourly rate of pay, and the reason you are no longer working;

Notice to Federal Employees About Unemployment Insurance, Standard Form 8 (former federal employees only);

DD 214 Member 4 copy (ex-military only);

Citizenship status, and, if you are not a U.S. citizen, information from your employment authorization document

*This was taken directly from the edd.ca.gov website*

When you have all of this together you are ready to file your claim.

There are three ways to file for unemployment. Fax or mail, by phone or online.

-------

Once you log in (or have your form), you will be prompted to answer questions about your previous employment and how you came to be unemployed. You must answer questions about previous employers in the past several years. You also must commit to being ready and willing to work, should it come your way despite the fact looking for work is not required at the moment. This is true for every form of application, be it mail, phone or fax.

After you have answered these questions your claim will go through some unseen channels and stay in the “pending” state for a bit. You may be asked to answer more questions online or via mail, should they be unsure about your claim. For instance, this writer had to re-do all the paperwork via mail because one question did not have a valid answer. So be careful as you fill all of these questions out.

Upon completion, you will be able to follow the progress of your claim online. Normally you can call to check the status of a claim, but this writer has found that each time he calls there are no operators available and they ask to call back. It will let you know the amount you will be receiving per week as well as any other bonus payments you may be receiving.

At the end of filing for your claim, you will be asked whether you would like a debit card (which acts like a standard debit card without limits, minus a fancy chip) or check. 

For convenience, I picked the debit card. Either way, it can take 2-3 weeks to receive your card or check. (Note, if you have filed for unemployment or disability in the last 5 years, you will not receive a new card. Rather you will receive more money on the previous card that you had. If, like me, you did not keep your card from the previous unemployment claim, you must call Bank of America’s EDD hotline to request a new card. This replacement card costs $10 and can be shipped in several days.)

Speaking of Bank of America, once you have received your card you must activate it on the EDD website—it will redirect you to Bank of America’s website and you will have found out that you now have an account with Bank of America for your debit card. From that account page, you can transfer money into your primary bank account if you wish. If you opted for the check you can deposit it straight into your bank account. 

Every other week you will be asked to fill out a form stating that you are able to work, you have been looking for work, any jobs you have applied for, and the status of those opportunities. Normally if you have turned down work, they will ask you why and you must have a valid reason.  

You will be able to receive these benefits for 52 weeks, so they normally will expect you to be actively looking for work. But as these times are not normal, EDD has nixed the requirement to actively search for a job, as stated above. 

When you do find employment that allows you to make more money per week than EDD pays you, you must cancel your claim by going to the contact tab in your EDD homepage. You can also call or mail EDD to let them know you are reemployed. 

This is how the usual process goes. Factors like how long you receive benefits, plus how much, can be disputed or policy changes can even shift because of things like COVID-19, so check updates and/or pay attention to your snail mail regularly.

[matrixaffiliate]

Patient

NEW STORY!

(This is the story I previewed here.)  I’m so excited for this story! I’m still in the middle of writing it, but don’t worry - I never abandon a story. I’ll try and get chapters done at least every other week. Enjoy!

FFN and AO3

Ginny never wanted to end up a wedding coordinator, especially when at 35 she hasn’t had her own wedding. But when she loses her big corporate event planning position, she’s more or less forced into the job. It’s not all bad though, Ginny gets to plan Victoire’s wedding, and she’s rather taken with the fiance’s godfather.

Patient

Ginny slid her keys into her bag as she walked into work. She’d just pulled off her biggest event yet, a conference of 5000 people and she had coordinated it all: the expo-center, the hotels, the food, the speakers, the free stuff, all of it. And it had gone off without a hitch. She was looking forward to simply writing up her final review and then getting started on the next event, a much smaller in-house event for the company management.

“Ms. Weasley,” a deadly sweet voice called out as she sat down at her desk. Ginny turned to find a squatted toad in a pink dress suit.

Dolores Umbridge stood directly to her left with what looked like excitement across her normally sour face. “I need a word, in my office.”

She looked at Ginny expectantly as Ginny cautiously stood from her chair; then the toad turned on her heels and practically marched down the hall.

Ginny knew this couldn’t be good, but she couldn’t figure out what it could be about. The conference had gone off perfectly, she’d even come in exactly on budget - no small feat. It hit her when she walked into Dolores’ office and saw the HR representative sitting at the desk.

“You’re firing me?” Ginny could feel her eyes bulging out of their sockets.

“Ginny, it’s nice to see you,” the HR rep that had hired her, Richard if she remembered correctly, stood and held out his hand. Ginny didn’t take it, she just stood, rooted to carpet.

“You’re firing me?” She turned to Dolores who smiled.

“Oh no, but we are dissolving the position of event coordinator. We’ll be moving all of your responsibilities to each department’s secretary.” Dolores practically beamed as she settled in her seat, “Please, sit down.”

Ginny wearily took the empty seat, “What about the corporate wide events?”

“The secretaries will work as a team and split the work,” Richard chimed in.

Ginny almost laughed. That was ridiculous. You couldn’t make these events happen without a main face, someone who all the vendors could come to and know they’d get a direct answer. Event planning wasn’t committee material.

“And,” Dolores pushed a small stack of papers across the desk to Ginny, “we’d like to offer you the opportunity to be the marketing department’s new secretary.”

Ginny glanced at the offer letter and this time she did laugh out loud. “That’s a 30% pay cut.”

“But it’s continued employment,” Richard added hastily.

Ginny took a deep breath and counted to ten, slowly, before speaking. “I’d like be considered a layoff and have my severance package instead.”

The look in Dolores’ eyes told Ginny she’d played right into their hand. Whatever. Fine. It didn’t matter.

“Richard has that paperwork,” Dolores turned to him. “After you sign it all he will escort you to your desk and then out of the building.”

Ginny wasn’t listening. She was focusing on not screaming. She wasn’t going to give the pink toad the satisfaction. She was going to walk out of this damn building with her head held high.

The next ten minutes felt like an out of body experience. Ginny went through the paperwork, signed everything, collected her belongings, and nodded politely to Richard as she handed over her badge. She slid into her car, shut the door, took a deep breath, and then screamed at the top of her lungs.

They’d fired her!

After pulling off the kind of events she was for this stupid company they fired her!

Ginny had been mad before, but this was a whole new level of furious. She needed to get home. She needed to call Luna. And she needed to scream a bit more.

Twenty minutes later, Ginny sat on her sofa, still in her power suit, a carton of ice cream in her hand and Luna offering some comfort on the other side of the sofa.

“I’m so sorry, Ginny.” Luna repeated for the millionth time.

“Thanks,” Ginny sighed and took another bite of ice cream before grabbing her laptop off the table. “I guess I should go update my resume and start applying for a new position.”

“Is event coordinator something most companies hire?” Luna asked as she moved closer to Ginny.

“Depends,” Ginny shrugged. “If they’re big enough and they do events outside the company then usually.”

Luna looked worried as she took in that information, but Ginny tried not to notice. She was going to believe that there was a job out there right now just for her.

It turned out that she should have shared Luna’s concern. Ginny had spent a full month applying and interviewing for corporate event coordinator positions to no avail.

“I don’t know what to do,” Ginny groaned as she sat across from her dad. He’d invited her out to lunch and she ignored how readily she’d agreed to a paid meal, along with the tinge of embarrassment she felt when he handed her two cooler bags full of food her mum had prepared.

“Maybe you need to broaden your search,” her dad furrowed his brow. “Be willing to relocate or switch fields.”

Ginny grimaced at the thought of switching fields. The only other thing that existed for event coordinators outside of corporate was wedding planning.

No, thank you.

Ginny didn’t have anything against weddings, aside from the fact that they were ridiculous and overdone and overpriced and she couldn’t put on the show that every bride was getting her happily ever after day in and day out. Nevermind that Ginny was convinced that she wasn’t going to be getting a wedding of her own. As her mother so frequently put it, “you’re nearly 36, don’t you think it’s time you settled down?” Which translated in Ginny’s mind as “you’re nearly past your prime, find someone before you expire.” But Ginny had no prospects, and no real desire to play the dating game again. She’d played it all through her twenties, and she was tired of it. So Ginny had accepted that she was probably just going to be single and put a lot of effort into being a good aunt and daughter and friend and person.

“I know you don’t like the idea of moving,” Arthur patted her hand, “but sometimes we have to roll with the punches. Life has a way of leading us in the right direction if we’re doing our best to be decent human beings.”

The conversation moved on from there but Ginny couldn’t keep from fretting. She was starting to dig into her savings. Her severance was one week of pay for every year she’d worked at the company. Her four years of working there gave her one month’s pay and even with cutting back on her expenses, she knew that her savings wouldn’t last forever.

Ginny walked to her car after bidding her dad goodbye and felt trapped in her situation. She was overqualified for any store attendant position and specialized enough that standard marketing positions preferred other applicants over her. She was running out of options almost as fast as she was running out of money. Ginny was pulled from her melancholy thoughts by her phone buzzing. It was an email from someone who found her on LinkedIn asking if she’d be willing to interview with Wedding Composition to be their newest wedding coordinator.

Ginny stared at the email. She really didn’t want to do this, but she couldn’t see an alternative. Her savings would run out, and that money had originally been for something entirely different than sustaining her through unemployment. She could always interview with them, take the job if offered, and then keep looking for something in corporate. It would at least pay the bills and make it so she wouldn’t need to scrimp after every penny. She would simply jump ship the minute something in corporate came along. Weddings would be easy. No one ever had weddings that compared to the scale of some of the corporate events she pulled off. She would have plenty of time to interview elsewhere. The more she thought about it, the more Ginny thought it was a great idea.

Ginny selected the contact number on her phone and hit the dial option.

Emily McCarthy was exactly what Ginny pictured when she thought of a wedding coordinator. She was bubbly and excited and exuded an optimism that bordered on insanity. But she loved Ginny and was positive that Ginny would love wedding planning so much she’d give up on finding a corporate event coordinator position and stay on forever with her and the rest of the team.

The rest of the team included Josh and Lyndi, both had years of experience in wedding planning. They also were in love with their work and thought they were creating dreams. They echoed Emily’s sentiments that Ginny would lose all desire to work anywhere else after she’d experienced wedding planning. But Ginny really didn’t care, she just was happy to have a job again and a paycheck coming in.

“Congratulations!” Molly beamed at her daughter that Sunday. Bill had complained that the family hadn’t gathered in a few months and Molly had risen to the occasion, inviting everyone home for a full family dinner. Ginny took note that Bill and his family had yet to show up.

“Thanks, Mum,” Ginny smiled, “it’s nice to have a job again.”

“You found a position?” Hermione gave Ginny a hug and shifted baby Rose to one side.

“I found something to get me by for now,” Ginny tickled Rose’s tummy before sighing. “I’m the newest wedding coordinator for Wedding Composition.”

Hermione’s face scrunched in confusion. She knew how much Ginny looked down on wedding planning. But Ginny was saved from having to explain by Bill and his brood filing through the door along with a young man with turquoise blue hair.

“Way to show up, slacker.”

“Be nice,” Molly chided Ginny as she ushered everyone in.

“Excuse me, everyone,” Bill raised his voice, “I’d like to introduce the man who wants to steal my daughter. Ted Lupin, meet the rest of your future family.”

Ginny’s mind quickly processed the words her brother spoke and looked down at her niece’s hand. Sure enough, an engagement ring sparkled in the light. Then the room erupted with cheers and questions and a lot of tears on Molly’s part.

Ginny knew her niece was old enough on paper to get married. She even knew Vic had been dating the same boy for the last three years. But Ginny couldn’t wrap her brain around it. Little Vicky was getting married at just 18? It felt absurd.

But then, it felt nauseating, because her little niece would be married, and Ginny was not. Ginny thought she had come to terms with the idea that she probably wouldn’t marry, but that was before the next generation started marrying. That was before 35 suddenly felt like 70. Ginny was about to excuse herself when her mother added to the anxiety.

“Oh this is perfect! Ginny just took a position as the newest wedding coordinator at Wedding Composition!” Molly turned to Ginny with an excitement in her eyes that Ginny was sure she’d only seen when weddings and babies were being discussed. “Ginny you have to plan Victoire and Ted’s wedding! It would be perfect!”

Ginny forced the panic down and put on a smile, hoping it didn’t look like a grimace. “I’d love to, you’ll be my first clients!”

Bill put his arm around Ginny, “Great, let’s talk budget before Vic gives you her wish list, and Ted can get you in touch with his godfather. He’s offered to help pay for the photographer and the flowers and suits.”

“Godfather?” Ginny repeated, surprised that it wasn’t his parents offering to help pay.

Ted shrugged, “He’s the only family I’ve got.”

The next day was Ginny’s official first day at work, but it really was just going to be a continuation of the previous evening. After laying out the budget with Bill she had spent the following three hours trying to go over wedding details with Vic. It was useless though because every female family member had to have her say about what would make the wedding perfect. Ginny had figured out pretty quick she wasn’t going to get very far and just let everyone talk at Vic and Ted. This morning she was going to be able to actually begin planning things out with her niece and soon to be nephew, along with the godfather who was coming to give her his budget figures.

She sighed as she opened her calendar on her tablet, so much for being able to jump ship the minute she found another job. Now she was stuck coordinating weddings until Vic was married. The next ten months were going to be very long months. Oh well. She pulled out the white binder with gold lace applique printed on it and Vic and Ted’s names printed on a sticker and placed on the binding. Emily had handed it to Ginny when she told Emily that her first client would be Vic. Emily had been ecstatic at the news and insisted that Ginny give Vic and Ted the family discount, something Bill was very happy about when Ginny called to tell him. Ginny flipped through the binder making sure she had filled in everything that she already knew the answers to. It wasn’t too different from her corporate event planning. Instead of branding it was wedding colors. Instead of the presentation it was the wedding ceremony. But the venue was still there and the catering and the lodging. There was just the addition of things like wedding dress shopping, and suits, and bridesmaid dresses, and flower bouquets, and photographers that she hadn’t done before.

“Aunt Ginny?”

Ginny looked up to find Vic and Ted standing at the entrance to her office.

“Thanks again for doing this, Ginny, Vic is so excited I think she’s going to explode.” Ted put a comfortable arm around Vic’s waist and kissed her temple. Ginny smiled, Vic had found a good one.

“Come on in and have a seat,” Ginny rose and gave Vic a hug. It still seemed surreal that little Vicky was old enough to be getting married. They were so young. Ginny was in her mid-thirties and she still felt clueless half the time. Yet here were these babies asking her to help them have the wedding of their dreams.

“I thought your godfather was going to be here,” Ginny turned to Ted as they all sat down.

“He’s on his way,” Ted nodded, “he got a little hung up.”

“No matter,” Ginny waved it away. “Let’s start with the important stuff, and contrary to what everyone at the Burrow told you, that is not the colors or the dress or any of that. I first need to know the number of people you’re going to have at the wedding ceremony and the reception.”

“Oh,” Vic’s cheeks blushed and she looked down at her hand intertwined with Ted’s. “I hadn’t thought about that part actually.”

Ginny sighed. Obviously brides weren’t nearly as organized as most of her previous managers.

“As practical as that is,” a voice sounded from the door, “doesn’t that take some of the fun out of the first meeting with your wedding coordinator?”

Ginny looked up at her door to see a very attractive man with dark hair that fell in every direction and green, green eyes behind a pair of dark framed glasses.

“Harry!” Ted jumped up and gave the man a hug.

“Sorry I’m late, Teddy,” Harry shook his head as he pulled away.

“It’s fine, really, we understand.” Ted turned to Ginny, “Harry, this is Vic’s aunt and our wedding coordinator, Ginny Weasley. Ginny, this is my godfather, Harry Potter.”

“Pleasure,” Harry shook her proffered hand, and Ginny had to pull every trick in the book to maintain her cool. Harry’s eyes bore into her and his smile was captivating. But she didn’t particularly like being called out on her growing pains when it came to transitioning from corporate events to weddings.

“We don’t want to take up too much of your time, Mr. Potter, so let’s go ahead and talk about what you would like to add to the couple’s budget and then you can head back to work.”

“Harry, please,” he pulled a chair up next to Ted. “And I’ve taken the rest of the day off to help with this and everything else Teddy has planned today.”

“Right,” Ginny took a deep breath. She had dealt with Umbridge every day for four years, surely she could handle a sassy, good looking man with minimal issue.

Harry gave her the number and as she wrote it down in the binder he cleared his throat.

“There’s one thing though, I’m sure Teddy would have brought it up when you came to it, but we want to make it clear that there will be no alcohol at the reception.”

Ginny looked up confused. “What?”

Harry looked at her intently. “There will be no alcohol served or available or smuggled in.”

Ginny turned to look at the couple who nodded at her solemnly.

“Er, alright,” she grabbed her red pen and made a note on the catering page. She wasn’t sure what the aversion to alcohol was all about, but obviously the couple agreed which was all that mattered really. “Any other unusual requests?”

Harry flashed her a grin, “Not at the moment.”

Ginny shook her head and tried to hide the smile that was pulling on her lips. This man was ridiculous.

With a little help from Harry and herself, they were able to nail down a good estimate for the number of people to be at the ceremony and the reception. Next Ginny brought up the venue and she watched as Vic heaved a sigh. Ginny felt bad, really she did, but this was the right way to plan out an event. They’d get to colors and dresses and cakes when the big priced items were taken care of and they knew how much money was left after that.

“You know,” Harry stretched, “I could really do with a tea or something. How about we move this little meeting to the cafe down the street?”

“We have a little reception room down the hall that has a kitchenette with tea and water and sodas.” Ginny shook her head. Emily had told her to use the formal reception room for Vic, but Ginny found the room to be over the top. She had decided her office was a much more practical place to meet with her clients.

“Lead on, Ms. Weasley,” Harry stood and gestured out the door.

Ginny grabbed her tablet and the binder and her pens and everything else she thought she’d need before leading her little group into the formal reception room.

The room had cream colored couches and chairs with antique white coffee and side tables. The counter for the kitchenette was white marble and the faucet and handles for the cabinets were gold colored and polished to shine. The walls had large blown up images of smiling brides in beautiful wedding dresses surrounded by flowers and delicate decor. Ginny felt like it was trying to hard. But as she led the little group into the room, she heard Vic gasp and turned to see her niece gripping Ted’s arm with the biggest smile she’d seen on her face since the big family dinner the night before.

“This is beautiful!”

Ginny stared at Vic. Apparently being a French woman’s daughter gave you a severe romantic streak? She turned when she heard water running as Harry filled the electric kettle. He winked at her before he began rummaging through the cabinets looking for tea. Then he opened the mini-fridge and scowled before shaking his head. He reached in and pulled out a Diet Coke.

“Here Teddy,” he handed it over to Ted who grinned and thanked him.

Ginny joined Harry in rummaging through the cabinets for cups and tea and biscuits. As the kettle clicked, Harry leaned closer to her to whisper.

“I’m not about to tell you how to do your job, but your poor niece is looking like you just took her childhood dream and made it a conference room training. So maybe let her have some of the fairytale back.” He poured the cream into Vic’s tea before turning to carry it to her.

Ginny stared at the space he’d just vacated. Who the hell did this guy think he was? She turned her head to glare at him, but she caught a glimpse of Vic and paused. Vic was smiling like the whole world was right. She looked excited and like she couldn’t wait for the day she’d become Mrs. Edward Lupin. Ginny sighed. She absolutely hated being wrong. But she loved Vic. Vic was the little girl who made her an aunt. Vic was the little girl that she took to parks and played tea party with. She was who Vic stayed with when Fleur went into labor with Dominique. Vic was something special and Ginny grudgingly admitted that Harry was right, she deserved the fairytale.

“Now then,” Ginny sat down across from Victoire, “why don’t you tell me what you want your wedding to look like?”

Vic’s eyes lit up like Ginny had just offered her chocolate cake. She proceeded into a monologue of everything she’d dreamed her wedding would be. She wanted the main color to be the same color turquoise as Ted’s hair, accented with silver and white and black. She wanted it to be elegant. She wanted a roses and orchids. She wanted a proper tea instead of a cocktail hour while photographs of the family were being taken after the ceremony. She went on about her dress and the bridesmaids dresses and the way she wanted the venue decorated, how the cake would look, what food they’d have, the music that would play.

And as Vic shared her dreams for her wedding, Ginny just sat and listened. She remembered being young and in love. She remembered what she’d imagined a wedding for herself would have been like. She remembered it had never included the logistics. And finally it hit her. A wedding coordinator existed to keep the magic of the wedding alive, while making sure the logistics went smoothly. An event coordinator had to prove that they had the logistics under control, keep them out in front for their manager to see it was going exactly how they expected it would and was within budget. Ginny realized she’d been trying to be an event coordinator with Vic’s wedding, and she’d been killing the magic.

Ginny glanced at Harry as Vic continued, and found him watching her intently. He nodded once when she caught his eye, and Ginny felt like he could see right through her. She didn’t particularly care for that feeling, but she pushed it away and turned back to Vic as the girl seemed to be winding down on her monologue.

“What do you think?” Vic looked at Ginny with hopeful eyes as she nervously pulled her bottom lip between her teeth.

Ginny moved quickly to wrap her niece in her arms. “It sounds perfect, Vicky.”

They spent the next half hour filling in exactly what the first page of the binder Emily gave Ginny said to decide: date, colors, aesthetic, theme if any, flowers, ceremony desires, location desires, and number of guests. The bottom of that page had a space for the next appointment to be filled in. Ginny stared at it a moment before deciding to trust it. She set up their next meeting and walked the trio back to the front of the little shop.

“Thank you, Aunt Ginny!” Vic hugged her tight. “I’m so excited!”

Ginny held this precious girl in her arms for a long moment and smiled at Ted and Harry. “I’m going to make sure this is as perfect as I can make it for you, Vic.”

Harry winked at her as he pulled the engaged couple out the door. “We’ll see you at the next meeting.”

It wasn’t until she stepped back into her office that Ginny realized what he’d said. Did Harry really think it necessary to come to every meeting? There must have been a miscommunication somewhere along the line because for the most part she would only need Vic and Ted. Wedding dress shopping would of course include more people, as would the selection of suits, but that was it. It wasn’t worth fretting over though, because Ginny had a lot of research to do. Vic wanted her dream wedding, and Ginny was going to make sure that all the money Bill and Harry were putting towards it would stretch as far as she could make it.

She was deep in her figuring of numbers to determine how much the kind of dress Vic wanted would cost in comparison to venues and flowers and cake and catering when Emily knocked on her door.

“Wow,�� Emily looked at the spreadsheets across Ginny’s monitors and the number of browser tabs open both on her computer and the one she could see on the tablet. Ginny’s notebook was open as well, notes scribbled across both pages. “I knew you were good, but this is incredibly thorough, Ginny.”

Ginny smiled, “She is my niece after all.”

Emily slid into a chair on the other side of Ginny’s desk. “What exactly are you doing?”

“I’m making sure she can have everything she wants,” Ginny pasted another link into her spreadsheet and entered in another price point, watching the figures update.

“We have the vendors that we normally work with,” Emily reminded her.

“Of course,” Ginny nodded, “and I have all of their information in my spreadsheets as well, but I want to make sure that her budget stretches as far as I can make it. My brother and her fiance’s godfather are both putting money in but it’s still a limited budget.”

“His parents aren’t contributing?” Emily asked with a furrowed brow.

“He told me his godfather was the only family he had.”

Emily’s eyes immediately filled with tears. “Well thank goodness that he has someone!”

Ginny smiled. Harry Potter was a sassy and pretentious someone, but yes, he was someone.

“Well, I wanted to tell you that I have another couple that I’ll be assigning to you. I’ve scheduled their first meeting to be a week from today. We like to do those introductory meetings on Mondays here whenever possible.” Emily handed her another binder, just like the one she had for Vic and Ted. This time, however, Emily had filled in the names and phone numbers.

“Do they have a budget?” Ginny asked, noticing that space was left blank.

Emily chuckled. “Kathleen Hawthorne’s father is quite wealthy. He’s planning on simply selling off a property to pay for his daughter’s wedding.”

Ginny’s mouth dropped. “You’re giving me a rich client?”

“Of course, you’re my most thorough coordinator and I actually think that is going to make Mr. Hawthorne much more likely to broadcast around to his friends that Wedding Composition is the best place for even the aristocracy to bring their daughters.”

“That’s a pretty tall order,” Ginny smiled, “but I’ll do my best.”

“I know you will. Let me know if you need anything.” Emily stood up to leave before turning. “Oh, how did your niece like the reception room?”

Ginny smiled, “It took her breath away.”

“That’s the goal,” she chuckled, “before you leave today, remember to restock what you used. I noticed you already put the cups and saucers in the dishwasher, thank you for that.”

Ginny nodded as Emily walked out to prepare for her next meeting.

Ginny spent the entire day doing research for Vic’s wedding, determined to find the best prices on everything. It felt good to be working and it felt good to be doing the part of her job she liked best. Sorting through all her vendor options, pitting their best prices against each other and sweet talking her way into deals. She loved seeing an event go off perfectly, but she lived for putting it all together so that she could be confident that nothing could go so wrong at the event that it couldn’t be saved.

Before heading home for the day, Ginny pulled a Diet Coke from the stock room and walked it into the reception room. She slid it into the fridge but stopped a moment when she saw what was sitting next to the assortment of sodas. Bottles of champagne sat ready to open and serve to the clients. She’d need to remember that for when Kathleen Hawthorne and Travis Schultz came in next week. That would probably be exactly what big money like that would want. Ginny put a note in her phone to pick up some fruit and scones on her way in that day as well.

But before she could meet her expensive taste clients, she had to find Vic a venue to get married in.

“I have five places to look at today, but if you don’t feel like any of them are right we can look at a few more. These are just the ones I think you’ll fall in love with.” Ginny smiled at Vic who sat in the front seat of her car with her, nearly bouncing with excitement. Ted and Harry sat in the back. She’d have to remember to tell Harry that he didn’t need to keep taking work off for this, she’d let Ted know if he needed to be there or not. Ginny glanced back in the rearview mirror and accidentally caught Harry’s eye. He winked at her before looking back out his window.

Ginny tried to ignore the way the blood rushed to her ears.

Thankfully she was pulling up to the first reception hall.

The place was very modern. Clean lines everywhere and gold and silver finishes. The floors were polished black granite and every table had a white marble top. Ginny heard Vic’s breath catch as they walked in and she grinned. But as they went through the tour, Ginny could see that while this had the elegance Vic had wanted, it was a bit too much for her.

“We have the exact date of your wedding open as well,” the host spoke to Vic as she continued to tell her how they could make this facility into her dream.

“Vic,” Ginny stepped between the host and her niece, “remember I have four other facilities for you to look at. You don’t have to pick right now.”

Vic smiled in relief, “Let’s go look at the other places, I want to know what all my options are.” The poor girl grabbed Teddy’s hand and practically bolted for the door. Ginny chuckled before thanking the host and arranging to bring her next clients through as well. This hall looked like the kind of thing they might just eat up.

“Remember, Vic,” Ginny said as she drove the to the next hall, “you aren’t required to give them an answer at all. I can call them and get everything set up after you’re back at home. We’ll have meetings to make sure it’s exactly what you want, so don’t let them pressure you into making decisions before you’re ready.”

“It’s your day,” Harry added, “and we’re all just here to make sure you love it.”

Ginny looked at Harry in her rearview mirror and he winked at her again. Ginny immediately looked back at the road. Why did this man have to be so, so, so, whatever, it didn’t matter. She’d let him know he didn’t need to be around for these things and then she wouldn’t see him again aside from suits and the wedding day.

Vic went through the next two venues with a bit more confidence, but the fourth venue had her staring out the window while everyone else filed out of the car.

“It looks even better out of the car, love.” Ted opened her door and offered his hand. Vic took it and slowly stepped out.

“Oh my,” she breathed.

The venue was an old converted manor house that had a very French chateaux feel. The gardens were the definition of a fairytale, even with it being late August. Roses, lilies, and freesias of every color were slowly fading but covered the beds around the house with sweet peas intermixed throughout. Greenery and trees brought an elegant balance to the whimsical colors. The entire picture was everything that Vic had described and Ginny had been the beyond excited to show it to her.

“Wait till you see inside,” Ginny beckoned Vic forward.

Ted gave her a gentle tug and Vic walked slowly, looking for all the world like she’d just walked through the gateway into Narnia.

Sara, the owner of the manor house turned chateaux reception hall, met them at the door. She showed them around the hall then the gardens. Sara painted the picture of a garden ceremony as the sun began to set. She showed where the tea would be held in the smaller hall on one end of the home, and how the reception could be either out in the gardens or in the larger hall off the main entrance. Sara even knew where the perfect place to take photographs would be and offered to speak with the photographer before the wedding so Vic would have the perfect pictures of her amazing day.

Ginny let a smug smile touch her lips as she watched her niece. This was the place, and Sara had just sealed the deal by inviting Vic and Ted to take some time to walk around and picture it for themselves.

“Why did you save this one for last?”

Ginny jumped as she realized that Harry had snuck up next to her.

“It isn’t last,” Ginny chuckled, “there’s still one more. We hit them in the order of closest to the office first.”

“But you knew she’d pick this one,” Harry stepped closer to her and Ginny felt her heart rate increase.

“I suspected she would, but I didn’t know.”

Harry gave a quiet laugh that was more of a rumble in his chest and that did things to Ginny that she hadn’t experienced in ages. “What did you do before becoming a wedding coordinator?”

“How do you know I haven’t always been a wedding coordinator?” Ginny was suddenly weary of where he was pulling that kind of personal information on her.

Harry stared at her a moment before gesturing to the engaged couple walking the gardens hand in hand. “I’m Teddy’s godfather, amazingly enough, and I do tend to talk to him. Vic talks a lot about you too when she’s at ours.”

Ginny felt her neck grow hot and a tinge of embarrassment gripped her stomach. She kept forgetting that Harry was the equivalent of Bill. He certainly didn’t look much older than her, but some people just aged well, and Harry was probably one of them. Ted was a year older than Vic, and so Ginny assumed that Harry must be closer to Bill’s age.

“I suppose that puts us on uneven footing. I know nothing about you, and you already know that this is the first time I’ve coordinated a wedding.”

Harry took another step closer to her, leaving a breath’s distance between them. “I’d be happy to put us on even footing, if that would put you at ease.”

Ginny felt her breath stop. Was he…flirting with her?

It’d been so long since she’d put herself out there that she wasn’t even sure how to respond as Harry stared down at her with those green eyes and messy hair that her fingers itched to touch.

“Aunt Ginny,” Vic apparently decided Ginny didn’t need to respond, and for the briefest moment, Ginny wished her niece would go snog her fiance for the next two or three hours and leave her be.

“Aunt Ginny, this is it!” Vic exclaimed. “This is exactly what I want! I love it, and so does Ted! Can we get it reserved right now?”

Ginny gave herself a mental shake and smiled at Vic, “Absolutely! Let’s go get Sara and we’ll get everything reserved and set for your big day.”

She led them back into the manor house and tried to shake the feeling that Harry was watching her. Instead she discreetly texted Luna and asked if she could stop by after work. She really needed someone to put her head back on straight.

Luna, thankfully, was free and Ginny dropped her crew off at the office where they’d all met up before grabbing takeaway and heading to her best friend.

“I brought your favorite,” Ginny handed the bags over to Luna when she opened her door.

Luna chuckled as she ushered Ginny in, “So what’s the emergency?”

Ginny threw herself onto Luna’s sofa and sighed, “How did you know Rolf was interested in you before you started dating?”

Luna started unloading the food, “He told me he wanted to date me.”

Ginny sighed, why couldn’t everyone be just a bit eccentric like Luna and Rolf? They were relationship goals. So straightforward and to the point with each other, and even with Rolf and Luna going separate expeditions all the time they were probably the tightest couple Ginny had ever laid eyes on.

“Who are you hoping is interested?”

Ginny shook her head, “I don’t know if I even want him to be interested. I haven’t dated since Dean and that was nearly five years ago. I’m just…confused?”

“Confused,” Luna echoed her.

“I guess,” Ginny took a bite of food to buy her some time to think.

“He isn’t a groom, is he?”

Ginny stared at her friend, almost sure she was taking the Mickey.

“He’s Ted’s godfather.”

Luna smiled and Ginny was sure now that she was being teased. Luna loved to tease in her own quiet way, especially if it meant she could tease Ginny. They’d been friends for nearly there decades and the friendly teasing seemed to pull the rug out from Ginny’s anxiety.

“I’m being ridiculous, aren’t I?”

“Only mildly,” Luna assured her with a quiet laugh. Ginny couldn’t help but join in on the laughter, and pretty soon the two friends were in a right fit of giggles on the sofa. It took several minutes before either was able to gain control of themselves.

“Now then,” Luna chuckled as she took hold of her water glass, “why don’t you fill me in on what’s going on like a sane person.”

Ginny stuck her tongue out at Luna. “I told you about Ted’s godfather, Harry, remember? Well he showed up to the venue tours today and he offered to tell me as much about himself as Vic and Ted had told him about me.”

Luna wriggled her eyebrows, “Oooh that sounds so romantic.”

“Luna, please,” Ginny groaned, “I’m trying to figure out what to do!”

“Let the man,” Luna shrugged, “you could do with a night out.”

“He didn’t ask me out for a pint,” Ginny huffed. “I don’t know what he was implying.”

“Stop being thirteen,” Luna stood and started clearing her food. “If you’re interested in the man then let him know. If you’re not, then be professional and don’t pursue him.”

“That’s the problem, I don’t know if I’m interested,” Ginny joined her in clearing their takeaway.

“I can’t help you there,” Luna put a comforting hand on Ginny’s shoulder, “you’re going to need to figure that out for yourself.”

“And that’s the hard part,” Ginny sighed.

Ginny didn’t know what she wanted. She was happy with her life, wasn’t she? She was comfortable being single, at least she thought so. Things didn’t end well with Dean and Ginny had decided she was done playing the field. She didn’t want to try and convince some guy she was worth the time of day. But what did she want? Did she really want to keep coming home to an empty flat? Did she really want to spend the rest of her life single? Or did she really just want to avoid getting burned again?

When Ginny fell into bed that night, she still didn’t know.

After meeting with Kathleen and Travis that Monday, which seemed to go off without a hitch, Ginny decided to see if Vic had time to look at the photographers portfolios with her. They would need to get engagement pictures done just as quickly as possible so they could decide on the invitations.

Vic responded to her text with a phone call.

“Hi Vicky.”

“Hi Aunt Ginny, I got your text and I’m at Ted’s. What do you think of coming over and after we pick a photographer you can stay for dinner?”

Ginny sighed, little Vicky was old enough to be the hostess now, when did that happen?

“That sounds lovely, thank you! Send me the address and I’ll leave here in fifteen minutes.”

Ginny had expected a flat. Ted was nineteen, only a year older than Vic, and she expected him to be living like a nineteen year old, in a flat, in a cheap part of town, with little food on hand. So when the GPS led Ginny out to the suburbs and a small home with a lovely little wrought iron fence and a slightly overgrown front garden, Ginny immediately checked that the addresses were the same. Everything looked to be right, so with a bit of trepidation and a lot of confusion, Ginny approached the front door and rang the bell. Her heart almost stopped when the door opened.

Harry Potter stood looking at her with those stupid green eyes and a sassy grin on his face.

“Oh good, you found it,” He stepped off to the side and motioned for Ginny to come in.

“Er, yes, the GPS led me straight to it.” Ginny’s brain was quickly catching up with what was happening. Ted obviously lived with his godfather. Ginny was going to be having dinner with Vic and Ted…and Harry.

She was pulled from her musings by a soft hand on the small of her back as Harry led her down the hall. The spot on her back where his hand was touching seemed to burn and Ginny tried not to let her labored breathing show. The home was well kept and the smells coming from the kitchen were amazing. She was just about to ask Harry for clarification on what was going on when she heard her name.

“Aunt Ginny!” Vic jumped up from the sofa as Harry led them further into the house.

“You ready to pick out your photographer?” Ginny smiled as she wrapped Vic in a hug. Work, she needed to focus on the wedding and she would be fine. Ginny could have a professional work dinner with her clients. It would be fine.

“I’m so excited!” Vic pulled her down to the sofa.

Yes. Ginny was going to focus on work, and stop imagining that Harry was watching her, because he wasn’t, she was sure he wasn’t.

Ginny pulled her tablet out of her bag along with a couple printed portfolios from photographers that the shop kept on hand. “Ok, let’s start with looking at the photos and then we can talk about which package would be right for you. No sense in paying to have a photographer all day if the wedding and reception will only be a few hours.”

Vic picked up the first portfolio with excitement and put it across her lap and Ted’s. “Wow, do you think I’ll look like that?” Vic pointed to the first image of a bride surrounded by roses.

“You’ll look more beautiful than every single picture here,” Ted kissed her cheek and Ginny smiled as Vic’s cheeks tinged pink.

“You are a flatterer, Edward.”

“And you love it,” Ted chuckled, “besides, I never say anything that isn’t true.”

Ginny remembered a time when she would have scoffed at that sort of exchange between her brothers and their wives. Even as recently as Luna and Rolf had Ginny rolled her eyes at what she considered sappy attempts to be romantic. But something about it being the next generation was different. It was heartwarming to see Vic growing up, to see her find someone who looked at her like she was his whole world, and Ginny couldn’t bring herself to be cynical of any of it.

They sorted through photographers before deciding on the one that Vic liked best and had the best rate. Ginny excused herself to what Harry called his office in order to call and make the arrangements. She was just finishing up, consultation, engagement shoot, and wedding day booked and planned, when Harry stepped in the room.

“Just checking something,” he smiled at her as he slid into his computer chair and began clicking around on his computer.

She should have left; she was already standing, she was finished with the call, she had no reason to still be in his office. But for some reason, Ginny pulled out her tablet out and looked with unseeing eyes at her calendar, alone in a room with Harry Potter.

“Were you able to get the dates for Vic and Teddy?” He slid up next to her and looked over her shoulder at the calendar.

“Yeah,” Ginny bit her lip.

Harry was close, close like he had been when he offered to tell her as much about himself as he knew about her. She chanced to look up at him and found him smiling at her. Ginny felt like she needed to say something, she needed to break this spell he’d cast over her that had somehow rendered her trapped under his gaze. But she couldn’t seem to gain control over her voice or manage to look away. His green eyes held hers and Ginny was rooted to the floor staring up at him with no idea of how to escape, and if she was honest, she didn’t want to escape.

Suddenly, Ginny felt the nearly five years since she’d been this close to a man as keenly as she would have felt five years without ice cream. Had it really been almost five years since she’d kissed anyone? Had she really gone nearly sixty months since she’d been held? How had she managed these roughly seventeen hundred days without really touching another person? There was a part of Ginny’s mind that reminded her that she was happy. She lived a fulfilling life and had wonderful friends and a loving family. But that part of her brain was being drowned out by the part of her that had sprung to life like a phoenix rising from the ashes, the part of her that wanted this, that wanted Harry.

“Do,” Ginny whispered, “do you want to come to the consultation, with the photographer?”

Harry’s grin tilted just a bit higher and he glanced down at the screen, “I think I can be there for it, probably smart too, since I’m paying the man and all.”

Ginny felt the smile pulling on her lips and she gave into it. “Yeah, got to make sure this bloke isn’t going to take your money and run.”

Harry laughed and moved closer, placing his hand on the small of her back again, “As long as he isn’t also running off with the wedding coordinator.”

Ginny stopped breathing. She honest to goodness forgot how to make her lungs pull breath in and expel it out.

“Harry,” Ted’s voice sounded down the hall. “The stove timer is going off, which dish is it for?”

Ginny saw annoyance flash in Harry’s eyes as his hand fell from her back. The lack of contact brought her breath back, but Ginny would have almost rather passed out from lack of oxygen than have him not touching her. Harry moved toward the door and Ginny watched him in slow motion as Luna’s advice rang through her ears.

“Harry,” she barely heard her own voice but Harry stopped dead in his tracks and turned towards her.

“The,” she bit her lip and took a deep breath, “the wedding coordinator is more interested in the godfather than the photographer.”

Harry’s smile bloomed on his face like a morning flower, “That’s very good news.” He winked at her before disappearing down the hallway.

Ginny felt her breath leave with him.

[im-a-goddamn-cat]

i'm crying rn and cannot stop. i'm so stressed for two major reasons. first off, i just figured out that i'd have to get at least an A-, A-, and B+ in the three classes i'm taking atm to get my overall GPA up to the minimum requirement in time for the Vet Tech program application (deadline is in March)... no fucking way i'm gonna get those grades. and if i don't get accepted this time, i'll have to wait a whole year to try applying again. (unless other colleges have ones i could apply for, idk, i have no idea. but their requirements are probably similar, so.) also pretty sure this is all bc of that first semester in 2020 where i failed one class, got a C+ in another class and a B in the other... so thanks a lot 2020 me /s

and second, i regret taking this job. i do like the job kinda but idk, i feel really overwhelmed with both college and the job. idfk why tho, i don't have that much schoolwork (so far at least) and i've been working only two days. some ppl do school full time and work meanwhile i can't handle part time school and two days of work... but i feel like i can't quit bc i just started like only a month ago and i told myself i would keep the job until i got into/started the Vet Tech program (tho that probably isn't even gonna happen.) idek why i looked for a job, i have a pretty good stash of money saved from when i sat on my ass for like a year doing nothing bc where i had worked at the time shut down temporarily bc of covid so i got unemployment and then didn't return when they reopened. i mean, it won't last forever, but it's something...

idk what to do about either of these things

also i have been feeling depressed and like a loser/failure and that everyone hates me and this stuff is making it worse. i wanna give up and quit and drop out and isolate myself from the world again. i can't fucking handle anything or do anything right

[gordonwilliamsweb]

Colorado Clinic’s Prescription for Healthier Patients? Lawyers

COMMERCE CITY, Colo. — In her 19 years of living with cerebral palsy, scoliosis and other ailments, Cynthia Enriquez De Santiago has endured about 60 surgeries and her heart has flatlined at least four times.

But the most unusual doctor’s referral of her life came last year: Go see an attorney.

Enriquez De Santiago sought help at a Colorado health clinic that takes a novel approach to improving the health of its patients: It incorporates legal assistance into its medical practice for patients facing eviction or deportation proceedings, among other legal woes. And the state’s Medicaid program helps fund the initiative.

Although Medicaid traditionally doesn’t fund clinics to supply legal assistance, Colorado is one of several states that have been given permission to use some of their Medicaid money to help pay for such programs. Every day in Commerce City, four lawyers join the physicians, psychiatrists and social workers at Salud Family Health Centers’ clinic in this suburb north of Denver, as part of Salud’s philosophy that mending legal ills is as important for health as diet and exercise.

The goal: Reduce toxic stress and keep families intact, on the premise that it will serve their health for years to come, said Marc Scanlon, the attorney who directs the program.

Mostly, that has meant helping people with unemployment benefit claims and Social Security Disability Insurance denials. But it also regularly entails helping patients — many of whom speak only Spanish after having arrived here from Mexico or Central America — with immigration hearings.

The program is among at least 450 existing medical-legal partnerships across the nation that typically serve impoverished people and migrants. The vast majority don’t rely on Medicaid dollars, which are used only in fewer than 10 states, according to the National Center for Medical-Legal Partnership.

The role of these sorts of medical-legal partnerships has grown over the past year as millions of people in the U.S. have faced lost income and the threat of losing their homes during the covid-19 pandemic. Some partnerships have helped patients secure unemployment checks, while others have fought some of the evictions that weren’t already barred by state or federal moratoriums.

“All the issues that people are struggling with in the pandemic are all the same issues that medical-legal partnerships have been trying to work with forever,” said Vicki Girard, a law professor and co-director of the Georgetown University Health Justice Alliance in Washington, D.C.

In Montana, Kallie Dale-Ramos helped persuade a primary care association, the state’s legal aid organization and six community health centers operating in cities across Montana to pool $20,000 to help hire an attorney, who can split time among the clinics to help patients affected by the pandemic.

Since the start of 2020, that investment has helped more than 130 patients seek unemployment claims — and potentially stave off financial ruin.

One woman had been waiting for unemployment assistance since applying in March 2020, and only recently received her first check, said Dale-Ramos. Without legal help along the way, the woman “would have just been like, ‘I can’t do this anymore,’” Dale-Ramos said.

This sort of legal-medical partnership is centered on the notion that doctors can do only so much to keep their patients healthy.

Proponents See Lasting Impact

Advocates for such programs cite the example of a child suffering from asthma caused by mold in a dilapidated apartment. While a doctor couldn’t force a landlord to clean up the property or break the lease, a letter from a lawyer might be persuasive, said Dr. Tillman Farley, Salud’s chief medical officer.

“Some of these impacts carry out for decades,” Farley said. “And once you get into effects like that, then you’re really talking generational changes in health outcomes.”

Beyond common sense, evidence from emerging research suggests the approach can work. Patients at Veterans Affairs clinics in Connecticut and New York, for example, saw their mental health improve significantly within three months of consulting a clinic attorney, according to a 2017 study in Health Affairs.

And at Colorado’s partnership, a survey of patients from 2015 to 2020 found statistically significant drops in stress and poor physical health, as well as fewer missed medical appointments among its 69 respondents, said Dr. Angela Sauaia, a professor at the Colorado School of Public Health who led the research.

The possible reasons for missing fewer doctor appointments after getting the legal help, Sauaia said, included patients having more income, being less depressed and having an improved immigration status that made them less fearful to venture into public.

Medical-legal partnerships should be considered part of health care, Sauaia believes. “You should be referring to them the same way a provider would be referring a patient to a specialty, such as endocrinology or surgery.”

The biggest challenge for these programs is securing stable funding. Many are funded with a small amount of seed money, or by grants that run only a year or two.

Medicaid, established in 1965, is a nationwide health care program for people who have low incomes or are disabled. It’s jointly funded by the federal government and each state, and traditionally has covered medical costs such as physician visits and hospital stays.

In recent years, though, some states have increasingly sought to use Medicaid dollars to fund initiatives such as using social workers or offering legal assistance to address the social determinants of health. That includes North Carolina, which is using a federal waiver and hundreds of millions of dollars in a highly scrutinized effort to transform its Medicaid program. Among its strategies is more legal aid for patients.

Some Critics See Overreach by Medicaid Plans

The nationwide shift has prompted some health policy experts to question whether Medicaid is beginning to run too far afield of its purpose.

“Everybody agrees that social factors play a very large role in health outcomes; the question is what to do about it,” said James Capretta, a resident fellow of the American Enterprise Institute who was an associate director of the Office of Management and Budget during the George W. Bush administration.

“Medicaid is already an immense program with lots of financial challenges,” Capretta noted. “The program was not built for Medicaid to pay for too many services beyond the more direct services that are related to a medical condition or a disability.”

The small-scale use of waivers and supplemental Medicaid dollars to fund programs aimed at the social factors of poor health — such as housing for people with severe mental illness — works in some places, said Matt Salo, executive director of the National Association of Medicaid Directors. But for Medicaid to provide widespread funding for such social service programs would be unsustainable, and shouldn’t happen, he said.

“It is not — and should not be — Medicaid’s responsibility to figure out how to pay for it,” he said.

Some advocates for legal assistance programs and health policy experts worry about a potential public backlash based on misperceptions about how the little-known medical-legal partnerships use Medicaid. For one, the programs generally aren’t reimbursed for services in the same way traditional Medicaid programs are, said Sara Rosenbaum, a health law and policy professor at George Washington University. Medicaid is more of “an indirect funder,” she said.

A 2019 Manatt Health Strategies report on funding for medical-legal partnerships said “the time is ripe” for these partnerships to explore the little-used avenues available in Medicaid.

The states that administer the Medicaid programs and the managed care organizations that contract with them have some discretion to fund non-clinical services that improve access or outcomes for social determinants of health, according to the report.

States also can write the medical-leaderships programs into a larger federal waiver application for experimental, pilot or demonstration projects that promote Medicaid’s objectives.

“The dollars are minimal,” said Ellen Lawton, former director of the National Center for Medical-Legal Partnership, and a senior fellow at HealthBegins, a consulting firm. “And I think what we’re seeing is that — appropriately — the Medicaid programs are pacing themselves. They’re looking to see what works — what works in our state, what works in our region, what works with the populations that we’re focused on.”

States have been creative in funding these sorts of legal assistance programs. Colorado officials said they amended their Medicaid spending plan to provide grants to two such partnerships. Other states have sought federal waivers allowing them to support those programs. The Department of Veterans Affairs also offers the services of medical-legal partnerships funded by outside organizations.

Scanlon, the attorney at the Salud clinic, is part of a nonprofit organization called Medical Legal Partnership Colorado that operates under a joint agreement with the clinic. Colorado���s Medicaid program approved a $300,000 grant to the partnership that was renewed this year to pay for three attorneys’ salaries.

Authorizing the funding took little convincing, said Michelle Miller, chief nursing officer for the state’s Medicaid program. “When we were asked to approve funding for this, I jumped at it,” Miller said.

One Woman’s Story

For Cynthia Enriquez De Santiago, the 19-year-old patient from Salud’s Commerce City clinic, legal advice made all the difference in her medical care.

In addition to her cerebral palsy, the teen is blind and has difficulty speaking; she needs round-the-clock care, including help eating and using the bathroom. Her doctor at the clinic put Rafaela De Santiago, Cynthia’s mother, in touch with an attorney who could help her continue to be her daughter’s legal guardian after the teen turned 18 last year.

The timing of that legal help proved critical: Several months after seeing the attorney, Enriquez De Santiago was rushed to a hospital. For no obvious reason, she had become hypothermic; her blood pressure dropped and her blood-oxygen levels cratered.

“The doctors were telling me I had to be ready for the worst,” the teen’s mother said through a Spanish-to-English interpreter.

Because she was Enriquez De Santiago’s legal guardian, her mother was able to sign off on follow-up tests after that emergency to quickly get to the root of the medical problem and help prevent it from happening again.

Without guardianship, “it would have been really, really hard, because I wouldn’t know where to begin the process,” Rafaela De Santiago said.

KHN (Kaiser Health News) is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues. Together with Policy Analysis and Polling, KHN is one of the three major operating programs at KFF (Kaiser Family Foundation). KFF is an endowed nonprofit organization providing information on health issues to the nation.

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[18082013]

Getting our minds off our minds

I know I’ve been quiet and numb towards all your messages yesterday but it's because I was really down and trying to figure out what's going on between us.

I needed some timeout as I always start with introspection and the processing involved with it takes me further and deeper into a dark place.

While I’m in a dark place I need time to be able to process things.

I trust that you’ll be understanding and considerate towards my delayed response.

Let's backtrack to Monday allowing me to present my side of the story with more detail...

I’ve made a promise to you to be better and to heal myself by drinking less in order to fix the issues around me that’s been causing my stress and anxiety levels to max out which's lead me to drink way too much. This is a promise that I’ve been sticking to as we agreed upon and I have not broken or jeopardised it in any way - no lies!

My recovery has been really difficult and that itself is also a stress for me due to the fact that I feel like:

you’ve been a bit controlling and

policing me max every single day by being extremely stern and unforgiving at times.

The unnecessary labelling and dwelling on it by being distrustful has not made it easy along the way.

How is anyone suppose to stay focused on recovery when the person is being policed, and emotionally manipulated in a distrustful recovery environment?

It honestly feels unfair like I’m being kicked while down on the ground during a time when I’m fighting hard to get up :(

I finally started to feel happy again and it’s taken me longer than I anticipated as I obviously had to unlearn a lot in the past month but I truly feel that I’ve done well thus far.

Sunday and maybe the better bit of the weekend was honestly a breakthrough for me as I finally started to feel happy in a natural way again.

It could have been because of my fathers birthday, seeing him happy and the phone call I had with my dad, seeing him happy through the WhatsApp chats that I and Mia had until late 2 am ’ish in the morning.

And probably having a great weekend with you: Chill Friday dinner with Dusty and his family, relaxed Saturday missions to the market and yummy winner-winner butter chicken dinner vibes!

I honestly woke up naturally happy on Monday morning with a positive attitude, feeling energised and changed - I could feel that my recovery was working and that I’m on the right track!

That's why the first thing I did when waking up was to call you to the room to start my/our day with a hug, positivity and love.

We gave each other a lovely hug but I could sense that you had something on your mind.

I asked you to share it with me in a caring/loving way, which you did and I listened to the issue with Madeleine and sensed that you were very worked up about it.

My priority was to instinctively allow you to let you get it off your chest by listening to you and being available emotionally and supportive as your partner.

I did my best to calm you down when you got very worked up and emotional about it, my support was all-natural, honest and from the heart because I'll always be there for you!

Fast forward to that moment/later on where you questioned my happiness for some destructive reason with the nasty emotional wordplay.

"Why are you so happy, did you stay up till 2 am drinking ?!”

The words hurt me so much and I allowed all hell to break loose as it felt like you deliberately, manipulatively and emotionally blackmailed me with those words :(

What you said invoked a negative attitude towards me, the shame and stigma stem from the labelling and ill judgement placed upon me :(

The stereotype I've ever heard about “addicts” and “alcoholics” instantly gets applied with stereotypes such as: lazy, untrustworthy, liar, sinner, uncaring, unemployable, and many more attributes become accepted when someone else constantly labels me.

I would like to live my life without fear of the all-powerful stigma that comes along with these words and unfortunately your words to me in such a way creates stigma and shame which in return leads to a negative self-concept.

I start seeing myself as the problem again by feeling the "helplessness" all over again. Labelling and judging me ignores all my circumstances!

I've accepted my struggles and it's allowing me to move forward with a clear mind and the motivation to make positive changes in my life.

If you could do the same it will help me out a lot!

People have never broken your heart, they've broken your expectations and by breaking your expectations, they've got you closer to your heart!

Let's not dwell in the past and start to:

Focus on more positive things forward

Disarming unilaterally

Reflecting more on what drew us together

Try to have an open and compassionate attitude toward each other by responding with more understanding

Stop focusing on correcting each other by constantly telling each other what to change

And choosing to be close rather than/over being right

Anyhoo's...long story short and most importantly, I love you and want to fix things from my side but I need you to do the same to help us help ourselves!

xoxo

“Happiness always looks small while you hold it in your hands, but let it go, and you learn at once how big and precious it is.” ~ Maxim Gorky

“If I had a flower for every time I thought of you...I could walk through my garden forever.” ~ Alfred Tennyson

[abbelossop]

Business News Day

It's a tough time to be an entrepreneur. Businesses are closing across the country, from retail giants such as Circuit City to mom-and-pop stores.

After years of being flush with cash and discretionary income, consumers have cut back on spending ---and everyone from retailers to service industries are feeling the pain.

It's enough to make a small business owner throw in the towel and take the next 9-to-5 gig. But, there's probably no better time than right now to launch your business.

Why? Hard times equal opportunity.

I know it sounds crazy, but it's true. Right now is the right time to become a business owner. Nothing has changed about the state of our economy: Homeowners are grappling with Business News Day  record falling home values and much of the country is in a recession. Employers are slashing jobs at a record pace.

What has changed, though, is opportunity.

Don't Listen to Naysayers

Turn off the news. Stop reading the financial pages - at least the negative news. Forget about the value of your stock portfolios for just a second. There is no denying that there's gloom and doom; have you seen unemployment figures and the number of foreclosure filings lately?

But just because it exists doesn't mean you have to make it your reality. You've got to keep focused on your vision. And in these economic times, you'll need tunnel vision to be a success. Don't concentrate on the negative. Keep focused on your business goals, instead.

And step up your game. You've got to plan, plan and plan again. No matter the economy, people will still spend money. It might be less money than before, but it's money nonetheless. So figure out what people are willing to pay for and give it to them.

A bad economy isn't all bad. Maybe you can profit from the foreclosure mess by starting a business that cleans foreclosed homes. Buy liquidated merchandise from closed retailers and sell it on eBay for a profit.

Or, open an automotive shop because people are more willing to fix that old clunker than buy a new car. There are business ideas out there that could make a fortune; you've just got to be more resourceful to find them.

Figure out how you can profit. Existing business owners may have to cut their prices. Or offer more services to stay competitive. But some money beats no money any day.

The 'Old' Rules No Longer Apply

A year ago, no one probably ever guessed we'd be dealing with the economic crisis that we're in. And so it's changed the business game -- forever. Conditions aren't the same, so you can't do business the same.

For so long, if it was open, customers came. And came they did. But those rules no longer apply; they're old-school, and if you follow them, your small business will probably be the next one to close.

[annieintheaair]

2020: The Year of the Underdogs

It has been over three months now since I've flown as a Flight Attendant.

It's weird because after being away from work for 15 months on my injury, I thought for sure that I'd feel a little bit more sad about being gone again. I had been back for exactly a year from the time I returned from my injury to when I was furloughed. 12 months was just enough time to qualify me for decent furlough pay and the option to get unemployment benefits if needed.

When the pandemic hit in March, I knew deep down that furlough was coming. I had prepared for furlough since the day I got hired in 2015. The airline industry is no stranger to furlough and after 9/11, you can never be too prepared.

See, I thought I had my plan all laid out. I thought that if I was furloughed, at least I had my part-time job on the side and at least I went to college, got a degree, stayed active in jobs in the "real world" and could always go back to events if needed. No one prepared me for a pandemic and I never thought that I needed anything more than a plan B, C, or D. Lesson learned- you REALLY can never be too prepared.

When I found out that it was very likely that I'd be furloughed, I immediately began applying for jobs because now I needed a plan E, F, G, and maybe more.

Not to say that I couldn't have handled all of this change on my own but going through all of this with someone you love by your side makes all of the difference.

Going off a little bit here but remember James, the guy I met in Jackson Hole in July? Well, I wish I wrote more between then and now because after I last wrote, James ended up coming down to Texas to visit me. We had a few great days together and on the first night when he was in town, we went to a nearby lake for drinks and while we sat there drinking beers at happy hour, he told me how he felt about relationships and how he believed in really focusing on pursuing one relationship at a time instead of the way that modern dating goes where you date multiple people at once. It was during that conversation that I realized that I was falling for him.

I don't know what happened over the course of those few days but eventually he went back to Wyoming and I went off to work. Long story short but it turned out that I actually had shingles and had to take off some time from work. Even though he had been back in Wyoming for less than 24 hours, he asked if he could come back down and be with me.

He ended up coming back and spending the rest of July and most of August with me. I flew turns at work so I was home every night. It was nice having him there to come home to and my dogs, Ellie and Kirby definitely appreciated his company.

At the end of August, James returned to Wyoming for a little bit and I flew out there to visit him for a week. We had a great time exploring and he took me to Idaho for a night for fun and even had me hike this insane mountain with him. I don’t know anyone else that I’d hike a mountain like that for but I was glad to have done it with James.

I was in Wyoming the morning that I received the official notice about being furloughed. It was the day I was heading back to Texas and I was already sad about leaving James but the news about furlough had me break down in tears. James was there to hug me and comfort me through one of the most difficult days.

He stayed in Wyoming for another week while his friends visited and then he returned to Texas to spend September with me. I had surgery for my new Cochlear Osia (hearing aid) and he was there to drop me off and pick me up after surgery.

At the end of September, he returned to Wyoming for about four days before deciding to come back to Texas and spend the next few months with me. Snowboarding wouldn’t be opening until Thanksgiving so he chose to stay in Texas until then.

I can’t say everything has gone perfectly smooth these last 5+ months and no relationship is perfect but we’ve learned how to get through things together.

I recently stopped going to my therapist because I no longer had anything to talk about. I realized that most of the time, any issues with James we were able to handle on our own and by the time I met with my therapist for our weekly sessions, everything had already been resolved. My therapist is was helpful for a long time for me and I appreciate that but she gave me the tools I needed to figure things out on my own.

James returned to Wyoming on November 21st and I flew out to New Jersey to spend time with my family for Thanksgiving. On December 2nd, 5 months from the day we first met, I flew to Wyoming to spend some time with James.

My plan was to only spend about 6 days there but I ended up staying for 11. I was terribly distraught leaving him and absolutely hated going back to Texas without him.

I’m finally on my way to New Jersey for Christmas and James is planning on coming out on the 26th for a later Christmas celebration with my family. I’m sad to not be able to be with him for Christmas but I’m excited to see him again the day after and get to spend New Years with him in Texas.

Circling back- since I haven’t been flying, I started a new job. My brother had talked about how much he loved the company he works for and I asked him one day if they were hiring. As it turns out, they were hiring!

I applied for a temporary 3-month position and got the job and now I’m praying they keep me on after my contract ends on January 13th. It really is a great company to work for and I’d love to stay longer.

Since I’ve been away from flying, I’m actually enjoying the break. Things were getting crazy on the plane and I was tired of wearing a mask at work all day. While furlough wasn’t ideal, I’m making the most of it even though most of my (former) coworkers seem to be absolutely miserable being stuck on the ground.

Being at my new job these last 2+ months has been an incredible learning experience. I feel like a newer, happier person. Not to say that flying made me sad or miserable but working for a company that cares about every employee makes all of the difference. Being given the tools to truly make a difference and go above and beyond for your customers is life changing. I feel like everything I’ve learned up to this point will eventually help me to be the best flight attendant version of myself than ever before.

Forget flight attendant— best version of myself PERIOD. I feel like I’ve learned how to really care about people more and put my heart into everything I do. Being happier at work has made me happier in life and in my relationships.

For the first time in a long time, I feel appreciated at work and like I’m actually doing something good and making a difference. Even if I have to walk away at the end of the 3 months, I’ll know that I left my mark and made an impact. I’ll know that I’ll be taking so many new things that I’ve learned with me.

The last 5+ months have felt like a weird dream. Everyone seems to be hating on 2020 but I think I’m actually doing ok. Will I be sad when the clock strikes midnight and it’s 2021? Maybe not, but I definitely don’t see 2020 in the negative light that most people see it.

Looking back at this year, a lot has happened. Here’s a few highlights:

I enjoyed a few months of flying with one of my best friends (Shasta) before we got furloughed and her life forever changed (she had a baby).

I finally got my dream car and my first new car EVER- my 2020 Volvo XC40 (who I refer to as Velma, which means protector!).

I met and fell in love with James, who has helped me get through these last 5+ months (taking care of me when I was sick and when I had surgery; helping me through furlough; cheering me on when applying for jobs).

I’ve also been able to spend some time finishing out the year in NJ with my family and due to furlough, I not only got to enjoy Thanksgiving with them this year but will get to be there for Christmas, too!

In general, this year I’m also thankful to have my two dogs that I love so much and I’ve gotten to live in a house in a great neighborhood they I also love.

I’ve gotten to enjoy more time with friends and I’ve done a little bit of domestic traveling and have had so many great adventures (locally and even some road trips with James).

When asked what I want for Christmas this year, there’s literally nothing. Sure, I could use a million dollars (haha) and the security of knowing that maybe I’ll get to keep my temporary job past January but overall, I’m actually content in my life for once. I feel like I have everything and my life is complete.

I can’t say I’ve ever felt like this before and of course, we always find little things we want (like a new sweater or electronic device or you know, typical things), but if I had to live the rest of my life with only what and who I have in my life right now, I know I’d be happy forever.

I finally feel like everything has finally come together. My mom was right— 2020 was MY year!

I hope your 2020 turned out okay and that you’ve made it through. If not, my wish for you is that 2021 will be your year. I know for me that it felt like every year my mom would say that it would be my year and then it wasn’t but it finally arrived this year. 2020 has been the year of the underdogs and I finally feel like I’m coming out on top.

xoxo

Annie

[easyfoodnetwork]

The Chefs I Used to Admire Aren’t the Leaders We Need Right Now

Big-name chefs need to do more for the employees they laid off

This is Eater Voices, where chefs, restaurateurs, writers, and industry insiders share their perspectives about the food world, tackling a range of topics through the lens of personal experience. First-time writer? Don’t worry, we’ll pair you with an editor to make sure your piece hits the mark. If you want to write an Eater Voices essay, please send us a couple paragraphs explaining what you want to write about and why you are the person to write it to voices@eater.com.

As an amateur cook on my way to becoming a chef, I studied the world-renowned chefs credited with changing restaurant cuisine forever. I’ve read their cookbooks, been to their restaurants, and have even met a few. I’ve been drawn in by the creativity and innovation from chefs like Thomas Keller, Ferran Adrià, René Redzepi, and David Chang, who can transform a raw ingredient into a mindblowing and even iconic dish. But over the past month, I have hit my breaking point with being quiet about the actions, or rather lack of action, high-profile chefs and restaurateurs have taken during this global pandemic. Since the start of the coronavirus crisis, it’s become apparent that awards and accolades don’t translate into common sense and an understanding of optics. From what I’ve seen, it doesn’t seem these chefs can think beyond their own interests.

In a CNBC interview, Chang described this time first and foremost as “easily the hardest couple weeks of my life.” In a Yahoo Finance interview, Tom Colicchio said he thought that it was a bad idea for restaurants to be open for takeout, considering those restaurants would only be making $5,000 a night. He followed it up with, “But the restaurants are doing this because they’re struggling, I understand the intention, I had the same desire to make sure my staff is kept whole. But it’s just not a good thing to do right now.” These statements reek of privilege. Many chefs at this level have licensing deals with hotels, merchandise, luxury car brand deals, millionaire and/or billionaire investors, and cookbook deals. These owners have so many more assets and opportunities than their staff, but we’re led to believe that it’s a hard world for them right now, not their employees. While $5,000 might not be enough for Colicchio to shoulder the risk of opening for takeout, it’s the only option for so many restaurants, including my own, when closing could mean awful things for the staff.

I feel the need to continually reinvent the wheel to keep my staff employed, while the chefs I’m supposed to look up to as industry leaders are looking at their interests first. On April 15, Keller announced that he, Jean-Georges Vongerichten, Daniel Boulud, and Wolfgang Puck are the chosen men, among an entirely male and mostly white group, to join the White House’s Economic Council for Restaurants, one of the “economic revival industry groups” tasked with figuring out how we are going to come back from this. That same day the Small Business Administration announced that the first round of stimulus money had run out. While big-name chefs and restaurant groups positioned themselves to get the first handouts, small businesses without the attached names, accolades, or connections were left to fight it out for the last pennies. There isn’t a timeline for the next round. By then, hundreds if not thousands more restaurants will have closed.

Laid-off employees are struggling to figure things out while their former bosses are lauded as heroes.

For these big names with industry muscle, the first step should have been to lead the charge in taking care of their employees, not just by offering links to unemployment sites, but by making sure they didn’t stretch themselves so thin when they opened new restaurants every year and conducted $10 million renovations. They could have had a better plan than to use unemployment as a safety net for the employees who bent over backward to push their names and brands forward. They could have used their talents and funds to help organizations and people in need, whether it’s those who are food insecure, their unemployed staff, or anyone else who could use a little extra. Instead, even if they acknowledge feeling sad for the employees they’ve had to lay off, these chefs have elected to partner with the Trump administration and brands to do the absolute minimum for their communities.

Like many other restaurants, Eleven Madison Park launched fundraisers for its laid-off staff, including an auction and a donation account. But it’s an odd look considering concurrent news stories announcing it had received funds from a billion-dollar company. A few weeks after EMP closed, it was transformed into a community kitchen for the nonprofit Rethink, a transformation made possible by an undisclosed amount from American Express. Sure, that sounds great, but if American Express can get the EMP kitchen back up and running with this collaboration, then why can’t it pull out the limitless Black Card to also help the staff members who can’t pay their bills?

Laid-off employees are struggling to figure things out while their former bosses are lauded as heroes. Recently, Keller has led a fight to take on insurance companies for not allowing restaurants to use their business-interruption coverage. While admirable, that doesn’t really do anything to help the employees that the chef has laid off. There is no guarantee that money received from an insurance settlement will put a dishwasher in a better position to buy food or pay rent next week.

The optics of these industry-leading restaurants behaving this way gives me zero hope that they are the future of the industry, and yet these are the voices being tasked with bringing back restaurants. We need to hear from the people who are the actual beating heart of the restaurant industry — not from the few who have managed to amass millions and will continue to do so even as they lay off thousands of employees and their restaurants close. I want to hear more from small businesses and learn what they need to stay open. There are chefs who make amazing food who might not speak English or know how to navigate an Small Business Association loan process. There are people at small restaurants who are still working 12-hour-plus days, seven days a week, who don’t have time to navigate an application or collect paperwork or drive down to the bank while keeping a restaurant moving. There are undocumented employees who can’t even apply for unemployment, but are told they were the heart of the kitchen.

For years I have had to work to have a voice in this industry. I worked my way up from my first job at 15 as a busboy at a Black-Eyed Pea restaurant in Texas to owning my own restaurant, Addo in Seattle. My own small business, with nine employees, is continuing to fight on, despite having to compete with multi-unit operators with endless resources. And as a business owner, I have to compete with these same highly resourced chefs, who seem to be first in line for programs, whether it’s a Small Business Association loan or Paycheck Protection Program protections. I know I won’t be getting the help I need for my restaurant on a local, state, or federal level. The only help I can count on is from my staff and my guests. In the face of all of this we have been busier than ever, hired employees to keep up with demand, and even launched benefits for employees on April 1.

I’ve had people — older chefs and men — reach out to try to stop me from calling out chefs for putting their employees in such peril. Those who want to silence me are people who are okay with what’s been going on in this restaurant system for ages. I have been told how if it weren’t for these chefs, their restaurant suppliers would lose support, charities would go without millions, and so on. I can’t ignore the fact that when we are in a global pandemic, these highly respected chefs seem to be taking what they need in order to protect their brands. But they are not moving fast enough to adequately support their former employees.

I’ve been asked about how things will change when restaurants reopen. We are nowhere close to reopening restaurants safely. Everything in restaurants will change, forever. There are restaurants, like mine, that are still here trying to figure out how to keep things going, adjusting on the fly while having to decide if today is the last day. There are people who haven’t seen a paycheck in a month or two who will have to figure out how to pay rent. There are people on the streets who have even less than before.

There are people of all ages dying who won’t get to see what happens when restaurants do finally come back. So who really cares about what the well-regarded chef with a TV show to promote has to say about his vision for the future? These chefs will be fine and are well positioned to come back to their proper place in the spotlight. That’s how things will finally get back to normal — for them.

Eric Rivera is the chef and owner of Addo in Seattle. Vance Lump is an illustrator in the Pacific Northwest.

from Eater - All https://ift.tt/2yCCJPR https://ift.tt/3cEAABI

Big-name chefs need to do more for the employees they laid off

This is Eater Voices, where chefs, restaurateurs, writers, and industry insiders share their perspectives about the food world, tackling a range of topics through the lens of personal experience. First-time writer? Don’t worry, we’ll pair you with an editor to make sure your piece hits the mark. If you want to write an Eater Voices essay, please send us a couple paragraphs explaining what you want to write about and why you are the person to write it to voices@eater.com.

As an amateur cook on my way to becoming a chef, I studied the world-renowned chefs credited with changing restaurant cuisine forever. I’ve read their cookbooks, been to their restaurants, and have even met a few. I’ve been drawn in by the creativity and innovation from chefs like Thomas Keller, Ferran Adrià, René Redzepi, and David Chang, who can transform a raw ingredient into a mindblowing and even iconic dish. But over the past month, I have hit my breaking point with being quiet about the actions, or rather lack of action, high-profile chefs and restaurateurs have taken during this global pandemic. Since the start of the coronavirus crisis, it’s become apparent that awards and accolades don’t translate into common sense and an understanding of optics. From what I’ve seen, it doesn’t seem these chefs can think beyond their own interests.

In a CNBC interview, Chang described this time first and foremost as “easily the hardest couple weeks of my life.” In a Yahoo Finance interview, Tom Colicchio said he thought that it was a bad idea for restaurants to be open for takeout, considering those restaurants would only be making $5,000 a night. He followed it up with, “But the restaurants are doing this because they’re struggling, I understand the intention, I had the same desire to make sure my staff is kept whole. But it’s just not a good thing to do right now.” These statements reek of privilege. Many chefs at this level have licensing deals with hotels, merchandise, luxury car brand deals, millionaire and/or billionaire investors, and cookbook deals. These owners have so many more assets and opportunities than their staff, but we’re led to believe that it’s a hard world for them right now, not their employees. While $5,000 might not be enough for Colicchio to shoulder the risk of opening for takeout, it’s the only option for so many restaurants, including my own, when closing could mean awful things for the staff.

I feel the need to continually reinvent the wheel to keep my staff employed, while the chefs I’m supposed to look up to as industry leaders are looking at their interests first. On April 15, Keller announced that he, Jean-Georges Vongerichten, Daniel Boulud, and Wolfgang Puck are the chosen men, among an entirely male and mostly white group, to join the White House’s Economic Council for Restaurants, one of the “economic revival industry groups” tasked with figuring out how we are going to come back from this. That same day the Small Business Administration announced that the first round of stimulus money had run out. While big-name chefs and restaurant groups positioned themselves to get the first handouts, small businesses without the attached names, accolades, or connections were left to fight it out for the last pennies. There isn’t a timeline for the next round. By then, hundreds if not thousands more restaurants will have closed.

Laid-off employees are struggling to figure things out while their former bosses are lauded as heroes.

For these big names with industry muscle, the first step should have been to lead the charge in taking care of their employees, not just by offering links to unemployment sites, but by making sure they didn’t stretch themselves so thin when they opened new restaurants every year and conducted $10 million renovations. They could have had a better plan than to use unemployment as a safety net for the employees who bent over backward to push their names and brands forward. They could have used their talents and funds to help organizations and people in need, whether it’s those who are food insecure, their unemployed staff, or anyone else who could use a little extra. Instead, even if they acknowledge feeling sad for the employees they’ve had to lay off, these chefs have elected to partner with the Trump administration and brands to do the absolute minimum for their communities.

Like many other restaurants, Eleven Madison Park launched fundraisers for its laid-off staff, including an auction and a donation account. But it’s an odd look considering concurrent news stories announcing it had received funds from a billion-dollar company. A few weeks after EMP closed, it was transformed into a community kitchen for the nonprofit Rethink, a transformation made possible by an undisclosed amount from American Express. Sure, that sounds great, but if American Express can get the EMP kitchen back up and running with this collaboration, then why can’t it pull out the limitless Black Card to also help the staff members who can’t pay their bills?

Laid-off employees are struggling to figure things out while their former bosses are lauded as heroes. Recently, Keller has led a fight to take on insurance companies for not allowing restaurants to use their business-interruption coverage. While admirable, that doesn’t really do anything to help the employees that the chef has laid off. There is no guarantee that money received from an insurance settlement will put a dishwasher in a better position to buy food or pay rent next week.

The optics of these industry-leading restaurants behaving this way gives me zero hope that they are the future of the industry, and yet these are the voices being tasked with bringing back restaurants. We need to hear from the people who are the actual beating heart of the restaurant industry — not from the few who have managed to amass millions and will continue to do so even as they lay off thousands of employees and their restaurants close. I want to hear more from small businesses and learn what they need to stay open. There are chefs who make amazing food who might not speak English or know how to navigate an Small Business Association loan process. There are people at small restaurants who are still working 12-hour-plus days, seven days a week, who don’t have time to navigate an application or collect paperwork or drive down to the bank while keeping a restaurant moving. There are undocumented employees who can’t even apply for unemployment, but are told they were the heart of the kitchen.

For years I have had to work to have a voice in this industry. I worked my way up from my first job at 15 as a busboy at a Black-Eyed Pea restaurant in Texas to owning my own restaurant, Addo in Seattle. My own small business, with nine employees, is continuing to fight on, despite having to compete with multi-unit operators with endless resources. And as a business owner, I have to compete with these same highly resourced chefs, who seem to be first in line for programs, whether it’s a Small Business Association loan or Paycheck Protection Program protections. I know I won’t be getting the help I need for my restaurant on a local, state, or federal level. The only help I can count on is from my staff and my guests. In the face of all of this we have been busier than ever, hired employees to keep up with demand, and even launched benefits for employees on April 1.

I’ve had people — older chefs and men — reach out to try to stop me from calling out chefs for putting their employees in such peril. Those who want to silence me are people who are okay with what’s been going on in this restaurant system for ages. I have been told how if it weren’t for these chefs, their restaurant suppliers would lose support, charities would go without millions, and so on. I can’t ignore the fact that when we are in a global pandemic, these highly respected chefs seem to be taking what they need in order to protect their brands. But they are not moving fast enough to adequately support their former employees.

I’ve been asked about how things will change when restaurants reopen. We are nowhere close to reopening restaurants safely. Everything in restaurants will change, forever. There are restaurants, like mine, that are still here trying to figure out how to keep things going, adjusting on the fly while having to decide if today is the last day. There are people who haven’t seen a paycheck in a month or two who will have to figure out how to pay rent. There are people on the streets who have even less than before.

There are people of all ages dying who won’t get to see what happens when restaurants do finally come back. So who really cares about what the well-regarded chef with a TV show to promote has to say about his vision for the future? These chefs will be fine and are well positioned to come back to their proper place in the spotlight. That’s how things will finally get back to normal — for them.

Eric Rivera is the chef and owner of Addo in Seattle. Vance Lump is an illustrator in the Pacific Northwest.

from Eater - All https://ift.tt/2yCCJPR via Blogger https://ift.tt/2Kuhke3

[enemylegal55-blog]

How I Dealt With Losing My Job With No Warning After Just 1 Month

A month into a new position I found myself unexpectedly unemployed. It was a Thursday morning, and I was called into my new boss’s office. I was expecting to speak about my current performance, and out of nowhere, I was told to pack my things and leave the building. The only explanation I was given was “you aren’t fulfilling the needs of the role.” There was no warning, no meetings or writeup beforehand regarding my performance in the position.

So, on a Thursday afternoon, I found myself jobless. My head was spinning with everything this meant. “My bills, my new car lease, moving in July, student loans, savings…..what do I do?”

I quickly realized that finding a job that fits you is a lot like dating. You have kiss a lot of frogs to find your prince (or princess) charming. So back to the pond I am going. Trust me: I am no stranger to the stressors of being without an income. I have had a few periods in my work history of unemployment. During those times, I was able to develop 9 tips that have helped me make the most of my time of unemployment.

1. Have an emergency account

It wasn’t until last year when I discovered TFD that I knew about the importance of having an emergency fund. Sure, I had savings, kinda. But nothing dedicated to the “what ifs” in life. My partner and I now have an emergency fund that we have dedicated to building over the last year. We started by transferring $1,000 from our checking account into a new savings account, and from there, we set up an automatic transfer of $100 a month ($50 from each paycheck) into our emergency account. Then we don’t touch it, no matter what. A little short for vacation money? Too bad — no funds are coming out of the emergency fund.

Having the emergency fund is like having a safety net under the tight rope you’re walking. You hope you won’t need it, but when you do, you are so happy it’s there. Many people suggest having at least three months of expenses in your emergency account, but for my own life, I keep five months of expenses saved. Unemployment is unpredictable, and last time I was unemployed, it lasted five months. The more you have saved, the greater peace of mind you will have.

2. Get to know your state’s unemployment benefits

Now, this one was a big pill for my ego to swallow. I was very reluctant to apply for unemployment. I thought, “People like me don’t do that” — but guess what? We do. Unemployment benefits are there to help you during this transitional time. It’s not forever, and it doesn’t mean you failed. Applying for unemployment benefits is your right as a tax-paying citizen. It just means you are taking care of yourself during this awkward time.

3. Look at your budget, or make a budget

Your income has changed, and therefore your money output has to change. Look at your budget — maybe you can’t go out to eat three times a week anymore. Look at what you spend on consistently, and make adjustments. This doesn’t mean depriving yourself; it just means adjusting your spending to your needs.

4. Create a 9-5 schedule

Just because you’re not going to work 9-5 doesn’t mean you shouldn’t be working. Keeping yourself on an “office hours” schedule will help you feel productive. I never realized how deeply my self-esteem was tied to having a job. I used to be the gal at work who would joke about wishing to go home as soon as possible, but now that I am unemployed, all I want is to go to work. By keeping a 9-5 schedule and filling it with tasks that keep me productive and learning, I am able to keep my self-esteem high and myself from spiraling into negativity.

5. Avoid the binge-watching trap

Binge-watching feels good after a full workweek, but it often makes you feel lazy and unaccomplished if it’s what you do every day. Avoid turning on the TV until after your 9-5 schedule. Make binge-watching your favorite TV show a reward for a hard day’s work — not a hobby.

6. Set time for meditations, job searches, and learning

During that 9-5 schedule, these are my three important tasks to do every day:

Meditate: being unemployed can really wreak havoc on your self-esteem. You could easily fall down the negativity rabbit hole. Meditation can put a stop to that; take a moment to be present. It helps — I promise!

Apply for jobs: Schedule 2-3 hours a day to hit the pavement (or internet) to apply for jobs, post your resume, make calls, network. Of course, job searching is a large part of unemployment, but don’t let it consume you all day every day (that’s a one-way ticket to negativity land). Block out time for it in your daily schedule.

Learning something new: Remember all the times you said, “If I had more time, I would learn X”? Guess what? You’ve got the time now. Use it.

7. YouTube is your friend

Don’t know how to meditate? There is a YouTube channel for that. Want to learn a new skill? There is a YouTube channel for practically anything you want to learn. Take time to search the internet to find resources to help you develop/learn new skills.

8. Stay social

It is so important to stay connected to your friends and family during your time of unemployment. As mentioned before, unemployment can be a time of negativity, and low self-esteem can sneak up on you. Work is a place where most of us get our social interactions during the week. That is why unemployment can feel so isolating. Talk to your friends and family, and make plans. Be honest with them about your finical situation, and offer low-cost or free alternatives to what you usually do together. Go to the park, go on a hike, have a movie night, game night, find meetups in your community. Your friends and family want you around, and I am positive that if you are honest about your needs, they will adjust their plans.

9. Stay active/go outside

The fresh air and new scenery will do you good. Staying physically active has endless benefits, physically, mentally and emotionally. Put it in your 9-5 schedule.

*****

Ultimately, unemployment doesn’t last forever. Take this time to focus on yourself. Take the time to learn, grow, kiss a few frogs, and find the job that best fits you.

Deena is newly unemployed, trying to figure out this thing called life.

Image via Unsplash

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Source: https://thefinancialdiet.com/how-i-dealt-with-losing-my-job-with-no-warning-after-just-1-month/

[agentharrisonofshield-a]

⏳⏳⏳⏳⏳⏳

For every “⏳” I receive, my muse will openly talk about a bit of their backstory.@wxldchxld

“My dad was a blue-collar worker.  Union man.  I didn’t quite understand how the whole unemployment situation worked when I was young, so all I knew is sometimes he was working and sometimes he wasn’t, and I knew enough to know that parents not working equaled bad.  So I’d start getting anxious every time he wasn’t working.  I’d stop asking for toys or books or trips to the museum, and I’d try to save up all my change to help. 

“On a related note, it turns out my mother wasn’t poor - she was a well-respected lawyer according to my dad, and she came from money through my grandmother.  So my dad and I were never in danger of even being unable to afford membership to AMNH or long weekends in DC, let alone being unable to afford a new book or a toy I wanted.  I just took all of that for granted.  I remember being surprised that one of the kids from my local school had never seen the Statue of Liberty, let alone been to the AMNH or the Met or the Intrepid, but it never really registered with me until I was a lot older that I got to do things and take for granted things that a lot of my classmates with working-class parents didn’t.

“They first sent me to therapy after my mom died.  Maybe my dad might’ve done it anyway, but I’m pretty sure me waking up screaming every night from nightmares was part of the reason.  Even after the nightmares mostly stopped, my dad made me keep going, because now I’d started public school - first grade after private kindergarten - and I wasn’t handling it well.  When I was 6 I was first diagnosed with general anxiety disorder.

“Fun fact: Asperger’s didn’t make it into the DSM until I was ten years old.  My dad says he and my mom had been concerned about me when I was a toddler, because I went forever without speaking, and then when I did speak it was in full sentences, but if I didn’t know a word to express what I wanted I’d go and bang my head against the wall.  But I didn’t hit the delayed development criteria for autism, so the doctor told my mom it was just a phase that I’d grow out of.  Fast forward 14 years, and my testing for learning disabilities that everyone insisted were the only thing that could explain the difference between how smart I was and my poor school performance turns up this wtf diagnosis of ‘Asperger’s’.  It was like a light shining down from heaven: suddenly there was a name for literally everything that I’d been feeling.

“High school I went to was a good school.  Most of my teachers liked me, which was a nice change from all of my teachers only knowing me as the problem child.  The bullying was still there but it was... tolerable, if you can apply that word to that situation.  No one was shoving me around, no one was throwing shit at me, no one was starting chants of insulting nicknames that the whole class would take up before the teacher returned.  Just the usual snide comments and ostracization and rumors that I would of course be the last person to hear about.  I even joined the drama department my freshman year.  Not to act.  I was a techie, mostly - building the set and running the plays.  I did costumes and makeup, too, starting my sophomore year, when my history teacher took me under her wing.  I was never really part of the cast or the crew, but it was fun.  And in my senior year I joined the cross-country team.  I was fat and I’d never run a mile in my life but one of my classmates had said something and I figured the misery would be worth pissing them off.  Lost some weight, actually, and the running wasn’t miserable (even though this was pre-ipod) so I... stuck with it.  Still try to do 3 miles minimum at least four days a week.

“College... didn’t go well.  Depression-that-was-actually-bipolar-disorder, anxiety, social anxiety, that feeling I couldn’t shake that literally everyone but me knew what they were doing and I was making a fool of myself, and the fact that I’d never spent more than 6 weeks away from home.  I eventually just stopped leaving my dorm room except for food and the occasional visit to Paddles, and since I’d gone out of my way to request a single as an accommodation, there was no one to notice that I’d stopped going to class.  I lied to my dad about it for months, making up stories about tests and quizzes and classroom discussions.  I think I even made up a whole set of classmates to talk about as if I knew them.  Eventually I broke down and he learned the truth, and I dropped out and went home.”

[sierradorotheia]

CURRENT FAVES vol 3

So I know it’s been REALLY long since the last ~current faves~ post. It’s been six months since I moved out of the North and back down South... but I just never found the time to write something remotely “worth-while” (despite the unemployment back in the Fall!) but here it is anyway. I am also thinking about doing a “Life Update” post of some sort, since I have a post on my Drafts that’s been sitting there after I moved out of Yellowknife. 

Aaand... without any much further ado...

*** MAKEUP ***

Dior Backstage Foundation ~ this started as a sample from when I had a makeover done at Sephora. I absolutely love this foundation’s longevity and that it has a satin finish. Lately I’ve been steering clear of matte foundations because of the season. I get compliments with my flawless face with this foundation. The only thing I dislike about it is the fact that it’s not pump; for something high-end, you would think it would have a different, less-messy packaging. But overall, I wish this foundation is not expensive enough for me to use all the time. 

CoverFX Highlighting Drops ~ again, another deluxe sample I got from Sephora. I’m still using the sample I got actually- and man this liquid highlighter is just the stuff of the goddesses. I swear I always look GLOWY and naturally radiant with these drops. I saw some videos where people mix a drop or two with their foundations, but I use it on my cheekbones, bridge of my nose and my chine. I don’t even have to use a highlighting powder after! I would definitely buy the full size when I run out, but this deluxe sample bottle is lasting me ages.

Charlotte Tilburry Hollywood Contour ~ this cream contour stick is so worth the splurge. I had the Sephora makeup artist use this on me when I had a makeover done, and I just knew I got to have it. It was out of stock for the longest time in-store and online and I finally took the plunge when it went back in stock on the day Sephora was having the 20% off event. This contour is so good on its own--- on a very important night-out. It’s very natural-looking and long-lasting. I can’t stress enough how much I love this product, and I also wish I can use this all the time if not for the price point!

Sephora Lip Plumper in Nude ~ so... I’m not really a believer in lip plumpers and stuff. I just don’t think it ever works, not that I’ve tried one before. I was on my lunch break at work and watching itsjudytime on YouTube and she featured this as one of her all-time faves. I checked the website and I assumed it wouldn’t be too pricey since it’s a Sephora brand, and I was right. My office is inside a mall with a Sephora so I picked one up on the same day. I can’t say it works per se but I like the tingly effect it has (like it’s actually doing something lol) and since I am never a fan of glossy lips, I can make an exception with this. The nude colour is so universal and perfect for me!

Artistry Highlighter ~ bestfriend got this for me for Christmas, and while I am not familiar with the Artistry brand, I was excited to try this (I mean, you can never have so many high-lighters right?!). My favourite is the gold and pink highlights as they have really natural look and finish to it, and the fact that it stays put all-day is really a plus. 

No POREblem Primer Touch in Sol ~ I haven’t bought a full-sized primer in a while just because I have so many deluxe samples I haven’t yet exhausted, but this primer is so satiny, and silky.. love the scent and the way it applies.

*** SKIN CARE/HAIR CARE ***

Mario Badescu Face Mist - Green Tea and Aloe Vera ~ you might already know I’m quite fond of the Mario Badescu line- and how exciting that Sephora carries MB now, too! I immediately purchased the Green Tea and Aloe and Lavender face mists. I loved the GT one but not so much the lavender; the latter has a scent that I kind of don’t like, and I wish I bought a smaller bottle to start. Now I’m just miserably trying to finish it at work... but the GT is very refreshing, very soothing!

Lush Body Wash ~ I am partially embarrassed to say that for a couple of months, I was a body wash-sample hoarder at at least four locations in my City. Like... I would go from stores to stores and shamelessly get at least two samples of body wash (most times, without even purchasing anything), and they were generous with their samples, too! I feel so bad for abusing the system... but I finally took the plunge and bought full-sized bottles. The ones I like by Lush are : Sleepy, Happy Hippy, American Cream, Olive Branch, and Rose Jam. They all smell amazing, very bubbly... and I liked having variations in my shower so I can use whatever suits my mood. It adds to the excitement of showering. lol L'Occitane Foot Cream ~ I know it’s still sub-zero temps outside but... sandals season is just around the corner! I finally ditched Soap and Glory’s foot cream and while I was on a hunt for new one, I stumbled upon this product on Sephora and just basically trusted the buyer reviews. I like how creamy this is, a little goes a long way for sure compared to S&G... and it has echinacea extract, which apparently helps wick away foot odour. So far I’m liking this, and I don’t even have to use the foot board all the time before applying this foot cream.

Bath and Body Works Smoothing Body Scrub ~ I’ve always been a fan of BBW scrubs because of how fine they are, they smell SOOO good, and they actually do the job of exfoliating and keeping my skin smooth and supple. Right now I have the Comfort and Love scents in my shower, and I am still waiting for the Energize one to be available in-store. This scrubs are so perfect post-waxing or post-shaving.

Redken All-Soft Shampoo & Conditioner ~ this was the shampoo and conditioner used by my hairdresser during my last haircut appointment, so I decided to purchase a full bottle to take home. It lives up to its claim of all-soft. My hair does not look dull, and the softness and silkiness is almost instant and last until the day after.

BrioGeo Scalp Revival Shampoo/Conditioner/Scalp Drops ~ I was on the fence about including these on the current favourites since I have only used this three times exactly, but I just used it today so I figured I’d tell you what I thought about it. I use the three together of course, and while they recommend you use the products 2-3 times a week, I have only been using them every two weeks or so, just because I don’t think it actually cleanses the hair and especially after a workout, I would love that clean feeling on my hair. So  from what I noticed, the shampoo and conditioner combo sort of weighs my hair down, but I think that’s part of the process. It’s a treatment, so I would understand how it won’t make your hair feel fab right after usage. It has a cooling effect from the peppermint right after rinsing and I LIVE FOR THAT. It feels amazing, soothing, calming... you name it. I can still feel it now and it’s been three hours since I washed my hair. I just have to keep using it I guess, but I don’t know if I’m ready to take the plunge and buy the pricey full-sized bottles!

Hempz Body Lotion ~ you can tell I’ve been using this lotion for quite sometime lol... I really love the scent of this lotion. So clean... so subtle. And it smells like the lotions they have at the nail spa that they apply to my hands after my manicure. 

Burberry Her ~ this is my current scent, and God knows it took me forever to change scents. First time I tried this perfume out, I thought it was too sweet. But I love how it smells shortly after. It’s very feminine... and I don’t even mind that because this is Burberry’s new scent, there might be tons of other women wearing the same scent.

  Vasanti Face Scrub ~ this item was in my FabFitFun box way back when, and after I ran out of my ExfoliKate (and refusing to repurchase unless I used up all the samples I have), I decided to finally give this a shot. I am all for the fine microbreads this scrub has, and it does leave my face bright and smooth in the morning.

Mount Lai Rose Quartz Face Roller ~ I’ve been wanting to try this product for the longest time, and then I forgot about it... and Sephora began carrying Mount Lai face rollers and I knew I just have to pull the trigger. My only regret is not buying the bigger size, as I did not know there was such, but this mini-size does the trick just as well. I pop this in the fridge and I just use it at night after my night time skincare. It’s very relaxing, and you just want to keep doing it over and over. You have to make sure you know how to properly use it though! Watch the video they have on the Sephora website here 

*** MISCELLANEOUS ***

Bergamot Waters Three-Wick Candle ~ finally, a home scent that the boyfriend and I agreed on! We have this as a plug-in, and the candles, and has very nice scent that’s not over powering. 

Essential Oils ~ I know I’m a little too late on the essential oils wagon, but we finally tried this out with our humidifier and while I’m not sure if it’s really doing anything health-wise, it helps me sleep better so that’s kinda good.

Anytime Fitness Workout App ~ I stopped doing CrossFit workouts since late January, and being in the CrossFit bubble for over two years, I really don’t know what to do at the gym without any direction. I decided to check out the free Anytime Fitness app that came with my gym membership, and I’m quite happy with the results so far. I feel like I’m pushing harder this way, and at my own pace so I feel as though I am less prone to injure myself. The App has different workouts every 8 weeks so you can switch things up and confuse your muscles!

[diarrheaworldstarhiphop]

I think the anon re: memes versus left/right was trying to point out that you yourself have a double-standard when it comes to them and that you've uncritically spread right-wing ones before that turned out to be bullshit while mocking the left for falling for the exact same thing????????????? hillary death note

eh, i dont think so? I dont think it is speaking to me, i mean, it goes:

Interesting how memes mocking the left don't have to be factual, but memes mocking the right have to be backed up with a fucktinllion of evidence.

memes mocking the left are generally coming from a basis that isnt too concerned with the factual while memes mocking the right are coming from a basis that is totally concerned with being factual. I feel the right side is EMOTIONALLLLLLY invested rather than intelligently. I mean, it’s in the name, reactionary politics, as it is a desperate appeal of return to the status quo ante, which has depression and dread about the SITUATION NOW as a prerequisite. For them, it’s a terrible loss bordering on grief, and that lends itself to an outlook and sense of humour that speaks out of dark, sardonic wit. They have nothing to lose, so to speak, because they have already lost as far as they know. It’s a political rage against the dying of the light and they will be as surreal and intangible about it, indifferent to how outsiders interpret that, relishing in others’ confusion as they worship gods of chaos via repeating digits and making pee pee and poo poo jokes with icons of a frogs.

The left, however, are smug and confident in using wit and “facts”, because they are the status quo and part of what they feel and express is the “right side of history.” No matter how bad or awful they feel civil rights are, they KNOW, in their gut that they will be validated by time itself and that lends itself to a sense of “evidence is on my side” and a light wit appended to that. See: the daily show. Memeing and joking about the right wing opposition is treated like a sideshow oddity on it’s way out on the love boat ride of history, and that lends itself to a sort of sensible, condescending smugness.

to factually assail the far right wing’s memes is ineffective, because yeah, their memes tap into something emotional rather than “factual”. But the effect these emotional memes have on the left and producing real change on discourse and awareness is promising. A means to an end. It’s hard not to get excited about that, because it confounds and infuriates the left because it has the trappings of a real counter culture they have no control of. It gets the left invested in a way they have previously been passive about and that lends itself to constructive discourse, once taboos have been shed and the playing field leveled.

Unless you made that anon, maybe you are projecting your own frustration with me onto that ask?

This double standard you have ascribed to me tho, i acknowledge that.

Because for all the facts and statistics, you can have your face in the details for so long that the greater picture eludes and morphs around you and ultimately out of your grasp. The left commands power and clout the right wing can only grasp at and hold in fleeting moments. The left, for having command of the media and the “facts,” somehow inspite of that, nationalism and reactionary politics is on an incredible rise and no matter how much fact checking and dispelling of “fake news” is done, it can’t help that. So what good is there for me in further fact checking here when its done all the time on CNN, MSNBC, most news outlets and so on that you, yes you, can tune into rather than wait for me to do so. Also i have like a million tabs open and links to follow up on stories and shit ive posted before but never get around to it because i have a live and career out of this and I run this blog FOR FREE

You can use this bleg on the internet as a counterweight or barometre against mainstream news, i actually encourge that lol. Youd be figuring it out for uRSELF and forming ur own opinion, which is ideal haha. I really dont want people relying on me

I usually get the impetus to make time to post if something excites me or if its readily just there or if i find it particularly controversial or inflammatory. I find myself focused on the prevailing status quo and it’s failures more often than i would employ a general consistency to ALL.

But yeah, anyway, mainstream news (REAL NEWS™) is a tool for maintaining status quo. It fact checks the western right but is totally blind to the needs of population and the rise of the right wing among western muslims (in a way that isnt totally inflammatory, theres hardly ever a nuanced constructive look at it - only “not all muslims” or “yes all muslims”) who are a reaction to the global predominance of western culture/influence, that in turn fuels the rise of the right wing in the west because the concerned westerner’s options are either the reigning side of total ignorance/apologism or complete ethnic upheaval/nationalism as a function of western polarization because of how ineffectual the status quo (liberals) are.

The western left isn’t looking forward, it’s isnt looking in the present either, it’s looking to the past, in maintaining itself independent of the multiple trajectories and developing trends around the world, and an increasingly antiquated pipeline to progressive utopia hoping for indefinite power over the right rather than evolve with everyone else who now has figured out a way to exploit these narrow focused western progressive blinders. (lengthy sentence, take a breath, sorry lol)

It has no vision, while people are captivated by vision. Selective factchecking and saying everything is hokey dorey and praying for a large enough multicultural vote one day - because it’s been pre-ordained by Being On The Right Side Of History, because cmon it’s Current Year - to deny the right wing power isnt a platform worth being captivated by. I surely am not captivated by it, especially with how it has fanned the flames of polarization and become apologist toward awful international militarism it’s responsible for and SOME forms of terrorism that has resulted from that.

You can look at the factchecking about the economy and see unemployment in the USA has been down since 2008 thanks to obama (arguably? adminstrations generally cant effect the direction of the economy so well), and yet the american midwest is still an economic wasteland riddled with opiate addiction - that has helped push Trump into the white house. You can believe that more immigration will grant you demographic destiny and ensure the success of a truly progressive forever guaranteed slate of power where everyone lives in peace, newcomers drop their customs and assimilate into a country that becomes a mixed race nation transcending tribalism without the right wing impeding on that... except the obvious brewing timebomb of ethnic strife experienced in other diverse countries that OTHER NATIONS RECOGNIZE AND SEEK TO FOMENT AND EXPLOIT IN THE WEST, rendering that narrow utopian platform a failure in waiting when shit like this happens:

I mean yes, i have peddled things that has turned out to be bullshit, but who hasn’t? I use this blog often to speak to areas i feel are ignored and fuck around with shit i see that isnt already posted to high hell about already elsewhere. The left listens to factual contest and the right listens to gut punch populism.

what is a double standard anyway, what is the standard even? politics is the study of languages and not everyone speaks the same language. Why should i correct the speakers of hindi for not using the grammatical structure of romance languages? You may speak one language, baffled by how i dont fit in that but im plainly busy trying to comprehend languages and apply them in places where necessary.

I think i started rambling off track, whoops, ill end this now lol

TL;DR: its my blog you can unfollow if you dont like my apparent inconsistency, im not trying to appeal to your or anyone’s standards besides my own (i dont have any, really, im along for the ride). im like the facade of a contrarian on steroids and self likened political historian, observer of sorts - which is all egostroke, im just a shitposter on the internet and i like gauging reactions and flossing my thoughts by responding to things like this ask.