#it's kinda nostalgic

[turtlemagnum]

today was the day my grandpa retired. he came into work, sat in the break room and talked to everybody who wanted to say goodbye at work all day. he got to see this one regular shopper who always brought her dog, he got to pet her (and so did i, eventually). me and my grandma got there at about 2:30 or so, and stayed until about 4, which is when he got clapped out. i swear, every fucking employee in the company was there, and we all clapped as he passed by. it's weird to say about my goddamn grandpa, but i felt proud of him in that moment. then we went to the bar that they planned his retirement party at. turned out to be a gay bar, which they didn't know when they planned it, but they didn't have a problem with it either. was nice to have a bar i could feel comfortable wearing my pride pins at.

the party felt a bit rough on my end, at the start. shit got crowded quick, and for the first little while they kept sending me out to the car to get one little thing they forgot. but, i got some food in me (which was mostly pretty damn good), and then i started talking to my mom, which led to talking to family members i either hadn't seen for a while or hadn't met at all, which turned out nice. i played darts with someone who turned out to be my little cousin, little gremlin thing was only 14. i had to stop her from getting tetanus, apparently earlier in the month she decided to grab a motherfucking snapping turtle, frankly amazed she's still in one piece. her grandfather was the man who took me to shoot for the first time, so goddamn many years ago. my mom asked him about something gun related and his response gave me the bittersweet revelation that in terms of technical information, i've surpassed him in the intervening years. i can guarantee he's still a better shot than me though, given just a relative lack of experience on my end.

at first i only drank water because the only non-alcoholic drinks the barkeep said she had were non-alcoholic beer and coke products, and given the current boycott i'm trying my best to steer clear from coke products. then my little cousin mentioned she wanted a daiquiri, and apparently they had them available so i got one too (or first, rather, just by sheer luck of the draw). virgin, of course, just like i used to get when i was a little kid. one of the many things that felt nostalgic tonight. karaoke had started, and i saw my grandparents dancing together to a love song, and i felt like crying. it was through a window, but i saw a very special moment. a part of me was envious, for what they have. i'd never tell them that, though.

eventually, the crowd that came for the party started clearing out, and there were a few unrelated people who just came for the karaoke. one was a beautiful woman with an even more beautiful singing voice. my mom really hit it off with her after she sang, though i couldn't hear a word they said due to how loud the music was. the same could be said of my grandparents talking right next to me. i was resting my arm on my grandma's chair, and i felt it wobble from being a bit uneven. i decided to wiggle the chair a bit, which got a smile out of her. something else i remember from earlier was that i talked to my uncle. a bit about him:

he's my grandma's adopted little brother. i mention that he's adopted because he's native. don't know what tribe or anything, he's never mentioned it and frankly, given how he taught us kids words in "indian" i'm not entirely sure he knew either. again, adopted. in terms of raising him my great grandparents did about as good a job as white people living in the 1970s coulda done, frankly. because of that bleeding over into how my grandparents and how my mother raised me, i'd like to think i have a fairly healthy amount of respect and interest in indigenous cultures the world over; especially for somebody whiter than a cracker. so because of him, i don't think i'd be as good a person as i am today without his impact in a somewhat roundabout way, given how we were never the closest or anything. maybe when i was a lot younger, but the years have definitely gone on. and my only regret is that i feel like i can't really communicate how him and his son have impacted who i am as a person.

regardless, i talked with him for a bit. he asked what i was doing with my life, and i mentioned that i've been planning on getting my CDL and becoming a truck driver. he was also a truck driver before he somewhat recently retired, so he gave me a lot of advice, what to expect, what to look for, so on. he mentioned that the biggest downside to trucking is that it gets real lonely, and i said that was fine by me because i'm already a lonely person. he responded saying that it'd be the perfect job for me, then, and empathized with me when i mentioned how shitty that grocery job was. the conversation trailed off after his son, my cousin, came back after paying their bill. he was there with his girlfriend, who started talking about how she wanted to punch the owner dude for how he treated the barkeep lady. i just sorta slinked off from there

a few highlights and notable occurrences of today include: me and my grandma going to the car to be there for my grandpa while it was pouring goddamn buckets, like seriously just a little bit earlier the weather got bad enough that we thought somebody tried to bust open the door at first. being up at the bar with my mom and some guy mentioning that i looked like some guy from the smashing pumpkins(?), with both him and my mom being amazed that i didn't know who they were. he got especially amazed when i mentioned that she was my mom, he just sorta thought we were friends. he pulled up a picture of the guy on his phone and i did see the resemblance in the sense that he was a bald guy with a wide facial structure. one of my relatives i hadn't met before (at least, to my own recollection) wanted to see my eyes, because she wanted to see if i got them from my grandpa. his are blue, mine are hazel. regardless, she said i had beautiful eyes and an even more beautiful smile. really lit up my night, especially after my grandpa mentioned that i usually have beautiful hair too. also led to me having a conversation with the gun grandpa relative guy about how when i was a lot younger, i had my hair a bit longer once and then an old lady i held open a door for called me a "nice young lady" and i immediately shaved it, which he mentioned how he used to be a hippie dude which then went into a whole thing about him struggling with alcoholism and such. after the whole conversation topic had essentially run its course, i mentioned how growing up with my mom i heard a lot about the shit that addiction had done to our family, so i've made sure to never start anything, and i couldn't quite get a read on it but he seemed a bit proud.

at one point my mom was doing karaoke, this was later on in the night. she was doing green day, and she was just bad. had no sense for the flow of the words, no real tune to it, just god awful, it was great. she gestured for me to come up and sing with her, which i denied vehemently, mostly because i knew the song wasn't suited to my voice at all. which, to be fair, it wasn't suited for hers, either, but i actually cared about sounding good. i remembered how many years ago, she told me how much i sucked at singing, and it really hurt my little kid ego. then, a few years back now, back when i had a friend group they all agreed that i had a pretty good singing voice. so when i went up for karaoke, i felt pretty confident in sounding at least decent, albeit anxiety ridden as all hell.

here's the thing about my singing voice. it's not really suited for most of the music i'm really into, much less shit like modern-ish pop or rock or anything like that. i think it's unequivocally best suited for oldies, especially shit like sinatra. so, that's what i went with, and put in blue moon. i had songs from new vegas on the mind, since earlier the guy running the karaoke equipment sang why don't you do right from it presumably to fill the gaps between actual customers wanting to sing. and god dammit, when i got up and grabbed the microphone i was fucking shaking, especially my legs. i was anxious, because i wasn't sure if i was gonna turn out well, and to my relief i did. something i think was one of my better points was my rhythm/timing, i can't say i know the words by heart but i do know the way they're sung deep in my bones. i kept my eyes glued to the lyric screen until the first break in the song, and then i looked at the "crowd" (which, wasn't very many people but still). they all seemed to be genuinely enjoying it, and not at my expense either. something else i'm particularly proud of is how i'd occasionally misspeak (missing?) e.g. saying "flew moon" instead of "blue moon", but i managed to stay almost perfectly in sync with how the song's supposed to go without stopping and going "ah shit", y'know. i definitely know it's an important skill in live performances to be able to just keep on going even if you fuck up, so i'm definitely pretty happy about that.

afterwards i got applause. and like, i had been there for the night, i could definitely tell the polite applause from the "oh shit that was good" applause y'know. i didn't get as much hype as the lady who was an actually good singer, but i could tell that i did a pretty good job. my mom said that i did really good too, and both her and my grandpa congratulated me on having the balls to actually get up there and sing because they know how i am. afterwards my grandpa said he was genuinely impressed, and i know for a fact he'd let it be known that i did a shitty job if i did a shitty job, so that meant a lot. it was, in fact, my first time ever singing karaoke, so despite not being The Best tonight we're all definitely happy with how it turned out. that felt really nice.

it's bittersweet, seeing that he's finally done with this fucking job. he literally had number 1 seniority in the entire company, and this isn't a small company. it's mostly local, but it's big enough that there are a few stores in places like chicago. all of the people he worked with clearly loved him, and i'm glad that i have a grandpa worth being considered "the best boss i've ever had" by so many goddamn people. we had people who he hadn't even worked with in years, who moved to other jobs or other stores, they all came just to show how much they loved him. i'm glad he's so loved, i love him too. i just hope he doesn't go fucking insane from being home so damn much. tonight was a good night

[leo-artista]

Toxic yaoi minecraft version

[noxious-fennec]

Snapshots of simpler times..

[ryllen]

Apologize my humor is like this but i really had tear in my eyes because of how funny it sounds to me [x]

[cozylittleartblog]

For gabriel, do you hate V1 or... Are you guys just friends?

i dont know why this is worded like i'm an ask blog but i think they're insufferable boyfriends

[me and the machine i pulled by being a traitorous heathen.png]

[chul-sinusoida]

Smetimes you just gotta

[cubedmango]

dyed in madder red

[longmaxsilvarg]

something about the main menu for life is strange genuinely makes me wanna collapse and sob

[dangermousie]

And now for something a bit different

[crushedsweets]

I fucking love 2014ish/cartoony/cute art of Toby cuz it makes me feel so nostalgic and like cuteness aggression like when I see my little brother or a baby monkey or something cute I just want to explode it with my mind I need to make a folder. I see that one toby ref sheet w that fatass smile and the buckteeth and I tear up a little. He’s just some guy

[ink-the-artist]

bought some crayons

[oriixxc]

[ljesak]

some sketches i mostly cleaned up and a temp ref for shannon

[bumfuzzled-bee]

! Eight !

[little-pup-pip]

I have a request, I don't know what the name of this asthetic is but it was very popular back in the 2000s and 2010s. It's the stereotypical boy, age range from kids to teens. Stuff like disney XD, ninjagos, skating, dinosaurs, epic voices, rough housing, nerfs, cars, blues and reds. No pacifier btw, hope this helps.

Here you go!!

[noname-404s-blog]