#like straddling the line between middle aged and senior

[dragonwysper]

TRUE. I love them honestly they're great

sometimes i look at animorphs, a series for the 8-12 market, and look at all the blood and death and gore and near-deaths of the protagonists and psychological horror and grief and ptsd and survivor’s guilt in this series and think, what the hell would this series be like if it was aimed at teens

and then i remember

i’ve read those books

they were written by animorphs author ka applegate’s husband, michael grant, they’re called the gone series, and they’re grim as all hell

[yikesharringrove]

the fic you wrote for my last prompt was amazing, ty 😭 can you do 50 + 56 this time please? and if you want to work in dyslexic!steve too that would be awesome! 🥰

You are speaking my fuckin’ language, dyslexic Steve is my ABSOLUTE jam. Honestly, whenever I write Steve, he’s dyslexic, although sometimes it’s not mentioned because it’s not important to Harry’s journey @ jk rowling

Thank you for your request! I’m really glad you liked the other one I wrote! You’re anonymous so I don’t know which one that is but I really enjoyed writing them all! Sorry for my manic energy rn.

Something a little different, it’s modern au! This is probably nothing like what you were thinking so I’m sorry, but I kinda love it ngl.

50: Secret Admirer

56: “I don’t know if I should be flattered or offended.”

Prompt list!

Billy spent three and a half hours reading through every single tweet on the account.

There were so fucking many of them. The earliest one was timestamped from four days ago, so obviously, this person had no life outside of tweeting.

Tweeting about Billy.

He had a few personal favorites. He had retweeted them to his account, figuring may as well play it up, make a joke outta everything.

@ImHardForHargrove: sorry WHOMST gave you the RIGHT to have eyes that fuckin blue im YELLING

@ImHardForHargrove: watchin u play basketball is a religious experience y are ur arms so BIG hhnnnng

And Billy’s absolute favorite, which he pinned right at the top of his account

@ImHardForHargrove: ass ass ass ass ass ass ass ass ass ass ass ass ass ass ass ass ass ass ass ass ass ass ass ass ass ass ass ass ass ass

Billy knew he looked good. Knew he turned heads wherever he went. He did that on purpose. But realizing someone at Hawkins High had set up a thirst account for him, well.

“I don’t know if I should be flattered or offended.” Billy had explained the situation to Robin, letting her go through the account on his phone. “Like, It’s kinda nice, whoever this guy is, he’s got a crush. But also like, It’s kinda creepy. Plus he’s objectifying me,” Billy was talking through his sandwich.

Robin made a face of disgust. “Why do you keep saying ‘he’? All of the girls in this fucking school are practically drooling for you.”

“Hard for Hargrove, Robin. I know you’re like, revolted by the peen and whatever but that does not excuse a lack of basic sexual education and anatomy.” She gagged at him. Honest to God, gagged. He thought she was gonna spew all over the table.

“If I ever hear you call it a peen ever again, it’s on sight Hargrove.” Heather plopped herself down next to Robin, kissing her cheek before zeroing in on Billy’s phone, still in Robin’s hand.

“Have you guys worked out who it could be yet?” Her eyes were wide at Billy.

“Billy says he thinks its a guy even though people with penises aren’t necessarily men.” Robin gave him a pointed look.

“Yeah Robin, I know that, but, I don’t know I just think it’s a guy penis-having person.”

Heather narrowed her eyes at him. “Do you actually think that, or are you just hoping in that goblin little brain of yours that this account is Steve Harrington’s.” Billy could feel the heat spread down his neck.

“Billy, I know Steve is like, the only out guy in this whole fucking town, but you can do way better than him.  PLUS, I feel like it makes more sense if the person running this account wasn’t out and had to channel their gay yearning through social media.”

“First of all Robin, you have this vendetta against Steve that I don’t get. He’s a nice guy. He’s kinda dopey, kinda dumb, but he’s like, sweet and shit. Second, I’m not out, so it still could be him because he doesn’t think I would, like, accept his advances or whatever. Hence, gay internet yearning.” The chime of the bell sent them packing their lunches, Billy’s phone vibrated in Robin’s hand. She rolled her eyes when he realized he turned on notifications for the account

“Get a fucking life you loser.” She slapped the phone into his hand. He opened the new tweet with embarrassing zeal.

@ImHardForHargrove: i saw u talking with ur mouth full and it was yucky but i was still  🥺🥺

His head shot up, trying to see who would have been facing him during lunch, but the cafeteria was almost empty.

The rest of the week Billy took deliberate care of every interaction he had with anyone. Observing who was in his surroundings, and making note of everything he did and said. He took extra caution around Steve, wanting to spot any minute detail that could give away who ran the account.

The account started blowing up. People were retweeting like fucking crazy. Everywhere he went, he was being asked if he’s seen it, like he doesn’t regularly retweet the good ones. The search for the owner of the account had spread throughout the whole school. A few girls even tried to claim the account was theirs, but every time that happened the account would tweet out something to discredit whoever made the claim, proving them a liar.

Billy was starting to lose hope it was Harrington. The tweets were coming at all different times, posted whenever the person thought about it, so Billy was losing track of who was near when he said or did something. And the tweets were always about stupid stuff Billy didn’t register doing. On Wednesday night the account said

@ImHardForHargrove: hi when you chew on your pencil and it makes me 🥴 that is all thx for comin to my ted talk

Friday afternoon gave them all:

@ImHardForHargrove: walked past ur classroom and u were asleep ive never wanted to CUDDLE someone so bad in my LIFE

But Saturday, Saturday renewed all hope for Harrington Billy could possibly have. Lauren Kranz was throwing a party. It was the first real rager in a while, so everyone was there, and everyone was sloshed. Everyone but Billy, who’d agreed to be designated driver for Robin and Heather like some kinda idiot.

He was brooding on the back porch when his phone went off. The account was active, and the owner was drunk.

@ImHardForHargrove: I can seeeeee u oyt the windw I wan u 2 FUC ME. RAW DOG.

@ImHardForHargrove: srry ur so beauitiful nd THICCC

@ImHardForHargrove: I wana shoot my shot but idk if u lik bois

@ImHardForHargrove: (ys i am boi)

@ImHardForHargrove: nd i dont wana get my heart broken agin 😥

He was right about it being a guy. He was right about him being too nervous to approach him outright. His brain was screaming stevestevesteve at him. Hawkins was shook when Steve came out as bisexual in his sophomore year. He was the golden boy, a real jock. He was NOT the kind of guy people would assume queer in a small midwestern town.

He was kind of a douchebag, dumping one girl for another, sleeping with her and never calling again. But then he settled down with this guy from the University of Indianapolis for a few months until Steve caught him cheating. Apparently, he had slashed the guy’s tires. Billy was impressed.

The next year came Wheeler, who only stuck around long enough to make sure Steve was nice and whipped before she fucked off on him too. So Steve retreated. Spent more time with middle schoolers than anybody else. Didn’t want to put his heart on the line anymore until he knew it wouldn’t be stomped on.  Billy could respect that.

Billy couldn’t risk being out in a town like Hawkins. Word always had a way of getting right back to his dad, and in a tiny hick town with nothing better to do than gossip, it was usually only a matter of hours before Neil heard something he didn’t like.

@ImHardForHargrove: srry 4 bad typing rn. drunk nd dysl exic ren’t a happy combo

Billy’s heart stopped. The drunken idiot was giving himself away. Maybe if he sat here staring at the account long enough, enough would be revealed he could figure it all out like a shitty drunk episode of Blue’s Clues.

He was so focused on Twitter, refreshing his feed, again and again, he didn’t notice a very drunk, and very unsteady Steve Harrington stumbling out the back door towards him. Until he crashed into his back.

“Sorry, Bill!” Billy had Steve by the shoulders trying to keep him upright. “Heyy I have a question for you.” Steve grabbed one of Billy’s hands and veered over to the table and chairs arranged neatly on the small patio. When they were sitting, Steve kept ahold of Billy’s hand.

“Hi.” Steve was smiling like a little kid. Billy was in fucking love.

“hey, Harrington. What was your question.”

“So-oo. I have this friend. A very good friend. Super close. And he has a big ol’ crush on you but he’s too scared to ask you himself because he keeps getting his heart fuckin’ broken so he wanted me to ask. Are you into guys?” It’s a miracle Billy understood any of that, every word blending into the next.

“That depends.” Billy leaned in, running his tongue along his bottom lip. He saw Steve take in a sharp breath, following the movement with his glazed eyes. He knew Steve was talking about himself, he just wanted to rile him up a little. Make him blush first. “This friend you’re talkin’ about. He’s our age? Like you’re not trying to set me up with one a’ your kids, right?” Steve physically recoiled.

“NO, you fuckin’ pedo. I’m NOT trying to set you up with a fuckin’, fuckin’ middle schooler. My friend is, uh eighteen. He’s a senior.” Unless Tommy fuckin’ H. suddenly had a penchant for dick Billy didn’t know about, Steve was 100% talking about himself.

“Well, if he’s as pretty as you are, I’d love to go out with him sometime.” Billy winked. Steve went red.

“Okay, but like, does that mean you’d go out with me? Like I’m as pretty as me, right? Because I was talking about me. Not ‘a friend’ I was talking about me. Steve.”

“Yeah, I kinda figured that out. You know, I was hoping it was you running that Twitter. Any time you’d tweet out something you wanted to do with me, I was always picturin’ doing it with you, Baby.” Billy was practically purring. “Especially all the shit you wanted me to do TO you.” Steve gave something between a whine and a groan and flopped himself onto Billy’s lap, straddling him with very little grace.

“Thank God. ‘Cause you’re so fucking hot I’d let you do anything to me. Anything, Bill.” Billy smiled softly at him.

“Then let me take you home. Let me put you in bed to sleep off all this. And let me take you to breakfast tomorrow. Something nice and greasy for your hangover tummy.” Steve was a puddle in Billy’s lap. “C’mon, Drunky, git your ass up.” Steve just giggled and muttered Drunky Skunky under his breath.

Billy sighed and stood up, hefting Steve up with him.

“Bil-ly,” Steve whined. “You’re so strong, this is so fucking hot. I gotta tweet about this.”

“Tweet it later, Sweet Thing.”

It took Billy for-fucking-ever to find Robin and Heather (they were making out in the basement with the stoners). But Steve chirped and cooed into his ear, so happy Billy could lift him and hold him like it was nothing.

The last tweet from the account was timestamped from Sunday evening.

@ImHardForHargrove: Hi this is Steve. Billy’s my boyfriend now 🥰#ThirstWorks

[sciencespies]

Study links hydraulic fracking with increased risk of heart attack hospitalization, death

https://sciencespies.com/environment/study-links-hydraulic-fracking-with-increased-risk-of-heart-attack-hospitalization-death/

Study links hydraulic fracking with increased risk of heart attack hospitalization, death

The Marcellus Formation straddles the New York State and Pennsylvania border, a region that shares similar geography and population demographics. However, on one side of the state line unconventional natural gas development — or fracking — is banned, while on the other side it represents a multi-billion dollar industry. New research takes advantage of this ‘natural experiment’ to examine the health impacts of fracking and found that people who live in areas with a high concentration of wells are at higher risk for heart attacks.

“Fracking is associated with increased acute myocardial infarction hospitalization rates among middle-aged men, older men and older women as well as with increased heart attack-related mortality among middle-aged men,” said Elaine Hill, Ph.D., an associate professor in the University of Rochester Medical Center (URMC) Department of Public Health Sciences, and senior author of the study that appears in the journal Environmental Research. “Our findings lend support for increased awareness about cardiovascular risks of unconventional natural gas development and scaled-up heart attack prevention, as well as suggest that bans on hydraulic fracturing can be protective for public health.”

Natural gas extraction, including hydraulic fracking, is a well-known contributor to air pollution. Fracking wells operate around the clock and the process of drilling, gas extraction, and flaring — the burning off of natural gas byproducts — release organic compounds, nitrogen oxide, and other chemicals and particulates into the air. Additionally, each well requires the constant transportation of equipment, water, and chemicals, as well as the removal of waste water from the fracking process, further contributing to air pollution levels. Fracking wells remain in operation for several years, prolonging exposure to people who work at the wells sites and those who live nearby.

Instead of the typical single source of industrial air pollution, such as a factory or power plant, fracking entails multiple well sites spread across a large, and often rural, geographic area. In 2014, there were more than 8,000 fracking well sites in Pennsylvania. Some areas of the state have a dense population of fracking wells — three Pennsylvania counties have more than 1,000 sites. Contrast that with New York State, which has essentially banned the process of hydraulic fracking since 2010.

Exposure to air pollution is recognized as a significant risk factor for cardiovascular disease. Other research has shown that the intensity of oil and gas development and production is positively associated with diminished vascular function, blood pressure, and inflammatory markers associated with stress and short-term air pollution exposure. Light and noise pollution from the continuous operation of the wells are also associated with increasing stress, which is another contributor to cardiovascular disease.

The research team decided to measure the impact of fracking on cardiovascular health by studying heart attack hospitalization and death rates in 47 counties on either side of the New York and Pennsylvania state line. Using data from 2005 to 2014, they observed that heart attack rates were 1.4 to 2.8 percent higher in Pennsylvania, depending upon the age group and level of fracking activity in a given county.

The associations between fracking and heart attack hospitalization and death were most consistent among men aged 45-54, a group most likely to be in the unconventional gas industry workforce and probably the most exposed to fracking-related air pollutants and stressors. Heart attack deaths also increase in this age group by 5.4 percent or more in counties with high concentrations of well sites. Hospitalization and mortality rates also jumped significantly in women over the age of 65.

Fracking is more concentrated in rural communities, which the authors speculate may further compromise cardiovascular heath due to the trend of rural hospital closures. People who suffer from cardiovascular disease in these areas may be at increased risk of adverse health outcomes, including death, due to less access to care. The authors suggest that more should be done to raise awareness about fracking-related risks for cardiovascular disease and physicians should keep a closer eye on high risk patients who reside in areas with fracking activity. They also contend that the study should inform policymakers about the tradeoffs between public health and the economic activity generated by the industry.

“These findings contribute to the growing body of evidence on the adverse health impact of fracking,” said Alina Denham, a Ph.D. candidate in Health Policy at the University of Rochester School of Medicine and Dentistry and first author of the study. “Several states, including New York, have taken the precaution of prohibiting hydraulic fracturing until more is known about the health and environmental consequences. If causal mechanisms behind our findings are ascertained, our findings would suggest that bans on hydraulic fracturing can be protective for human health.”

The study was funded with support from the National Institutes of Health Office of the Director.

Story Source:

Materials provided by University of Rochester Medical Center. Original written by Mark Michaud. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.

#Environment

[perfectirishgifts]

Biden’s Coming China Headache: Climate Change And “Developing Countries”

New Post has been published on https://perfectirishgifts.com/bidens-coming-china-headache-climate-change-and-developing-countries/

Biden’s Coming China Headache: Climate Change And “Developing Countries”

A Biden presidency, which now seems most likely, will have plenty on its foreign policy plate, ranging from relations with Russia, China and Europe to the Iran question in the Middle East. But it is likely that global climate change policy, especially in relation to China’s position in it, will be among the most contentious challenges it will face in international diplomacy.

If we are slated for a Biden presidency, we will get the most climate change-conscious administrations in US history. The climate agenda has been elevated to a “whole of government” approach, straddling the key portfolios of national security, foreign policy, and economy and finance. From January 20th 2021,  “fighting global warming” will be elevated to a primary concern of the vast US government bureaucracies  ranging from the EPA and the Federal Reserve to the Pentagon and the State Department.  A Biden administration would “use every tool of American foreign policy to push the rest of the world to raise their ambitions alongside with the US” and it would “pursue strong measures” to stop other countries from cheating on their climate commitments.     

The “Grand Bargain” of Paris

No doubt a future Biden presidency would seek to emulate the  lauded bargain between Obama and China’s President Xi that set the foundations of the non-binding Paris Agreement. The 2015 agreement was hailed as ex-President Obama’s “breakthrough” understanding with China that the latter too would join in the global effort to cut emissions. In a move welcomed by European leaders, Biden has vowed that the US would re-join the Paris climate accord on his first day in the White House in January. It will seek to reverse President Trump’s formal withdrawal notice from the Paris Agreement issued in November 2019.

To steer this vision — an example of an enlightened , “lead from behind”, multilateral approach in concert with Europe —  Biden has appointed the aristocratic Europhile John Kerry to a Cabinet-level role as “climate tsar”. Kerry oversaw the negotiations that led to the Paris Agreement and signed the accord on the behalf of the US in 2016 as ex-President Obama’s Secretary of State (2013 – 2017). As “special presidential envoy for climate”, Kerry does not require Senate confirmation. He has vowed that under his watch “America will soon have a government that treats the climate crisis as the urgent national security threat it is”.

To the proponents of “climate crisis”, a Biden-Xi collaboration is an opportunity to set the terms for meaningful global cooperation on climate change policies. For the more hard headed diplomats — not least China’s ‘wolf warriors’ – more at home reading Machiavelli’s The Prince than Obama’s latest bestseller A Promised Land,  the hopes of a US-China ‘grand bargain’ will seem naïve.

The celebrated Paris Agreement was only so much of smoke and mirrors as far as China’s practitioners of strategic statecraft were concerned. For Obama’s end of the bargain, his administration unleashed such punitive measures on US’s own economic interests as the Clean Power Plan and the Waters Of The US Act by Executive Orders (since the Paris Agreement was conveniently not a “treaty” requiring an impossible Senate approval). At Xi’s end, China promised to peak its emissions by 2030 at a level and a rate of subsequent decline that were not specified.

Nor were Chinese planners unaware that research showed that China’s commitment to peak by 2030 was actually less ambitious than continuing business as usual, that the country’s emissions would have peaked by then anyway whatever it did (or not). Meanwhile, signing the agreement did not stop China from approving 23 gigawatts of new coal-power projects the first half of 2020, more than the previous two years combined. Note that China had commissioned more coal power capacity than the rest of the world combined in those two years.  

The Developing Country Position

From the earliest UN negotiations starting in 1994 under the Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), China firmly and consistently played the ‘Third World’ position. Developing countries carried “common but differentiated responsibilities”. This meant that while developed countries (primarily the West, but also including Japan) adopted binding commitments to reduce carbon emissions by specified amounts, the developing countries not only did not have any binding policy commitments but were expected to receive considerable sums in “climate finance” to assist mitigating and adapting to climate change.

The BASIC group (Brazil, South Africa, India and China – the world’s four largest ‘developing countries’) formed a bloc in 2009 to act jointly at the Copenhagen climate summit, including a possible united walk-out if their “common minimum position” was not met by the developed nations. Effectively, the Kyoto Protocol, brought into force in 2005, became an exercise in massive international income distribution, as senior UN officials openly admitted.

To be sure, the ‘third world’ position is not necessarily a cynical one. The rationale behind the ‘developing country’ position is based on the reasonable grounds of equity and historical responsibility. Since the major portion of the stock of man-made greenhouse gases (GHGs) in the earth’s atmosphere is accounted for by the industrialised West, the developed countries should launch serious efforts to reduce their own emissions before calling upon the developing countries to contribute.

By the time Trump came into office in 2016, China was already the world’s largest emitter of GHGs by far. By then it was also long evident that it was a stretch to call China a ‘developing’ country in any meaningful sense. President Trump boiled over last year on China‘s “developing country” status: among his many tweets, “The WTO is BROKEN when the world’s RICHEST countries claim to be developing countries to avoid WTO rules and get special treatment. NO more!!!”

China’s emergence as an economic and military power challenging US dominance in Asia and beyond is a fact not denied even by the left wing of the US Democratic party. China is one of the prime movers of global commodity and financial markets. Its investments in the much hyped Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), often grossly inflated in the business press, have nevertheless grown into an extensive web of infrastructure construction and investments in over a hundred countries.

As a source of loans for deficit-ridden governments in Asia, the Middle East, Africa and Europe, China has emerged as the major competitor to the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, the Washington-based pillars of the post-WWII economic international system. Indeed, David Malpass, whose appointment in 2019 as World Bank chief was supported by President Trump, was an outspoken critic of the World Bank’s loans to China (and India). Malpass quite rightly argued that these countries had become rich enough to tap global capital markets on reasonable terms.

China’s Red Line

If China is no more a ‘developing country’ with little responsibility in the West-led global “fight against climate change”, then just what can a Biden administration extract from the Chinese government in decarbonization commitments? China’s state planners are likely to have a keener appreciation for the laws of physics and economics in their assessments of decarbonization than their counterparts in the West who are busy pursuing a quixotic Green Industrial Revolution. They will insist on delivering to their people an Industrial Revolution first, of the sort enjoyed by the West since its birth over two centuries ago, before signing up to anything that might come in the way.

For President-for-life Mr. Xi, who does not have elections to contend with, it is a one-shot gamble on regime stability. It would be the height of folly to imagine that President Xi would turn to Rudyard Kipling’s bravado “If you can make one heap of all your winnings… And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss” in some kind of moral turn towards international cooperation with the climate crusaders in a Biden administration.  

Regime survival, China’s red line, is predicated on meeting the material aspirations of ordinary citizens, the only source of legitimacy afforded to unelected governments throughout history. China’s government fended off — with a mixture of confrontation and unstable interim agreements — President Trump’s explosive tariff diplomacy against China’s intellectual property theft, gaming of the WTO system and other US complaints. It will do so no less with the threats of border taxes on its carbon-intensive exports if that were to be John Kerry’s and his European allies’ stick in climate policy negotiations.  

To the Trump-voting “deplorables”, John Kerry is “that guy who’s hanging out in Europe enjoying it, talking about the climate and flying around on his private jet”. But it will be an aged President Biden who will be landed with a policy headache of monumental proportions if he fails to handle climate change and China in no uncertain manner.

From Energy in Perfectirishgifts

[dippedanddripped]

I was born in 1995. If you ask some, I am a member of Generation Z. Others will say that I am more of a millennial. No wonder I’ve always felt like I straddled the line between the two. While technically I’m a member of Gen Z, before the time when “generational experts” and marketing firms started targeting my cohort, I played the part of a millennial, doing all the things that those same marketers labeled as being peak millennial behavior. This means: I got my fashion tips from Tumblr, started a style blog on Blogspot, and dressed like every other person my age in middle school (first, at Abercrombie; then, Urban Outfitters and Free People). It wasn’t until college that I even thought to try thrift shopping. Once I had, it was years before I learned the ins and outs of the trade — which days my local Goodwill locations got new stock, what’s salvageable and what’s not, and how much is too much to spend on a pair of vintage Levi’s. Thrifting now feels like one of the most Gen Z things I do, and it’s no wonder: For Gen Z, thrifting isn’t just a way to shop — it’s a lifestyle.

Olivia McCafferty-Cable,17, from Santa Barbara, California, has been thrifting regularly since she was 13. “Thrifting allowed me to find things at very affordable prices that no one else I knew had,” she tells Refinery29. “I like standing out with my clothes, especially at school, because I tend to be a very quiet person, and [thrifting] was a way for me to express myself and push myself outside of my comfort zone.” Hannah Valentine, a 19-year-old from St. Louis, Missouri, doesn’t even remember her first thrifting experience. “Thrifting has been a constant in my life for years,” she says. “I’ll never stop loving the rush of adrenaline that I get when I enter a thrift store not knowing what I’m going to find that day.” While Valentine fell for thrift shopping because of the search aspect, over time, it turned into something else entirely. “Now, I thrift because I want to help save clothing from being thrown away, while also providing an easy and accessible way for people to shop secondhand so that they’re not instead shopping on fast fashion websites,” Valentine says. The way she does the latter is through Depop, an online marketplace where many members of Gen Z have set up shop. (According to The Wall Street Journal, of Depop’s 15 million users in 2019, 90% were under the age of 26.) Valentine’s Depop page is scattered with floral maxi dresses, ‘90s sportswear à la Princess Diana, and retro pins from Steak & Shake. She offers sizes up to 3X and uses her platform on the app to advocate for people with disabilities. “I think of my job as a second-hand clothing rehoming service,” she says.

Another seller on Depop, 23-year-old Monique Miu Masuko, started her thrifting journey in middle school. Ever since her mom told her when she was a kid that buying secondhand was the easiest and most affordable way to stay on-trend, Masuko hasn’t stopped thrifting. Like so many others before her, took her favorite pastime and built a career out of it. Now her Depop shop has 2.8k followers. “[Thrifting] is more affordable, accessible, and eco-friendly — all three of which go hand in hand with sustaining Gen Z’s future,” she says.According to Deloitte, Gen Z’s interest in thrifting could have something to do with having entered adolescence during the recession of 2007 to 2009, when the oldest members of Gen Z were between 12 and 14 years old. Many grew up experiencing financial hardship, and so it makes perfect sense that they’d be searching out economically friendly ways of staying in fashion. Gen Z isn’t the only demographic actively shopping secondhand right now. Fashion search engine Lyst reported that, in September, there was a 104% increase in online fashion searches for secondhand-related keywords like “vintage fashion” and “slow fashion,” the latter of which was responsible for more than seven million social impressions. But they are the largest demographic: An estimated 46% of Gen Z shopped secondhand in 2019, according to Medium, compared to 37% of millennials and just 18% of Gen X. Since Gen Z has matured into its spending power, the resale market has grown significantly. In fact, it’s grown 21 times faster than traditional retail over the past three years to be worth $24 billion in 2019. It makes sense. Unlike millennials, who are said to “seek validation through purchases,” members of Gen Z are obsessed with being different from their peers. Ask the question of “why thrift?” for instance, and it will result in a wide variety of answers. (I’d know, I talked to over 30 of them.)

Some listed being able to look unique and build a more personalized sense of style as one of the reasons for thrifting. Tori López, 24, from Brooklyn, New York, says she found an “inexplicable sense of empowerment and independence” in wearing pieces that felt made for her, even if they were previously owned by someone else. “Wearing ‘one-of-a-kind’ clothing makes me feel special; it makes me feel unique; it makes me feel happy — and if that outfit costs you $30, all the better.” Elena Dunn-Barcelona, a 24-year-old from Harlem, fell in love with thrifting during her senior year of high school because it allowed her to compete with her classmates style-wise “for an eighth of the price,” she says. “I was one of a handful of Black kids at a predominantly white boarding school,” she tells Refinery29. According to Dunn-Barcelona, everyone there wore the same things from the same brands (“Sperrys, J.Crew, Free People, Vineyard Vines, etc.”), none of which her parents were willing to buy for her: “There was no way they were going to hand me $60-plus for a top that would be out of style before the school year was over.” Thrifting made it possible for Dunn-Barcelona to build confidence in her style without overspending. It also allowed her to find options that fit when off-the-rack styles wouldn’t because of her scoliosis. “I have a shortened torso, and stand at only 4 feet and 4 inches, which makes shopping for clothing a constant struggle for me. But after a while, when I’d find cute things that didn’t fit me, I realized that someone else might love them, so I turned it into a business,” she says. Her Depop shop, Mighty Thrift, sells clothing in sizes 0 to 5X and has over 5k followers. By August 2021, she says thrifting will be her sole way of supporting herself.

There is also the matter of the climate crisis looming, which many listed as a major motivation for thrifting. “Thrifting taught me that I can positively impact this world in more ways than one,” Lopez says. “It’s granted me an entryway into a new way of living that feels more productive and purposeful.” She explains that what started as a mode of expression has since catalyzed a more intentional lifestyle, where, across categories, she’s more considerate about her purchases: “Now that I’m older, I find myself frequenting more local businesses, paying attention to companies’ stances on current political issues, and buying quality over quantity.” During the lockdown, many young people took to TikTok for entertainment. In the process they also learned about the damaging effects that fashion — and other powerful industries — has on the environment. Of TikTok’s 800 million worldwide users, 60% are members of Gen Z, many of whom are using their fast-growing platforms to promote thrifting as an alternative to fast fashion and an easy way to minimize waste. The numbers don’t lie: #ThriftStore has 92.7 million views on the app, while #Secondhand has 90.8 million views. “So much of our clothes get worn a couple of times, then head to the landfill, which is really gross considering how many resources go into producing clothes,” says 24-year-old Lily Fulop, the author of Wear, Repair, Repurpose: A Maker's Guide to Mending and Upcycling Clothes and a designer at Refinery29. “We need to produce less clothing, and make use of the clothes that are already in existence,” she says. One of the easiest and most affordable ways to do that is by thrifting: “It saves water, reduces microplastics and petroleum use, cuts down on pollution from pesticides, dye, and shipping... the list goes on.” 

According to Emily Reyes, a 21-year-old living in New York City, Gen Z YouTube influencers like Emma Chamberlain are in large part responsible for showing young people that, unlike what their older family members or friends would have them believe, fast fashion isn’t the only way to find on-trend clothing at an affordable price. The 19-year-old YouTube celebrity — who has 9.6 million subscribers on YouTube and 8.3 million followers on TikTok — is known for frequenting Goodwill. Chamberlain’s thrift hauls, videos in which she goes through the items she recently thrifted and styles them on herself, are among her most popular videos on both platforms. Thrifting feels emblematic of the way that Gen Z prefers to stray from the beaten path — a path beaten to death by millennials, Gen X, and Baby Boomers, that doesn’t even seem to be going anywhere anymore. They want to be independent. They want to save the planet. They also want to save money — and make money. And they want to do it all in a cute outfit, probably one that costs less than $10. Thrifting makes all of that possible. Now that I know this, I look forward to making up for lost time.It's a cliché, but this year was supposed to be our year — full of independence, opportunity, or at least a few weekend afternoons spent with more than 10 friends with fewer than six feet between us. But with COVID-necessary social distancing, a shitty job market, and closed campuses, 2020 hasn't given us much to work with. Past generations have had to deal with a recession, social upheaval, and changing norms: We've had to deal with all of it at once.So, what now? What do we do with our careers, our relationships, and our lives? How do we move forward when we're still stuck in our high school bedrooms? These stories are for us — filled with the resources, blueprints, and people who are finding ways to turn all this garbage into something like lemonade.

[jaybear1701]

Chapter Summary: Two days before the wedding, some secrets come to light and some ice begins to thaw.

A/N: @haughtbreaker calls this a 2 on the Angst scale. lol Enjoy!

“Somewhere deep inside You must know I miss you But what can I say? Rules must be obeyed”

"What about this one?” Waverly took a sip from her wine glass before setting it on the end table, showing her tablet screen to Nicole. They were tucked together on Nicole’s old love seat, legs tangled together as they searched through possible donors on the sperm bank’s website.

Nicole craned her head to read over the page she was shown, rolling her eyes before pressing a kiss to Waverly’s temple. “Are you sure you want this kid to have red hair?”

"Uh huh.” Waverly tipped her head up, finding Nicole’s lips easily for a kiss. “I want her… to look… just like you.” She whispered between soft kisses, finding herself easily left breathless. They’d finally decided that she was going to carry Nicole’s child, leaving Nicole still able to work while Waverly would be able to relax. As if that was a real thing.

"Her huh?” Nicole mumbled against unrelenting lips. “You’re sure it’s gonna be a girl.”

“Uh huh.” Waverly nipped at Nicole’s bottom lip. “All I want is a beautiful, tall, red-headed girl… Even if she might smell like copper.”

“What?” Nicole pulled away from the kiss, a mock horrified look on her face.

“And I mean… even if gingers do consume people’s souls and…” She didn’t get the rest out before long, tapered fingers attacked her side, easily slipping beyond her defenses and finding her most ticklish spots. “Nicole!” She squealed, trying to squirm away.

“I… do not… smell like copper…” Nicole grit out, having no mercy as she slipped a hand down Waverly’s side to get to her ticklish hip.

Apparently a master of combat and defense, Waverly slipped a hand through auburn locks, pulling Nicole forward for a deep kiss.

It was like magic, Nicole decided, how easily she could be distracted with a kiss. Ever since they’d made the decision to have children, it was like she couldn’t get enough of Waverly. Maybe it was something as simple as hormones, some natural reaction to the thought of procreation in turn increasing libido, but she had no complaints. Especially as Waverly deepened the kiss, a hot tongue teasing her lips. There was the sound of tablets being hastily moved to the end table before she pulled Waverly onto her lap, feeling the strong thighs straddling her own.

Breaking off the kiss with a gasp, Waverly caressed a flushed cheek with a hand, her thumb tracing Nicole’s beestung bottom lip.

God she’s beautiful, Nicole thought as Waverly leaned forward, tilting Nicole’s head to the side so she could brush her lips along her jaw, taking in a long and undoubtedly hedonistic breath.

“You’re right.” Waverly groaned into her ear. “You don’t smell like copper.” Waverly nipped the skin of the ear lobe before leaning back, eyes clouded with desire watching Nicole closely. “You did, however… capture my soul.”

Nicole swallowed audibly, her hands sliding up Waverly’s thighs. She could feel the way the muscles twitched just slightly under her touch. “I like to think it was a mutual exchange.” She hooked her hands behind Waverly’s knees, pulling her closer. “Maybe baby number 2 could look a little more like you?” She suggested as her hands slid up Waverly’s sides, bringing her top up and off, leaving her in her bra and cut off shorts. “Cause you’ve got pretty fantastic genes.”

“Oh... baby number 2 now?” Waverly laughed.

“That’s what you backwater rednecks do right?” She laughed at Waverly’s shocked look. “Get knocked up in high school out of wedlock... Keep the women barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen?” She laughed as she found her hands pinned to the loveseat.

“Backwater rednecks?” Waverly gave her a fierce look. “Look here, Miss Haught. You may have a cute tushi, but that’s not gonna save you. I mean yes at least 4 girls were pregnant my senior year but that doesn’t mean we don’t believe in traditional…”

“Then marry me.”

Waverly froze, her hands releasing Nicole’s wrists. “What?”

Nicole chuckled as she sat up a little straighter, her hands settling on Waverly’s hips. She’d expected the surprise. In truth, she’d wanted to propose since just months after they met, and quite frankly she wasn’t sure why she hadn’t. “My daddy always taught me marriage comes before children, and you know it would only make legal sense…”

“Oh…” Waverly’s face fell, a look of troubled disappointment coming over her eyes. She seemed to revert into her own thoughts and Nicole rolled her eyes, using the opportunity to reach over into the end table, finding a small box she’d hidden all the way in the back.

“Waverly.” Nicole laughed, getting the attention of unfocused eyes. “I also want to marry you because… well I don’t ever want to wake up without you there beside me.” She lifted Waverly’s hand, setting the box in her palm. “Marry me, Waverly Earp, not just because it would make total sense, but because I can’t imagine a day without you.”

Accepting the box, Waverly lifted the top, finding a simple solitaire diamond sitting in white gold. There was a moment, seconds really, that felt like an eternity passed before Waverly spoke.  “You know…” She looked up as Nicole lifted the ring from its velvet pillow. As it slid onto her finger, fitting perfectly, Waverly took a deep breath. “That’s awfully traditional for someone who makes it a habit to shun tradition.”

Setting the leather box aside, Nicole settled her hands back on Waverly’s hips. It was true, she hated most traditions, and until meeting Waverly, even hated the idea of marriage, but seeing the delighted look in brown eyes watching her, how could she hate that? “Some traditions are worth keeping, I suppose.”

Waverly wrapped her arms around Nicole’s neck, pulling her forward for another kiss.

Nicole resisted, shaking her head. “Say yes first.”

“Well...It would make legal sense,” Waverly repeated, finding better things to do with her lips since she was currently being denied a kiss. She moved slowly, caressing the line of Nicole’s jaw in an agonizingly slow tease. “Tell you what…I’ll say yes,” she lowered her voice, this close to Nicole’s ear, “if we…” As she whispered softly exactly what she wanted Nicole to do, Nicole’s hands tightened around her waist.

Nicole felt a wave of heat rush through her at the seductive words, felt the need she’d become accustomed to since the day she walked into Shorty’s to find a soaking wet waitress fighting with a beer tap. It was so easy, shifting her hold as she stood, feeling legs wrap around her waist as lips found her own. Years of practice allowed her to find her room easily, laying her precious cargo on the pillow top mattress before covering the shorter frame with her own.

She didn’t doubt that Waverly was going to say yes, tasted the acceptance in a deep kiss as her fingers found the button fly of cut off jeans shorts. Some traditions were definitely worth it, her mind repeated as her hand slid between skin and cotton panties to find slick arousal. Breaking off the kiss, she watched as lips pulled into a smirk. “I love you.” She whispered, afraid that speaking too loudly would ruin the moment, feeling hips begin to move against her hand.

“Don’t ever leave me.” Waverly responded simply, her fingers tangling in red hair.

“I won’t.” Nicole pressed into her, smiling as Waverly arched against her. “I’ll always be here.”

“LIAR!” Waverly suddenly screamed, pushing her away.

Nicole woke with a sudden jolt, her eyes scanning the room before she scrubbed her face with her palms. An uneasy rumble made itself known and she tasted acid at the back of her throat. “Fuck.” She barely made it to the bathroom before her stomach rebelled, before everything from last night came back to her, including the unknown number of shots she’d taken.

Including Waverly.

Including Wynonna.

She wanted to expel all the toxic emotions along with the alcohol, but her heart was far more stubborn than her stomach.

Rising on unsteady legs, Nicole moved to the sink, rinsing out her mouth and splashing water on her face. There was a tug in her chest, a pain that attempted to make itself known. She should have been able to ignore it. She was a professional at setting aside emotional baggage. After all, she’d had twenty years of practice.

But she couldn’t. As much practice as she’d had, she thought about Waverly and how angry she’d been and she hated her subconscious, the way it preyed on her in her sleep, reminding her of a time long past -- the past and present twisting together to torment her dreams.

She wished it could be something she could forget, to move on and just live her life, but she found herself digging through her bag, pulling out a small box she’d stuffed in there on a whim before leaving Chicago. It was still the same, a little aged, but she could remember the weight of it. She’d thought about selling it, thought about ridding her life of the reminder, but overcome with some ridiculous nostalgia and a horrible case of remember when s, she pulled back the lid. While the outside was a little worn, the sun found no trouble in reflecting off the faceted surface, Nicole wincing at the flash of light on her retinas and heart.

“Messenger dropped that off.” Becky gave her a nonchalant look.

Nicole looked at the box sitting in the middle of her desk. There was no card. No letter. Just a box and a ring, shining in the sunlight like it was a goddamn sword waiting to be pulled from the stone.

It hadn’t been that long ago that she’d been in the car, hearing Waverly and Champ arguing about a pregnancy.

It was over. She wanted to scream, but definitely not in front of her sister.

“So,” Becky seemed at least a little cautious. “About that blind date… You have to say yes.” Becky leaned against the desk. “Morgan is beautiful, sweet, and a hell of a lawyer. You guys will hit it off perfectly.”

That was the last thing she wanted. Nicole sighed softly, opening the drawer beside her desk and dropping the box in it, shutting away the memories. “Becky…”

“You don’t have to marry her, Nicole.” Becky rolled her eyes. “You don’t even have to sleep with her, but seriously, you pining away for someone who obviously has moved on is not healthy.”

Nicole didn’t want to hear it. The thought of being with anyone else caused her heart to flutter, for bile to rise in her throat.

“It’s just drinks.”

She could really use a drink, Nicole thought as her eyes fell on the closed drawer. She could use… like a few bottles. “Fine,” she hissed, even if she knew it was a bad idea.

Nicole tucked the ring back into her bag. What the hell had she been thinking? She was out of her mind thinking anything even close to reconnecting was possible. Waverly had made that painfully obvious, but as she thought about the visit, something seemed off, something on the edge of her tongue, teasing her. There was something she was missing.

She wanted to add everything up, to take stock of the random information she’d been tossed yesterday. She wanted to kickstart that legal analysis part of her brain that helped her win cases, but when she tried, her brain seemed to hug itself tight, burrowing deep inside itself and sending a defensive attack out against her, leaving her stumbling around the room looking for some aspirin.  

“Fuck,” she cursed, her eyes taking in the sight of all the discarded empties from the mini bar, wishing she could blame it all on Wynonna. Another pain lanced through her head, reminding her how untrue that was and she reached for the phone, hitting 0. It took everything in her not to hang up when a cheerful voice answered, telling her what a glorious day it was outside in Purgatory today and not to miss the town square’s festival lights when evening rolled around. “This is room 407,” she grit out after the woman’s spiel was done, “I need about 4 aspirin, coffee… lots of coffee… and water.”

Her phone ringing caught her attention and she scrambled for it. She was supposed to meet Whitney at the diner in less than an hour. There was a part of her that hoped that was her asking to cancel, freeing Nicole from any other obligation.

“Hello?” She answered, instantly realising she should have checked who was calling.

“ Why the hell are you in Purgatory ?” Becky’s voice came in loud and hard.

“How the hell…” Nicole found an unopened bottle of water amongst the empty bottles scattered around the mini bar and thankfully unscrewed it. “Are you spying on me?” She asked before gulping down the water. She didn’t need an answer. It wasn’t anything new for her family.

“It’s my money.” Nicole argued, pacing back and forth in the bedroom. It was almost impossible to get any sort of privacy in the tiny apartment, but Waverly was at least pretending she wasn’t listening. That in itself was a blessing. She really wasn’t in the mood for another argument.

“You’ve gone through $40,000 in the past year, Nicky.” Her father’s voice was patronising as ever. “You’re worrying your mother.”

Nicole took a steadying breath, not wanting to say something she’d regret. “She wouldn’t have anything to worry about if you weren’t spying on my finances.”

“Nonsense. It’s not spying. I’m your father.”

“Just…” Nicole could feel the anger radiating through her. It scared her just a bit, the way she wanted to hit something… anything. “You have to let me live my life.” She pinched the bridge of her nose, afraid she might get a nosebleed from the stress of dealing with her family. “Like I told you before, Waverly and I are trying to have a baby and I don’t care if I drain my savings to do it.” Trying was the word. No matter how many rounds of expensive shots and probing, extracting and fertilizing eggs, implanting embryo…

“Don’t be silly. You know…”

“I’m not talking about this with you anymore, Dad. Tell Mom I love her and I’ll call next week.” She didn’t let him respond, just hung up the phone before setting it on the charger. With a soft sigh she turned to find an emotionless mask watching her, Waverly standing in the doorway. She had her arms crossed over her chest, hugging herself close but beyond that, there was nothing else.

Nicole missed the old smile and wave. She missed...Waverly. How could she miss someone while standing less than ten feet away? “Sorry about that. Are you ready for your shot?”

Waverly didn’t say anything, just nodded before turning back towards the kitchen.  

“You need to leave Purgatory right now.”

Nicole rolled her eyes. “I’m not a child and you are definitely not in charge of me.” She sighed. She really wasn’t in the mood to deal with her sister, even if Christmas was coming. “Tell Mom and Dad I said Merry Christmas.”

“Seriously. You don’t understand. You need to…”

Nicole hung up the phone when there was a knock at the door. Dropping it on the blankets, she moved to answer. She was thankful it wasn’t Randy again. Thankfully it wasn’t anyone she recognized or vice versa.

“Someone had a bit of a night, huh?” The old woman smiled, her cheeks plump and rosy. “We’ve got some aspirin, coffee, and a lot of water. The kitchen also threw in some muffins if you would like.”

Nicole signed the receipt, managing to conjure up a bit of a smile. “Thank you.”

Looking at the tray, Nicole took a deep breath, thinking about the day ahead of her. She really needed to get the hell out of Purgatory, but first she’d agreed to breakfast. Eyeing the muffins, she reached for one and ripped off the muffin top, preferring to eat the streusel top alone. It was sweet, delicious, and probably just what she needed to help soak up whatever alcohol was left in her stomach.

Whitney checked her reflection in the storefront window of the pawn shop, smoothing back her hair and making sure she didn’t have pink lipstick smeared on her teeth. She hardly slept at all the night before, even though she had been exhausted after staying up ‘til the wee hours of the morning with Anna and Jen assembling new centerpieces. They had managed to finish even though her Aunt Wynonna had pitched in, and all her “help” eventually had to be redone by her mother.

Her mom had seemed distracted even though she had smiled through the rest of the night. But Whitney knew better. Could always tell when her mom was trying to hide something behind false cheer. Coupled with her anxiety over inviting Nicole Haught to her wedding and meeting her for breakfast, the sight of her mother in subtle distress made Whitney’s stomach wrench. So much so that she couldn’t rest, and she had been up and out of bed before the sunrise.

“Whit,” Jesse said with exasperation a few steps ahead. “That’s the third time you’ve done that.” He walked back and kissed her cheek. “You’re gorgeous as always.”

Whitney rolled her eyes, but couldn’t hold back a flattered smile. “You have to say that, or I’ll leave your ass at the altar.”

“Even if you did,” Jesse placed a gentle hand on her shoulder and guided her back in the direction of the pancake house, “you’d still be gorgeous. Unlike me and this shiner.” He pointed to the purplish bruising around his right eye.

“My poor guy.” Whitney leaned up to gently kiss the edge of his black eye. “Does it hurt still?” Whitney leaned into Jesse’s warmth, hoping his tall frame and bulky uniform jacket might shield the brunt of the frigid winds and dusting of snow that descended upon Purgatory overnight.

“Nah, barely felt it.” He wrapped an arm around her shoulders as they continued walking, their boots crunching in tandem through the frost on the ground. “So who exactly are we meeting that you’re suddenly so self-conscious?”

“I told you, an old friend.”

“But no one I should be worried about, right?” He played it off as a joke, but Whitney could hear the uncertainty in his voice.

“Don’t be silly.” Whitney nudged him with her elbow. “She’s a…a family friend.” It was the truth. But not the whole truth , her guilty conscience whispered back.

“Then how come I’ve never seen or heard of her before?”

“She moved away a long time ago and hasn’t been back since.” Whitney shrugged as nonchalantly as possible. “ It happens.” She playfully jabbed at his ribs with her elbow. “What’s with the interrogation, huh? It’ll be another few years before you’re eligible for the detective’s exam.”

Jesse winced. “Ah, sorry. I think I’m just a little on edge with all the surprises lately. There seem to be a lot more than usual.”

“Yeah…” She knew she should tell Jesse about who Nicole Haught really was, but she didn’t want to deal with a potentially negative reaction before their meal. “It just seems like that because of the extra stress of the wedding,” Whitney tried to rationalize, even though she too felt like they had hit a patch of bad luck, from the broken centerpieces and Jesse’s black eye to a text from her tailor stating that the stitching for all of the tuxedo and bridesmaid dress alterations had mysteriously come undone overnight.

“Yeah, you’re right.” Jesse nodded.

“Damn right, I’m right.” Whitney smirked. “And don’t you forget it.”

“Never.” Jesse sealed his promise with a quick peck on Whitney’s lips as they approached the old diner.

Through one of the foggy windows, she already could make out Nicole sitting in one of the booths and scanning the menu. Whitney’s heart skipped a beat. “She’s here.”

“Well then, let’s not make her wait.” Jesse walked forward and held open the front door. “After you, m’lady,” he said, gesturing her inside.

“Why thank you kindly, Officer James.” Whitney curtseyed before stepping into a warm blast of heated air and the mouthwatering aromas of fresh-brewed coffee, buttermilk pancakes, and sizzling bacon.

Whitney took Jesse by the hand, leading him past a partly torn “Seat Yourself” sign and toward Nicole’s table. She looked up as they approached, a smile on her face when she saw Whitney. It faltered when she noticed the sheriff’s deputy next to her.

“Hey Nicole.” Whitney smiled and waved, just like her mom had taught her to put people at ease. It seemed to work, as Nicole’s shoulders loosened.

“Morning,” Nicole said as she stood to greet them. Dressed in black corduroys and a blue cashmere sweater over a white oxford, Nicole appeared more relaxed than she had the previous night. And if she was hungover at all, she didn’t show it.

“I hope you don’t mind, I brought my fiancé Jesse along,” Whitney gestured to Jesse, “I like to make sure he eats a proper breakfast before work. Sometimes he forgets.”

Nicole shook her head. “Not at all. In fact, I’ve done that myself at times.” She stuck out a hand, an easy smile on her face. “Nicole Haught. Congratulations on your wedding.”

Whitney held her breath.

“Jesse James,” he said. They shook hands firmly, once up and down. “And thank you. It’s a pleasure to meet you, ma’am.”

“Please, just Nicole,” she said. “And the pleasure’s all mine.” She directed them toward the opposite side of the booth. “Have a seat.”

Whitney exhaled, her stomach unknotting somewhat. She took off her coat and handed it to Jesse, who hung it and his jacket onto the hook on the side of their bench. The faded green vinyl of the booth creaked and groaned as she and Jesse slid into their seats.

“Tough night?” Nicole asked Jesse once they were settled.

“Hm?”

She pointed to her right eye.

“Oh that.” Jesse gave an embarrassed chuckle and scratched the back of his neck. “Some drunkard got loose from his cell somehow. Took me by surprise. Gonna make for some interesting wedding photos, that’s for sure.”

“Thank god for concealer and photoshop,” Whitney chimed in.

Nicole winced in sympathy. “Late night shift at the drunk tank. Been there and definitely don’t miss it.”

Whitney bit her tongue as Jesse raised his eyebrows. “You’re a cop?” He asked.

Nicole’s gaze slid toward Whitney, who half shrugged helplessly, hoping that Nicole would keep her word about not revealing too much. “Not anymore,” she replied casually. “Not for a long time.”

Before Jesse could ask a follow-up, their server moseyed up to the table, a portly old woman named Betty Johnson. “What can I get you two lovebirds?” She smiled warmly at Jesse and Whitney, but then frowned at Nicole. “And uh…” Betty squinted at Nicole through her large, coke-bottle glasses. “Have we met before, miss?”

“It’s Nicole, Betty,” Nicole said, lips curving into a tentative smile. “Nicole Haught.”

“Office Haught, as I live and breathe!” Betty laughed. “My, it’s been a while! C’mere and give an old lady a hug!”

Whitney watched as Nicole reluctantly got to her feet and was swept into a bear hug. “Gosh, I haven’t seen you in, what? Twenty some years?”

“Something like that yeah,” Nicole said, surprised, awkwardly patting Betty’s back. Whitney had to hide a smile beneath a paper napkin.

Betty finally released Nicole, who sunk back onto her seat, cheeks pink. “She was my favorite deputy way back when,” she explained to a dumbfounded Jesse. “Used to help me get my cats down from the trees. You could learn a thing or two, Jesse.” She turned back toward Nicole, covered the side of her mouth, and stage-whispered, “He’s scared of ‘em.”

“Not scared!” Jesse defended. “Just, allergic.”

“Uh huh,” Betty rolled her eyes. “So I’m guessing the wedding brought you back into town?” She clicked her tongue, her gaze appraising as it bounced from Nicole to Whitney and back to Nicole again. Whitney felt her stomach sink. Did Betty know? Did everyone but her know about Nicole? “I’m glad everything worked out. I was hoping for a good long while.”

Nicole tensed, but kept a polite smile on her face. “Me too,” she said, her voice imperceptibly strained.

Oblivious to any growing tension, Betty whipped out a pencil and a small note pad. She licked the lead tip. “So what can I get y’all to drink?”

“Cappuccino, please,” Nicole and Whitney replied at the same time. Their brown eyes locked as Betty hummed and wrote down their order. It was just a drink -- a drink her mom always seemed to dislike for no apparent reason -- but the coincidence, and the thoughtful look on Nicole’s face, made Whitney’s stomach flip.

Jesse ordered a black coffee and Betty shuffled away, promising to return quickly.

“So you used to work for the sheriff’s department?” Jesse asked, and Whitney inwardly cringed. She wondered if he remembered the personnel file from yesterday.

Nicole swallowed, but nodded. “Sure did.”

“Huh.” Jesse’s brow furrowed, a contemplative look passing across his face as he regarded Nicole. He was about to ask another question when his eyes widened and he suddenly lifted up his menu, ducking his head behind it. “Ah shit.”

Nicole and Whitney’s lips turned down into near identical frowns. “What’s wrong?” Whitney asked.

“Ah, it’s just my dad,” Jesse explained. “I haven’t told him about the shiner yet and I’m not too keen to hear a lecture about he’d never let anyone lay a finger on him.”

Both women looked out the window and, sure enough, Champ Hardy was strutting across the other side of the street, no doubt on his way for a drink at Shorty’s. He paid no mind to the diner or its occupants.

“Is he gone?” Jesse asked.

“Yeah, baby, he’s gone,” Whitney chuckled, lowering the menu. She glanced at Nicole, who shook her head, eyebrows knitted.

“I’m sorry,” Nicole said. “But Champ Hardy is your dad?”

“Yup,” Jesse grimaced. “I love him and all, but sometimes he can be a bit much, you know?”

Nicole stared at him for several long seconds before turning to Whitney. “But isn’t he your father too? Does that mean you two are…?”

It took a moment for Whitney to put two and together, and when she did, she burst out laughing. “Champ? My father !?” She was glad they hadn’t received their drinks yet. The thought alone of her sharing genes with Champ made her want to upchuck.

“Last night at Shorty’s, you called him dad.”

“He insisted since I was marrying Jesse,” Whitney explained. “But,” she shuddered, “God, no, he is not my dad dad. No offense, Baby,” she added, kissing Jesse on the cheek.

“None taken,” Jesse sighed.

“But you said your last name is James,” Nicole continued, still very much confused. “Not Hardy.”

“Hardy’s his first name.” Jesse nodded. “Hardy James. Champ was just his old rodeo nickname.”

Mouth dropping open, Nicole looked completely floored, as if all the air had left her body, and Whitney couldn’t figure out why unless… Holy shit… If Nicole had thought Champ was her biological father, then maybe that meant…

She doesn’t know, Whitney thought, her heart clenching. She doesn’t know I’m her daughter.

“That’s um,” Nicole was at a loss for words.

“Did you know him?” Jesse asked. “My dad?”

“I did,” Nicole cleared her throat. “Actually, I kinda knocked him out once.”

“What?” Jesse and Whitney both exclaimed.

“At the Wainright. A long time ago.” Nicole fiddled with the napkin wrapped around her utensils, tearing off bits and pieces. “So don’t believe him if he ever says no one got the jump on him.”

Jesse laughed. “I won’t.” He and Nicole both grinned warmly at each other and Whitney swore her heart grew in size.

“You’re staying at the Wainright, aren’t you?” Whitney asked Nicole.

“Sure am.”

“You should come to our rehearsal dinner,” Whitney forged ahead, paying no mind to Jesse’s curious glance. “The pavilion isn’t ready at the Homestead yet, so we’re having it at the Wainright. We’d be honored if you could make it.” She slipped her hand into Jesse’s. “Right honey?”

“Ah,” Jesse shrugged. “The more the merrier, I suppose. Anyone who managed to floor my dad is always welcome in my book.”

“I… don’t know,” Nicole looked apologetically at Whitney. They both knew just who might think otherwise about Nicole being welcome. “Mind if I take some time to think about it?”

“Fair enough,” Whitney said as Betty returned with two cappuccinos and one black coffee, sliding piping hot mugs to their respective recipients. And as Jesse asked Nicole more about the night she flattened Champ, a plan began formulating in Whitney’s mind. But first, she had to get a hold of her Aunt Wynonna. If anyone would be a likely accomplice, it would be her.

Wynonna sat in the chair facing the front door, her fingers playing with an eggshell colored envelope. She’d seen many of them before, had received one herself at the mailbox Black Badge kept for her. Well, the one she’d received had been slightly different, she pondered as she thought about the information card tucked in the invitation, the phone number and email address changed to information that was still familiar, yet not the ones they should be.

And hers definitely didn’t have Nicole Haught’s address on the outside in handwriting that was most certainly not Waverly’s.

She’d found the envelope in her pants pocket when she’d woken up that morning and had a moment to take stock of her memories. To her credit, she at least woke up in Waverly’s bed and not some random stranger’s.

There had been a lot more alcohol and tears after Whitney and her friends had called it a night and she remembered passing out cuddling with a crying Waverly, but by the time she woke up, her sister was nowhere to be seen. Whitney was nowhere to be seen.

She thought about the confrontation with Nicole. It had been somewhat of a relief, freeing herself of what she'd wished she'd said twenty years ago,  but on another level,  seeing Nicole just take it all…

Wynonna shook her head. This wasn't the Nicole she remembered. Then again,  she doubted she herself was the same person Nicole remembered.  

She couldn't help but think about what they'd all been like back then. Back when Nicole and Waverly were ridiculously happy. When Black Badge had gone from their allies, to enemies, and back to allies more than a few times.  

Back when Doc still cared enough to watch over them, helping them despite his utter hatred for Black Badge.

Back when Dolls had been the solid rock she needed.

Wynonna didn’t want to think about Dolls and how she hadn’t heard back, but she was sure the Black Badge would notify her if anything serious was happening.

Wouldn't they?

Wynonna shook her head as she took a sip from her glass of bourbon. She had bigger things to worry about,  like the envelope and the car that pulled up to the homestead.

Wynonna sat a little straighter,  waiting for the front door to open.

“Oh, hey. You’re awake.” Whitney smiled.

Waverly had been right about one thing way back when, Wynonna decided. While Earps had their share of dimples in their blood, those were 100% Haught dimples. “Hey Baby Girl Junior.”

“Getting started early?” Whitney set her bag on the table, her eyes moving from the glass and back to Wynonna.

“Hair of the dog and all that.” Wynonna shrugged. “You know what they say. The best way to avoid a hangover is to just…”

“Keep drinking.” Whitney chuckled as she snagged the invitation from her aunt. “I can’t believe I’m getting married in 2 days. It just seems so…” Her words trailed off as she flipped the envelope over to the addressed side, eyes scanning the outside before lifting to look at Wynonna.

“Take a seat, Whit.”

Whitney didn’t argue, just slid into the seat facing her. “Where did you… how did you get this?”

“From the person it’s addressed to last night.” Wynonna sipped from her glass. She’d promised Waverly years ago that she wouldn’t tell Whitney about her parentage.

“Wait. You saw Nicole? She didn’t say…”

“Wait.” Wynonna sat up a little straighter. “You talked to…”

“My mother?” Whitney’s voice was soft, uncertain almost.

Wynonna set her empty glass down. Hearing Whitney say that, it left a bad taste in her mouth. “Waverly is your mother,” she said certainly, refilling her glass with the almost empty bottle.

Whitney snorted. “Obviously.” She paused momentarily, pursing her lips before continuing. “She is always going to be my mother, just like you’re always going to be my Aunt… there’s no… DNA doesn’t change that, ya know.”

Wynonna looked her over, not seeing any anger there like she’d expected. “How did you...”

Whitney shrugged, reaching into her bag and pulling out the journal. She didn’t know why she kept carrying it around. Something about it just felt… right. Maybe it made her feel a little closer to the women in it. Not just Nicole, but to the person her mother was twenty years ago. “I found a box in the attic with a bunch of old stuff…”

“I remember this.” Wynonna smirked, reaching for the book and flipping through the pages. “Wait… you read this?” At Whitney’s blush, she chuckled. “Yeah… I read a few pages of it back in the day…” When Whitney gave her a surprised look, she laughed. “What? You were an only child so you didn’t get the joy of spying on siblings.” She cringed. “So you got to read all about Mommy and her lady lover…” She snorted. “I’ve read fanfic with less graphic details.”

“I just...” Finally Whitney’s face turned troubled. “Why didn’t Mom tell her?”

“Hmmm?” Wynonna looked up from the journal. “Tell her what?”

“About me.”

Eyes pinched in confusion, Wynonna set the journal down. “What do you mean?”

Whitney took the book back, sliding it back into her bag. “She doesn’t know I’m her daughter.”

How was that even possible? Wynonna leaned forward. “What do you mean she doesn’t know?”

“Nicole…” Whitney hesitated. “She thought Champ was my father.”

It didn’t make sense. “But your mom…” Wynonna thought about the past, thought about the many times Waverly had broken down crying, the attempted calls, the disconnected number… She remembered the threat from Nicole’s sister… Becky. “That bitch.”

“Hey!”

“Not your mom…” Wynonna took a sip, thinking about what it all meant. “Your Aunt Becky.” Just the sound of it made her anger rise.

Whitney perked up.  “I have another aunt?”

“Oh you won't anymore… once I get my hands on her…” That had to be it, Wynonna decided. Nicole's sister had done it on purpose and they'd all been so willing to blame Nicole.  “Oh shit,” she realized how bad it had to look from the outside.

Nicole, for some reason, thought Waverly had gotten knocked up by Champ. Nicole, who had been so willing to accept blame for everything. But did she know the truth now? “What did you tell her?”

“Nothing. We were having breakfast. I wanted her to meet Jesse.” Whitney sighed softly, reaching for the bottle and taking a swig with a grimace. “I thought she knew.” She shook her head. “But then we saw Champ and Jesse called him dad and…” She laughed. “Man, she must have some ideas about Purgatory cause I swear she thought we were a REALLY close family…” She hesitated just a bit. “I… invited her to the rehearsal dinner.”

Wynonna paused mid-sip, swallowing what was already in her mouth hastily. “No you didn’t… of course you did.” She shook her head. She was Nicole’s by blood, but she sure did have that Earp trouble streak. Oh God , she thought as she went over the consequences. “Your mother thinks she knows.” She watched Whitney freeze, eyes doubling in size. “She thinks Nicole abandoned the both of you. That’s why she never brought it up. She didn’t want you to think that…” She paused again, feeling the empathetic heartbreak that she knew was inevitable. “All these years, she thought Nicole knew.”

“And if Nicole comes, they’re both going to be at the dinner tonight…”

“With Nicole thinking Champ got your mom pregnant and your mom thinking Nicole abandoned her….” Wynonna had to snort in laughter. “Well this is a goddamned Greek tragedy if there ever was one. They make Broadway musicals about this shit.”

“Okay but… in a musical there would be a happy ending…” Whitney smiled. “So…” She reached over and refilled Wynonna’s glass. “What say you?” She held the bottle out. “Wanna help me Parent Trap my moms?”

Wynonna picked the glass up, pursing her lips before tapping the edge of her glass to the bottle. The next few days were going to be interesting at least, she decided as she drank back the alcohol, feeling it warm her from within. It was a much better idea than focusing on her own shit show of a life. “Saddle up, Baby Girl Junior. We’re in for a wild ride.”

Twelve boxes were stacked on the store’s glass counter, separated into two mini-towers of pink. John Baker, the 16-year-old son of Bob and Edith Baker of Purgatory’s finest (read: only) bakery, proudly opened up one box for Waverly to inspect. Inside, one dozen cupcakes were arranged neatly, each one with elegant swirls of white frosting topped with one pink rose blossom.

Waverly leaned in and breathed in the sugary richness. “They look amazing,” she said, trying to hide her relief. With everything that had gone wrong with the wedding lately, she was just waiting for another shoe to drop. “You all really outdid yourselves this time.”

“Thanks, Ms. Waverly,” John blushed, nervously smoothing down the front of his flour-stained apron. “If you give me a minute to assist some customers, I can carry the boxes to your car.”

Waverly waved him off, already pulling the first stack toward her. “You’ve got the holiday rush to take care of.” She glanced at the growing line of people waiting to be served, some of them glowering at Waverly and John with thinly veiled impatience. “Don’t worry about me, I’ll be just fine.”

John nodded. “Well, enjoy the rehearsal tonight. We’ll have the cake delivered to the Homestead before the big day.”

“Thanks John.” Waverly adjusted the knit cap on her head and hitched up her tote bag higher on her shoulder, wishing she had emptied it out a bit or left it in the jeep as she lifted half a dozen boxes. They were a bit heavier than they looked, but she was sure she’d manage just fine. She approached the door and turned around to back into it. The boxes wobbled mid-push and Waverly paused to adjust her grip. Just as she was confident they weren’t going to go tumbling out of her arms, someone behind her said,

“Here, let me get that for you.”

It was simultaneously the last voice she wanted to hear and, though she would never admit it, the only voice she wanted to hear. The one that had been echoing throughout her mind all night long.

Waverly’s heart pounded as the weight of the door eased off her shoulders. She shivered as a freezing rush of air stung her skin. Bracing herself, she turned to see Nicole holding the door open for her and, goddammit, looking as gorgeous as ever in her gray peacoat, dark pants, and blue beanie. A tentative smile adorned her face and Waverly hated the way her stomach still flipped at the sight of Nicole’s stupid dimples.

“I had it under control,” Waverly grumbled out, knowing she was being rude but unable to stop herself. Clenching her jaw, she brushed past Nicole and stepped onto the sidewalk.

Nicole shrugged and let the door close. “That’s an interesting way of thanking someone.”

“I’m not thanking you,” Waverly snapped. “I didn’t need your help.”

“I know you didn’t,” Nicole said. “But I wanted to lend a hand.”

“Yeah? You’re about 20 years too late for that.” The words tumbled off Waverly’s tongue before she could stop them.

Pain flashed in Nicole’s eyes. She blinked it back in a second, but Waverly still felt a pang of guilt.

Nicole shoved her gloved hands inside her pockets, resembling a chastised puppy despite her attempt at nonchalance. “Have a good day, Waverly.”

Waverly hesitated, torn between wanting to apologize and wanting to indulge in two decades of pent-up resentment. But she knew, deep down, that lashing out at Nicole wouldn’t change the past; wouldn’t erase years of grief; wouldn’t suddenly make her feel better about what they lost. So she did the only thing she could do: nod and walk away.

Like the previous night, Waverly was proud of herself for not giving into temptation and glancing back, at least after the first few steps. But the pull to sneak one more glimpse of Nicole was harder to resist that morning. She blew out a frustrated breath that billowed out like a white stream of smoke. One peek couldn’t hurt, could it?

When Waverly reached an intersection and started to cross the street, she took the chance to look back, not noticing the frozen puddle just past the curb. The heel of her boot slid on the patch of ice. She let out a yelp as she lost her footing and stumbled backward until a strong hand steadied her from behind while an arm quickly wrapped around her to stop the boxes from tumbling to the ground.

“Careful,” Nicole’s voice puffed against Waverly’s ear. Vanilla and shea butter enveloped Waverly, whose pulse fluttered at the warm, familiar scent.

Flushing, she pulled away from Nicole, careful to step back onto the sidewalk. The boxes remained safely in her arms and she sighed in relief.

“I…” Waverly began.

“Didn’t need my help, I know,” Nicole finished for her. “For what it’s worth, I wasn’t trying to help you.”

“No?”

Nicole shrugged. “I didn’t want anything to happen to the pastries.”

Waverly would have chuckled if not for the fact that she was embarrassed, and that she couldn’t believe she was even having this conversation with Nicole. “Cupcakes, actually. I suppose even they’re a little grateful.”

And perhaps Waverly was too despite her earlier surliness. The last thing she wanted was for anything else to potentially ruin Whitney’s wedding.

Nicole ducked her head down, a half-smile appearing before she looked back up and across the street. “Signal’s back on,” she said.

Nodding, Waverly turned back toward the street and began crossing, this time keeping an eye out for icy areas. She felt, rather than heard, Nicole follow after her. Waverly glanced backward and, sure enough, Nicole was trailing behind a few feet. Any lingering gratitude that Waverly might have felt from Nicole’s safe melted back into irritation.

“Why are you following me?” Waverly asked through gritted teeth.

“I’m not,” Nicole casually replied.

“This isn’t the way to the Wainright.”

“Who says I’m going to the Wainright?”

Waverly huffed out and continued walking forward, picking up her pace. She would just have to ignore her. Nicole didn’t follow suit, just maintained the same ambling pace, as if she were strolling down the street on a warm spring day.

Just as Waverly reached her Jeep, she felt the cardboard of the bottom box start to give way. “Shit,” she cursed, trying to arrange her arms beneath it to keep it from falling apart. Perhaps she had accidentally torn it during her near fall. There was no way she could fish her keys out of her purse and unlock her doors and trunk without sacrificing the cupcakes. She considered placing the stack of boxes on the ground, but it was covered in brown slush from the ice melt the town had laid the night before.

“Looks like the cupcakes could use a bit more help,” Nicole commented as she approached.

If Waverly had any hands free, she’d be tempted to smack Nicole. But instead she thought again of Whitney and swallowed her pride. “Just get your ass over here, Haught.”

Jogging forward, Nicole took the boxes from Waverly and secured the base of the one on the bottom. Their gloved hands brushed, and even that small amount of contact sent a jolt through Waverly, who quickly stepped back and focused on getting her trunk open. She told herself she hated it. Hated that Nicole still had that effect on her.

“New car,” Nicole commented as she gently laid the boxes down in the trunk. “When’d you get it?”

“A while ago,” Waverly found herself responding even though it was really none of Nicole’s business. “Whit…” She swallowed. “Some people convinced me it was time to upgrade. Nothing lasts forever, no matter how much you want it to.”

Nicole blinked at Waverly. “Right.”

An awkward silence settled between them and Waverly shifted her weight from one foot, unsure how to proceed. “Don’t you have other work to do besides saving cupcakes?” She asked lightly as she shut the trunk.

“Nothing more important than that,” Nicole said. “I don’t really have anything planned, except maybe pay my respects to Nedley. Finally.”

Waverly held her breath, remembering how she had hoped years ago to see Nicole at the memorial service. How, despite insisting that she was over Nicole, she still was crushed when Nicole hadn’t shown up.

“I should have come then,” Nicole said softly, as if reading Waverly’s thoughts. “I should have come back a lot sooner.”

Nicole locked eyes with Waverly, a quiet conviction in her brown eyes so intense that Waverly had to look away, suddenly breathless. “You’re here now,” Waverly said. “That’s something.”

“Is it?”

Waverly nodded. “I’m sure it is to Nedley.”

Nicole swiped at her nose, red from the cold. “Then I’d best be going.”

“Did you want a ride?” Waverly blurted out, surprising them both. “It’s freezing and, well, it’s the least the cupcakes could do to thank you.”

A slow smile spread across Nicole’s face, making Waverly’s traitorous heart thud warmly against her chest. “I appreciate the offer, but I’ll have to respectfully decline. It’s not that much farther and I could use the exercise.”

“Okay,” Waverly said, annoyed at herself for the disappointment sinking in her stomach. “I guess I’ll… see you around.” She didn’t know why she said it. Nicole would be long gone again before she knew it.

Nicole only nodded, eyes following Waverly as she hopped in her Jeep and turned on the ignition. Don’t look back. Don’t look back. Don’t look back. Waverly pulled away from the curb and made her way back to the bakery to pick up the last of the boxes. She would be damned if she carried the rest of them that far again. She turned on her hazards and got out of her car. When she was back on the sidewalk, she couldn’t stop herself from looking back down the street one more time.

It looked as if Nicole was typing out a text before she tucked her phone back in her coat pocket. She glanced up and, even from a distance, even as much as she didn’t want to acknowledge it, Waverly could still feel a connection between them, an invisible string tying them together after all this time. Nicole gave her a small wave and then turned back in the direction of the cemetery while Waverly, ignoring the pull to go after Nicole, swung open the bakery’s door and walked inside.

[mikawa-province]

Lovers’ Quarrel [1/2]

Title: Lovers’ Quarrel Fandom: Samurai Love Ballad: Party/Tenka Touitsu Koi no Ran: Love Ballad Pairing: Tokugawa Ieyasu x MC Rating: R-18 → MA Word Count (MS Word): 5,014

痴話喧嘩　（ちわげんか） [chiwagenka] (n) lovers' quarrel

My friend Sayou requested for this fic for her birthday last March. Took me nearly a month to finish, but here’s to hoping that everyone else enjoys this fic as much as she did.

Link for mobile users

It all started one night, when Ieyasu-sama had been in a rather foul mood that no one wanted to be around him.

The talk about an alliance with Oshu in the north was not going well, and despite the diplomacy and the aggression that his lord had shown, the Date clan would not budge and agree to the conditions, even sending a counter-demand that had gotten the Lord of Mikawa worked-up. The stress, it seemed, was taking its toll on the leader of the Tokugawa clan that he had been snappy and unforgiving towards anyone who would try and test his patience.

The only people immune to his anger had been Honda Tadakatsu, who seemed to delight in getting trash-talked and glared at by his lord, and the sole female retainer, who had been ignoring his mood swings for the past few days. Their relationship was now better than before, though while he did not openly insult her, he had been rather hostile. To everyone’s amazement, she simply took it all in stride and was rather cordial with him, even if he had grabbed his dinner tray from her rather roughly, nearly spilling his miso soup on the tatami and on her kimono.

Each and every retainer of the clan ate their dinner and left as quickly as possible, not wanting to be the target of their lord’s dark mood.

As for him, it took the senior retainer several minutes to realize that he was one of the two remaining retainers in the dining hall. Immediately, he began to shove the rice in his mouth, wanting to finish his meal without Ieyasu-sama noticing him, lest he get tortured with his hair getting plucked.

“What would you like for dessert, Ieyasu-sama?” he heard the female retainer ask their lord. As soon as Tadatsugu looked up from his tray, all he could see was Tokugawa Ieyasu glaring angrily at her. It seemed as if their lord had been offended over the question, as he kept his mouth shut and frowned, not wanting to answer her.

“Guess I’ll make something sweet.” She said in a cheerful voice. “That should turn that frown upside down.”

Muttering a word of thanks for his meal, he got up and was just about to exit when he heard a startled gasp coming from her. Alarmed that his lord had finally snapped and was not acting like himself, he looked back to see if she was okay, only to feel his eyes widen and his jaws drop at the sight before him.

The feared Lord of Mikawa, the cunning tanuki who made everyone cower with his mere presence and his sharp tongue, had pulled the female retainer towards him, cradled her in his arms, and was kissing her rather… passionately. What amazed the senior retainer was the fact that she had practically melted in her lord’s arms and had actually began kissing him back after wrapping her arms around his neck.

“Don’t need anything else. This is sweet enough for me.” he heard the younger man say once they pulled away from one another.

Stunned at how it all played out before him, Sakai had to tell himself to get out of the room and give them some privacy, despite the fact that his whole body was shaking, and that he could feel the tears in his eyes.

He could hardly believe that this day has arrived at last.

Tokugawa Ieyasu, a former hostage of Imagawa Yoshimoto, was finally growing up and becoming a man.

With the events that had unfolded before his very eyes a few nights ago, Sakai Tadatsugu had decided that if he had one fervent wish that he would like to happen before he passes on to the next world, it would be to hold his lord’s child in his arms.

Unfortunately for him, when he had given that response on his birthday upon being asked by his lord what he wanted as a reward for being a loyal retainer, Ieyasu-sama’s response to that was to pluck at least ten strands of his already thinning hair before telling him to ‘keep dreaming’.

While he was but an old man who had loyally served one clan in his lifetime, he knew the importance of children and continuing both the line and the legacy of the clan. Ieyasu-sama may be young, but the older man was of the opinion that it was better to start as soon as possible, and that his lord had no excuse to delay it, especially since he had a female retainer who was also his lover, with whom he could have a child with. While the woman in question was not from any samurai family, no one in the clan could nor would they even dare oppose the relationship.

Virtually, the woman was a goddess in the eyes of many, as she had been the very reason why the changes in their lord had been mostly positive. While Sakikabara and some of the retainers had disliked her at one point, they were now neutral towards her, even acting cordial when the need for them to interact was imminent. In Sakakibara’s case, however, ever since he had been reinstated as a retainer of the clan, he took lengths to avoid her as not to make things between them awkward, and she did the same, a setup that suited them both well.

Everyone in the clan would, no doubt, support the relationship between their lord and his female retainer… and yet—

“Keep dreaming, old man. There’s no way she and I are going to have a brat.”

Did his lord not desire her?

Unusual, since she had been seen frequenting Ieyasu-sama’s rooms every night, which meant he wanted her with him at all times, if not in his bed.

Unless, of course…

Gasping out loud and ignoring the curious looks of the others around him, Sakai Tadatsugu began to secretly weep in his heart at the thought of his lord so very uneducated in the matters of the heart and romance. The duty of teaching the young one about romantic relationships fell on him as the most senior retainer, and he had failed on that aspect.

No wonder she had yet to carry his child; his lord was… was… lacking, and not in the anatomical sense.

This had to be rectified immediately if he wanted to hold the child in his arms, and he knew just the thing to subtly hint to his lord about starting the bedroom activities. Smiling to himself, he proceeded to pick up the book he had ordered not long ago, a book that Ieyasu-sama had long forgotten, and was well on his way to the man’s room when he heard words that would make even him stop in his tracks.

“Take it off!”

Was that—

“Calm down—” the voice belonged to Ieyasu-sama, but the response to him was anything but calm.

“No! If you won’t, then I will!”

A thud and a yelp soon followed after, and the older samurai wondered if this was his cue to open the sliding doors and check if they were alright.

“Get it away from me!!!” another shriek, followed by a sob, and a plea to take ‘it’ far, far away from her.

At this, Sakai realized that it may be something serious, and that it may be time for him to intervene.

With that, he slid the doors opened, and the sight before him had rendered him speechless. Though people who walk in on others, thinking the worst about because they mistook the noise for something else, end up getting embarrassed over nothing, this time around, Sakai Tadatsugu, in all of his years, had been rendered mute, all because of his lord and his lover.

Ieyasu-sama was in the middle of getting undressed, judging from how his haori and top had been discarded to the tatami, with the hakama strings loose, and the hakama itself was slowly falling down his hips, while the top part of her kimono was nearly falling down because of the lack of obi, and the skirt was hiked all the way up to her thighs.

He had walked in on them while they were… preparing, and he didn’t know if that was a good thing or a bad thing he interrupted.

Until, of course, the young lord of the clan had bellowed a command that snapped him back to reality and made him run out of the room as quickly as possible.

“Leave.”

Upon hearing this, he found himself exiting the room, slamming the door on his way out, and decided to go to his room to process everything he had just seen.

The gods have heard his prayer.

Ieyasu-sama had not been lacking at all; he simply was biding his time to seduce her and make his move.

Trying hard not to cry until he was in the privacy of his room, he quickly made his way down the corridor, a spring added to his step, despite his advancing age.

The very thing he was wishing for had come true in an instant, and it was only imperative that he celebrate the joyous occasion.

The Tokugawa clan’s future was secured.

He never knew she had it in her to suddenly straddle him on the tatami and to single-handedly divest him of his clothing, not because she wanted some afternoon tryst, but all because of a stupid house critter.

Tokugawa Ieyasu was well aware of her fear of spiders, which was what prompted him to play a harmless prank involving one. With the temperatures getting warmer and the season moving towards spring, animals and insects were back from hibernation and making its presence known all over the castle. While he could deal with a bug or two, in her case, she was definitely not fond of any of them.

Just days ago, he had heard her screaming her lungs off when a spider had entered her room, which ended up dead when she reached out for a low table that she used for writing and crushed it using one of the legs.

Which was why he had caught a harmless house spider, placed it inside one of the drawers that contained his clothing, and called upon her to help him do some spring cleaning.

As soon as she opened the chest, out came the spider, which made her shriek.

And just when he was about to laugh at her and point out how funny she looked startled, the house spider jumped unto his chest and made its way inside his top.

Not that it bothered him, as the spider in question was not the poisonous type.

To his surprise, however, she had panicked upon seeing the creature crawl into his clothing.

“Take it off!” she demanded of him, tugging the collar of his clothes in an attempt to shrug it off of him. To his surprise, there was no look of fear in her eyes, as it had been replaced by a determined one.

He would have found it amusing that she had looked so determined to strip him, but with the seriousness etched on her face, Ieyasu knew he had to tread cautiously, lest he upset her.

“Calm down—” he began, only for her to shriek at him, the seriousness on her face suddenly becoming a distressed one.

“No, I will not!” she then reached down and began untying his hakama, surprising even him.

She was really going that far?

For a spider?

A harmless, non-poisonous spider?

“If you won’t, then I will!”

For someone who was a head shorter, smaller, and lighter in weight than him, she had actually managed to tackle him to the tatami, which should not have happened at all… then again, this day was just full of surprises, which was why his guard was down, and he may have let her tackle him to the tatami.

He tried not to gasp as her hands began wandering into the inside of his robes in an attempt to get the spider out. When that failed, he was left trying hard to calm his rapidly-beating heart as her hands brushed past his chest while she searched for the spider.

He must have been too distracted from what she had done earlier that he only snapped back to reality when he heard her shriek again.

“Get it away from me!!!”

The irony of it all would be the spider crawling into her, which had left her screaming and shaking.

As he saw the spider making its away on her back and had actually dared to hop inside her kimono, she muffled her scream by placing her arms around his neck and pressing her lips against his now bare chest.

This girl…

Ieyasu gave an exaggerated sigh as he loosed the obi of her kimono and reached out to try and grab the spider from the collar. He guessed that each time the spider made a move, she would whimper in fear and held on to him for dear life; while it was nice at first, with their nearly naked bodies pressing one another outside of the bedroom act, he could barely move by the time he had actually grabbed the damn thing and threw it across the room.

Cue in Sakai opening the sliding doors and seeing them in a rather compromising position that would have made anyone think that they were definitely not doing something as innocent as getting rid of a spider: his haori and his top were gone, his hakama strings had been loosened, and it was threatening to slide down his hips while the skirt of her kimono was hiked all the way up to her thighs. When she was straddling him earlier, she had pinned him down while her obi had fallen on the floor, her kimono now gaping open for him to see her breasts.

She gasped upon realizing that her kimono had come undone, and the fact that Sakai was also there. In an attempt to cover herself up immediately, she hugged him tighter and had pressed her face against his neck, their bodies pressing more intimately than before.

She was seriously going to kill him right then and there with that gesture.

It took all but one word to get the most senior retainer to close the doors and bid them a good day in an instant.

“Leave.”

From the corner of his eye, even the spider had realized that it had to leave and had followed along Sakai, barely missing the death that was the sliding doors that could have squished the life out of it.

He noticed that she was still shaking in his arms, and in response, he rubbed the palm of his hand on her upper back in an attempt to calm her down.

“… Come on, it already left. Why are you still trembling?” he tried to sound harsh, but both knew he was failing in that aspect. After he had actually taken the risk of trusting and opening his heart to her, she was more than capable of reading his facial expressions and sensing his moods, and knew that whenever he was being sarcastic, he was trying to hide his own anxiety.

“I-I thought it was… it was going to bite you…” she muttered, her face still pressed against his neck. “I-I was scared…”

“It wasn’t poisonous.” He informed her.

He was a bit disappointed when she pulled away to assess if he was telling the truth, but the view that she was unknowingly showing made up for the lack of warmth, though his reaction down south was paining him.

“How sure are you that it wasn’t poisonous?” she narrowed her eyes at him.

“Because I know what poisonous spiders look like.” He glared at her. “Don’t underestimate me.”

“I am not, but I can’t help but worry for your safety, Ieyasu-sama.” She was pleading with him with those eyes that he knew was his downfall the moment he had let her comfort him during one of the worst failures he experienced as an adult. “The thought of you getting poisoned by a spider—”

“I doubt I’ll go down easily from a spider bite, and you shouldn’t worry too much.” He placed a hand on her shoulder, letting her kimono slide down her skin, and tossed the fabric away, leaving her naked. “If I were you, I shouldn’t worry over a spider...” she blushed after realizing that she had been straddling him the whole time, and that she had shamelessly been sitting on his abdomen the whole time, her soft backside pressed against his erection.

“I—” before she could even say an apology, he capture her lips with his as he sat up to kiss her, all the while shrugging off the hakama that came loose from her deft tugging and pulling of the strings. She, in turn, had lifted her hips a bit in order to get the hakama completely off his body.

By the time they pulled away from one another to catch their breaths, he was just as naked as she was.

“Unlike spiders, I don’t let my prey get away.”

“I-Ieyasu-sama, now is not the time to—” she nearly squeaked as soon as she felt him tease her with his fingers, opening, coaxing her into seduction.

“Sakai already had the wrong idea when he saw us like this. We might as well proceed.” He shrugged, brushing his fingers against her inner folds, making her gasp. “And it seems like you’ve been anticipating this. I take it you were imagining that this would happen at one point?”

While he found all of this amusing, she frowned at him. “S-stop teasing me. I-I must explain to Sakai-sama—” before she could even attempt to get off him and grab her now discarded kimono, he kissed the valley between her breasts in an attempt to distract her, as he had managed to slip a finger inside, making her arch in pleasure. “I-Ieyasu-sama…!”

“Why don’t we just do it so that you don’t have to explain anything to him?”

As he teased her further with his skillful fingers, unconsciously, she parted her legs further, something that she always did to encourage him to stroke her until she would reach her peak and moan her ecstasy against his ear.

… Which was something he did not like, as he wanted to see her face while she writhed and moaned under his touch.

Just when he knew she was close to finally having her release, judging from the way she was gasping and moaning and her inner muscles were gripping his fingers, he stopped.

After catching her breath, her expression told him that she was ready to murder him when he placed his come-soaked fingers in her mouth.

Momentarily distracted at his actions, he had an inkling that she didn’t realize that her knees were unsteady when he had managed to easily slip inside of her when he lowered her gently unto him by pushing her down by the shoulders, making her gasp as he slowly sheathed himself within. Once she was done licking his fingers clean, he flashed her rather lazy smile, grinning further upon seeing her cheeks flush in embarrassment.

“You’re in control… for once.” He chuckled at their situation, looking quite content, despite the fact that he was usually the one who was on top of her whenever they were making love.

She looked so distressed upon realizing that this was all new to her… and that she had no idea what she had to do. “I… I don’t know how—” before she could even voice out her complaint, he kissed the side of her throat to calm her down.

“If you want something, you gotta work for it.” He whispered huskily. “So, what are you gonna do about this?”

It had been easy enough to encourage her by lifting her until he let her go, their hips met once more. Her sharp intake of breath had told him that she found the sensation surprising. To her credit, she had been rather fast on the uptake, realizing that with their current positions, she was actually at an advantage, and could probably delay and deny him of the release he had sought as well. In hindsight, it may have been a bad idea to let her know of the power she could have over him, but Ieyasu knew it would be worth it.

Especially since she had made it a point to grasp his shoulders to steady herself, all the while moaning against his ear to steady herself and work her way to her climax. With her hips raised, she would immediately meet his own, a motion that she would repeat in a steady pace. Her actions, as well as her moans, was enough to make him reach his peak in no time; while he slowly filled her, she had not slowed down her pace. Rather, it had become more frantic and rough, until he felt her inner walls grip around him, her moans becoming louder as she climaxed.

With her breathing coming down to a slower pace, silently, he cupped her face and kissed her cheek, her neck, and her collar bone before capturing her lips once more, slipping his tongue into her mouth as he kissed her. She kissed him back and let her hands roam all over his body, making him moan against her lips. For someone who disliked being physically near another person, Ieyasu knew that the only one he allowed to be this close to him was her, and only because the intimacy they shared had strangely made him more, dare he say it, clingy to her.

Happily, she did not dislike being so physically and emotionally close to him, which had been a relief, since he dreaded over the possibility that she would actually object to it.

“Ieyasu-sama…” she whispered huskily as she stared into his eyes, sighing in contentment.

He gave her yet another peck on the lips before smirking. “Now you don’t have to explain anything to Sakai.”

Ieyasu chuckled when her only response had been a blush on her cheeks and a slap on his arm.

Several weeks have passed, and during this particular dinner, in his private room, after she had brought in his favorite sea bream tempura, the female servants followed, and had served both of them some rice with red beans on it.

Whereas she began pondering as to what the celebration was all about, he wondered if it had anything to do with what Sakai thought had happened weeks ago, when he mistakenly walked in on them, which they had remedied in the end by doing what the old man had assumed they were in the middle of doing.

Isn’t it too fast for this? He was well aware she was not pregnant, as he often told her to be upfront with him whenever it came to her health, and it had only been some days since they last made love, and yet…

“Sakai, what is the meaning of this?” he asked the retainer, who had checked on them several minutes after the food had been brought inside his room.

“I would like to be the first to congratulate you both on this wonderful occasion!” upon seeing their blank (his) and confused (hers) looks, the older man frowned. “Huh? But I heard you both yesterday talking if it would be a boy or a girl, and Ieyasu-sama was very adamant about it being a boy…”

He tried to remember what he was doing yesterday that involved her, especially when they were both too busy to even greet one another as they passed by the hallway; the last of the guests from Oshu had departed earlier today, and it was only now when they could have a private moment. He knew his duties, and she knew hers as well, and the arrangement suited them fine… though, he would never admit, there were times wherein he just wanted to run away from his responsibilities, even for a day, and spend time with her, just the two of them.

“Sakai-sama, I think you… I think you’ve gotten it all wrong.” She said, breaking the awkward silence. “We weren’t talking about a baby at all…”

“Then what were you two talking about?”

Suddenly, it all made sense.

This whole misunderstanding wouldn’t have happened if the old man hadn’t been a terrible eavesdropper.

“Do you think it’s a boy or a girl?”

For all her expertise in cooking and making meals that could, admittedly, nourish both his body and soul, she had no knowledge of telling apart the crabs’ sexes. Either that, or she just didn’t feel the need to learn; Mikawa and Totomi were areas that were abundant in sea food, while the capital was landlocked, the nearest body of water being the mythical Lake Biwa in Omi.

“You can’t tell?” he asked her.

“Not really, no…” she sounded embarrassed, to the point that her cheeks were turning pink.

Chuckling, he pointed at the small bucket that contained ten crabs, all imported from the province of Kaga, and cautiously picked one up.

“Easiest way to tell is the size, as female crabs are smaller, but if you want to be really sure, you flip it over and check what they call an ‘apron’. If the shape is narrow and more pointed, it’s male. If it’s a bit wider, it’s female.”

She nodded. “I see. I’ll keep that in mind then, when we have crabs again for dinner.”

“This may be the only time we can have these, unless your friend from the Maeda clan is generous enough to share their seafood during winter.” He told her.

“Doesn’t hurt to ask, Ieyasu-sama.” She grinned at him.

“We had crabs yesterday night, and on the morning of the feast, I was teaching her how to tell a male crab from a female crab because I prefer the former over the latter.” At Sakai’s blank stare, he shrugged. “Male crab meat taste better, which was why I was showing her how to identify one for future reference.”

Was he hearing things, or did Sakai just muttered to himself, “You should’ve demonstrated to her the difference between a man and a woman as well…”?

That old man was seriously getting himself worked up over something so stupid.

“Listen, old man. She and I do not plan on having a brat, and never will.”

To his surprise, Tadatsugu has actually looked scandalized and offended at what he had said. “Ieyasu-sama, please reconsider. The clan—”

“We can have that discussion some other day. For now…” while he still disliked the old man for his meddling ways, Ieyasu had learned to curb his tongue… for most part anyway. “I want to have a quiet dinner with Sanae.”

“Of course.” The old man did not look happy, but knew he had no choice but to back off for the meantime. “Good night, Ieyasu-sama, Sanae-dono.”

Ieyasu waited until Sakai Tadatsugu exited the room before turning to his female retainer to have a laugh about how ridiculous the whole thing was… until he noticed her looking a bit pale and her face showed signs of distress. Ever since he had been a bit more accommodating towards her, he rarely saw that expression on her face… until now.

The last time she looked at him like that was when he had a fight with Ishida over her, and he had been so cruel and sadistic to her that he was surprised that she could still bring herself to have any form of romantic affection for him.

“D-did you mean what you said about… about… not planning to have… a ‘brat’?”

He swore inwardly.

This was not how he wanted to spend his evening with her.

He could either ignore what she said and push for an uneventful dinner or ask her further with regards to her line of question.

While he suspected as much, he knew he still had to ask her, just to be sure. “… Are you… are you pregnant?”

It took several seconds for her to give out a tentative nod, her eyes on the tatami, unable to look at him.

Her non-verbal confirmation had made his world spin rather violently.

It took everything in him to keep calm and not get worked up over the fact that she might already be carrying the heir to the clan. Despite the current situation being more favorable than what he experienced in his youth, no doubt, there was still a chance that his heir would be used as a hostage by a powerful warlord if he was careless enough to make a mistake and his lands would get invaded by his enemies.

If not an heir, his daughter would most likely be used as a pawn by the others if he died early and she would be sent to a neighboring province as the bride of some man decades older than her, stuck in a political marriage until the man was dead and she would move on to the next husband. That, or he could always leave a will to send her to a temple and let her be a priestess until it was time for her to rule the clan.

And then, her.

No doubt, she would suffer the fate of becoming some man’s concubine in order to survive, seeing as she was not from a samurai family. If she lived through the childbirth and he somehow died, she would most likely be used by another clan as someone they can use to bear their heir, as they would use the first childbirth as a measure of ‘success’ in bringing forth a child.

Ieyasu let out a breath he never knew he was holding within before managing a calm reply. “… I see.”

The last thing he heard before everything went dark was her panicked scream, calling out his name.

Notes:

MC being afraid of spiders happened in the Matsudaira Motoyasu’s Prologue Arc in KoiRan/Tenka. In the epilogue story, a spider had frightened her when it appeared in Ieyasu/Motoyasu’s room, something that unfazed him. This led MC to think that Motoyasu has no weaknesses at all.

This may come as a shock for those unfamiliar with Sengoku Period History, but during that time, it was common, even normal for weaker clans to send family/clan members to the houses of powerful warlords as hostages to keep them in-check. Takechiyo/Matsudaira Motoyasu/Tokugawa Ieyasu was once a hostage of Imagawa Yoshimoto. In the NHK Taiga drama series Onna Joshuu Naotora, Otowa/Naotora narrowly avoided becoming a hostage of the Imagawa by becoming a priestess. That’s where I got the idea for this fic. In other words, the source of everyone’s headache before Imagawa Yoshimoto got killed by Oda Nobunaga would be Imagawa himself.

Snow crabs can only be gotten from prefectures/provinces along the Sea of Japan, and like everything in Japan, it can only be consumed during a certain period in late-autumn to late-winter. With Ieyasu being a formidable [maybe even rich] warlord in his own right, I think he had the means to get snow crabs, even if Kaga Province is too far away from Totomi Province/Hamamatsu.

The final chapter will be posted sometime. It will be connected to a prompt fic sent my way with the prompt being ‘exchanging letters’. Rating may stay the same or may go up, depending on the content that I will write as I go along.

Thank you for reading!

[amyddaniels]

How to Be Happy at Every Age

Yogis and scholars explain how to stay present and embrace what each decade brings your way.

I turned 40 last May, and I’m apparently about to tumble into years of despair. Because, according to friends and colleagues who hit that milestone a few years before I did (not to mention researchers), my “midlife crisis” is right around the corner. But I don’t buy it. Sure, I need at least an hour of meditation with one sock on, one sock off (no joke) and 1.5 (no more, no less) cups of Sleepytime tea to fall asleep, but that’s hardly what I’d call a crisis.

Jonathan Rauch, award-winning journalist and author of The Happiness Curve: Why Life Gets Better After 50 also rejects the idea of a midlife crisis, a term coined back in 1965 by psychologist Elliott Jaques. He prefers to call it a slump or, on perhaps less optimistic days, a “constant drizzle of disappointment.” Still pretty bleak sounding if you ask me.

Multiple studies of adults in countries around the world show a U shape on the happiness scale as we age. In fact, according to Rauch, “it turns up so frequently and in so many places that many happiness researchers take it for granted.” The U shape suggests that people feel good in their 20s, then get a bit more miserable in their 30s—until everything bottoms out in the fifth decade. In fact, according to a new study by Dartmouth professor David Blanchflower that examined trends in 132 countries, life’s “peak time for misery” happens around age 47. Ouch. Maybe that’s why my friends would rather say they’re celebrating the 20th anniversary of their 20th birthday than proudly own the Big 4-0.

See also Find the Happiness Within You

There is good news, however. Studies by Blanchflower and British researcher Andrew Oswald bear that out. Their findings suggest that well-being “declines steadily (apart from a blip around the mid-20s) until approximately 50; it then rises in a hill-like way up to the age of 70; after that it declines slightly until the age of 90.” Happiness deepens as we age, like a fine wine. But until then—what? Those of us in our 40s are destined to mope around and bide our time until we can get a senior discount? No thank you. Fortunately, University of Pennsylvania researcher Matt Killingsworth has a different point of view. He found that happiness is tied to being present��not fretting about the past or even lusting after retirement.

I decided to set off to find a way to make it through this quote unquote low point without entering crisis mode. There has to be a way to be happy—no matter what the trends suggest—at any age.

“THERE HAS TO BE A WAY TO BE HAPPY—NO MATTER WHAT THE TRENDS SUGGEST—AT ANY AGE.”

What Is Happiness, Anyway?

Clearly, how a person defines happiness affects their perception of it—and there are myriad definitions to consider, from ancient traditions to modern scholarly ones. In the yoga world, for example, there are at least four types of happiness. Santosha (contentment) implies a sense of delight; being content with what you have, who you are, and where you are in this moment. We’re happiest when we’re not wishing we were better, richer, kinder, or any other kind of different. Sukha (ease or, literally, a good space) is the comfort or sweetness we feel, even in the midst of confusion or turbulent times. For some people, mudita (sympathetic joy) is the hardest of all. It asks us to be joyful for those who are happiest; to be happy for the good fortune of others—even if they have what we wish we had. We experience ananda, the state of being blissfully happy, when we stop trying to find happiness and simply experience it. Yogic scholar Georg Feuerstein once wrote that ananda is “what we experience when our whole body radiates with joyous energy and we feel like embracing everyone and everything.” The Dalai Lama himself says that happiness is mainly having “a sense of deep satisfaction.” All of these definitions are, in the words of Killingsworth, “tied to being present.”

Rauch went with a more scholarly definition in his book. He breaks happiness down into two categories: affective well-being (how you feel today, how often you smile) and evaluative well-being (how you assess your life as a whole). His research looked at the latter: “You might not feel happy today, but you still feel your life is fulfilling and rewarding,” Rauch says.

See also 5 Happiness Boosting Poses

Although Rauch is a fan of the U curve, which he contends “has been pretty stable over time,” he also believes there will always be outliers. And even within the same shape, he says, the details of the curve, such as where it bends and at what age, vary by country, suggesting there could be some social impact to our well-being.

How to Be Happy at Every Age

Even if research shows happiness commonly dips in middle age, that doesn’t mean we can’t be happy at any age.

Linda Sparrowe, co-author of The Woman’s Book of Yoga and Health: A Lifelong Guide to Wellness (with Patricia Walden), believes that each stage of life has its high points on the happiness scale and, alas, its low points, too. Yoga and certain mindful lifestyle practices can maximize the pinnacles and minimize the troughs, she says. While the stages she writes about are fluid—adolescence moving into our 20s; early 40s holding fast to the 30s, the late 40s having more in common with the early 50s, and so forth—Sparrowe agrees that each decade brings something unique to our growth.

See also How to Train Your Brain for Happiness

Ayurvedic practitioner and yoga teacher trainer Niika Quistgard encourages people to look at doshic patterns as a general map, not an unbreakable fact. “There are generalizations that can help us take a closer look and see if they’re true for us at the time, but we can’t just boilerplate everyone,” Quistgard says. “Life is more complex than that.”

With that in mind, let’s examine the ups and downs—the gifts and challenges—each decade may bring.

THE 20S

Anyone who has navigated the rough waters of puberty knows how amazing it can feel to move past insecurities, erratic hormones, and conflicting messages from family, friends, and the media that threaten a person’s sense of self. No wonder the 20s are thought to be at the top of the happiness curve. Sure, there are still moments of doubt, as young people struggle to feel less awkward and more grounded—to become more independent, to find their voices, and to embrace both their vulnerabilities and their strengths. There are still times of falling down and getting back up and falling down again. That’s all part of what makes this the decade of “becoming.”

My 20s were a wild roller coaster, tearing through the social constructs that had limited my youth. I hit rock bottom, at one point living in my car after I left a dysfunctional relationship. But that was when I finally began to discover my true self and separate from my family, controlling partners, and trauma from my past. I had nothing, yet I had independence, and that was everything.

My 20s were challenging, but there really is no better time to try things on for size—to play with new ways of showing up in the world—and to explore new places, ideas, and relationships. Yogic philosophy calls this stage brahmacharya, or the student phase, which centers around learning, playing, and finding mentors.

See also 5 Ways to Boost Happiness

Yoga plays an important role in this time of awakening. A physical yoga practice—standing poses, arm balances, backbends and forward bends—can be stabilizing and strengthening, both for the body and for the emotions, and help to build self-confidence off the mat, too.

THE 30S

After a decade (or more) of self-inquiry and investigation, the 30s arrive, bringing a shift in focus from the inner to the outer world. Suddenly you are coming into your own, and you are ready to show the world your fabulousness. You are more outward-facing, establishing yourself in the workplace, creating new ideas, setting down roots, taking care of others, and perhaps starting a family. I got married and gave birth to my daughter when I was 30, and it completely transformed my life. At the same time, I was building my career as a travel writer—it was hectic, but I loved it. Yogic philosophy calls this period grihastha, or the householder period, a time of adventure, family, and enterprise during adulthood.

The challenge, of course, is you run the risk of losing yourself in the process, not making time to take care of your own physical and emotional needs. Sparrowe warns that when we move into this decade, we straddle “a fine line between being present in the world and being swallowed up by that world.” These are heated, ambitious, passionate years, influenced by the fiery pitta dosha, says Ayurvedic practitioner Quistgard.

See also Path to Happiness: 9 Interpretations of the Yamas + Niyamas

So, it’s important to stay balanced as much as possible. Otherwise, your creative, no-time-to-lose energy becomes more frantic, until you run the risk of chronic stress and burnout.

Committing to a regular yoga practice can bring your focus inward, which will help to calm and reset a young-adult nervous system. It worked for me. I didn’t really embrace a regular yoga and meditation practice until my 30s, and then it was out of necessity. I needed it as a way to create an intentional separation between my deadline-driven work life and my home life; I needed to learn how to truly finish something before I started something else—not just in a physical sense, but in my mind as well. A consistent home practice—even for 10 minutes a day—can give you a respite from all the responsibilities you shoulder (at work or at home), help you refuel, and put things back into perspective. Put your legs up the wall when you get home; listen to soothing music; do several rounds of pranayama (Nadi Shodhana is particularly balancing); go for a walk. And then, move into your non-work time with your full attention and joy.

THE 40S

When author Rauch hit his 40s, he was dissatisfied despite his achievements and wanted to know why.

So he did what any self-respecting journalist would do: He interviewed experts in psychology, neuroscience, economics, and sociology to help make sense of what was going on. He also conducted what he called an “unscientific survey” of approximately 300 ordinary people about their lives, he told me.

The results, which he describes in his book, led him to understand that our 40s are a decade of transition and a certain amount of upheaval. Our priorities—in other words, the things that relate to our sense of evaluative well-being—tend to change over time. We typically value competition, ambition, and achievement in our 20s, 30s, and early 40s, but as we move deeper into our fifth decade, we may start to question whether we’ve achieved our goals, whether we’ve done enough, and—even more fraught—whether we still matter. At the same time, Rauch says, “We’re beginning to shift our values toward caring, cooperation, and community,” which can feel confusing. Not to worry, he says. “If you hit a slump in your 40s, know it’s temporary and you have a lot to look forward to. Anyone who says, ‘If you haven’t made it by your 50s, you’re finished’ has it exactly backward.”

See also Bringing Happiness Home

Meditation and yoga nidra teacher Tracee Stanley encourages people to embrace the transitions in their lives, welcoming them as portals to redefine and rediscover at a deeper level what happiness truly means. “A lot of times in life when there’s a transition, there’s also a vacuum.

A void. The most powerful place to put your intention is in a void,” Stanley says. “In a transition, if we can stay awake and aware, that’s where power is.” Stanley recommends yoga nidra (yogic sleep) during this time, which she calls a deeply “immersive experience of self-inquiry and deep rest” that can increase your intuition and bring more clarity to your purpose—all of which will serve you well as you move into your later years.

THE 50S

Even though Rauch says we have a lot to look forward to in our 50s, sometimes that’s not immediately apparent. Entering a new era, some people complain that they feel invisible, irrelevant, or kind of “in the way” in a culture obsessed with youth. Some grumble that their bodies have changed and they hardly recognize themselves. Some women struggle with perimenopause and the realization that their childbearing years are officially over. Sounds rough to me. But Sparrowe doesn’t see it that way. She says the sixth decade brings opportunities for powerful, transformative experiences. If we enter into our 50s having taken care of ourselves, she says, we’re much more apt to weather the physical challenges and move into a stage of life in which we nurture others in a much larger context and find the confidence to speak our truths kindly and without apology.

See also Feel the Joy

This decade lines up with yogic philosophy’s third stage, vanaprastha, which focuses on contemplation, having less concern about material things, and solitude; it is also called the forest-dweller or retirement period (often marked by grandchildren).

On a physical and emotional level, yoga can help combat those pesky perimenopause symptoms—insomnia, hot flashes, fatigue, and anxiety. Specifically, forward bends, twists, and backbends can help pacify and then activate the adrenals. Baxter Bell, MD, author of Yoga for Healthy Aging: A Guide to Lifelong Well-Being, says that studies of longtime yoga practitioners and meditators also show calmer brainwave patterns, improvement in areas of the brain involved with cognitive decision-making and memory, and an improved ability to tune into the subtle messages of the body and respond to them more proactively than reactively. All of this is to say: Keep up your practice.

THE 60S AND BEYOND

For many people, their 60s, 70s, and 80s read like a litany of physical complaints: osteoporosis, heart disease, hip and knee pain. Sometimes the list seems endless. Of course, this time of life is so much more than that. In yogic philosophy, it is known as sannyasa: the time in which our attention moves deeper inward, toward union with the divine. Many retire, begin to let go of their possessions, and choose to spend more time in contemplation and in service to others. This sense of freedom can bring with it an almost childlike energy, an added layer of wisdom born from a lifetime of experiences.

Alan Castel, a professor in the Department of Psychology at UCLA, whose own research focuses on human memory, cognition, and cognitive aging, suggests that there could be a biological reason why the elder years sit at the top of the U curve. As we age, our brains actually latch onto and recall positive things more than negative ones, says Castel, author of Better with Age: The Psychology of Successful Aging. This is called the “positivity bias.” Castel references a study by Laura Carstensen that demonstrates if you show people two faces, one happy and one sad, younger people focus more on the sad face, whereas older people spend more time looking at the happy face.

See also Create a Life You Love

“This can influence memory—and mood. If you focus on positive things, those are the things you’re more likely to remember,” Castel says. Plus, even though your memory declines with age, your memory selectivity improves; you get better at focusing on the things that are important to you, Castel says.

To find balance at this stage—or really any stage—and to feel more connected to yourself and others, Quistgard recommends spending more time in nature, living with the natural circadian rhythm (waking with the sunrise, winding down with the sunset), and serving others. Do yoga, sit in meditation, and laugh as often as possible. Reach out to others, practice together, connect, mentor, and support one another.

“YOU NEED TO BE ABLE TO SURRENDER AND TO KNOW THAT YOU’RE SUPPORTED IN ORDER TO BE ABLE TO REALLY BE CONTENT.”

Happiness at Every Age

Of course, just because you practice yoga, chant mantras, or breathe rhythmically doesn’t guarantee your happiness, says yoga teacher Christi Sullivan. “If you go into [your practice] with the expectation that happiness and joy will be sprinkled on you like fairy dust, you’ll never find it,” she says.

“It’s not finding the feeling. It’s feeling the feeling that is already there,” she says. “If you wonder why life has lost its magic, it’s because we stopped showing up inside and were looking for it on the outside.”

See also 6-Step Meditation to Invoke Joy

So how do we get the magic back? By approaching our life with devotion and gratitude, without trying to “get something out of it,” says yoga nidra teacher Stanley. If you assign an expectation to an action (like “On a scale of 1 to 10, how happy do I want to be when I’m done?”), it changes the experience. “If you’re looking for it, it’s not going to happen,” she says, because your mind is too busy thinking. “You need to be able to surrender and to know that you’re supported in order to be able to really be content.”

This ties back into Killingsworth’s research about presence. While he was a doctoral student at Harvard, Killingsworth developed an app to track happiness and found that a wandering mind is an unhappy mind, even if you’re fantasizing about the good ol’ days or better days to come. He discovered that people are happiest when they stay in the moment.

Right here. Right now.

Even if you’re in an unpleasant situation, like a traffic jam, or say, I don’t know, freshly 40 with a U curve stacked against you.

See also A Meditation Practice To Let In Joy + Happiness

About the author

Aimee Heckel is a writer in Boulder, Colorado. Learn more at aimeeheckel.com

[krisiunicornio]

Yogis and scholars explain how to stay present and embrace what each decade brings your way.

I turned 40 last May, and I’m apparently about to tumble into years of despair. Because, according to friends and colleagues who hit that milestone a few years before I did (not to mention researchers), my “midlife crisis” is right around the corner. But I don’t buy it. Sure, I need at least an hour of meditation with one sock on, one sock off (no joke) and 1.5 (no more, no less) cups of Sleepytime tea to fall asleep, but that’s hardly what I’d call a crisis.

Jonathan Rauch, award-winning journalist and author of The Happiness Curve: Why Life Gets Better After 50 also rejects the idea of a midlife crisis, a term coined back in 1965 by psychologist Elliott Jaques. He prefers to call it a slump or, on perhaps less optimistic days, a “constant drizzle of disappointment.” Still pretty bleak sounding if you ask me.

Multiple studies of adults in countries around the world show a U shape on the happiness scale as we age. In fact, according to Rauch, “it turns up so frequently and in so many places that many happiness researchers take it for granted.” The U shape suggests that people feel good in their 20s, then get a bit more miserable in their 30s—until everything bottoms out in the fifth decade. In fact, according to a new study by Dartmouth professor David Blanchflower that examined trends in 132 countries, life’s “peak time for misery” happens around age 47. Ouch. Maybe that’s why my friends would rather say they’re celebrating the 20th anniversary of their 20th birthday than proudly own the Big 4-0.

See also Find the Happiness Within You

There is good news, however. Studies by Blanchflower and British researcher Andrew Oswald bear that out. Their findings suggest that well-being “declines steadily (apart from a blip around the mid-20s) until approximately 50; it then rises in a hill-like way up to the age of 70; after that it declines slightly until the age of 90.” Happiness deepens as we age, like a fine wine. But until then—what? Those of us in our 40s are destined to mope around and bide our time until we can get a senior discount? No thank you. Fortunately, University of Pennsylvania researcher Matt Killingsworth has a different point of view. He found that happiness is tied to being present—not fretting about the past or even lusting after retirement.

I decided to set off to find a way to make it through this quote unquote low point without entering crisis mode. There has to be a way to be happy—no matter what the trends suggest—at any age.

“THERE HAS TO BE A WAY TO BE HAPPY—NO MATTER WHAT THE TRENDS SUGGEST—AT ANY AGE.”

What Is Happiness, Anyway?

Clearly, how a person defines happiness affects their perception of it—and there are myriad definitions to consider, from ancient traditions to modern scholarly ones. In the yoga world, for example, there are at least four types of happiness. Santosha (contentment) implies a sense of delight; being content with what you have, who you are, and where you are in this moment. We’re happiest when we’re not wishing we were better, richer, kinder, or any other kind of different. Sukha (ease or, literally, a good space) is the comfort or sweetness we feel, even in the midst of confusion or turbulent times. For some people, mudita (sympathetic joy) is the hardest of all. It asks us to be joyful for those who are happiest; to be happy for the good fortune of others—even if they have what we wish we had. We experience ananda, the state of being blissfully happy, when we stop trying to find happiness and simply experience it. Yogic scholar Georg Feuerstein once wrote that ananda is “what we experience when our whole body radiates with joyous energy and we feel like embracing everyone and everything.” The Dalai Lama himself says that happiness is mainly having “a sense of deep satisfaction.” All of these definitions are, in the words of Killingsworth, “tied to being present.”

Rauch went with a more scholarly definition in his book. He breaks happiness down into two categories: affective well-being (how you feel today, how often you smile) and evaluative well-being (how you assess your life as a whole). His research looked at the latter: “You might not feel happy today, but you still feel your life is fulfilling and rewarding,” Rauch says.

See also 5 Happiness Boosting Poses

Although Rauch is a fan of the U curve, which he contends “has been pretty stable over time,” he also believes there will always be outliers. And even within the same shape, he says, the details of the curve, such as where it bends and at what age, vary by country, suggesting there could be some social impact to our well-being.

How to Be Happy at Every Age

Even if research shows happiness commonly dips in middle age, that doesn’t mean we can’t be happy at any age.

Linda Sparrowe, co-author of The Woman’s Book of Yoga and Health: A Lifelong Guide to Wellness (with Patricia Walden), believes that each stage of life has its high points on the happiness scale and, alas, its low points, too. Yoga and certain mindful lifestyle practices can maximize the pinnacles and minimize the troughs, she says. While the stages she writes about are fluid—adolescence moving into our 20s; early 40s holding fast to the 30s, the late 40s having more in common with the early 50s, and so forth—Sparrowe agrees that each decade brings something unique to our growth.

See also How to Train Your Brain for Happiness

Ayurvedic practitioner and yoga teacher trainer Niika Quistgard encourages people to look at doshic patterns as a general map, not an unbreakable fact. “There are generalizations that can help us take a closer look and see if they’re true for us at the time, but we can’t just boilerplate everyone,” Quistgard says. “Life is more complex than that.”

With that in mind, let’s examine the ups and downs—the gifts and challenges—each decade may bring.

THE 20S

Anyone who has navigated the rough waters of puberty knows how amazing it can feel to move past insecurities, erratic hormones, and conflicting messages from family, friends, and the media that threaten a person’s sense of self. No wonder the 20s are thought to be at the top of the happiness curve. Sure, there are still moments of doubt, as young people struggle to feel less awkward and more grounded—to become more independent, to find their voices, and to embrace both their vulnerabilities and their strengths. There are still times of falling down and getting back up and falling down again. That’s all part of what makes this the decade of “becoming.”

My 20s were a wild roller coaster, tearing through the social constructs that had limited my youth. I hit rock bottom, at one point living in my car after I left a dysfunctional relationship. But that was when I finally began to discover my true self and separate from my family, controlling partners, and trauma from my past. I had nothing, yet I had independence, and that was everything.

My 20s were challenging, but there really is no better time to try things on for size—to play with new ways of showing up in the world—and to explore new places, ideas, and relationships. Yogic philosophy calls this stage brahmacharya, or the student phase, which centers around learning, playing, and finding mentors.

See also 5 Ways to Boost Happiness

Yoga plays an important role in this time of awakening. A physical yoga practice—standing poses, arm balances, backbends and forward bends—can be stabilizing and strengthening, both for the body and for the emotions, and help to build self-confidence off the mat, too.

THE 30S

After a decade (or more) of self-inquiry and investigation, the 30s arrive, bringing a shift in focus from the inner to the outer world. Suddenly you are coming into your own, and you are ready to show the world your fabulousness. You are more outward-facing, establishing yourself in the workplace, creating new ideas, setting down roots, taking care of others, and perhaps starting a family. I got married and gave birth to my daughter when I was 30, and it completely transformed my life. At the same time, I was building my career as a travel writer—it was hectic, but I loved it. Yogic philosophy calls this period grihastha, or the householder period, a time of adventure, family, and enterprise during adulthood.

The challenge, of course, is you run the risk of losing yourself in the process, not making time to take care of your own physical and emotional needs. Sparrowe warns that when we move into this decade, we straddle “a fine line between being present in the world and being swallowed up by that world.” These are heated, ambitious, passionate years, influenced by the fiery pitta dosha, says Ayurvedic practitioner Quistgard.

See also Path to Happiness: 9 Interpretations of the Yamas + Niyamas

So, it’s important to stay balanced as much as possible. Otherwise, your creative, no-time-to-lose energy becomes more frantic, until you run the risk of chronic stress and burnout.

Committing to a regular yoga practice can bring your focus inward, which will help to calm and reset a young-adult nervous system. It worked for me. I didn’t really embrace a regular yoga and meditation practice until my 30s, and then it was out of necessity. I needed it as a way to create an intentional separation between my deadline-driven work life and my home life; I needed to learn how to truly finish something before I started something else—not just in a physical sense, but in my mind as well. A consistent home practice—even for 10 minutes a day—can give you a respite from all the responsibilities you shoulder (at work or at home), help you refuel, and put things back into perspective. Put your legs up the wall when you get home; listen to soothing music; do several rounds of pranayama (Nadi Shodhana is particularly balancing); go for a walk. And then, move into your non-work time with your full attention and joy.

THE 40S

When author Rauch hit his 40s, he was dissatisfied despite his achievements and wanted to know why.

So he did what any self-respecting journalist would do: He interviewed experts in psychology, neuroscience, economics, and sociology to help make sense of what was going on. He also conducted what he called an “unscientific survey” of approximately 300 ordinary people about their lives, he told me.

The results, which he describes in his book, led him to understand that our 40s are a decade of transition and a certain amount of upheaval. Our priorities—in other words, the things that relate to our sense of evaluative well-being—tend to change over time. We typically value competition, ambition, and achievement in our 20s, 30s, and early 40s, but as we move deeper into our fifth decade, we may start to question whether we’ve achieved our goals, whether we’ve done enough, and—even more fraught—whether we still matter. At the same time, Rauch says, “We’re beginning to shift our values toward caring, cooperation, and community,” which can feel confusing. Not to worry, he says. “If you hit a slump in your 40s, know it’s temporary and you have a lot to look forward to. Anyone who says, ‘If you haven’t made it by your 50s, you’re finished’ has it exactly backward.”

See also Bringing Happiness Home

Meditation and yoga nidra teacher Tracee Stanley encourages people to embrace the transitions in their lives, welcoming them as portals to redefine and rediscover at a deeper level what happiness truly means. “A lot of times in life when there’s a transition, there’s also a vacuum.

A void. The most powerful place to put your intention is in a void,” Stanley says. “In a transition, if we can stay awake and aware, that’s where power is.” Stanley recommends yoga nidra (yogic sleep) during this time, which she calls a deeply “immersive experience of self-inquiry and deep rest” that can increase your intuition and bring more clarity to your purpose—all of which will serve you well as you move into your later years.

THE 50S

Even though Rauch says we have a lot to look forward to in our 50s, sometimes that’s not immediately apparent. Entering a new era, some people complain that they feel invisible, irrelevant, or kind of “in the way” in a culture obsessed with youth. Some grumble that their bodies have changed and they hardly recognize themselves. Some women struggle with perimenopause and the realization that their childbearing years are officially over. Sounds rough to me. But Sparrowe doesn’t see it that way. She says the sixth decade brings opportunities for powerful, transformative experiences. If we enter into our 50s having taken care of ourselves, she says, we’re much more apt to weather the physical challenges and move into a stage of life in which we nurture others in a much larger context and find the confidence to speak our truths kindly and without apology.

See also Feel the Joy

This decade lines up with yogic philosophy’s third stage, vanaprastha, which focuses on contemplation, having less concern about material things, and solitude; it is also called the forest-dweller or retirement period (often marked by grandchildren).

On a physical and emotional level, yoga can help combat those pesky perimenopause symptoms—insomnia, hot flashes, fatigue, and anxiety. Specifically, forward bends, twists, and backbends can help pacify and then activate the adrenals. Baxter Bell, MD, author of Yoga for Healthy Aging: A Guide to Lifelong Well-Being, says that studies of longtime yoga practitioners and meditators also show calmer brainwave patterns, improvement in areas of the brain involved with cognitive decision-making and memory, and an improved ability to tune into the subtle messages of the body and respond to them more proactively than reactively. All of this is to say: Keep up your practice.

THE 60S AND BEYOND

For many people, their 60s, 70s, and 80s read like a litany of physical complaints: osteoporosis, heart disease, hip and knee pain. Sometimes the list seems endless. Of course, this time of life is so much more than that. In yogic philosophy, it is known as sannyasa: the time in which our attention moves deeper inward, toward union with the divine. Many retire, begin to let go of their possessions, and choose to spend more time in contemplation and in service to others. This sense of freedom can bring with it an almost childlike energy, an added layer of wisdom born from a lifetime of experiences.

Alan Castel, a professor in the Department of Psychology at UCLA, whose own research focuses on human memory, cognition, and cognitive aging, suggests that there could be a biological reason why the elder years sit at the top of the U curve. As we age, our brains actually latch onto and recall positive things more than negative ones, says Castel, author of Better with Age: The Psychology of Successful Aging. This is called the “positivity bias.” Castel references a study by Laura Carstensen that demonstrates if you show people two faces, one happy and one sad, younger people focus more on the sad face, whereas older people spend more time looking at the happy face.

See also Create a Life You Love

“This can influence memory—and mood. If you focus on positive things, those are the things you’re more likely to remember,” Castel says. Plus, even though your memory declines with age, your memory selectivity improves; you get better at focusing on the things that are important to you, Castel says.

To find balance at this stage—or really any stage—and to feel more connected to yourself and others, Quistgard recommends spending more time in nature, living with the natural circadian rhythm (waking with the sunrise, winding down with the sunset), and serving others. Do yoga, sit in meditation, and laugh as often as possible. Reach out to others, practice together, connect, mentor, and support one another.

“YOU NEED TO BE ABLE TO SURRENDER AND TO KNOW THAT YOU’RE SUPPORTED IN ORDER TO BE ABLE TO REALLY BE CONTENT.”

Happiness at Every Age

Of course, just because you practice yoga, chant mantras, or breathe rhythmically doesn’t guarantee your happiness, says yoga teacher Christi Sullivan. “If you go into [your practice] with the expectation that happiness and joy will be sprinkled on you like fairy dust, you’ll never find it,” she says.

“It’s not finding the feeling. It’s feeling the feeling that is already there,” she says. “If you wonder why life has lost its magic, it’s because we stopped showing up inside and were looking for it on the outside.”

See also 6-Step Meditation to Invoke Joy

So how do we get the magic back? By approaching our life with devotion and gratitude, without trying to “get something out of it,” says yoga nidra teacher Stanley. If you assign an expectation to an action (like “On a scale of 1 to 10, how happy do I want to be when I’m done?”), it changes the experience. “If you’re looking for it, it’s not going to happen,” she says, because your mind is too busy thinking. “You need to be able to surrender and to know that you’re supported in order to be able to really be content.”

This ties back into Killingsworth’s research about presence. While he was a doctoral student at Harvard, Killingsworth developed an app to track happiness and found that a wandering mind is an unhappy mind, even if you’re fantasizing about the good ol’ days or better days to come. He discovered that people are happiest when they stay in the moment.

Right here. Right now.

Even if you’re in an unpleasant situation, like a traffic jam, or say, I don’t know, freshly 40 with a U curve stacked against you.

See also A Meditation Practice To Let In Joy + Happiness

About the author

Aimee Heckel is a writer in Boulder, Colorado. Learn more at aimeeheckel.com

[cedarrrun]

Yogis and scholars explain how to stay present and embrace what each decade brings your way.

I turned 40 last May, and I’m apparently about to tumble into years of despair. Because, according to friends and colleagues who hit that milestone a few years before I did (not to mention researchers), my “midlife crisis” is right around the corner. But I don’t buy it. Sure, I need at least an hour of meditation with one sock on, one sock off (no joke) and 1.5 (no more, no less) cups of Sleepytime tea to fall asleep, but that’s hardly what I’d call a crisis.

Jonathan Rauch, award-winning journalist and author of The Happiness Curve: Why Life Gets Better After 50 also rejects the idea of a midlife crisis, a term coined back in 1965 by psychologist Elliott Jaques. He prefers to call it a slump or, on perhaps less optimistic days, a “constant drizzle of disappointment.” Still pretty bleak sounding if you ask me.

Multiple studies of adults in countries around the world show a U shape on the happiness scale as we age. In fact, according to Rauch, “it turns up so frequently and in so many places that many happiness researchers take it for granted.” The U shape suggests that people feel good in their 20s, then get a bit more miserable in their 30s—until everything bottoms out in the fifth decade. In fact, according to a new study by Dartmouth professor David Blanchflower that examined trends in 132 countries, life’s “peak time for misery” happens around age 47. Ouch. Maybe that’s why my friends would rather say they’re celebrating the 20th anniversary of their 20th birthday than proudly own the Big 4-0.

See also Find the Happiness Within You

There is good news, however. Studies by Blanchflower and British researcher Andrew Oswald bear that out. Their findings suggest that well-being “declines steadily (apart from a blip around the mid-20s) until approximately 50; it then rises in a hill-like way up to the age of 70; after that it declines slightly until the age of 90.” Happiness deepens as we age, like a fine wine. But until then—what? Those of us in our 40s are destined to mope around and bide our time until we can get a senior discount? No thank you. Fortunately, University of Pennsylvania researcher Matt Killingsworth has a different point of view. He found that happiness is tied to being present—not fretting about the past or even lusting after retirement.

I decided to set off to find a way to make it through this quote unquote low point without entering crisis mode. There has to be a way to be happy—no matter what the trends suggest—at any age.

“THERE HAS TO BE A WAY TO BE HAPPY—NO MATTER WHAT THE TRENDS SUGGEST—AT ANY AGE.”

What Is Happiness, Anyway?

Clearly, how a person defines happiness affects their perception of it—and there are myriad definitions to consider, from ancient traditions to modern scholarly ones. In the yoga world, for example, there are at least four types of happiness. Santosha (contentment) implies a sense of delight; being content with what you have, who you are, and where you are in this moment. We’re happiest when we’re not wishing we were better, richer, kinder, or any other kind of different. Sukha (ease or, literally, a good space) is the comfort or sweetness we feel, even in the midst of confusion or turbulent times. For some people, mudita (sympathetic joy) is the hardest of all. It asks us to be joyful for those who are happiest; to be happy for the good fortune of others—even if they have what we wish we had. We experience ananda, the state of being blissfully happy, when we stop trying to find happiness and simply experience it. Yogic scholar Georg Feuerstein once wrote that ananda is “what we experience when our whole body radiates with joyous energy and we feel like embracing everyone and everything.” The Dalai Lama himself says that happiness is mainly having “a sense of deep satisfaction.” All of these definitions are, in the words of Killingsworth, “tied to being present.”

Rauch went with a more scholarly definition in his book. He breaks happiness down into two categories: affective well-being (how you feel today, how often you smile) and evaluative well-being (how you assess your life as a whole). His research looked at the latter: “You might not feel happy today, but you still feel your life is fulfilling and rewarding,” Rauch says.

See also 5 Happiness Boosting Poses

Although Rauch is a fan of the U curve, which he contends “has been pretty stable over time,” he also believes there will always be outliers. And even within the same shape, he says, the details of the curve, such as where it bends and at what age, vary by country, suggesting there could be some social impact to our well-being.

How to Be Happy at Every Age

Even if research shows happiness commonly dips in middle age, that doesn’t mean we can’t be happy at any age.

Linda Sparrowe, co-author of The Woman’s Book of Yoga and Health: A Lifelong Guide to Wellness (with Patricia Walden), believes that each stage of life has its high points on the happiness scale and, alas, its low points, too. Yoga and certain mindful lifestyle practices can maximize the pinnacles and minimize the troughs, she says. While the stages she writes about are fluid—adolescence moving into our 20s; early 40s holding fast to the 30s, the late 40s having more in common with the early 50s, and so forth—Sparrowe agrees that each decade brings something unique to our growth.

See also How to Train Your Brain for Happiness

Ayurvedic practitioner and yoga teacher trainer Niika Quistgard encourages people to look at doshic patterns as a general map, not an unbreakable fact. “There are generalizations that can help us take a closer look and see if they’re true for us at the time, but we can’t just boilerplate everyone,” Quistgard says. “Life is more complex than that.”

With that in mind, let’s examine the ups and downs—the gifts and challenges—each decade may bring.

THE 20S

Anyone who has navigated the rough waters of puberty knows how amazing it can feel to move past insecurities, erratic hormones, and conflicting messages from family, friends, and the media that threaten a person’s sense of self. No wonder the 20s are thought to be at the top of the happiness curve. Sure, there are still moments of doubt, as young people struggle to feel less awkward and more grounded—to become more independent, to find their voices, and to embrace both their vulnerabilities and their strengths. There are still times of falling down and getting back up and falling down again. That’s all part of what makes this the decade of “becoming.”

My 20s were a wild roller coaster, tearing through the social constructs that had limited my youth. I hit rock bottom, at one point living in my car after I left a dysfunctional relationship. But that was when I finally began to discover my true self and separate from my family, controlling partners, and trauma from my past. I had nothing, yet I had independence, and that was everything.

My 20s were challenging, but there really is no better time to try things on for size—to play with new ways of showing up in the world—and to explore new places, ideas, and relationships. Yogic philosophy calls this stage brahmacharya, or the student phase, which centers around learning, playing, and finding mentors.

See also 5 Ways to Boost Happiness

Yoga plays an important role in this time of awakening. A physical yoga practice—standing poses, arm balances, backbends and forward bends—can be stabilizing and strengthening, both for the body and for the emotions, and help to build self-confidence off the mat, too.

THE 30S

After a decade (or more) of self-inquiry and investigation, the 30s arrive, bringing a shift in focus from the inner to the outer world. Suddenly you are coming into your own, and you are ready to show the world your fabulousness. You are more outward-facing, establishing yourself in the workplace, creating new ideas, setting down roots, taking care of others, and perhaps starting a family. I got married and gave birth to my daughter when I was 30, and it completely transformed my life. At the same time, I was building my career as a travel writer—it was hectic, but I loved it. Yogic philosophy calls this period grihastha, or the householder period, a time of adventure, family, and enterprise during adulthood.

The challenge, of course, is you run the risk of losing yourself in the process, not making time to take care of your own physical and emotional needs. Sparrowe warns that when we move into this decade, we straddle “a fine line between being present in the world and being swallowed up by that world.” These are heated, ambitious, passionate years, influenced by the fiery pitta dosha, says Ayurvedic practitioner Quistgard.

See also Path to Happiness: 9 Interpretations of the Yamas + Niyamas

So, it’s important to stay balanced as much as possible. Otherwise, your creative, no-time-to-lose energy becomes more frantic, until you run the risk of chronic stress and burnout.

Committing to a regular yoga practice can bring your focus inward, which will help to calm and reset a young-adult nervous system. It worked for me. I didn’t really embrace a regular yoga and meditation practice until my 30s, and then it was out of necessity. I needed it as a way to create an intentional separation between my deadline-driven work life and my home life; I needed to learn how to truly finish something before I started something else—not just in a physical sense, but in my mind as well. A consistent home practice—even for 10 minutes a day—can give you a respite from all the responsibilities you shoulder (at work or at home), help you refuel, and put things back into perspective. Put your legs up the wall when you get home; listen to soothing music; do several rounds of pranayama (Nadi Shodhana is particularly balancing); go for a walk. And then, move into your non-work time with your full attention and joy.

THE 40S

When author Rauch hit his 40s, he was dissatisfied despite his achievements and wanted to know why.

So he did what any self-respecting journalist would do: He interviewed experts in psychology, neuroscience, economics, and sociology to help make sense of what was going on. He also conducted what he called an “unscientific survey” of approximately 300 ordinary people about their lives, he told me.

The results, which he describes in his book, led him to understand that our 40s are a decade of transition and a certain amount of upheaval. Our priorities—in other words, the things that relate to our sense of evaluative well-being—tend to change over time. We typically value competition, ambition, and achievement in our 20s, 30s, and early 40s, but as we move deeper into our fifth decade, we may start to question whether we’ve achieved our goals, whether we’ve done enough, and—even more fraught—whether we still matter. At the same time, Rauch says, “We’re beginning to shift our values toward caring, cooperation, and community,” which can feel confusing. Not to worry, he says. “If you hit a slump in your 40s, know it’s temporary and you have a lot to look forward to. Anyone who says, ‘If you haven’t made it by your 50s, you’re finished’ has it exactly backward.”

See also Bringing Happiness Home

Meditation and yoga nidra teacher Tracee Stanley encourages people to embrace the transitions in their lives, welcoming them as portals to redefine and rediscover at a deeper level what happiness truly means. “A lot of times in life when there’s a transition, there’s also a vacuum.

A void. The most powerful place to put your intention is in a void,” Stanley says. “In a transition, if we can stay awake and aware, that’s where power is.” Stanley recommends yoga nidra (yogic sleep) during this time, which she calls a deeply “immersive experience of self-inquiry and deep rest” that can increase your intuition and bring more clarity to your purpose—all of which will serve you well as you move into your later years.

THE 50S

Even though Rauch says we have a lot to look forward to in our 50s, sometimes that’s not immediately apparent. Entering a new era, some people complain that they feel invisible, irrelevant, or kind of “in the way” in a culture obsessed with youth. Some grumble that their bodies have changed and they hardly recognize themselves. Some women struggle with perimenopause and the realization that their childbearing years are officially over. Sounds rough to me. But Sparrowe doesn’t see it that way. She says the sixth decade brings opportunities for powerful, transformative experiences. If we enter into our 50s having taken care of ourselves, she says, we’re much more apt to weather the physical challenges and move into a stage of life in which we nurture others in a much larger context and find the confidence to speak our truths kindly and without apology.

See also Feel the Joy

This decade lines up with yogic philosophy’s third stage, vanaprastha, which focuses on contemplation, having less concern about material things, and solitude; it is also called the forest-dweller or retirement period (often marked by grandchildren).

On a physical and emotional level, yoga can help combat those pesky perimenopause symptoms—insomnia, hot flashes, fatigue, and anxiety. Specifically, forward bends, twists, and backbends can help pacify and then activate the adrenals. Baxter Bell, MD, author of Yoga for Healthy Aging: A Guide to Lifelong Well-Being, says that studies of longtime yoga practitioners and meditators also show calmer brainwave patterns, improvement in areas of the brain involved with cognitive decision-making and memory, and an improved ability to tune into the subtle messages of the body and respond to them more proactively than reactively. All of this is to say: Keep up your practice.

THE 60S AND BEYOND

For many people, their 60s, 70s, and 80s read like a litany of physical complaints: osteoporosis, heart disease, hip and knee pain. Sometimes the list seems endless. Of course, this time of life is so much more than that. In yogic philosophy, it is known as sannyasa: the time in which our attention moves deeper inward, toward union with the divine. Many retire, begin to let go of their possessions, and choose to spend more time in contemplation and in service to others. This sense of freedom can bring with it an almost childlike energy, an added layer of wisdom born from a lifetime of experiences.

Alan Castel, a professor in the Department of Psychology at UCLA, whose own research focuses on human memory, cognition, and cognitive aging, suggests that there could be a biological reason why the elder years sit at the top of the U curve. As we age, our brains actually latch onto and recall positive things more than negative ones, says Castel, author of Better with Age: The Psychology of Successful Aging. This is called the “positivity bias.” Castel references a study by Laura Carstensen that demonstrates if you show people two faces, one happy and one sad, younger people focus more on the sad face, whereas older people spend more time looking at the happy face.

See also Create a Life You Love

“This can influence memory—and mood. If you focus on positive things, those are the things you’re more likely to remember,” Castel says. Plus, even though your memory declines with age, your memory selectivity improves; you get better at focusing on the things that are important to you, Castel says.

To find balance at this stage—or really any stage—and to feel more connected to yourself and others, Quistgard recommends spending more time in nature, living with the natural circadian rhythm (waking with the sunrise, winding down with the sunset), and serving others. Do yoga, sit in meditation, and laugh as often as possible. Reach out to others, practice together, connect, mentor, and support one another.

“YOU NEED TO BE ABLE TO SURRENDER AND TO KNOW THAT YOU’RE SUPPORTED IN ORDER TO BE ABLE TO REALLY BE CONTENT.”

Happiness at Every Age

Of course, just because you practice yoga, chant mantras, or breathe rhythmically doesn’t guarantee your happiness, says yoga teacher Christi Sullivan. “If you go into [your practice] with the expectation that happiness and joy will be sprinkled on you like fairy dust, you’ll never find it,” she says.

“It’s not finding the feeling. It’s feeling the feeling that is already there,” she says. “If you wonder why life has lost its magic, it’s because we stopped showing up inside and were looking for it on the outside.”

See also 6-Step Meditation to Invoke Joy

So how do we get the magic back? By approaching our life with devotion and gratitude, without trying to “get something out of it,” says yoga nidra teacher Stanley. If you assign an expectation to an action (like “On a scale of 1 to 10, how happy do I want to be when I’m done?”), it changes the experience. “If you’re looking for it, it’s not going to happen,” she says, because your mind is too busy thinking. “You need to be able to surrender and to know that you’re supported in order to be able to really be content.”

This ties back into Killingsworth’s research about presence. While he was a doctoral student at Harvard, Killingsworth developed an app to track happiness and found that a wandering mind is an unhappy mind, even if you’re fantasizing about the good ol’ days or better days to come. He discovered that people are happiest when they stay in the moment.

Right here. Right now.

Even if you’re in an unpleasant situation, like a traffic jam, or say, I don’t know, freshly 40 with a U curve stacked against you.

See also A Meditation Practice To Let In Joy + Happiness

About the author

Aimee Heckel is a writer in Boulder, Colorado. Learn more at aimeeheckel.com

[cristinajourdanqp]

Urinary Urgency and Incontinence: Why It’s Not Just Age

Most people chalk urinary incontinence and excessive urgency up to age. We get old, stuff stops working, we wake up to wet sheets. Cue jokes about adult diapers and investing in “Depends” futures. It’s not entirely out of line. Aging matters. There’s just more to it. Like other aspects of “aging,” incontinence and unreasonable urgency don’t just “happen.” Aging may hasten or accompany the decline, but it’s by no means inevitable, unavoidable, or unmitigated.

There are surgical treatments available, many of which involve the implantation of balloons and slings and rings and hammocks. Those are beyond the scope of this post, which will focus on exercises and other less invasive interventions and preventive measures.

What’s the Deal With Urinary Incontinence?

The most well-known type is stress incontinence. When you do anything intense enough to create pressure, such as a sneeze, a particularly boisterous laugh, a trampoline session, a power clean, or a box jump, the pressure escapes through the weakest point of your body—your slack pelvic floor muscles which support and enable bladder function. The result is inadvertent leakage.

The most common type is urgency incontinence. That’s when you can control your bladder well enough, but you feel like you have to go more frequently than you’d like. This can disrupt sleep and place you in uncomfortable situations.

There’s also prostate-related urinary incontinence. If men have incontinence, it’s usually because of prostate issues or prostate surgery altering the normal flow and function of their urinary tract. Today’s post won’t deal with this explicitly, although many of the exercises I’ll discuss that help women treat incontinence can also help men treat prostate-related incontinence. For more info on this, revisit my post on prostate health from a few weeks back.

Both stress incontinence and urgency incontinence usually have the same cause: pelvic floor dysfunction. The pelvic floor acts as a taut, supple sling of muscle and connective tissue running between the pelvis and the sacrum that supports the pelvic apparatus, including organs, joints, sex organs, bladders, bowels, and various sphincters. We use it to control our urination, our bowel movements, even our sexual functions. It’s very important.

What Goes Wrong?

It gets weak and tight and pulls the sacrum inward (the tail gets pulled toward the front of the body), interfering with urination and urinary control.

What causes pelvic floor dysfunction?

Childbirth is one potential cause, but it’s not a foregone conclusion. Women who have vaginal deliveries are more likely to display more pelvic floor dysfunction than women who have cesareans, while a more recent study found that tool-assisted vaginal delivery and episiotomy were the biggest risk factors for vaginal delivery-associated incontinence, not vaginal delivery alone. Allowing passive descent in the second stage of labor, rather than active pushing from the get-go, might also reduce the association.

Muscular atrophy of the pelvic floor muscles. The pelvis is where the magic happens. It’s where we generate power, walk, run, procreate, dance, and move. To keep it happy, healthy, and strong, we have to move. And then keep moving. Through all the various ranges of space and time and possible permutations of limbs and joints. That’s what all our muscles expect from the environment. It’s what they need. When that doesn’t happen, they atrophy—just like the other muscles.

Who Develops Incontinence?

Stress incontinence is more common among women than men. And most women with stress incontinence are older, although childbirth can increase the incidence.

Signs of Poor Pelvic Floor Function

Besides urinary incontinence and urgency incontinence—which are pretty tough to miss—what are some warning signs of poor pelvic floor function?

Low-to-no glute activity when walking. According to expert Katy Bowman, the glutes play a crucial role in pelvic floor function and incontinence prevention.

Lack of lower back curvature. This suggests your pelvis is being pulled inward due to poor glute activity and/or overly tight pelvic floor musculature.

Muscle atrophy elsewhere. If the muscle’s disappearing from your arms and legs, what do you think is happening in other areas?

What Can You Do? Work On Your Squat

If you can’t sit in a full squat, with shins fairly vertical and heels down on the ground, you need to work on your form.

I suggest reading this old post by Kelly Starrett describing optimal squat form. He focuses on performance and strength training, but the technique applies equally to basic bodyweight squatting for pelvic floor health.

One thing to emphasize: go as low as you can without reaching “butt wink” threshold. The butt wink is when the pelvis begins rotating backward underneath the body. If you’re butt winking all over the place, you’re shortchanging your glutes and preventing them from balancing out the pelvic floor situation. Stop short of the butt wink.

Squat a Lot

You don’t have to load up the bar, although that’s a great way to build glute strength. In fact, I’d refrain from heavy squatting if you’re currently suffering from urinary incontinence, as the stress placed on that region of the body during a heavy squat can make the problem worse and cause, well, leakage.

I’m mainly talking about everyday squatting: while playing with the kids, picking up dog poop, unloading the dishwasher, brushing your teeth, cleaning the house, gardening. If you can incorporate squatting while using the bathroom, perhaps with a Squatty Potty or similar product, that’s even better. Katy Bowman recommends women squat to pee in the shower as an integral part of her therapy for pelvic floor disorder.

Squat To Use the Toilet (or At Least Get Your Feet Up)

I wrote an entire post almost ten years ago exploring the virtues of squatting to poop. Not only does it improve symptoms in hemorrhoid sufferers, reduce straining, and alleviate constipation, but squatting to poop turns out to relieve a lot of excessive pressure on the pelvic floor musculature.

Not everyone’s going to hoist themselves up over the toilet standing on a stack of thick books, or go all out and build a Southeast Asian-style squat toilet in their bathroom, or even get the Squatty Potty. It’s probably the best way to do it—and it’s certainly the most evolutionarily concordant way to poop—but it’s not totally necessary. What matters most is getting those feet up and those knees above your hips. If you can achieve this by placing your feet on a stool (not that kind of stool) as you sit on the toilet, it should do the trick.

Take a Walk and Feel Yourself Up

Next time you walk, rest your palms on the upper swell of your butt cheeks. Every time you step through, you should feel your glutes contract. If they contract, awesome. You’re unconsciously using your glutes to propel yourself forward. If they don’t, you’ll have to train them to contract when you walk.

Do this by going for a ten minute walk (minimum) every single day while feeling your glutes. Consciously contract them enough and feel yourself up enough and the resultant biofeedback will make glute activation a passive behavior, like breathing. Eventually you’ll start doing it without thinking. That’s the goal.

Do Kegels—Differently

The classic therapy for pelvic floor disorder is to train the pelvic floor muscles directly using kegels. This is the muscle you contract to stop yourself from peeing midstream. “Doing kegels” means contracting and releasing that muscle for sets and reps. A common recommendation is to hold for ten seconds, release for ten seconds, repeated throughout the day. Waiting in line? Kegels. Eating dinner? Do some kegels. Remember that man at the DMV last week who would randomly tense up and start sweating as you both waited for your number? He was probably doing kegels.

It’s definitely part of the story—studies show kegels work in men, women, and seniors—but it’s not enough.

Consider  Katy Bowman’s take on the subject. She thinks kegels by themselves make the problem worse by creating a tight but ultimately weakened pelvic floor muscle that pulls the sacrum further inward. Combine that with weak or underactive glutes that should be balancing the anterior pull on the sacrum but don’t and you end up with rising pelvic floor dysfunction and incontinence.  She recommends doing kegels while in the squat position to ensure that the glutes are engaged and all the other contributing muscles are in balance.

Do More Than Kegels

The bad news is that we don’t have controlled trials of Katy Bowman’s protocols with deep squats and frequent daily movement and going barefoot over varied surfaces and squat toilets. We mostly just have basic “pelvic floor exercises,” which usually just mean “kegels.” The good news is that even these suboptimal exercise therapies seem to work on anyone with incontinence, whether they’re just coming off a pregnancy, a 70th birthday, or a prostate procedure. Young, old, middle-aged, male, female—exercise works.

Actually, we do have one small study that suggests kegels will work much better if you balance them out with exercises that target the glutes and hips. In the study, women suffering from urinary incontinence were split into two treatment groups. One group did pelvic floor muscle exercises (kegels). The other group did pelvic floor muscle exercises, plus exercises to strengthen the hip adductors, the glute medius, and glute maximus. Both groups improved symptoms, but the group that did the combo exercises had better results.

For hip adduction, you can use that hip adduction machine where you straddle the chair with legs spread and bring your knees together against resistance. Another option is to use resistance bands. Attach one end of the band to a secure structure and the other to your ankle. Stand with legs spread, then bring the banded leg inward toward the unbanded leg; you should feel it in your inner thigh. Do this for both legs.

For glutes, you have many options. Glute bridges, hip thrusts, squats, deadlifts, lunges, resistance band glute kickbacks.

If you want to get deep into this subject and really learn the optimal exercises for pelvic floor dysfunction, I’d pick up a copy of Katy’s Down There For Women.

Get Strong and Stay Strong

One of the strongest predictors of urinary incontinence is physical frailty. The more frail—weak, fragile, prone to falling, unable to handle stairs, unsteady on one’s feet—the man or woman, the more likely they are to suffer from urinary incontinence. This mostly comes down to muscle atrophy; the frail tend to have low muscle mass all over, including the pelvic floor.

Studies show that strength training improves urinary control in both men coming off prostate procedures and women.

The best option is to never get frail in the first place. If you’re younger and in shape, keep training and moving. Don’t lose it. If you’re younger and trending frail, get training and moving. Don’t squander the time you have. It goes quickly. If you’re older and frail, you have to start today. Fixing this doesn’t happen overnight. Being frail makes it harder to do the things necessary to get strong, but that doesn’t absolve you of the responsibility.

The Bottom Line

None of this stuff is a guarantee against incontinence. Guarantees don’t really exist in life. But I’d definitely argue that anyone who employs all the tips and advice mentioned in today’s post will have a better shot at maintaining bladder control than their doppelganger in some parallel universe who never tries anything—the earlier the better.

If you have any experience with urinary incontinence, let us know in the comments down below. What worked? What didn’t? What worked for a while, then stopped?

Thanks for reading—and sharing here. Happy Halloween, everybody.

References:

Bernstein IT. The pelvic floor muscles: muscle thickness in healthy and urinary-incontinent women measured by perineal ultrasonography with reference to the effect of pelvic floor training. Estrogen receptor studies. Neurourol Urodyn. 1997;16(4):237-75.

De araujo CC, Coelho SA, Stahlschmidt P, Juliato CRT. Does vaginal delivery cause more damage to the pelvic floor than cesarean section as determined by 3D ultrasound evaluation? A systematic review. Int Urogynecol J. 2018;29(5):639-645.

Kokabi R, Yazdanpanah D. Effects of delivery mode and sociodemographic factors on postpartum stress urinary incontinency in primipara women: A prospective cohort study. J Chin Med Assoc. 2017;

Handa VL, Harris TA, Ostergard DR. Protecting the pelvic floor: obstetric management to prevent incontinence and pelvic organ prolapse. Obstet Gynecol. 1996;88(3):470-8.

Dokuzlar O, Soysal P, Isik AT. Association between serum vitamin B12 level and frailty in older adults. North Clin Istanb. 2017;4(1):22-28.

The post Urinary Urgency and Incontinence: Why It’s Not Just Age appeared first on Mark's Daily Apple.

[watsonrodriquezie]

Urinary Urgency and Incontinence: Why It’s Not Just Age

Most people chalk urinary incontinence and excessive urgency up to age. We get old, stuff stops working, we wake up to wet sheets. Cue jokes about adult diapers and investing in “Depends” futures. It’s not entirely out of line. Aging matters. There’s just more to it. Like other aspects of “aging,” incontinence and unreasonable urgency don’t just “happen.” Aging may hasten or accompany the decline, but it’s by no means inevitable, unavoidable, or unmitigated.

There are surgical treatments available, many of which involve the implantation of balloons and slings and rings and hammocks. Those are beyond the scope of this post, which will focus on exercises and other less invasive interventions and preventive measures.

What’s the Deal With Urinary Incontinence?

The most well-known type is stress incontinence. When you do anything intense enough to create pressure, such as a sneeze, a particularly boisterous laugh, a trampoline session, a power clean, or a box jump, the pressure escapes through the weakest point of your body—your slack pelvic floor muscles which support and enable bladder function. The result is inadvertent leakage.

The most common type is urgency incontinence. That’s when you can control your bladder well enough, but you feel like you have to go more frequently than you’d like. This can disrupt sleep and place you in uncomfortable situations.

There’s also prostate-related urinary incontinence. If men have incontinence, it’s usually because of prostate issues or prostate surgery altering the normal flow and function of their urinary tract. Today’s post won’t deal with this explicitly, although many of the exercises I’ll discuss that help women treat incontinence can also help men treat prostate-related incontinence. For more info on this, revisit my post on prostate health from a few weeks back.

Both stress incontinence and urgency incontinence usually have the same cause: pelvic floor dysfunction. The pelvic floor acts as a taut, supple sling of muscle and connective tissue running between the pelvis and the sacrum that supports the pelvic apparatus, including organs, joints, sex organs, bladders, bowels, and various sphincters. We use it to control our urination, our bowel movements, even our sexual functions. It’s very important.

What Goes Wrong?

It gets weak and tight and pulls the sacrum inward (the tail gets pulled toward the front of the body), interfering with urination and urinary control.

What causes pelvic floor dysfunction?

Childbirth is one potential cause, but it’s not a foregone conclusion. Women who have vaginal deliveries are more likely to display more pelvic floor dysfunction than women who have cesareans, while a more recent study found that tool-assisted vaginal delivery and episiotomy were the biggest risk factors for vaginal delivery-associated incontinence, not vaginal delivery alone. Allowing passive descent in the second stage of labor, rather than active pushing from the get-go, might also reduce the association.

Muscular atrophy of the pelvic floor muscles. The pelvis is where the magic happens. It’s where we generate power, walk, run, procreate, dance, and move. To keep it happy, healthy, and strong, we have to move. And then keep moving. Through all the various ranges of space and time and possible permutations of limbs and joints. That’s what all our muscles expect from the environment. It’s what they need. When that doesn’t happen, they atrophy—just like the other muscles.

Who Develops Incontinence?

Stress incontinence is more common among women than men. And most women with stress incontinence are older, although childbirth can increase the incidence.

Signs of Poor Pelvic Floor Function

Besides urinary incontinence and urgency incontinence—which are pretty tough to miss—what are some warning signs of poor pelvic floor function?

Low-to-no glute activity when walking. According to expert Katy Bowman, the glutes play a crucial role in pelvic floor function and incontinence prevention.

Lack of lower back curvature. This suggests your pelvis is being pulled inward due to poor glute activity and/or overly tight pelvic floor musculature.

Muscle atrophy elsewhere. If the muscle’s disappearing from your arms and legs, what do you think is happening in other areas?

What Can You Do? Work On Your Squat

If you can’t sit in a full squat, with shins fairly vertical and heels down on the ground, you need to work on your form.

I suggest reading this old post by Kelly Starrett describing optimal squat form. He focuses on performance and strength training, but the technique applies equally to basic bodyweight squatting for pelvic floor health.

One thing to emphasize: go as low as you can without reaching “butt wink” threshold. The butt wink is when the pelvis begins rotating backward underneath the body. If you’re butt winking all over the place, you’re shortchanging your glutes and preventing them from balancing out the pelvic floor situation. Stop short of the butt wink.

Squat a Lot

You don’t have to load up the bar, although that’s a great way to build glute strength. In fact, I’d refrain from heavy squatting if you’re currently suffering from urinary incontinence, as the stress placed on that region of the body during a heavy squat can make the problem worse and cause, well, leakage.

I’m mainly talking about everyday squatting: while playing with the kids, picking up dog poop, unloading the dishwasher, brushing your teeth, cleaning the house, gardening. If you can incorporate squatting while using the bathroom, perhaps with a Squatty Potty or similar product, that’s even better. Katy Bowman recommends women squat to pee in the shower as an integral part of her therapy for pelvic floor disorder.

Squat To Use the Toilet (or At Least Get Your Feet Up)

I wrote an entire post almost ten years ago exploring the virtues of squatting to poop. Not only does it improve symptoms in hemorrhoid sufferers, reduce straining, and alleviate constipation, but squatting to poop turns out to relieve a lot of excessive pressure on the pelvic floor musculature.

Not everyone’s going to hoist themselves up over the toilet standing on a stack of thick books, or go all out and build a Southeast Asian-style squat toilet in their bathroom, or even get the Squatty Potty. It’s probably the best way to do it—and it’s certainly the most evolutionarily concordant way to poop—but it’s not totally necessary. What matters most is getting those feet up and those knees above your hips. If you can achieve this by placing your feet on a stool (not that kind of stool) as you sit on the toilet, it should do the trick.

Take a Walk and Feel Yourself Up

Next time you walk, rest your palms on the upper swell of your butt cheeks. Every time you step through, you should feel your glutes contract. If they contract, awesome. You’re unconsciously using your glutes to propel yourself forward. If they don’t, you’ll have to train them to contract when you walk.

Do this by going for a ten minute walk (minimum) every single day while feeling your glutes. Consciously contract them enough and feel yourself up enough and the resultant biofeedback will make glute activation a passive behavior, like breathing. Eventually you’ll start doing it without thinking. That’s the goal.

Do Kegels—Differently

The classic therapy for pelvic floor disorder is to train the pelvic floor muscles directly using kegels. This is the muscle you contract to stop yourself from peeing midstream. “Doing kegels” means contracting and releasing that muscle for sets and reps. A common recommendation is to hold for ten seconds, release for ten seconds, repeated throughout the day. Waiting in line? Kegels. Eating dinner? Do some kegels. Remember that man at the DMV last week who would randomly tense up and start sweating as you both waited for your number? He was probably doing kegels.

It’s definitely part of the story—studies show kegels work in men, women, and seniors—but it’s not enough.

Consider  Katy Bowman’s take on the subject. She thinks kegels by themselves make the problem worse by creating a tight but ultimately weakened pelvic floor muscle that pulls the sacrum further inward. Combine that with weak or underactive glutes that should be balancing the anterior pull on the sacrum but don’t and you end up with rising pelvic floor dysfunction and incontinence.  She recommends doing kegels while in the squat position to ensure that the glutes are engaged and all the other contributing muscles are in balance.

Do More Than Kegels

The bad news is that we don’t have controlled trials of Katy Bowman’s protocols with deep squats and frequent daily movement and going barefoot over varied surfaces and squat toilets. We mostly just have basic “pelvic floor exercises,” which usually just mean “kegels.” The good news is that even these suboptimal exercise therapies seem to work on anyone with incontinence, whether they’re just coming off a pregnancy, a 70th birthday, or a prostate procedure. Young, old, middle-aged, male, female—exercise works.

Actually, we do have one small study that suggests kegels will work much better if you balance them out with exercises that target the glutes and hips. In the study, women suffering from urinary incontinence were split into two treatment groups. One group did pelvic floor muscle exercises (kegels). The other group did pelvic floor muscle exercises, plus exercises to strengthen the hip adductors, the glute medius, and glute maximus. Both groups improved symptoms, but the group that did the combo exercises had better results.

For hip adduction, you can use that hip adduction machine where you straddle the chair with legs spread and bring your knees together against resistance. Another option is to use resistance bands. Attach one end of the band to a secure structure and the other to your ankle. Stand with legs spread, then bring the banded leg inward toward the unbanded leg; you should feel it in your inner thigh. Do this for both legs.

For glutes, you have many options. Glute bridges, hip thrusts, squats, deadlifts, lunges, resistance band glute kickbacks.

If you want to get deep into this subject and really learn the optimal exercises for pelvic floor dysfunction, I’d pick up a copy of Katy’s Down There For Women.

Get Strong and Stay Strong

One of the strongest predictors of urinary incontinence is physical frailty. The more frail—weak, fragile, prone to falling, unable to handle stairs, unsteady on one’s feet—the man or woman, the more likely they are to suffer from urinary incontinence. This mostly comes down to muscle atrophy; the frail tend to have low muscle mass all over, including the pelvic floor.

Studies show that strength training improves urinary control in both men coming off prostate procedures and women.

The best option is to never get frail in the first place. If you’re younger and in shape, keep training and moving. Don’t lose it. If you’re younger and trending frail, get training and moving. Don’t squander the time you have. It goes quickly. If you’re older and frail, you have to start today. Fixing this doesn’t happen overnight. Being frail makes it harder to do the things necessary to get strong, but that doesn’t absolve you of the responsibility.

The Bottom Line

None of this stuff is a guarantee against incontinence. Guarantees don’t really exist in life. But I’d definitely argue that anyone who employs all the tips and advice mentioned in today’s post will have a better shot at maintaining bladder control than their doppelganger in some parallel universe who never tries anything—the earlier the better.

If you have any experience with urinary incontinence, let us know in the comments down below. What worked? What didn’t? What worked for a while, then stopped?

Thanks for reading—and sharing here. Happy Halloween, everybody.

References:

Bernstein IT. The pelvic floor muscles: muscle thickness in healthy and urinary-incontinent women measured by perineal ultrasonography with reference to the effect of pelvic floor training. Estrogen receptor studies. Neurourol Urodyn. 1997;16(4):237-75.

De araujo CC, Coelho SA, Stahlschmidt P, Juliato CRT. Does vaginal delivery cause more damage to the pelvic floor than cesarean section as determined by 3D ultrasound evaluation? A systematic review. Int Urogynecol J. 2018;29(5):639-645.

Kokabi R, Yazdanpanah D. Effects of delivery mode and sociodemographic factors on postpartum stress urinary incontinency in primipara women: A prospective cohort study. J Chin Med Assoc. 2017;

Handa VL, Harris TA, Ostergard DR. Protecting the pelvic floor: obstetric management to prevent incontinence and pelvic organ prolapse. Obstet Gynecol. 1996;88(3):470-8.

Dokuzlar O, Soysal P, Isik AT. Association between serum vitamin B12 level and frailty in older adults. North Clin Istanb. 2017;4(1):22-28.

The post Urinary Urgency and Incontinence: Why It’s Not Just Age appeared first on Mark's Daily Apple.

[cynthiamwashington]

Urinary Urgency and Incontinence: Why It’s Not Just Age

Most people chalk urinary incontinence and excessive urgency up to age. We get old, stuff stops working, we wake up to wet sheets. Cue jokes about adult diapers and investing in “Depends” futures. It’s not entirely out of line. Aging matters. There’s just more to it. Like other aspects of “aging,” incontinence and unreasonable urgency don’t just “happen.” Aging may hasten or accompany the decline, but it’s by no means inevitable, unavoidable, or unmitigated.

There are surgical treatments available, many of which involve the implantation of balloons and slings and rings and hammocks. Those are beyond the scope of this post, which will focus on exercises and other less invasive interventions and preventive measures.

What’s the Deal With Urinary Incontinence?

The most well-known type is stress incontinence. When you do anything intense enough to create pressure, such as a sneeze, a particularly boisterous laugh, a trampoline session, a power clean, or a box jump, the pressure escapes through the weakest point of your body—your slack pelvic floor muscles which support and enable bladder function. The result is inadvertent leakage.

The most common type is urgency incontinence. That’s when you can control your bladder well enough, but you feel like you have to go more frequently than you’d like. This can disrupt sleep and place you in uncomfortable situations.

There’s also prostate-related urinary incontinence. If men have incontinence, it’s usually because of prostate issues or prostate surgery altering the normal flow and function of their urinary tract. Today’s post won’t deal with this explicitly, although many of the exercises I’ll discuss that help women treat incontinence can also help men treat prostate-related incontinence. For more info on this, revisit my post on prostate health from a few weeks back.

Both stress incontinence and urgency incontinence usually have the same cause: pelvic floor dysfunction. The pelvic floor acts as a taut, supple sling of muscle and connective tissue running between the pelvis and the sacrum that supports the pelvic apparatus, including organs, joints, sex organs, bladders, bowels, and various sphincters. We use it to control our urination, our bowel movements, even our sexual functions. It’s very important.

What Goes Wrong?

It gets weak and tight and pulls the sacrum inward (the tail gets pulled toward the front of the body), interfering with urination and urinary control.

What causes pelvic floor dysfunction?

Childbirth is one potential cause, but it’s not a foregone conclusion. Women who have vaginal deliveries are more likely to display more pelvic floor dysfunction than women who have cesareans, while a more recent study found that tool-assisted vaginal delivery and episiotomy were the biggest risk factors for vaginal delivery-associated incontinence, not vaginal delivery alone. Allowing passive descent in the second stage of labor, rather than active pushing from the get-go, might also reduce the association.

Muscular atrophy of the pelvic floor muscles. The pelvis is where the magic happens. It’s where we generate power, walk, run, procreate, dance, and move. To keep it happy, healthy, and strong, we have to move. And then keep moving. Through all the various ranges of space and time and possible permutations of limbs and joints. That’s what all our muscles expect from the environment. It’s what they need. When that doesn’t happen, they atrophy—just like the other muscles.

Who Develops Incontinence?

Stress incontinence is more common among women than men. And most women with stress incontinence are older, although childbirth can increase the incidence.

Signs of Poor Pelvic Floor Function

Besides urinary incontinence and urgency incontinence—which are pretty tough to miss—what are some warning signs of poor pelvic floor function?

Low-to-no glute activity when walking. According to expert Katy Bowman, the glutes play a crucial role in pelvic floor function and incontinence prevention.

Lack of lower back curvature. This suggests your pelvis is being pulled inward due to poor glute activity and/or overly tight pelvic floor musculature.

Muscle atrophy elsewhere. If the muscle’s disappearing from your arms and legs, what do you think is happening in other areas?

What Can You Do?

Work On Your Squat

If you can’t sit in a full squat, with shins fairly vertical and heels down on the ground, you need to work on your form.

I suggest reading this old post by Kelly Starrett describing optimal squat form. He focuses on performance and strength training, but the technique applies equally to basic bodyweight squatting for pelvic floor health.

One thing to emphasize: go as low as you can without reaching “butt wink” threshold. The butt wink is when the pelvis begins rotating backward underneath the body. If you’re butt winking all over the place, you’re shortchanging your glutes and preventing them from balancing out the pelvic floor situation. Stop short of the butt wink.

Squat a Lot

You don’t have to load up the bar, although that’s a great way to build glute strength. In fact, I’d refrain from heavy squatting if you’re currently suffering from urinary incontinence, as the stress placed on that region of the body during a heavy squat can make the problem worse and cause, well, leakage.

I’m mainly talking about everyday squatting: while playing with the kids, picking up dog poop, unloading the dishwasher, brushing your teeth, cleaning the house, gardening. If you can incorporate squatting while using the bathroom, perhaps with a Squatty Potty or similar product, that’s even better. Katy Bowman recommends women squat to pee in the shower as an integral part of her therapy for pelvic floor disorder.

Squat To Use the Toilet (or At Least Get Your Feet Up)

I wrote an entire post almost ten years ago exploring the virtues of squatting to poop. Not only does it improve symptoms in hemorrhoid sufferers, reduce straining, and alleviate constipation, but squatting to poop turns out to relieve a lot of excessive pressure on the pelvic floor musculature.

Not everyone’s going to hoist themselves up over the toilet standing on a stack of thick books, or go all out and build a Southeast Asian-style squat toilet in their bathroom, or even get the Squatty Potty. It’s probably the best way to do it—and it’s certainly the most evolutionarily concordant way to poop—but it’s not totally necessary. What matters most is getting those feet up and those knees above your hips. If you can achieve this by placing your feet on a stool (not that kind of stool) as you sit on the toilet, it should do the trick.

Take a Walk and Feel Yourself Up

Next time you walk, rest your palms on the upper swell of your butt cheeks. Every time you step through, you should feel your glutes contract. If they contract, awesome. You’re unconsciously using your glutes to propel yourself forward. If they don’t, you’ll have to train them to contract when you walk.

Do this by going for a ten minute walk (minimum) every single day while feeling your glutes. Consciously contract them enough and feel yourself up enough and the resultant biofeedback will make glute activation a passive behavior, like breathing. Eventually you’ll start doing it without thinking. That’s the goal.

Do Kegels—Differently

The classic therapy for pelvic floor disorder is to train the pelvic floor muscles directly using kegels. This is the muscle you contract to stop yourself from peeing midstream. “Doing kegels” means contracting and releasing that muscle for sets and reps. A common recommendation is to hold for ten seconds, release for ten seconds, repeated throughout the day. Waiting in line? Kegels. Eating dinner? Do some kegels. Remember that man at the DMV last week who would randomly tense up and start sweating as you both waited for your number? He was probably doing kegels.

It’s definitely part of the story—studies show kegels work in men, women, and seniors—but it’s not enough.

Consider  Katy Bowman’s take on the subject. She thinks kegels by themselves make the problem worse by creating a tight but ultimately weakened pelvic floor muscle that pulls the sacrum further inward. Combine that with weak or underactive glutes that should be balancing the anterior pull on the sacrum but don’t and you end up with rising pelvic floor dysfunction and incontinence.  She recommends doing kegels while in the squat position to ensure that the glutes are engaged and all the other contributing muscles are in balance.

Do More Than Kegels

The bad news is that we don’t have controlled trials of Katy Bowman’s protocols with deep squats and frequent daily movement and going barefoot over varied surfaces and squat toilets. We mostly just have basic “pelvic floor exercises,” which usually just mean “kegels.” The good news is that even these suboptimal exercise therapies seem to work on anyone with incontinence, whether they’re just coming off a pregnancy, a 70th birthday, or a prostate procedure. Young, old, middle-aged, male, female—exercise works.

Actually, we do have one small study that suggests kegels will work much better if you balance them out with exercises that target the glutes and hips. In the study, women suffering from urinary incontinence were split into two treatment groups. One group did pelvic floor muscle exercises (kegels). The other group did pelvic floor muscle exercises, plus exercises to strengthen the hip adductors, the glute medius, and glute maximus. Both groups improved symptoms, but the group that did the combo exercises had better results.

For hip adduction, you can use that hip adduction machine where you straddle the chair with legs spread and bring your knees together against resistance. Another option is to use resistance bands. Attach one end of the band to a secure structure and the other to your ankle. Stand with legs spread, then bring the banded leg inward toward the unbanded leg; you should feel it in your inner thigh. Do this for both legs.

For glutes, you have many options. Glute bridges, hip thrusts, squats, deadlifts, lunges, resistance band glute kickbacks.

If you want to get deep into this subject and really learn the optimal exercises for pelvic floor dysfunction, I’d pick up a copy of Katy’s Down There For Women.

Get Strong and Stay Strong

One of the strongest predictors of urinary incontinence is physical frailty. The more frail—weak, fragile, prone to falling, unable to handle stairs, unsteady on one’s feet—the man or woman, the more likely they are to suffer from urinary incontinence. This mostly comes down to muscle atrophy; the frail tend to have low muscle mass all over, including the pelvic floor.

Studies show that strength training improves urinary control in both men coming off prostate procedures and women.

The best option is to never get frail in the first place. If you’re younger and in shape, keep training and moving. Don’t lose it. If you’re younger and trending frail, get training and moving. Don’t squander the time you have. It goes quickly. If you’re older and frail, you have to start today. Fixing this doesn’t happen overnight. Being frail makes it harder to do the things necessary to get strong, but that doesn’t absolve you of the responsibility.

The Bottom Line

None of this stuff is a guarantee against incontinence. Guarantees don’t really exist in life. But I’d definitely argue that anyone who employs all the tips and advice mentioned in today’s post will have a better shot at maintaining bladder control than their doppelganger in some parallel universe who never tries anything—the earlier the better.

If you have any experience with urinary incontinence, let us know in the comments down below. What worked? What didn’t? What worked for a while, then stopped?

Thanks for reading—and sharing here. Happy Halloween, everybody.

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References:

Bernstein IT. The pelvic floor muscles: muscle thickness in healthy and urinary-incontinent women measured by perineal ultrasonography with reference to the effect of pelvic floor training. Estrogen receptor studies. Neurourol Urodyn. 1997;16(4):237-75.

De araujo CC, Coelho SA, Stahlschmidt P, Juliato CRT. Does vaginal delivery cause more damage to the pelvic floor than cesarean section as determined by 3D ultrasound evaluation? A systematic review. Int Urogynecol J. 2018;29(5):639-645.

Kokabi R, Yazdanpanah D. Effects of delivery mode and sociodemographic factors on postpartum stress urinary incontinency in primipara women: A prospective cohort study. J Chin Med Assoc. 2017;

Handa VL, Harris TA, Ostergard DR. Protecting the pelvic floor: obstetric management to prevent incontinence and pelvic organ prolapse. Obstet Gynecol. 1996;88(3):470-8.

Dokuzlar O, Soysal P, Isik AT. Association between serum vitamin B12 level and frailty in older adults. North Clin Istanb. 2017;4(1):22-28.

The post Urinary Urgency and Incontinence: Why It’s Not Just Age appeared first on Mark's Daily Apple.

Article source here:Marks’s Daily Apple

[gillespialfredoe01806ld]

Forever Homes: The 10 Best Places in America to Age in Place

AngelMcNallphotography/iStock

The math is inescapable: There are about 75 million baby boomers growing a little older every day. They’re the largest generation ever to retire, whenever they get around to it. And following right behind are 65 million Gen-Xers, the oldest of whom are already well into their 50s. (Yikes!) They’re all going to need places to live as they age. But where?

Their children may not have the space, because their grandkids refuse to move out. (Damn millennials!) Housing prices are continuing to rise in desirable areas, making it difficult to downsize on a fixed income. And sending the boomers out on ice floes might seem like an attractive solution—until little Humbert asks where grandpa is going. The ice caps are melting anyway, so room may be limited.

But boomers changed the world—and now they’re changing the concept of getting older, too. They’re popularizing the idea of “aging in place”: buying homes for the long haul, and modifying them as time goes on, so they can continue to live independently for as long as possible. So-called “universal designs” allow such flexibility, and owners are adding bathroom rails, hands-free faucets, and downstairs den-into-bedroom conversions when they need them. And everyone, it seems, is on the prowl for places to live that can fit the bill from middle age all the way to the bitter end. Or darn close to it.

That’s where realtor.com®’s data team comes in. We figured out the best metros for middle-agers who may just be starting to slow down—or, now that the kids are gone, just starting to rev up. “Our current generation of boomers don’t want to do those for-old people things,” says Jana Lynott, senior policy adviser on livable communities for AARP. “We encourage [people to consider] neighborhoods where you can walk to a variety of services you access on a daily basis, like banks, public transportation, shopping, restaurants.”

To determine the best places to age in place, we took the 300 largest metros and evaluated them for affordability and health services, and then made sure these were locations people would really want to spend their golden years. To ensure geographic diversity, we limited the list to one per state. Here are our final criteria:

Number of homes already adapted for seniors, looking at realtor.com listings with keywords like “universal design,” “ground-floor master suite,” “senior-friendly,” and “no-step entry”

Percentage of residents older than 65*

Low cost of living*

Number of home health aides per senior*

Number of hospitals per capita*

Number of senior centers per capita*

Number of singles 55 and up*

Number of sunny days*

Number of golf courses per capita*

One shocker: Florida did not come out on top. Miami—once known as “God’s Waiting Room,” for its preponderance of elderly residents—ranked only as the 113th best U.S. city to age in place. The very worst to age in place is Burlington, VT. But we didn’t make access to Ben & Jerry’s ice cream one of our criteria. Our bad.

Best metros to age in place

Want to know more? Put on the designer spectacles and keep reading.

1. Florence, SC

Median home list price: $165,200

Michael Miller, head of Florence’s Chamber of Commerce, concedes that this city was once known as the “Denture Capital of the World.” But don’t be put off: This has become a lively and diverse place. Since 2010, the city has been hard at work on redeveloping its downtown area, which now boasts an $18 million library and a new art, science, and history museum—just the thing for folks with increasing amounts of time on their hands. The area is also a regional medical hub, with one of the nation’s highest concentrations of hospitals and home health aides. And more than 22,000 of its housing units have been designed or modified to accommodate older residents. This may be why several of local realtor® Laraine Stevens‘ clients in their 50s have relocated to the area from the oh-so-much-more-expensive Northeast. More of her buyers are seeking single-story homes or residences with ground-floor master suites.

“The cost of living is very affordable, and our taxes are lower compared to bigger cities,” says Stevens, of Berkshire Hathaway Home Services. “You have a more temperate climate. You’re not fighting the snow and the blizzards.”

2. Macon, GA

Median home list price: $156,600

Charming Macon, GA

SeanPavonePhoto/iStock

Maybe it’s the Southern hospitality that lands Macon—and other metros below the Mason-Dixon Line—on our list. But the lower expenses and steamier weather probably play an even larger part. Macon is experiencing an economic upswing that has filled once-empty storefronts with restaurants, shops, and even a few upscale markets.

Proximity to Mercer University gives the region a nice cultural boost, and there’s even a thriving museum district that includes the new Tubman Museum, devoted to African-American history.

But most importantly for lonely divorcées and widowers, Macon is one of the best places in the United States for single seniors. Almost half of its residents older than 50 are unattached. Let the hijinks begin!

3. Lake Havasu City, AZ

Median home list price: $254,900

The famous London Bridge in Lake Havasu.

Jerry Moorman/iStock

The metro near the junction of the California, Nevada, and Arizona borders is a tourist-friendly spot known as the home of the original London Bridge—yep, the one in the song, moved from the United Kingdom to Lake Havasu in 1968. But the real attraction here is the 290 days of sun a year, making the place a magnet for spring breakers and older Americans alike. In fact, Lake Havasu City boasts one of the highest percentages of senior citizens in the nation.

“It’s an active community,” says local real estate broker Liz Miller of Keller Williams Arizona Living Realty. She’s seeing more and more California refugees move in due to the year-round recreational activities. “Anything you want to do with water, you can do it here. And right now is an exciting time here.”

4. Vero Beach, FL

Median home list price: $299,500

Aerial view of Vero Beach, FL

CG-Photos/iStock

Finally, Florida shows up on our list.

The Sunshine State has long been a destination for seasonal refugees who trade high taxes and snow (a four-letter word for many older Americans) for no income tax and plenty of rounds at the golf course (which frequently involve more four-letter words). And indeed, Vero Beach’s impressive number of golf courses is what earned it a spot here. The city, located about halfway down the state’s Atlantic coast, has at least 16 golf courses, or one for every 9,500 residents. Plus, about half of its residents are older than 50. Put it all together, and you’ve got one heck of a lot of seniors hitting the links. Better reserve those tee times early. Fore!

5. Texarkana, TX

Median home list price: $159,500

The affordably priced metro, which straddles the border of Texas and Arkansas, has one of the highest percentages of residences adapted for those seeking to age in place. But that doesn’t mean folks here are housebound. Far from it! The city is home to Spring Lake Park, which offers disc golfing, fishing, and a primo walking and biking trail. And the local schools, Texarkana College and Texas A&M-Texarkana, offer a slew of free lectures and programs.

Oh, and there’s a ton of interesting/weird stuff to check out here, too. The Draughon-Moore Ace of Clubs House is a popular museum featuring furnishings going back to the early 1700s. The State Line Post Office is the only federal building in the U.S. that sits between two states. And the Texarkana Municipal Auditorium, site of some of Elvis’ best-known early concerts, is still going strong. Keep it real, Texarkana!

6. Saginaw, MI

Median home list price: $114,400

Looking for a bargain? Move to Saginaw. Those on a fixed income love this area’s low, low home prices. The metro, which was heavily dependent upon the automobile industry, fell on hard times when the American manufacturing economy began its slow collapse in the early 1980s. But it’s been aggressively coming back in recent years.

It now has a thriving downtown arts scene that includes a Japanese cultural center, tea house, and garden. Those seeking a bit more of an escape can explore the Shiawassee National Wildlife Refuge and participate in the many 5,000-meter runs held there.

The area is also a regional center for health care, boasting one of the highest ratios of home health aides in the U.S.

7. Redding, CA

Median home list price: $317,500

Shasta Lake, a popular location for Redding, CA, residents

4kodiak/iStock

The largest metro in northern California is also the highest-priced on our list. But the cost may be worth it for the most adventurous of boomers. The area is known for its abundance of outdoor recreational opportunities. Whether it’s rafting down the Sacramento River, touring the 300-acre Turtle Bay Exploration Park, or admiring the Sundial Bridge, which stretches across the Sacramento River, Redding has remade itself, from a sleepy logging town to a genuine destination.

Did we mention nearly nine out of 10 days in the California city are sunny? That may be why the region has a reputation as a cyclist’s haven. The League of American Wheelmen began weekly rides in the city way back in 1896.

8. Dothan, AL

Median Home List Price: $156,400

The Dothan area has emerged as the “Peanut Capital of the World” and is the home of a peanut festival that draws 120,000 visitors annually. Good luck beating those bragging rights.

On a slightly more pertinent note, Dothan has also emerged as a regional hub for health care and a way station for snowbirds traveling between the upper Midwest and Florida. It ranks high for its senior-friendly housing stock: More than 5% of its homes, or roughly 20,000 housing units, have been modified or built with aging-in-place features. These include perks like ground-floor master suites, wide hallways and doorways, and wheelchair ramps.

9. Shreveport, LA

Median home list price: $186,700

Tulip lights at Riverfront Park in Shreveport, LA

Beka_C/iStock

You don’t have to be a riverboat gambler to enjoy the Shreveport area. But it might just help pass the time. There are no fewer than a half-dozen casinos in the area, as well as Louisiana Downs, one of only three horse-racing tracks in the state.

Although Shreveport’s biggest employer is Barksdale Air Force Base, the city on the banks of the Red River has emerged as a regional center for health care. Shreveport also boasts the sixth-highest percentage of single people older than 50, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

Local Realtor Jessica McGee wanted to give those singles something to do. She helped start up a singles group for locals in their 40s, 50s, and 60s. The group does movie nights, Mardi Gras cruises, and wine tastings. And McGee plans to organize a trip to a local escape room, where participants must find clues to unlock the door to a room and “escape.”

“There are a lot of activities here,” she says. “And you can get way more for your money here than you can in most states.”

10. Hickory, NC

Median home list price: $217,500

This furniture manufacturing hub may not spring immediately to mind when folks are thinking about places to retire. But hey, why not?

The city is a three-time winner of the National Civic League’s “All-American City Award,” an honor bestowed on places that attempt to solve the most important issues in their communities. There’s plenty to do here, including the requisite golf outings, the cool and inviting bars and restaurants, the Zumba classes. But we’ll focus on the awesome Furniture Mart, a sprawling year-round showcase where local artisans show off their craft. And you can buy the stuff! Can 500,000 visitors a year be wrong?

* Data comes from the U.S. Census Bureau, U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis, GolfNow Course Directory, Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

The post Forever Homes: The 10 Best Places in America to Age in Place appeared first on Real Estate News & Insights | realtor.com®.

from DIYS http://ift.tt/2wzsKo7

[arcanakrp-blog]

LEE MONA – THE MAGICIAN. AGENT 01.

                                                   [   FILE TYPE: CLASSIFIED   ]

//: LOADING PROFILE: LEE MONA ...

international age: 24 birthplace: daegu, south korea arcana: the magician team number: two

//: LOADING MUTATION: CHAOS MAGIC ...

application one: magical energy manipulation  — Mona acts as a conduit of magical energy, harnessing and unleashing it. She unleashes this with mental focus on the intent of her action, and corresponding gestures that help her to guide more complicated work. It can range from the simple - igniting some flammable material or bursting open a door- to the more complicated. Her most innate abilities, fondly dubbed hexes, manifest often at random in response to emotional distress, springing forth to reorder the world in small ways to her benefit, to your (in a collective “other” sense) detriment. Gun barrels may melt, metals may rust, organic matter may rapidly decay. This is often unwarranted action on her part.

application two: magical energy constructs — She is in theory capable of molding this energy into various constructs and forms, but is unpracticed outside the more basic combative and defensive purposes, thanks to her rather specialized training in the topic. In a general sense, there are some things she is notably able to do with more reliability than others - fashioning her magic into bolts and force fields for offensive and limited defensive purposes, inciting combustion of targets, slowing or stopping projectiles, protecting her physical person, and so forth. Magic is mutable and multifaceted and requires imaginative use to truly harness the full scope of its abilities. Mona has been known to experiment in her free time, but that has been severely limited of late, in particular, which leaves her relying on the familiar - crude blasts of raw energy which would more accurately straddle the line between first application to the second. She is, in short, a walking force of destruction and chaos

application three: symbol / rune guided magic — This inscriptive format of magic requires the most control, the most study, and as a result has the most versatility. it is as yet largely unexplored for Mona, due to the fact that her potential as a weapon has been prioritized. Chaotic energy is exceptionally volatile and only through complicated inscriptions of runes and symbols can it be channelled and harnessed to purposes beyond the destructive. This is the only avenue of her capabilities that could potentially have use outside of a battlefield or the like, with potential in enchantments that might strengthen weaponry or armor or defensive barriers, and so forth. As it hasn’t been prioritized in her training she is uncertain of this,and is in truth doubtful that her abilities can truly be molded to any application beyond the destructive and terrible

overall strengths and weaknesses: — The overarching category under which her abilities fall is that of “chaos magic.” This is, to describe a complicated thing simply, the ability to manipulate the chaotic and wild magical energy of the universe to her bidding, to various ends. This is, of course, not quite so simple as it may sound. When one considers the principle of entropy, that all things trend towards destruction, it perhaps makes sense to conceptualize Mona as one who hastens the process along.

Her greatest weaknesses are that she is limited by line of sight (her targets must be visible), the unreliability of her magic ( particularly as tied to her mental and emotional state) and she is physically quite plainly human- she is not supernaturally strong, nor fast, nor durable.

While her abilities are seemingly otherworldly, chaotic and strong, Mona is simply a girl. She is a storm, a maelstrom poured into human skin, and the attempt to channel this massive energy through a fragile human form is, quite simply, difficult. There is a wear and tear on her, both physical and mental. Exhaustion, insomnia, heart palpitations, anxiety, depression, aches, and fevers - these are all byproducts of being a conduit to this magic.

Magic is a balancing act - to gain, something must be lost. With great strength given, something else must be taken. For Mona, this means the stability of her mind, for the most part. She is easily consumed by emotions, particularly the negative. She seems always to be one step away from falling apart mentally, either descending into depression or roaring into mania.

Because her abilities are so tied to her emotions, this volatility makes her both incredibly powerful and incredibly unpredictable. The limits of her abilities are untested because, quite simply, she’s a ticking time bomb. She carries within her great potential but lacks the mental and physical fortitude or desire to control it.

She is very aware that a greater control of her emotions would hone her into a perfect weapon and, truthfully, she resists this idea. She would just as soon the magic consume and destroy her as anything else.

//: LOADING HISTORY ..

PRE-MUTATION

for mona, life is not before and after. for mona there is a before, and an after, and then another before and another after still. mona’s life has flipped on its axis more than once.

the first time poles shift and her world is upended, mona isn’t mona at all.

instead, she’s lee loren.

lee loren is a sweet girl, mostly. that’s the rumor anyway. she’s born to a politician and his wife - mid tier, nothing special. he’s not running for leader of the country any time soon, but he’s known in his area. he’s on the news, he gives speeches, and his wife and his daughter stand faithfully at his side.

loren learns how to stand still and calm and quiet from a very early age.

she’s always been particularly quick witted - she’s bright, intelligent. precocious is the word, as a girl, when she rattles off equations and laughs her way through dinners, when jokes that ought to go over her head do not, when her wit astounds and brightens.

but it makes her lonely. a girl that progresses verbally beyond her peers from an early age doesn’t exactly get along with the other kids in elementary school. and when she tries to tag along with the older kids, desperate for someone to talk too, someone who knows where she’s coming from, they reject her as too little still, too foolish, just a baby.

so she turns to books instead.

if anything this exacerbates the problem. the more she reads the more advanced she becomes, the more she learns, the farther ahead she moves, the less her peers tolerate her. when they’re young she’s quirky. as they get older she’s an oddball. by middle school she’s a  prude, uptight, aloof. she has her head in her books all the time, she thinks she’s better than everyone else, that bitch loren. what a fucking weirdo, what a teachers’ pet, she thinks she’s all that.

loren is a lonely girl.

high school helps, strangely. suddenly, her wealth of trivial knowledge and her innate ability to memorize and deduce is an asset and not a social impunity. suddenly, its something to be desired. she makes friends. well, they seem like friends. they’re friends for as long as she’ll share her notes and her study guides, anyway, and loren can be content with that. she’s learned from her father that sometimes the appearance of friend sis as important as anything else.

she starts to bend beneath the pressure her senior year, as many do. the intensity is too much, the hours too long. she takes to popping little pills to help her focus, she gets too little sleep, she’s ringed in panda style dark circles and she’s wasting away, bit by bit. pale is chic in seoul, sure, but not the kind of pale that speaks to a girl who’s never seen the sun. that reads basement dwelling nerd to anyone.

its all beginning to pay off when she passes the entrance exams with flying colors. but there’s a lingering tension. an anxiety, a fear, a dread weight on her chest.

she begins to think she might have powers of premonition when the news breaks.

the first after comes now.

her father is being indicted. white collar crime is the name of the game - embezzling government funds, fudging investigations, voter fraud, deals with criminals. he’s set to head for jail. and then the moral implications come out. he’s cheating on his wife. he has an illegitimate son. he’s paid them to sit quiet, to shut up.

the trial is set to drag out long in the way these things do. her home is a mess. her father is in jail. her mother is distraught, depressed, despairing.

he gets off easy by selling out. he testifies against important figures in a criminal organization - loren never knows the specifics. what she does know is that, suddenly, she has to change her name. he’s still going to jail, but his family? they’ve been associated with him publicly for so long now, well, if someone were to get angry, to want to retaliate for his snitching? they’d be easy targets.

loren becomes lee mona. she chooses it for herself. the mona lisa. she enrolls in the school of her choice under this new name, a smaller school than she might have liked, but it has a good program. she wants to be a museum curator. she studies a degree in history, doubles with library sciences. things are looking good, they really are.

she graduates, is looking for jobs, when the second after happens.

POST-MUTATION

mona, it seems, is far more interesting than loren ever would be.

she wakes up one day with the power to shake the dead, to damn the living.

she took a physics class once. all things in the universe move towards a state of entropy, destruction, unravelling. chaos. mona is entropy now. fear, anger, stress, joy, desire - they bring out of her surges of energy she can’t control.

she wonders if she’s the first they’ve found. it feels like moments after she wakes that the first burst shakes the foundation of her apartment building. she’s hiking up in the woods when she’s startled by someone following her. paranoia takes over, and fear - her father’s enemies come to take her, finally, she wonders?

before she can think twice, she’s opening a crater in the ground around her, an eerie silence in the wake of the roar of it, the burst of energy raw and untempered. it isn’t as massive as she fears at first, but its more than enough to terrify, to leave her bursting into erratic, inconsolable sobs. someone comes towards her, perhaps to accuse, perhaps to console, but a lash of energy blows them back.

its enough energy expended in one immediate moment to leave her unconscious.

maybe they have a sense for these kinds of things. maybe they have a tracker somewhere. whatever it is, they find her. they pick her up from her dazed state, help her back home. they’re the ar collective, they explain, and they can help. they look at her like she is magical.

she feels like a monster.

it turns out they were right. chaos magic, its the best word they have for it. they’re in awe to speak of it, something so strangely unscientific for a bunch of scientists. they rattle on about it (it seems to work like energy, like probability maybe, like entropy in action, accelerated?)  and her eyes glaze over. she’s exhausted, perpetually. her mood is unstable, her senses blur, anxiety ebbs and flows like the incoming tide: relentless.

they pair her up, eventually, with the fuse to her bomb. fear is  her best trigger, they explain, and since she still has so little control - since she still works so much stronger and so much better when terrified - they figure this is the best way to make her useful.

as if she wasn’t terrified of herself already.

she grows sick with it, this fear. this anxiety. she grows sick of the things they call upon her to do, the things they suggest could be done, if she were to try a little harder, push a little more - to be a little more cruel or a little more terrified, and mona isn’t sure she can manage either.

but where else is she to go now, what else is she to do, but resign herself to this life? to this cage, and to this fear, and to this chaos.