#meanwhile I don’t get my holiday make up until mid January

[spacecores]

I survived my Christmas Adam shift and it was ✨shit fucking horrid✨ bc I’m cursed to have supervisors who should not be in charge of other humans just because they hit pay cap at their last role.

BUT MORE IMPORTANTLY my coworker was grilling me on the genealogical origin of my last name and where my family was from. It was like being on the fucking moon bc she’s of Asian descent, you’d think she’d experienced people asking stupid shit like that herself and know it’s a weird thing to ask, especially unprompted.

[yuta-nakamots]

perfect - z.cl

Pairing - Chenle x Fem!Reader

Genre - fluff, angst, university!au, friends to lovers!au

Warnings -  alcohol consumption, mention of drunkeness, lots of arguments, heavy making out, breakups, contains an aged up chenle (26-ish) towards the end

Summary - He’s definitely not your knight in shining armor, he may not be the one you bring home to mother, but he’ll be the one to give you flowers. Chenle is not the right one for you, but he is for right now.

Word Count - 5.2k

A/N - Bolded phrases are song lyrics taken from One Direction’s song ‘Perfect’ and inspired from the lyrics along with all the vlives where Chenle and the members have started yelling out the lyrics.This was supposed to come out back in January but school held it up and now Ana is gone hhhhh. I know she’s still on Tumblr but under a new url so if anyone wants to send this to her, to let her know that I did finish it, that would be nice. 

Taglist - @astroboy-lele​​​ @in-my-neofeelings​​​ || fill out this form if you’d like to join my general taglist ^^

Written for the Sometimes Letting Go… Collab originally hosted by @sunryu​ who unfortunately deactivated. 

When I first saw you from across the room, I could tell you were curious

The mutual attraction between you and Chenle was undeniable. Ever since the two of you first met as freshmen in an econ class, you knew he was your twin flame and he was yours. That initial meeting was almost comical, the way the professor said to pair up and talk to someone next to them for a bit and it seemed like everyone had turned away from you except for the boy sitting next to you.

It seems you both had the same realization as your heads turned and eyes met. “Well I guess you’re my friend for today,” he began, “hi, my name is Chenle. Pleased to make your acquaintance.”

“Y/n,” you told him, “the pleasure is all mine.”

“So, why are you in this class?” He asked, tapping his pen on his leather-bound planner.

You hesitated for a second as you thought about how much to tell him. “I’m majoring in business and this was just one of the mandatory classes in my plan.”

“Hm, same here,” Chenle shared, seeming the slightest bit amused at your similarity, “would you also happen to be in calculus this semester?”

“Section 3 at 10:30?” You counter.

Chenle broke into a smile, “that’s the one.”

“How about freshman seminar?” You asked.

“1:15 in the world language building?” Chenle offered, copying your answer from before.

“Wow,” your eyebrows were raised in actual disbelief, “did you steal my schedule or something?”

“No, but I do believe in fate,” the boy next to you confessed, “would you like to get lunch sometime before freshmen seminar?”

You nodded, “I’d like that,” you stopped mid-sentence when you remembered that you told your friends you’d eat with them, “I am gonna be eating with my friends though so I could introduce you to them if you’d like.”

“Want to bet that we have the same friends too?”

“No way, that would be too coincidental.”

And coincidental it was. Somehow your friends knew some of Chenle’s friends whether it be from high school activities, childhood friends, or even having just met in their own classes. Your small group of five had immediately doubled in size.

Of course, with such a large group of friends, there was much fun to be had and many memories to be made. During midterms is when you were thankful you were majoring in business and not something like biology or chemistry. You could still go out and have fun on weekends with Chenle and the majority of your friends, meanwhile a few poor souls had to stay back to study their ‘reaction mechanisms’ or whatever the heck those things were called.

You quickly found that you weren’t one for parties though you loved to hang out with your friends and have small little parties of your own in the dorms. Every single time, as you all got progressively drunker and started to clock out for the night, it was always you and Chenle left being the two most sober with no other choice but to take care of your friends over hushed conversations.

“How much vodka did Hannah even drink?” Chenle asked while you both worked on cleaning up the mess of solo cups and napkins surrounding your friend who had, unfortunately, drank over half of the bottle. You picked it up, waving it at Chenle to show him. “She’s gonna have a nasty hangover…or at least wake up super dehydrated.”

As you worked on laying a blanket across her, passed out on the floor, Chenle had managed to stuff all the napkins inside the cups he had collected and was busy aiming at the trash can across the room. Right as he was about to shoot, “miss!” you called out. The little stack of cups hit the rim of the plastic trash bin and fell to the floor. Chenle turned to you, sticking out his tongue and imitating the way you caused him to mess up before going to properly dispose of the rubbish.

Instead of simply placing it in the waste, he once again returned to where he stood before, with one eye shut, aiming for the bin. You let out a scoff, ready to disturb him once more. He shot you a glance, knowing what you were planning from the way you just stood watching him. But regardless, he tried again. “Airball” you sang as he released the short stack of cups, sending them flying to the foot of the bin.

Chenle let out a growl, childishly stomping his way over to you while you tried to quietly escape from his grasps through the mess of food and other miscellaneous items on the floor. From the hushed giggles and name-calling from the two of you as you both stumbled around the room, to the whispered late-night thoughts and affirmations spoken from your positions on the floor with your heads resting on the edge of a bed, you barely even noticed how fast time was passing.

“Are you going home for the holidays?” You asked him.

He shook his head, “it’s my first time getting to live away from my parents and whenever I do go back, they’ll probably be expecting me to bring some girl with me.”

You turned to look at him, “why would they expect that?”

“They’re both getting old and want to retire soon,” Chenle started, “so the faster I get married and take over the company, the faster they’ll get to live out the rest of their lives,” he explained.

“Well that’s not very nice of them,” you commented, “what kind of parents would place such high responsibility on their child like that?”

“Mine I guess,” Chenle sighed.

After a moment of silence, you sat up, unsure what to make of the next words to come out of your mouth. “If you want, I could go with you.” Chenle looked at you with his eyebrows furrowed. “Like, I could be your fake girlfriend or something so that they don’t bother you so much about finding one.”

“That’s…an idea,” he started, biting on the corner of his lip as he played out possible scenarios in his head. “I think that would only make it worse though since we’d both have to make up stories and tell the same information.”

“True. But we could at least make it look believable, don’t you think?” You reached over to pet Chenle’s head the same way you’ve seen him do to his friends. “Oh, Chenle, you’re so cute,” you cooed, “I can’t wait to marry you and be with you for the rest of our lives.”

He grabbed your wrist and put it in your lap, not very keen on the show of affection. “Yeah, I think we’d look like a pretty convincing couple.”

“Do we look good together though?” You pondered. “If we were to show up to an event or something, would we make people stop and stare at us?”

“Anyone can do that if they wear something weird or do something out of the ordinary-“

“Okay but that’s not what I’m asking,” you interrupted, “I’m asking, would we look good together as a couple?”

Chenle shrugged apprehensively, “sure.” Your eyes bore into him as if forcing a more legit answer out of him. “Yes, I think we would look good as a couple.”

It was as if you and Chenle were made for each other. Whatever one did, the other was never too far behind. It was absolutely no surprise to your friends when you told them Chenle had asked you out and you became official. While your college careers continued and friends came and went, Chenle was always with you. He was your solid island in the middle of a tumultuous sea, your oasis in a dried desert. You didn’t need anyone else around to have fun, just him, just the two of you.

But if you like causing trouble up in hotel rooms and if you like having secret little rendezvous

Being with Chenle was as wild as things could get. It meant impulsive plans and bad decisions. Weekend nights normally consisted of one of you driving with no destination in mind until someone got hungry. Even at that point, the night didn’t end.

Sometimes the two of you would stay out past midnight, not wanting to leave each other’s company just yet. The feeling of the wind whipping past you as Chenle drove or the thrill of gassing it down the freeway was almost dreamlike. One would think that at this point, you’d return home, but for you, your home was wherever Chenle was. If it meant staying in a small hotel room for the night drinking cheap wine out of paper cups then so be it, that was home.

“Baby, you already drank almost half of the bottle, leave some for me,” Chenle teased, his eyes glimmering under the low lighting. The brightness of the small lamp on the desk failed to reach where he was sitting, the cozy armchair too far in the corner for it to be illuminated.

“Come here and get some then,” you suggested, lazily winking at him before downing another shot-sized gulp and enjoying the burn from the liquid running down your throat. The bed you were sitting on wasn’t all that soft but you had already warmed up a little spot of it and gotten too comfortable to move.

Chenle raised an eyebrow at you, a smirk tugging at his lips. “I don’t think you want me to do that.”

“Why not?” Your expression mirroring his.

“You wanna find out?

“Maybe I do.”

He let out a scoff and within a second he was on the bed, climbing up and settling over you. His warm breath fanned your neck, the scent of alcohol filling your senses. “Are you sure about that?”

“Fuck around and find out, handsome,” you taunted.

You had barely even finished your sentence before Chenle’s lips were on yours, his usual soft and pillowy lips became hot and heavy against yours under the guide of the fifteen-dollar wine. You were sure that you were definitely getting tipsy but Chenle’s love and passion were even more overwhelming. It was moments like this when you felt that you were drunk off of his love and it was absolutely intoxicating in the best way.

If you like to do the things you know that we shouldn’t do, then baby I’m perfect

It was drunk weekends like this that led to a rocky start of the following week. It’s not that you and Chenle were bad students, it’s just that when you become totally infatuated with the person you love, you start to devote yourself to them instead of what actually needs to get done.

As sophomores in college, one would think that you’d have a little more self-control but with Chenle, you just couldn’t help it. He was worse than any drug you could ever take, to the point where your friends would have to intervene and keep you in your rooms until a substantial amount of work was done.

You called them annoying but really you should’ve been thankful to them for caring so much about you back then, and you are thankful, looking back on it. They always told you ‘distance makes the heart grow fonder’ and you wish you had listened to them. Maybe if you did, you wouldn’t have lost a relationship that you thought was practically flawless.

Perfect for you

In junior year, that is when your beautiful illusion finally began crumbling down. Your workloads grew heavier and your hours of sleep decreased. Chenle would often leave you on read, having opened your message in the middle of studying then forgotten to reply to it. Even when you childishly got upset at him for that, he’d always give you the same apology or buy you something cute as if money could shut you up.

With little to no distance between the two of you, it was easy for boundaries to be crossed and for problems to go unaddressed. You can feel like you know someone so well, that they’ll always understand what you mean and they can read your words like a book, but it didn’t seem that way anymore with Chenle.

He’d make fun of the way you always made him say ‘I love you’ at least once a day or some of your other pet peeves, including the way you had a Hello Kitty mouse pad that was ‘too childish for a college student to be using.’ It may have been out of love but it sure didn’t seem that way.

I might never be the hands you put your heart in or the arms that hold you any time you want them

Soon, the little pricks in your relationship spread past closed doors and into your schoolwork. Sharing a major and classes with your significant other was not exactly ideal, especially when they had different values and beliefs from you and had to argue for their reasoning.

“That just isn’t sustainable in the long run though,” you commented as you read through Chenle’s senior research report while seated opposite of him inside a library study room.

He ran a hand through his hair, leaning back into his seat, about to repeat himself for the fourth time. “It’s not about sustainability, it’s about the profit margin that’s being made. What don’t you get?”

“It’s not good for the environment, it’s not good for the people working in the factories,” you point out, “I don’t get how you can subject these things onto people.”

“Y/n, we’re business majors,” he stated plainly, “we study money, the economy, sales, company relationships, we’re not here to be environmentalists. Things don’t have to last very long, so much as they make a profit.”

“But we should think about the impact of our future businesses and their longevity in the world-”

“You should think about passing this class and stop being so prissy and uptight about saving trees or whatever the fuck you’re going on about.”

You were absolutely shocked at the words that had just come out of his mouth. This wasn’t the first time he had seemingly degraded you in this manner, but when it came to school and your own work, you were deeply offended at what he had said, especially since both of you had spent many hours on your respective projects.

“Chenle,” you began softly, “tell me you didn’t mean that.”

He refused to meet your gaze, “If I told you that then I would be a liar.”

“Look, you can’t just spew whatever bullshit you want and just expect that people won’t get hurt,” you criticized, only to be cut off once more.

“Then maybe you should learn to not take everything so seriously,” he snapped back.

“I...I think we need a break.”

“Agreed.”

“No, from each other.” Chenle’s head whipped up to look at you, his eyes went wide when he realized what you were insinuating.

“Baby no, you know it’s not like that,” he started, but it was already too late. You blocked his voice out of your head as you packed your belongings, just wanting to get out of this room, wanting to get away from him.

This wasn’t the first time you had fought with him in this way but it felt like you had finally lost all your patience. You were tired of always being told you were wrong and having your thoughts and ideas invalidated. As you stormed away from the library, you realized that maybe you needed to let go of things that no longer brought you joy.

Sometimes letting go...is a new start

After that incident, you did indeed have a fresh start. You slowly removed Chenle from your life and just in time for graduation. Whenever he tried to approach you on campus, you always turned the other way even if it meant being late to class. Luckily, you didn’t have many shared classes with him anymore and you were all the more grateful for it right now.

You’d come back to your campus apartment with the occasional flower or sticky note left on your doorstep asking you to give him another chance but you simply didn’t have enough time or energy to care anymore. Commencement was approaching and you still had yet to hear back from any of the companies you had applied to for internships.

But that don’t mean that we can’t live here in the moment

One of your friends had mentioned that Chenle had already received news that he was accepted into his family’s business, a large company in China, and you wished you could’ve been there when he had read the email. You could practically hear his yell of delight, his laugh when he’d turn to hug you, even if it was practically guaranteed that he’d get in, you missed it all so much but there was no turning back now.

It wasn’t until after commencement did you receive your own letter of acceptance from one of the largest foreign trade companies in the area after you saw Chenle for the last time. “Zhong Chenle, Bachelor of Arts in business management.” You remembered the immense pride and pain you felt in your chest, watching him walk across the stage to claim his diploma as you sat clothed in the same cap and gown only a few rows away. You wished you could share your emotions with him, but you had to remind yourself that he was no longer yours, he was no longer the man you first fell in love with.

‘Cause I can be the one you love from time to time

Four years have passed since that moment at commencement. In those four years, you’ve climbed your way up in the company, taking a hold of a directing position in project development and management. With all your success though, there was always one failure that kept floating through your mind. The number of sleepless nights and wandering moments you’ve spent thinking about all the ‘what ifs’ and the changes you should’ve made in your relationship have all decreased with time, but sometimes it all comes crashing back. You miss the memories you made with him and you miss being so young and naive.

Sometimes you managed to hear a thing or two about the company he worked for but you never paid much attention to it, always falling back into a spiral of guilt and calling yourself the sole reason why your relationship fell apart. Chenle would even pop into your mind at the weirdest times when you’d be thinking of anything but him.

Like the other day as you were staring out the window of your office, watching people and cars pass by, your memory of Chenle speeding down the empty highway suddenly resurfaced. The adrenaline you felt from the buildings and signs whizzing by, the slight buzz of alcohol you felt in your system, the cool air coming in from Chenle’s window, the warmth of his hand in yours. You couldn’t help but smile at it fondly yet it turned sour when you thought of the last time he ever drove you somewhere. You had argued with him about something dumb, you couldn’t even remember it at this point, and you even slammed the door before storming off to who knows where.

Or some months ago, you were interviewing possible new hires for the company and met someone from Puerto Rico. Once you finished the interview with them, you sat at the wooden desk while remembering the way you teased Chenle because he didn’t know how to pronounce Puerto Rico. You thought it was cute and even told him that, but it ended up in another fight because you may have spent a little too long dwelling on the topic.

But oftentimes when you find yourself thinking about him, you’d wonder how he’s doing. Is he happy where he is right now? What kinds of things is he doing for his job? Has he found a new girlfriend? What if he dated many other people after me? What if he’s married? Would he have children by now? Or most importantly, ‘does he still love me?’

And if you like midnight driving with the windows down, and if you like going places we can’t even pronounce

Regardless, you’d shake off all these thoughts and continue about your day, completing the tasks assigned to you. The majority of your time was spent conducting interviews and deliberating with the directors about who to hire for what position. It was quite fun, really. You got to meet all of the new hires before they came into the company and you felt empowered by the fact that you would be indirectly responsible for the future of the company in this sort of way.

On one particular day, everything felt like it was going just a little too well. Your hair was done just the right way, traffic was light, your coworkers seemed to all be in a good mood, but most importantly, there were no fat folders sitting on your desk, waiting for you to go through. Just a single sheet of paper with the list of the new hires coming in for their briefings along with the notes you were required to go over.

You didn’t bother checking it, seeing as how you had exactly two minutes left before the scheduled meet time, which was exactly the amount of time you needed to head downstairs to the conference room. You really should have checked the list though. It would have prepared you for the shock of seeing a certain someone sitting at the table in a suit that looked all too good on him.

“Zhong Chenle?” You audibly gasped, pausing in your tracks the moment you entered the conference room.

His eyes were already on you as if he knew you’d be the person to walk through that doorway at that exact moment. “That would be me.”

The other new hires looked around at each other sharing all types of glances. Worried, suspicious, surprised, questioning, nothing really all that positive. “Sorry, he’s just an old friend that I was surprised to see,” you quickly explained, trying to pull yourself back together.

Throughout your whole presentation, it was like all the attention in the world was directed at you. Never had you felt this nervous before doing something that was supposed to be so familiar. Every time your eyes glanced over in Chenle’s direction, his gaze managed to catch yours as if he was trying to speak to you without any words.

By the time you adjourned the meeting and sent the new hires off to their respective departments, it felt like you had run a marathon. Your palms were clammy, your legs shaky, your mind racing, and your heart was pounding.

Chenle was the only one left in the conference hall while you pushed in all the chairs and turned off the lights. “Looks like these years have done you well.” He commented, finally able to take in the sight of you now that there was no one else around.

“I could say the same for you.” His shoulder had gotten broader and any childlike features had left his face. He truly looked like he had grown into a man. The dark gray suit he was wearing fit the lines of his body so well, it made you think he could’ve been a model instead of simply becoming an office worker. “So how have you been?”

He did a classic Chenle shrug, “nothing much really. I started off being just a marketing employee, did some work, and got myself to be chief marketing officer. It seems you’ve gotten much further than I have, though. Project development and management?”

“Oh, it’s not anything huge. I just help with planning things out and doing all the paperwork for its execution. I only do interviews and help with hiring when we’re in season, which would be why I’m here right now,” you explained, motioning for him to follow you out of the room. “Your new supervisor is probably wondering where you are. I sent the rest of the newbies a few minutes ago already. I’ll just tell him that you had a few questions about our operations.”

“Wow, cheating the system? That’s not the way I remember you,” Chenle said with mock disapproval. You led him to the elevators, pleasantly surprised to find one still on your floor after you hit the ‘up’ button. Your eyes met with his while you gestured for him to go in. “Ladies first,” he had a cat-like grin on his face as you rolled your eyes and stepped into the elevator.

“So why did you decide to leave your company? Weren’t you going to take it over someday?” You ask over the squeaking of the doors closing.

Chenle leaned against the cold metal wall of the elevator, “I still plan to but I felt like they were just kind of babying me or treating me differently because they knew of my background,” he explained. You could only nod to acknowledge the fact that you were listening. “I told my parents that I wanted to get experience outside of the company and they didn’t really understand at first until I showed them my point of view and how it’s a little worrisome to perhaps, learn how to cook when you always have chefs around you giving you instructions down to the tiniest things.”

The elevator came to a stop and the heavy doors opened onto the floor Chenle would be working on. “But why this company? We’re not even closely related to yours?” You led him down the hallway in the direction of his supervisor's office.

“My parents were the ones who recommended it, actually. It would be a little risky to go to a neighboring one in the case of it being viewed as a betrayal or like some kind of inside mission so they said I should just come back here since I’d probably have a high chance of acceptance-“ you put a hand up to stop him from talking, seeing how many of the other employees had started to look at him due to his volume.

“Chenle, must I remind you that this is an office?” You gritted out, embarrassed in front of your colleagues.

He shook his head before turning to the mass of them, bowing politely then continuing in the same direction as before. Once both of you reached the head office at the end of the hallway, Chenle spoke up once more. “By any chance, are you free tonight?”

“That depends,” you began, “what are you hinting at?”

“Just seeing if you’d like to go out to dinner so we can properly catch up, I guess,” he proposed bashfully.

You hummed in thought, “mmm, put in a good word for me with your supervisor and you’ve got a deal.”

“Deal,” he agreed.

“Meet me in the lobby at 5:30, don’t be late,” you told him before knocking on the wooden door in front of you and allowing Chenle in.

If you like to do whatever you’ve been dreaming about, then baby you’re perfect

You thought Chenle’s wine phase in college would be just that, a phase, but it really wasn’t. He had ordered an expensive bottle of merlot even with all your insistence that you wouldn’t be drinking and even made him promise that he’d be sober enough to drive himself back to wherever his accommodations were.

He made a face of fake dismissal before picking up your last conversation. “So anyway, as I was saying earlier, my parents suggested that I come back here, especially since I got my degree from the university so I’m bound to get in.”

You were about to open your mouth to say something like “getting in is not a guarantee” especially coming from your experience in doing interviews and having to decide which applicants to turn down, but you decided against it.

“Initially, I was a little against it since I didn’t want to come back to somewhere I’ve already stayed at for some time,” he confessed, “but after I did some research on the company and found out that you’re one of the associates, I was a little more open to the idea.”

There was a break of silence while you started to link your thoughts together. “So you came here because you found out that I work here?”

“Yes, but also no,” Chenle stated, blurting the second part out rather quickly when he saw the shift in your expression. “It is true that I wanted to see you and how you were doing but it’s not just that. I figured that if you worked here and had such a high position, it must be a good place to work.”

“But what I’m hearing is…you came here because of me,” you state bluntly though your heart couldn’t help but let out a cheer of delight.

Chenle redirected his gaze at the neighboring tables. “You could say that, sure.”

“Chenle, what do you want out of this? What do you want out of me specifically?” You contended. His eyes continued to flit around the lowly lit space, not daring to meet yours unlike earlier in the conference hall. “What? Did you come back just expecting me to run into your arms? Did you think we would just pick up where we left off?”

Now he looked down at the white tablecloth, as if in shame. “Would it be wrong of me to ask for a second chance?”

You too joined him in staring at the table, wishing that he had answered ‘no’ to your previous questions. “It wouldn’t exactly be wrong, but it’s not right either. I’d be willing to give you a second chance if we agree to not call it that, but rather a promise.”

He finally looked up at you again, his dark pupils catching the dim golden lights above him. “A promise?”

You nodded. “We’re older now, we’re fully grown adults with jobs to do and taxes to pay. We’re no longer the same carefree college students we used to be.”

“Well yeah, obviously-“

“No, listen,” you interject, cutting him off, “we can’t just recklessly play with each other’s minds and feelings like we used to. No more games and no more ‘next times.’ If we try again, I want this to be a promise that we’ll both do better because we can and we want to.”

“If it’s a promise that you want then,” Chenle held out his hand with his pinky finger extended, “it’s a promise I’m willing to make.”

You linked your pinky with his before bringing your thumbs together and sealing the promise. Matching smiles appeared across both of your faces as you stepped into a new chapter of life with Chenle by your side once more.

Sometimes letting go is…perfect. So let’s start right now

[angel-princess-anna]

Speculation Sunday

In which weekly(?), I try to connect two dots (and connect nothing) in regards to the second DA film. This week, it’s more about the lack of spoilers and how it will be that way for awhile (also I realize it’s probably now Monday for most of you, whoops)

This post is based on my own perceptions and experiences having followed how they filmed and promoted the TV show and first film. I love discussing Downton, and I love hunting for spoilers, haha. Mainly because I want to know what’s gonna happen with my faves ASAP.

That said, I think we are going to get even less spoilery crumbs during the filming of DA 2021 than we did with DA 2019.

Focus and Carnival kept the official synopsis of the first film a mystery for a very long time (basically until the first full trailer came out) and I assume it will be similar this time too. They then dumped some more info and stills much closer to the release date. Interviews with the cast focused on “getting the gang back together” and I assume the DA 2021 press tour will focus on “getting the gang back together after lockdown” and “we are bringing escapism in dark times”. Understandable, but not ideal for people like me who love spoilers!

During most of the filming of the TV series, we didn’t get a lot of info and pics other than paparazzi photos (social media being less of a thing during the early series, and the latter because of cracking down on spoiler leaks), but then with S6, we were spoiled with riches given that they filmed outdoors a lot, and there was a bit of a social media campaign for the end of the show to honor the crew.

With DA 2019, all we got was a handful of outdoor sightings (the major one of course being the parade filming). This year we’ll have to rely on the paparazzi and tabloids, but again that’s if they film outdoors.

And given how most of the cast is when it comes to social media, and the worry of being punished for spoiler leaks, they aren’t gonna be taking selfies all the time.

So while we wait for Entertainment Weekly or the likes to visit the set, or one of the actors to promote another project and feed us crumbs in an interview, or a still gets released for a holiday... let’s think about what we do know.

The “original principal cast” is back. In Focus’ DA 2019 press release, that wording preceded a list of the main ensemble that was in all six series of the TV show, plus Matthew Goode and Harry Hadden-Patton. Raquel and Michael weren’t listed at that time, and while neither has posted on social media lately that I can see, Raquel’s latest post (as of writing this) has Baxley related hashtags lol. I don’t see why Baxter and Andy wouldn’t be in DA 2021. Kiddo wise, we know that the Baker boys are back as George and their triplet sister is playing someone. Fifi Hart is back as Sybbie. No word yet on the other children, but there’s five child actors from that one agency back for the new film (which doesn’t discount there being child actors from another agency).

Lily James didn’t appear in DA 2019, and I don’t think she would here either (regardless of, uh, Dominic West). Tuppence Middleton confirmed on Twitter she’s in; Max Brown confirmed he’s not. I haven’t seen anything concrete on Imelda yet, but I do assume she’d appear. We have at least four new characters, but nothing on who the new cast members will be playing.

Filming has already begun(!) at Ealing Studios, the studios they used when they filmed the TV show. And now they’ve been filming at Highclere Castle too!

Meanwhile, Rob gave us some clues on ITV’s This Morning:

- "someone goes for a bicycle ride" (easy, that’s the postman or whoever lol) - "someone has an argument" - "someone falls in love" - "someone falls out of love" - "someone goes to the shops"

As HWW said to me, perhaps it is not people that the characters are falling in and out of love with, but perhaps places, things, or ideas. And in the case of Thomas and Richard, it’s possible that they aren’t ‘over’, it’s just that they can’t see each other in the time frame of the film and maybe Thomas receives at least a letter from Richard or something. 

Now, what we don’t know, which is... mostly everything.

The timeline is a biggie, as it would definitely influence some of the plots. And it was something that really wasn’t confirmed for DA 2019 until after we got the trailer. The cast gave us vague ideas, but uh... let’s just say not all of them were correct.

Fellowes has always said that he wouldn’t take DA into the ‘30s, but he always used to say that he’d never work on DA and The Glided Age at the same time, and yet, here we are. I feel like he or Gareth mentioned at one point a sequel would follow closely to DA 2019 timeline wise. They had similarly said DA 2019 would follow closely after the TV show’s timeline, and that ended up being an 18 month gap.

Considering that DA 2021 is coming out during Christmas time, this makes me think that Christmas will be featured at some point. Not every DA Christmas Special did, but it’s festive, timely, and an event to help anchor the film and bring characters together.

The question then is, does it center around Christmas though? Of the three CSs that feature Christmas in some form (S6CS is really about New Year’s Eve, but the decorations and tree are still up), S2CS starts there but ends mid January of the next year, and S5CS and S6CS both start roughly in late summer, and then finish in late December (well 1 Jan in S6CS’ case).

One potential choice is to have it be set in December 1927 and then go into the next year, akin to S2CS. The S5/6 CS idea would set it in 1928 at the earliest.

Another thing factor to take into account here is Edith’s pregnancy. Fellowes skipped over showing Mary pregnant with Caroline in the first film and had her born before DA 2019, so the same might happen here again.

Other potential big events are perhaps a wedding between Daisy and Andy and/or Tom and Lucy.

And then the elephant in the room: Violet. Maggie’s said time and time again that Violet’s too old, and then we had the plot in DA 2019, which would set...  you know... that all up.

So like... filming outdoors in Bampton (where the town of Downton and the church was traditionally filmed for the TV series) is something is that is easily spoiled. They can put up screens to block the view around the church, but to also do it around the cemetery might be too telling. They did kinda manage with S6E8 (well, only kinda, ahem).

Thinking now about how members of the cast have said that DA 2021 will be coming at a time people are wanting/needing "escapism,” I don't think that discounts anything sad happening per se; a lot of people continued to call the TV series "escapism" when it got more darker (see: S4-5), and, I mean, people call Call the Midwife "cosy escapism" despite there being traumatic situations almost every episode it seems. So Violet's days could still very well be numbered. I remember how S3CS was marketed as a fun and frolicking trip to the Highlands, until the Norwegian channel NRK’s trailer for the episode came out and gave away that there was going to be a car accident. Escapism isn't the same for everyone anyway, so we'll have to see what this all entails. I don't necessarily want this for Violet, but I do hope that DA 2021 takes itself a bit more seriously, as the TV show did.

The first movie was written in a manner that was so that it was (somewhat?) understandable to people who didn’t watch the TV series. I have to wonder if DA 2021 has been written similarly. Part of me thinks it will be more similar to the first film than to the TV series, but with a potential sad plot for Violet... who knows, it might go back to its more “serial” roots (if that makes any sense). If DA 2021 also leans more into comedy as DA 2019, I don’t foresee it doing so but we’ll see.

That’s it for the this ramble! I have a topic for the next one regardless of the lack of crumbs! ;)

[e1e4n0r5]

A drop of tea to spill, just cos I need to put this into words

Seasons greetings, everyone. Even though I know I'm a bit late. For anyone who may be wondering why there was nothing on my blog to do with the holidays, or wondering why I haven't posted any original content in a good, long while, it's because 2019 has been a very shit year for me.

About this time last year (Nov 2018, to be precise) I started getting a lot of heartburn, acid, and indigestion, all coupled with the wonderful feeling in the top of my stomach and back of my throat that I constantly needed to yack. All the time. All day. Every day. With no relief.

So I go to the doctor and he diagnoses me with GORD, the fancy medical term for persistent acid reflux. He prescribes me some pills to help reduce my acid, and they do actually work...for a while.

Cut to Feb 2019 and I go back to the doctor (A totally different doctor sees me because that's just how my doctors surgery works) to discuss my prescription, because those pills I got in Nov are starting to give me side effects. Great. I talk with this 2nd doctor, who was lovely but seems quite perturbed that no investigation has been done into the cause of my reflux. After all, I am an otherwise perfectly healthy 26 (25 at the time) year old woman - why was I getting reflux out of nowhere???

He refers me for a breath test, which come back negative (Oh poop, that would have solved all my problems if it had been positive but hey-ho) Meanwhile I'm still taking these pills which are controlling the extra acid in my stomach but are still rocking my body with side effects. (TMI: nausea; diarrhoea; stomach pain, that is "pain of my stomach organ", like my stomach itself had been punched from the inside)

Please let it be known, up until about mid-May, despite these side effects, I was doing ok. Pretty good, I would say. Yes, there were days when I wasn't great. But overall, not too bad.

Then it gets to June, around my birthday. The side effects are getting worse and I'm starting to feel pretty shitty. No pun intended 😑 My parents go away for a week holiday and when they come back, I had apparently declined so much during those 7 days that they discussed it at length that night after I'd gone to bed. I was visibly worse, visibly sicker than I had been before they'd left, a mere 7 days ago. I was un-blissfully aware that my condition was indeed getting worse, seemingly by the day.

Never the less, I carried on as best I could.

This leads me to one night in June when I almost collapsed during a fitness class because I had felt so sick and in pain in my stomach. This episode actually caused my mother to contemplate calling for an ambulance to take me to hospital because I looked and felt so ill.

I have a phone call with another doctor (doctor #3) the next day, explaining my on-going issues with this first pill, the side effects, and my almost-collapse the night before. He prescribes me a different, gentler pill than the one I was on, in hopes that the side effects would not be as drastic. Well, he was correct. I did not have side effects from pill #2...Because pill #2 did not work against the stomach acid and I was crippled in less than 3 days.

Another phone call with a doctor (I honestly don't remember who I spoke to, everything was a blur at that point) and he tells me to go back to my old pills for the time being, but that he would also prescribe another pill, stronger than #2 but not as strong as #1, so it should control the acid but hopefully have less side effects.

(If anyone is still reading, thank you and I love you)

So I go back to pill #1 and with everything going on with this illness and my job, I just forget to collect pill #3.

About a week goes by, I'm still sick, I still have acid, the side effects have kicked in again now that I was back on pill #1, and I almost collapse for a second time at the same fitness class.

At that point, enough was enough. I had had it with this stupid acid and the stupid pills and the doctors not helping me feel better, so I booked an appointment with a private specialist, but that appointment was still 3 weeks away.

I go to work the next morning (the day after my second episode) and people can tell I'm not myself. My mum happens to call me just as I was putting my bags down at my desk, to check in on me, see how I was feeling that morning after what happened the night before. And I break down.

I have to find a private room because I am so upset, so distressed, and still feeling so ill. I am in tears on the phone with my mother, and we decide together that I had to go home, I was not fit to work, and I had to see a doctor that morning. Not just have a phone call, but actually see and speak to a doctor so that they could actually look at me and see how ill I was for themselves.

I manage to stop crying, get myself together a little, and pull my supervisor out of a meeting to tell her that I needed to go home. When she saw me with tears drying on my cheeks, she knew something was seriously wrong. As a rule, I don't cry when I'm upset. My colleagues had never seen me cry before, or even get slightly upset, so when I started crying again while speaking to this supervisor, the whole team knew how bad I had gotten. I manage to stutter out that I wasn't well and needed to go home and needed to see a doctor, and I headed home.

When I got home, my mother was on the phone was the doctors surgery, telling them that I needed an urgent appointment and that if they couldn't fit me in, we would be going to hospital because I could not wait for a regular appointment and I needed to be seen by a doctor that day.

They give me an appointment for that morning and my mother comes with me, to make sure that the doctor takes me seriously and doesn't just give me some new pill and tell me everything would be fine.

Because I felt like I was dying. I knew there was something wrong inside me, something was wrong with my body, and I felt like it was going to kill me if we didn't catch it. Whatever this was would be listed as Cause of Death on the certificate if I didn't get help. I didn't know what it was or how it would be treated, but I felt like I was dying, and I had felt that way for a while.

We go to the doctors and we're seen by a lovely female doctor who was very kind and sympathetic, and agreed that something had to be done urgently to help me. The first thing she did was sign me off work for 2 weeks, so I could rest and recuperate a little, take away the stress of work so that my body could get out of the fight-or-flight mode it had been in for the past several weeks.

The second thing was to refer me for an urgent procedure which would examine my stomach internally and see if there was anything physically wrong with it. I collected pill #3 from the pharmacy while we were there, which I started the next day.

One week later, I have the test at hospital, and finally we were given an answer. 7 months after that first appointment, 3 medications, half a dozen urgent phone calls, and being signed off work, finally led to an answer.

Hiatal hernia, 3cm.

A hiatal hernia happens when a portion of your stomach slips through the opening in your diaphragm muscle where your oesophagus joins with your stomach and that portion of your stomach ends up lodged in your chest cavity.

Fun.

This isn't a life-threatening condition, it's not even treated as a serious one. It's incredibly common, and research says that approximately 50% of patients with hiatal hernias don't even experience any symptoms.

Lucky bastards. Mine had me convinced I was dying.

Having that answer, that diagnosis did help. I wasn't dying. This was not serious, I would be ok.

Next came the question of what to do with this diagnosis. Several people I know have had their hernias for years and manage perfectly fine with no issues, complaints, or the need for medication.

So I could either learn how to manage it with the right medication, or seek surgery.

I went back to the doctor a few weeks later to discuss these options, and myself and the same lovely doctor who saw me That Day agreed that I would give it a few months and see how I fared on this new pill, pill #3 that I had been taking for about 3 or 4 weeks at that point.

Pill #3 did work better than #2, but alas had the same side effects as pill #1, admittedly to a lesser degree.

I gave pill #3 about 3 months, before I requested a new prescription, as it was now only, say, 90% effective against the acid and was still giving me side effects.

In comes pill #4. The doctor (not the lovely female doctor, a different doctor on the phone) explains that #4 is slightly stronger than #3 so should be more effective against the acid.

Nope.

Pill #4 did not help with my acid at all and came with even more side effects that #3. All cons, no pros.

Back to #3 only about 10 days later.

I go back to pill #3 for a while and just try to manage the side effects as best I can.

But about a month ago (mid-Nov 2019) pill #3 seems to just...stop working?? Out of nowhere?? I woke up one morning with stomach acid, and it wouldn't go away. I didn't think much of it, after all some days were worse than others. I just assumed I was having a bad day. But the next day, I had that acid feeling as well. And the next day. And the next. Before I knew it, it had been an entire week of that bad acid feeling, even though I was still taking pill #3 at the same dose I had been for several months. Nothing had changed, yet the pill wasn't working anymore.

Another phone call, another pill. Pill #5, which is where we are now. I've been on #5 for around 2 weeks, and I still don't feel great.

I have a specialist consultation booked for January, and I will be officially seeking corrective surgery.

Thank you for sticking with me while I try and sort my shit out.

TLDR: had a very shit year so haven't been creative or in the holiday spirit

[imyourliquor-youremypoison]

Hjem(løs)  - Ivar x OC - Modern AU - Part 2

*Hjem(løs) = Home(less)

Synopsis: It's Juleaften and Silje walks home from a late Christmas shopping spree. On her way back to her apartment, she makes an unexpected encounter.

Word count: 8.3k

Part 1 <<< >>> Part 3

MASTERLIST

However, that didn't prevent him from keeping an eye open. Like an invisible guardian making sure nothing bad happened to her, Ivar stayed in the same area as Silje for a while. It was borderline creepy, Ivar was well aware of it, but he felt like he owed her big time, and if the only way he could repay her was to lurk in dark alleys and make sure no creep was following her home, then he would do it. There were worse places in Copenhagen to hang out; Silje's neighbourhood was lively and overall safe - which made him wonder why he felt entitled to become her guardian angel at all, and from what exactly he was trying to protect her, but that was a place he didn't want to let his mind wander.

He had no idea how much longer he could persuade himself that he was only staying here for her sake. Truth is that he could not bring himself to walk away and wave goodbye to the possibility of ever running into Silje again. It had been quite a while since Jul, be he could not move on from their meeting. The need to see her again was strong, though not as strong as Ivar's reason telling him to stay at a distance. He had no right to bust in her door after a month without any explanation. He had no right at all to even talk to her again. He was giving himself headaches from thinking about this too much.

Therefore he remained in his dark alleys and on his isolated benches. Anger bubbled up inside of him whenever he saw her walk by, carelessly strutting home to the tune of some song blasting in her earphones. She didn't notice him – why would she? People don't look at homeless people, and homeless people don't like being looked at. She represented quite the temptation though. On the one hand he was pulled towards her like a magnet, on the other, he knew it would be wrong of him to give in.

It was snowing today. Ivar's fingers were blue and he hadn't felt the tip of his nose in four days. Strangely enough, he still felt good – maybe not fine, but good. There was peace in the air. People were still high off the bliss brought by the winter holidays, and the new year. Not to mention that he remembered how much Silje loved snow. Fuck, he was being ridiculous. She would make fun of him if he said his thoughts out loud. He had to fucking move on and stop nearly interfering with her life again.

So far he hadn't done anything, he hadn't uttered a word as she walked down the street across from his new sleeping bench. He looked up, smiled a little when he saw her mouth the lyrics to a song he couldn't hear, and hid his face in his scarf. As much as it caused his heart sink in his stomach each time he saw her strut by, simultaneously so close and so far out of reach, it still made him feel better to know that she was doing all right. It helped him sleep at night at least.

“Hey! Watch it man!” Someone yelled at him when he accidentally bumped into their shoulder. He had zoned out again. “Fucking hobo!” The other man grumbled in his beard, shooting a nasty glare at Ivar.

Today was not the day to mess with Ivar. As quick tempered as he usually was, tonight was worse and if this guy took so much as a second to think before speaking, he would have kept his mouth shut.

“What? Is the side walk not large enough for you?” Ivar barked back. He was so tired of being treated like a dog with rabies. “Bloody idiot.”

“What did you just say?!” The guy turned around to face Ivar. He was taller and broader than him, but there was no backing out now. It was like a switch that flipped inside Ivar.

“Is your masculinity so feeble that you cross homeless people merely to show off your steroid induced muscles?” Ivar heard his voice snap at the increasingly furious stranger. He couldn't help the cocky smirk on his face just like he couldn't help the scoff that followed his declaration.

It was too late to try and get out of this situation. Ivar had let his frustration and anger take control of his actions and he was about to face the consequences. The man was red in the face and looked about to blow up. Meanwhile Ivar tensed his entire body, ready to receive a blow. After all maybe that is what he wanted, or needed. Nothing like a sucker punch right in the jaw to put one's ideas back in place. If this guy hit hard enough maybe he would knock Silje right out of Ivar's mind.

He had no idea how much he craved a good fight until this very moment. Ivar's hand itched to throw a blow himself. He clenched it into a fist before stretching his fingers again. His knuckles hurt from the cold despite his gloves. He saw it coming and raised his arms in defence when the man's fist was mid-air but it hardly did anything so soften the blow. Clearly, Ivar had underestimated his adversary.

It all went black rather quickly after that.

*

“Skål!” Her friends all cheered, the sound of beer bottles clanking together filling the air.

It was accompanied by heartfelt laughter and the distinctive smell of alcohol. Silje was not a huge fan of beer and only drank one so her friends would stop pestering her about it; now they are already too intoxicated to notice that she was drinking tea. Her palm was held up toward the sky in an attempt to catch a few snowflakes but they melted the second they touched her skin.

The results of the first semester just came out and her friends dragged her to this picnic table in the middle of a park to celebrate. Although it was freezing, the alcohol running in their systems kept them warm enough to keep the party going, attracting the attention of passers-by with their music and loud chatter. Her tea wasn't doing that good of a job at keeping her limbs from getting numb, and neither did her skirt and tights.

“I'm going to head home” she declared only to earn a round of protest and teasing about how early she left. “I'm tired,” Silje objected when one of her classmate slung his arm around her shoulders to try and make her stay. “And cold. You can continue this party without me and I can celebrate in my apartment, wrapped in a warm blanket.”

“You are such a grandma!” Her friend snickered playfully as he shoved her in the arm. “Go, I'll distract them while you flee.”

Before he or anyone else could change their mind and decide to chain on her the bench with a beer in her hand, Silje stood up, gathered her belongings and stuffed them in her backpack as she walked away. While the music of their improvised party faded, Silje turned up the volume of her own and closed her eyes. It was a gentle night, the snow fell steadily and slowly from the sky, the kind of night you spent sitting in front of your window and looking outside.

However Silje had no intention of going home right away to find comfort in the many blankets she owned. As most days, she settled on a part of the city and wandered through the streets in search of - in desperate hope of finding – Ivar. She had regretted her decision of letting him leave the second she saw his dark figure walk away from her building. It was stupid really, but she wanted some kind of assurance to see him again, a means to contact him.

She expected him to wave, or smile, or do something but he merely disappeared in the shadows and from her life. Today was the 27th of January, over a month since the last time she saw him, and already she was beginning to forget what he looked like. The brevity of their encounter, although intense, had left a bitter-sweet taste in her mouth. She felt guilty – for not doing more for him, for not understanding his situation, for not sharing his problems. It was pointless to dwell on these things but here she was, roaming aimlessly through streets she didn't know, at night.

Somehow she knew this would enrage him if he knew – he made it very clear during their conversations that he thought it was reckless and careless for her to walk around at night in dark passageways. This forced a smile on her face and she let out a silent laugh, her hot breath visible in the air. Silje took out her earphones for a second. She thought it might help her find him if Ivar was around but the music and conversations coming out of the bars in this area drowned out any other noise.

She had been walking for half an hour when she decide that it was enough. It was late and cold. She'd look again tomorrow. It was time to head back and hide in these blankets she told her friends about. Someone wolf-whistled and Silje's head whipped to the right to see where it came from. There was a group of four or five boys staring at her. She scrunched up her nose in distaste and ignored them. They protested and called for her but she put her earphones back on.

“Jerks,” she grumbled to herself when even with her music she could hear their shouts.

“Hey!” Someone suddenly grabbed her by the shoulder and jerked her back. “I'm talking to you, bitch!”

As any girl would in her situation, Silje tensed up and her blood ran cold in her veins. Already cold sweat was forming in the nap of her neck – the instinctive response to a man raising his voice at her and being aggressive. She counted to ten in her head to gather herself and calm down. She got this, there was no reason for her to panic, she could handle the situation. There was no room for fear right now, she had to show this jackass that she wasn't some little mouse he could intimidate into talking to him.

After a short moment, Silje felt confident enough to look up and meet his eyes. The way he looked at her made her want to vomit in her mouth. Disgusting. Revolting. Clearly this guy was not familiar with the concept of a woman not being interested.

“And I'm ignoring you, asshole. Are we done stating the obvious?”

It was pretty ballsy and she might regret it but the words were out now, she couldn't take them back. One of the dude's friends whistled as she said that, apparently admiring the nerve she had to talk to him like that.

“What? You think you're too good for me?” The guy snarled, eyeing Silje up and down in a distasteful manner. “You're not even that hot, you should be flattered.”

“Oh be still my beating heart,” she said sarcastically as she rolled her eyes. “There, happy? Let me go now before I scream bloody murder and get the cops on your ass for assault.”

She would do it. She was ready to. At this point sarcasm was merely a defence mechanism. It took all of her concentration not to tremble like a leaf.

“Jeez! Girls nowadays can't take a compliment anymore!” He exclaimed but still let her go.

“You just told me I wasn't even hot, in what world is that a compliment? You need to work on your approach techniques dude.”

He grumbled a few more insults under his breath but he was already stepping back. He was obviously not happy about this defeat but his friends were laughing and telling him she wasn't worth the trouble so he let it slide. When she was sure they left, Silje carefully placed her earphones back on, hands shaking and eyes prickling, and she turned around to resume her walking. Just when she thought she might have to make a detour in case they decided to follow her home, she stumbled on something and almost fell.

She caught herself in extremis by reaching out for the corner of a wall, scratching her hands in the process. A string of curses tumbled down her lips while she rubbed her palm on her coat to get rid of the dirt, then she looked down to see what made her trip. When her eyes fell on the metallic cylinder on the floor, she thought they might pop out of her head.

That she would recognize anywhere. It was her Thermos. The one with the mismatched lid she had given to Ivar a month ago.

“Ivar,” she whispered, hoping against hope. “Ivar!”

On her feet she was before she had the time to think about it, nearly falling once again. Her hand found the Thermos and clung to it for dear life as she stumbled into the alley on her right.

“Ivar you bastard, if you're here say something!” She shouted this time, making sure that the entire neighbourhood heard her. “I swear I'm going to drag your hobo ass out of the hole you're hiding in!”

Her threats mustn't have been very convincing since no one answered, or maybe he simply wasn't here anymore. After a few more seconds of listening intently, one sound stood out of the distant music from the nearby bars. Faint, almost inaudible laughter.

“That the best you got, woman?” The strained but already so familiar voice of Ivar asked from the shadows.

Silje dived down towards the source of the voice and her hands found him before her eyes did. Her fingers grasped at the material of his clothes and Silje did as she promised and dragged him out of the darkness and into the light of the nearest street lamp. She only let go when he groaned.

“Shit, where did you get that strength from?” He asked, a bit out of breath.

Now that she could see his face Silje understood why he sounded in pain. The entire left side of his face was bruised and swelled. He had a black eye and a split lip; the blood had dried on his wounds.

“Don't say anything,” she ordered him, already taking his chin in between her fingers to better examine his beaten face. “You look like a bloody mess.” Her voice was stern but gentle.

“You look beautiful.”

“And you're delirious!” Silje exclaimed, her hand flying up to feel his forehead. “You have a bit of fever. How long have you been here in this state?”

“Few- hours-” he said, short breathed already. “Silje.”

He simply said her name with no intention of saying anything else, but it got her attention at last and she looked into his blue eyes, pleading her. Her hand let go of his chin and she moved it to his shoulder.

“I wanna hug you and punch you so bad right now,” Silje said between her teeth. “Come back with me. I'll fix you up, we're not too far from my apartment.”

“I can't- my legs... fuck. They messed up my legs,” he whined pitifully and winced in pain, his eyes drifting from hers to his legs. “I can't walk.”

“Even if you lean on me?” She asked hopefully. He shrugged but was already trying to stand up, willing to try anything to get out of the gutter he had put himself into. “We only have a couple streets to walk before reaching my place. You can do this.”

The strain was visible on his face etched with agony. Silje's arms were there to support him and help him up, no matter how much bigger he was, she was not about to complain or leave him to his fate. She had looked for him, she had found him, and now she was going to be true to her word and drag his ass back to her apartment, even up the five floors if she had to.

It was a lot harder said than done, but not impossible. She had no means to establish exactly how much pain Ivar was in because he hadn't said a word during their slow progression through the streets. His mind was entirely focused on not screaming or collapsing on the floor. The vein on his temple throbbed menacingly, if that was any indicator of the ache he currently endured. Nothing would have prepared either of them for the trial it represented to climb up so many stairs with only Silje's tiring legs to get to the top.

“Just leave me here, you won't make it with me,” Ivar groaned with difficulty.

“We're almost there, two more floors to go,” she said, completely ignoring his resigned tone. “Quit being a drama queen.”

“You killing me, Silje!”

“Oh is that what I'm doing? Funny because I thought I was once again saving you from the cold harsh world. A little gratitude would be welcome, you know? And I know precisely how you can repay me. I have a monstrous pile of dirty dishes waiting in the sink just for you.”

“This makes me want to stay in the staircase even more,” Ivar sighed, holding his breath each time they ascended another step.

“If you're well enough to make jokes then you're also well enough to climb up a few more steps,” Silje declared confidently. “We've made it this far, Ivar.”

“So stubborn,” he grumbled again though she thought she detected a hint of admiration in his voice, but maybe she was hearing things. “I am not joking, my legs are killing me.”

“Well what do you want me to do about it? I suspect you don't want me to bring you to the hospital, do you?”

He stiffened against her side and glared at her.

“I don't have money to pay for healthcare, you know this.”

“I do, that's why you're going to crash on my couch and I'll call my brother. He'll come and examine you properly. I don't know how to assert the extent of your injuries but he can,” she assured him but it did little to nothing to calm him down, in fact it had the opposite effect.

“Which brother?” He asked warily.

“Ubbe,” Silje managed a laugh even though she was exhausted. “The one you've met.”

“I remember Ubbe,” Ivar huffed.

Suddenly they realised they had made it. Silje's front door was standing right there. No more stairs. Black dots danced before her eyes and sweat trickled down her spine but they had made it.

“I remember the way he almost crushed my hand while shaking it,” Ivar added, a little out of breath but nothing compared to Silje's state of breathlessness and sweatiness.

“That's just his way of saying hello,” she said and with a little wave of the hand to gesture him it was nothing worth getting grey hair over. “I am in strong need of a shower.”

She managed to help Ivar onto the couch, both of them sighing in relief when their seemingly never-ending journey finally ended. She told him that she would call her brother then hop in the shower, and that she was all his after that.

It took a little more time and energy than she expected to convince her brother to get out of bed, grab the crutches they'd given him after his injury and come over to her place, all of this to look at Ivar's legs.

“Ivar? Who's Ivar?” Ubbe had asked, only to remember the moment he said his name. “Oh, the guy from Juleaften? What happened?”

“I don't know yet, okay? Just come, it's important and quite urgent too.”

He complied after two more minutes of convincing, and Silje was finally allowed a moment of peace. She got Ivar a glass of water and a pillow, then took her well-deserved shower. When she opened the front door fifteen minutes later, her hair was still wet, her previous clothes discarded by the bathroom door, and Ivar was grunting on the couch, trying not to move his legs. Their tumultuous journey had woken up the wound, it throbbed and deformed his attractive features into an expression of anger and pain.

“Come with me,” Silje grabbed Ubbe's arm to lead him right in front of Ivar. “It's his legs. I need you to examine him.”

“What are you now, a doctor?” Ivar spat. It was the pain speaking, not him, Ubbe knew better and he simply smirked. “I thought you were a reject soldier.”

“Big mouth, eh?” Ubbe huffed and knelt down by his legs. “Didn't serve you well from what I can see. And no, I'm not a doctor, but soldiers are trained to tend to their companions if something were to happen on the field. Landmine explosion for instance. That shit can blow your legs off.”

“I didn't step on a fucking landmine,” Ivar barked back. “Those assholes beat me up.”

He didn't specify that he provoked them but the siblings shared a look that spoke volumes. They knew he wasn't just randomly attacked. Ivar didn't say anything after that and allowed Ubbe to feel his legs and assert his injuries.

“Are they broken?” Silje asked after a couple minutes, not holding it in anymore.

Ivar hadn't realised how worried she really was up until now. Her foot tapped on the floor at a fast pace, one of her arms rested across her chest while the other held her hand up in front of her mouth. Her eyes did not budge from her brother once while he took a look at Ivar's messed up legs.

“No,” Ubbe said, earning a round of relieved sighs. “Wait before popping the champagne. That was the good news. The bad news is that while I can tell that your legs aren't broken, I can't guarantee that your tibia bones aren't shattered. And worst of all your left knee is out of joint. Did you walk here?”

“Hardly,” Ivar said with a little one-shoulder shrug.

“Well, you must be a tough motherfucker, because that hurts like hell. I can put it back in place but I should warn you that this is usually done under anaesthesia,” Ubbe explained under Silje's increasingly anxious gaze.

He looked Ivar straight in the eye without budging, like a real solider. Ubbe's relaxed demeanour from Juleaften was gone, his face was plain and serious, his mind focused on the task at hand, and no room was left for jokes.

“I can take it,” Ivar assured him.

“Sil,” Ubbe called his sister, waking her from her fear induced trance. “Get him something to bite into, a wooden spoon, a folded towel.”

She did as she was asked without uttering a word and soon came back with what he asked, leaving him to choose which of the two he preferred. Ivar simply grabbed the spoon and put it in his mouth.

“All right, here goes nothing,” Ubbe said, positioning his hands around Ivar's knee. “Silje don't look.”

He didn't need to tell her, she was already putting a conscious effort into staring out of the window instead of looking at the two boys in front of her. The towel would have worked better to muffle Ivar's pained groans and cries. Silje's hand shot up to her mouth and she had to turn around. Tears prickled her eyes but she swallowed them back. There was no time for this, Ivar was the one suffering, she could act like a weak little thing later. Right now she had to get her shit together.

“It's done,” Ubbe declared and after a few more seconds of panting, Ivar took the spoon out of his mouth. It hit the floor with a loud clatter. “He'll need a knee brace. Sil can you get him one?”

She nodded, still shaking.

“Y-yes, I have a friend who had one a few weeks ago, I can ask him.”

“Good. And you-” Ubbe's attention went back to Ivar. “If you don't want to end up at the ER, you have to rest until your bones heal and your muscles recover from the beating. Where do you live? I can drive you back. Do you have someone to take care of you? Because you won't be able to make it through this alone.”

“He does. I'll take care of him,” Silje stated firmly, two puzzled gazes turning to her. “He's staying here.”

“What if he doesn't want to crash on your couch for the following month?” Ubbe replied, pointing at Ivar as though he wasn't here. “Because that's how long I would suggest he doesn't use his bad leg.”

“He'll be fine,” Silje assured her brother.

“Bu-” He started but was interrupted by Ivar.

“I'm homeless, man!” To say that it cast a cold in the room would be minimising this. “The couch is fine.” In the state he was in, anything would have worked, he was tired enough to fall asleep standing. Not that he would be doing much of that from now on.

Ubbe stood up abruptly, almost knocking over the coffee table.

“What the fuck?” He exclaimed, looking at his sister.

“Not now, Ubbe,” Silje sighed and rubbed her face. “Thank you for coming, and for the crutches. We'll talk later, okay?”

“No, not okay, you can't just make me come here in the middle of the night during work week only to have me examine a homeless dude who got into a fight, then tell me you'll have him sleep on your couch and not give me a stellar explanation!”

“It sounds terrible when you put it like that but it's not as shady as it sounds,” she promised him. “Come now.” She gestured him to follow her to the door, away from Ivar's curious ears. “Ivar is my friend. I'm not going to turn my back on him when he's injured.”

“But he is homeless,” Ubbe protested with vehemence as if he was making a valid point. He wasn't.

“That does not define him. Listen, we'll argue tomorrow, okay? I'm tired and I think Ivar has a bit of fever.”

She must have sounded particularly worn out because Ubbe closed his mouth – for now at least – and opened the door. The trained soldier he was recognized the priorities but he would not let her go away with this.

“This conversation is not over-” he told her with a warning finger pointed at her. He pushed his sister to the side and walked up to Ivar who barely managed to open his eyes when Ubbe called him. “And you-” he started sternly. “-I meant what I said. You don't jump around, you don't try to exercise, you don't run, you don't even walk anywhere apart from the bathroom and the kitchen, anything farther than that is too far for you until I say it isn't anymore.” He looked furious but also determined to help him heal. “In case I'm not being clear enough, my sister's bedroom is off limits.” He had whispered the last part for only Ivar to hear – and he did hear it loud and clear.

“Yes sir,” he mumbled in response, barely conscious at this point.

Ubbe walked back to his sister who was still waiting by the door. “Don't post-pone our conversation for too long or I'll have to tell the others.”

Contrary to Ivar though, Silje wasn't about to pass out and wasn't in the mood to get intimidated by her big brother.

“Hvisterk already knows about Ivar anyway. Sigurd wouldn't care, and if Bjorn learns that you let a homeless stranger sleep in my apartment, you'll be the one in trouble. Goodnight brother.” Silje smiled and shut the door before Ubbe could find something else to threaten her with.

Her shoulders slumped down and she leaned against the door just or a few seconds, to catch her breath and get a small break from the intense last hour she had. When she felt she was ready to go at it again, she went back to Ivar, once again put her hand on his forehead and told him to stay awake just a little bit longer – his eyelids were droopy but she didn't want him to fall asleep before changing him and giving him some medicine to reduce the fever. It required another twenty minutes to accomplish these tasks but when she was finally done and Ivar was about to fall asleep in his new dry and warm clothes, she felt rather happy with herself. In an ideal world Ivar would take a shower too but they were both too exhausted for that. Tomorrow would be there soon enough and if they were lucky, by then Ivar's fever would break and his knee wouldn't feel like it was on fire anymore.

“Are we good now?” Ivar mumbled, fighting off sleep as best he could.

“Yes, we're good,” Silje told him, gently pushing some of his hair out of his face. “You can go to sleep. Hopefully you'll feel better tomorrow.”

She had a feeling he was already asleep mid-sentence and didn't even hear the end. A little smile tugged at her lips but it vanished quickly. This reunion was a bitter-sweet one – light years away from what she had imagined. Finding her friend beaten and feverish in the shadow of a container in a small back alley was not how she had hoped to find Ivar – actually the romantic inside her was convinced that despite her searching through the streets, she would end up bumping into him in that same park where they first met.

Soon her living room was filled with the light and steady snores of Ivar and she smiled again. Exhaustion washed over her and Silje lost no time in changing into her pyjamas and turning off the lights. Whatever happened today was over and it was time to breathe again.

*

“Ivar... Ivar. Ivar!”

The voice sounded distant, like an echo. But whoever was calling him seemed to get closer and closer each time they called his name. At first he wanted to groan and turn around, tell whoever was disturbing his sleep to go away and leave him in peace – the voice became too loud. But he realised that they weren't shouts.

“Ivar,” he heard again, more aware of the proximity of its source. He felt something heavy on his forehead and winced. It was cold too. “Ivar, open your eyes.”

He did not want to but the voice was soothing and warm, so he complied. His eyelids fluttered open, and he was glad to see that it wasn't too bright in the room. His eyes finally glanced towards the form next to him and he was met with Silje's worried gaze.

“Welcome back,” she told him with a somewhat tense smile. “How do you feel?”

“What-” shit his mouth was dry. “-what time is it? How long was I out?” He asked, ignoring her question. He felt awful, like a truck ran him over - twice.

“It's almost six in the evening, you slept over sixteen hours.”

“Did you sleep?”

“Not much. Believe it or not I went to class today,” she told him with a huff, as if wondering what the hell she was thinking. She didn't want to go but she had an important presentation and her professors didn't know or care about the fact that she gave shelter to an injured homeless man. “The three longest hours of my life, I thought I'd come home to your dead body lying on my couch.”

“You're the worst- caretaker- ever,” Ivar painfully breathed out. The air didn't come easy in his lungs, like something weighted down on his chest.

“Here,” Silje said and handed him a glass of water. “Need help?”

Ivar shook his head no and propped himself up on one elbow to down the water.

“I trust you're a fighter, you wouldn't let a fever get the best of you,” she chuckled.

“You just said-” Ivar started but left his sentence unfinished, simply gesturing to her with his right hand and hoping she would understand.

“I was worried, can you blame me? I was hoping your fever would get down a little bit. I probably should have woken you up to give you your medicine but you looked like you needed the sleep,” Silje explained, already reaching down to grab something Ivar could not see from where he was lying. “It's probably for the best that I'm not trying to become a nurse, right?”

“Your brother would make a better nurse,” Ivar began to laugh but it turned into a cough. “I bet he'd look pretty in the uniform.”

“God, I can't tell if this is the fever speaking or if you're really a on death wish. Do not say that in front of Ubbe or next time you wound up beaten up he'll refuse to take a look at you.”

“Just you wait until I'm better. I bet I can take him any time,” Ivar kept bragging.

Silje's hand reached out and brushed his hair out of his face. His forehead was sticky and his hair greasy. It was a tad longer than last time she saw him and his beard had grown back. The contact of her fresh hand against his hot skin made Ivar close his eyes in delight and lean into her touch. Next thing he knew Silje was giving him pills to swallow and asked that he sit up.

“I know it's painful but you have to get up, you need to take a shower.” Dread must have been written all over his face because she quickly added, “It'll make you feel better and I'll help you.”

“You'll help me shower? Like a baby?” He grumbled in complain. “How do you plan on doing this anyway? I can't stand on my left leg and I can't take a bath either.”

“Actually you can, I had it fixed,” Silje declared with a wide smile. She put her arms on the couch and rested her chin on her joined hands. “I think it'll suffice if I help you in the tub, you can take it from there. Unless you feel like getting a hair massage?”

“I feel like dying,” Ivar said, ever so positive and joyful.

“You're a ray of sunshine Ivar,” Silje laughed. “I'm glad you're fine. This might sound weird but I missed you – you really have a talent in bickering back and forth with me.”

“Don't you have enough brothers to fill up that role?” He wondered, trying to stand up with Silje's help.

Like yesterday, she let him lean on her and together, they stumbled across the room and to the bathroom. Ivar sat on the lid of the toilet. Silje ran his bath and turned on the wall heater to hang the towels on it.

“Apparently not,” she sighed, her hand lingering under the running water to see if it was hot enough. “They are a lot of things but intellectually stimulating is not one of them. I love them all but they can be a little boorish and obtuse at times.”

“Dunno.” Ivar shrugged. “Ubbe seemed pretty sharp to me when he examined my leg. The look in his eyes-”

“-you were on the receiving end of the soldier stare,” Silje laughed. “It rarely shows but it's scary when it does, it means shit's going down. After his injury, Ubbe wasn't the same; he had this look in his eyes all the time. But he's getting used to civilian life again, with Margrethe's help.”

“His girlfriend?”

“His fiancée,” Silje corrected him. “They are getting married in August.”

After that he didn't say anything anymore. Ivar stayed quiet until it was time to strip and get into the tub.

“I won't look,” Silje promised him when his fingers tugged at his belt to unbuckle it. She had no idea how she would accomplish that because she hardly managed to keep her eyes off his naked chest, but if she had to close her eyes to give him some privacy then she would do it.

“I didn't say anything,” Ivar replied, a smirk appearing on his face as he looked at her.

Silje couldn't help the blush on her cheeks but she didn't answer to his shameless flirting. He was feverish, he didn't think what he said – that's what she repeated to herself like a mantra while he finished taking off his remaining clothes while leaning on her to keep his balance. The girl let him take the lead and get into the tub on his own while trying her best to keep his weight off the bag leg.

“There. Will you be okay?” She asked him when he was in the water. Thank the gods, bubbles hid most of his body.

“Sure,” Ivar assured her. He raised his hand out of the water and flicked it at Silje, throwing drops of soapy water at her face and making her close her eyes. “I'll call you if I need help.”

“You won't try to get out of the tub by yourself to prove a point?” She asked just to make sure, squinting her eyes at him. “No misplaced pride? You call as soon as you're done, yeah?”

“Whatever,” he sighed and rolled his eyes but she didn't move a muscle. Silje would stay where she was, kneeling next to the tub and staring sternly at him as long as she wasn't sure he wouldn't do anything stupid. “I promise, okay? Now let me bathe, woman!” He flicked some more water at her and they both smiled.

Without another word, Silje walked out of the room, closed the door, then leaned against it and slid to the floor. Damn this boy.

*

Three weeks had passed and Silje was forced to admit that Ivar was far from the model patient. And she sure as hell would never become a nurse, that was final.

He was grumpy, stubborn, unwilling to comply, restless, capricious, and a bunch of other non-flattering adjectives. Silje was just about done with him. Then again, in spite of his foul behaviour when the pain kicked in, he was still of good company the rest of the time. He never voiced it but Silje knew that he only acted the way he did because he felt useless with his injured leg. It itched him to get up and get something done – she noticed he was particularly irritable whenever he sat on the couch, his legs resting on a cushion on the coffee table, while Silje ran around tiding and cleaning the apartment.

“This is ridiculous, let me help,” he grumbled for the hundredth time. Each time Silje laughed and told him to shut up. “I'm serious Silje, I'll go mad if I have to stay here any longer.”

“I've been cleaning my apartment on my own long before you crashed on my couch, I think I can handle this,” she reminded him. “Do something else to keep you busy. Read a book, learn sign language, knit a sweater.”

“Do you think I am an old lady?” He scoffed, obviously offended. “I need to get up, my muscles are stiffening from lack of use.”

If he was still bargaining instead of simply getting up my himself it meant that the pain was still too strong for him to do so. Silje stopped vacuuming the floor and pushed her hair out of her face to look at him and give him a scolding glare.

“We've been through this conversation already,” she said. “As long as Ubbe doesn't give you the green light, your ass is glued to the couch.”

“I'm sure I can stand on my leg, he just wants me to stay a cripple a little longer because he doesn't like me staying with you,” he argued, pointing a finger at Silje. She rolled her eyes and resumed vacuuming.

“Fine, you win. If you insist so much gather my mugs and put them in the sink, and put the bath towels in the washing machine,” she told him.

Those were easy tasks he could perform with his knee brace and crutches. As though she had just provided him with a life purpose, Ivar stood up, trying to conceal his wince of pain, and did as he was told. Silje couldn't wait for his leg to heal. Faint laughter came from the bathroom a few minutes later when Silje was putting away the vacuum cleaner and she peeked inside. A furious blush crept on her face when she saw him standing by the washing machine with her freshly washed underwear in his hands.

“I can't tell which one I like best,” he said, turning his head toward her, a boyish grin on his handsome face. His black eye had faded now, the wounds from his fight disappeared almost completely – the only remaining trace being the healing split lip.

In his left hand Ivar was holding Silje's cat knickers with the two little ears on the back, and in his right hand were her more revealing and expensive bottoms. Her mouth was ajar and she couldn't find anything to say for a solid ten seconds, then she gathered her wits.

“What are you, five?” She asked, her eyebrows shooting up and her arms crossing over her chest.

The way he looked at the underwear and then at her was purely indecent and certainly not how a five year old would behave. His wolfish smile sent shivers down Silje's spine and she dropped her arms to her sides and stood a little straighter. There was no knowing if he was messing with her or not, Ivar was difficult to read. He was a huge flirt, which made it increasingly hard for Silje to keep her cool around him. One day she was going to pin him against a wall with no warning and he won't see it coming.

“C'mon, Silje,” Ivar began. “Do you think I am that innocent?”

However today was not the day. She refused to answer this and engage on this slippery slope. Ivar was playing with her, he wanted to elicit a reaction.

“I can tell you where I bought them if you want the same,” she said, enjoying seeing his smirk drop. “They make bunny ones too.”

Defeated and disappointed, Ivar turned away from her. He mumbled something about her taking the fun out of everything, and went back to his task.

The comedy lasted another week, until Ubbe came along again and told him he could walk again.

“Not running a marathon, hear me?” He added right away when he saw Ivar's face light up. “You keep the leg brace, and you use the crutches. But you can take a walk, go grocery shopping or whatever you do with you time usually.”

“How thrilling. Might as well pick up an apron and settle down if I'm going to spend the rest of my days limping around,” he immediately complained, throwing his head against the back of the couch.

Ubbe patted his shoulder. Silje had called him a couple days after Ivar's injury and explained everything, which had considerably reduced Ubbe's hostility towards the young man. But not completely either.

“Can you lay off the drama for a second?” Silje huffed from the kitchenette. “Rejoice,” she told him in an overly optimistic voice. “You are now allowed to set foot outside of these four walls. Maybe you won't be as grumpy after some fresh air.”

That prediction came true. After his first walk Ivar was already less of a pain in the ass and stopped behaving like a child. Funnily enough, the nearest green area was Vestre Kirkegård which meant that Ivar and Silje regularly walked past the bench where she found him. He savoured the moment, enjoying how far he had come since this day. He liked to think that he had a little more control over his life than the first time he met Silje.

He even felt confident enough to make a move – at least he would if he could walk without those damn crutches. They didn't allow him to put his arm around Silje or even to let her hold his arm while they walked. No she simply strolled beside him with her hands in her pockets and cradling a cup of tea.

“Let's sit down,” he said, stopping in front of the bench instead of walking past it. “I wanna sit on this piece of wood one last time.”

“Feeling a little nostalgic?” She teased him, standing in front of him while he sat down, putting the crutches aside.

“No, I sit on it to establish dominance,” he said, his voice dripping with sarcasm. “Or maybe I like this bench? It's where I met a pretty girl.”

“I can't tell if you're joking or not, you're always looking at me like you know something I don't,” Silje told him and sat down.

“They say knowledge is where lies true power,” Ivar philosophized. “Why wouldn't I be serious? What makes you think I'm not?”

Silje laughed at this and gave him a scolding look.

“You are a relentless flirt, Ivar,” she told him but he only looked at her as if to say 'so what is your point?'. “You do it for the thrill and to make me uncomfortable.”

“Are you uncomfortable right now?” Ivar asked, leaning in closer to her and not detaching his eyes from her while she pondered her answer and bit her lip.

“No, uncomfortable wasn't the right word,” she eventually decided. “You try to make me nervous.”

“Unsuccessfully from what I can see, you always have an answer to my teasing no matter what I say.”

If anyone had heard this conversation they would have cringed. The air was tense and so electric Silje wondered if her hair wasn't standing on end. Speaking of hair...

“We need to do something about your hair,” she blurted out, effectively breaking the tension. “It's getting out of hand.”

“Wha-” Ivar began, gesturing around to show his disagreement. “My hair is perfect as it is.”

“It's not.” Silje shook her head under Ivar's puzzled gaze. “If you don't groom a little you'll never find a job.”

“A job?”

“Of course. Did you think I was gonna let you crash my place free of charge forever?” She scoffed and took a sip of her tea. Ivar leaned back against the bench and stared at her.

“You're kicking me out as soon as I can walk again?” He asked, truly astounded.

Not that he didn't see it coming, or thought he deserved it, but it was out of character for Silje. Or was it? Could he really tell after knowing her for a total of two months? Even if she did plan to dump him in the streets as soon as he was healed, this still came pretty much out of nowhere.

“No, I'm saying you help put bread on the table. You're not my charity case, remember? You're just a friend I'm helping get back on track.”

You're just a friend.

“You'll have to wait until August to apply for university, but until then you'll work. You don't need to pay a rent, my parents already cover the charges for the apartment and it's not like it changes anything for them if you live with me. I only ask you help pay for groceries and the water bill. You sure do enjoy your bath time so you can pay for it. The rest of the money you should save for dog days.”

“Sounds like you gave it some thought,” Ivar observed. “All right, I was going to do it anyway by the way, I wouldn't have abused your hospitality. I intend to contribute as best I can. But can we negotiate about my hair?”

“No.”

“What- but, why?”

“No.”

“That's not answering my question at all,” he complained but Silje merely smile innocently and finished her tea.

“It's beginning to rain,” she said. “Come, let's head back. I used to do my brothers' haircuts whenever their girlfriends didn't want to. I'm good at it.”

Ivar wanted to object again but he figured it might indeed feel good to get his mane tamed. It hadn't seen a pair of scissors in quite some time and grew long in the past year or so. Besides, going to a hair salon was out of the question, at least until his first pay check.

“Okay, but I get to choose what you do to my hair!”

“Whatever you say Ivar.”

Silje stood up and held her hand out for him. Ivar glared at it but still took the offered hand somewhat reluctantly. At least he tried to look reluctant. It was still warm from the cup of tea and she enclosed her fingers around his hand, dragging him away from the bench with a big smile on her face while he stumbled forward.

If you like my work please consider buying me a coffee <3

[meyerlansky]

do u guys wanna hear how utter fucking horseshit the company i work for is

of COURSE U DO

[warning: this is a goddamn saga. second warning: i’d think the cut would make it clear, but don’t reblog under pain of permablock.]

so i think i’ve mentioned a few times? that i work for a company that does certain things for clients on a contract basis. i keep this intentionally vague because it is a fairly small industry and self-preservation/plausible deniability is important. but so the short version is, i got fucked over real good in april because the money in the contract ran out three full months before i was told it was going to [and i was told this two weeks before i was about to be out of work for months on end] and then i got fucked over real good a second time when the contract started back up again, because i was told i would have a few month’s worth of work before the contract was finished.

some of you may remember: i did not have a few months of work left. i had less than two weeks of work left. in addition, i was told i had to remain available to complete follow up work until the project was completed, but it’s max a day a month of work, which is not enough to pay... any of my bills. so all the financial planning i did was utterly and completely fucked, because i had been planning to have three months of paychecks to stash and it turned out i didn’t even get one. 

after a little bit of scrambling i got everything mostly on a somewhat-even keel, put out a bunch of job applications to stuff, had some irons in the fire, eventually got hired for a part time thing that was a pretty steep pay cut both on an hours AND wage basis, but in addition to the graduate loans i excruciatingly took out for this semester it’s enough to keep my lights on. meanwhile i’m still technically on the ex-full-time job’s payroll, so i get my health insurance through them. which i feel is a small price for them to pay for me to stay on the fucking project with barely any work coming in, instead of having to pay THOUSANDS OF DOLLARS A MONTH for someone else at the company to come and live in boston for a month while they get their shit together and finish things up.

so between my classes, the part time gig, and waiting for my Main Job With Shit Company to have little fractions of days’ worth of work trickle in, i ended up scheduling a few weeks of the part time gig around the assumption that, y’know, i haven’t heard from Main Job in a few weeks, so it’s probably safe if i say i can go in three days this week instead of two, and i’ll just be able to take care of anything that comes up for Main Job before/after my classes. well. yesterday, thursday, i get an email from Main Job manager, who says “hey, can you come in and complete these two little pieces of work that will not even amount to half a day? like. can you come in tomorrow?”

again: i’ve scheduled three days of Part Time Job for this week, because i literally had not heard from Main Job for weeks. so i said well, no, i can drop in tomorrow [today, friday] and check on one of the things that doesn’t require set up, but for the second thing, the only time i’ll be able to come in and take care of it is tuesday, after my class.

and immediately not only my manager but the department operations manager start bombarding me with emails, saying that there was a timeline to get the onsite equipment removed from the client’s workspace by the end of november, we’re really delayed, is there any way you can come in earlier than tuesday

so i sort of. lost it. because these people have been jerking me around for A FULL YEAR at this point, forgetting to include me on company-wide emails, blaming me for their fuck ups, criticizing honest mistakes in my work in email threads other employees were cc’d on THREE MONTHS after the mistakes were corrected, and dragging this fucking contract out as if i’m fucking loaded and can live off four hours of work a month at seventeen bucks an hour in the third most expensive city in the fucking country. and i told them, no, i can’t come in before tuesday, because thanks to your shitty management of this project, i had to pick up a second fucking job, and since this was less than 24 hours of notice that you want these things finished, i can’t reschedule my hours at my other job on a fucking dime. i can drop in tomorrow, but the other thing is going to have to wait til tuesday.

more polite than that, obviously, i’m not a fucking idiot, but that was the gist of it.

anyway, so today, i’m at my part time job, waiting to hear back on this email thread. because i know something’s coming.

and i was right. because i’m always right.

i get an email from the [really very nice, she didn’t deserve to be in this crossfire at all] lady who takes care of getting employee approval on timecards, and i see i’ve got five hours put down for holiday. five. not eight. not the full day i’m entitled to as a full employee of this shitty bad-faith-operating-in company. so i email her back, very cheerfully, not at all betraying the gnawing pit of fuck in my stomach, asking why it’s five hours instead of eight.

she replies, “i’m forwarding this to [my manager] so he can give you the answer.”

the answer, turns out, three fucking hours after my initial email to the first lady, is that, due to the reduction in my hours because of the low quantity of work remaining on this project, i am no longer considered a full time employee of the company, and am therefore entitled to only five hours of holiday pay, effective as of this pay period.

remember how i said my health insurance is through this company?

that’s a full-time benefit.

which means i very panickedly sent off an extremely terse, clipped email, inquiring as to the status of my benefits for december, and saying i would have appreciated being notified about this when the decision was made, and not when my holiday hours were affected by it, and i certainly hope this change in my status is not retaliatory or meant as punishment for the conversation yesterday. which, i mean, it so obviously is. but i’m pretty sure it’d be illegal if they copped to it.

which they didn’t; the operations manager stepped in and said that she knew about my change in status prior to today but neglected to tell me, and that there were “no hard feelings about the conversation yesterday on our end, and we presume because there are no problems on our end there are none on your end.” they also apparently can’t just kick me off the health insurance mid-month, but come january i am off the plan. good thing it’s still open enrollment, right?

[fatbadjah]

To those whom I’ve disappointed and to those to whom I am disappointing...

On Monday I demonstrated that common sense, good judgment, and I are not always the best friends.  I learned about a social event that I was not involved in, and I felt hurt, left out, emotionally neglected and replied out of pain.

I hurt others in a moment of weakness, and for that, I apologize and ask forgiveness.

For me, one of the most iconic images of the 90s was a clip from Blind Melon’s “No Rain” video. In it, a little girl in a bee costume is ridiculed after a dance performance, and spends the song wandering the street…again facing derision and ridicule from strangers. Then, at one point in the song, she sees a gated field. In it, she sees others in bee costumes, dancing around. She pushes through the gate and joyously cavorts—having found “her” people.

I’ve come to define these moments of social connection “bee girl” moments. Most of us have them—especially in the furry fandom.

Like most, I was interested in anthropomorphic animals since I was a child. After reading The Wind in the Willows in third grade, I wanted to join that created family of Rat, Mole, Toad, and Badger. In the mid 80s, I saw Animalympics on HBO until I knew the songs by heart. Likewise, seeing Rock and Rule on the Movie Channel in early 1986 not only furthered my interest in anthropomorphics, but expanded my musical palate out a bit. I started collecting comic books in 1987, as quarter bins were bursting with remnants of the Black-And-White boom—many of which were anthropomorphic attempts to become the next TMNT. When I played role playing games or video games, I gravitated towards any animal-themed races, classes, or characters.

Frankly, I thought I was weird and the only one.

In December 1993, I saw a clip of an event called Confurence on the then-new Sci-Fi Channel (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iodRjbBKB0k). For the first time, I knew that there were others out there like me…that I wasn’t alone.

Florida State University, like many universities in the early 90s, restricted their student Internet access to engineering and computer science students. If you weren’t in one of those disciplines, the assumption was that you didn’t need to access the Internet. Of course, once I’d seen the Internet, that didn’t stop me. I’d learned a little UNIX trick that allowed me to access a raw Telnet in 1992, but I didn’t know what USENET was until January of 1994, when FSU began selling Garnet accounts to students—a basic Internet account with Telnet, email, a few other early 90s goodies, and USENET access. One Friday night, as I was diving through the sea of alt and soc groups, I found one called alt.fan.furry. The group was buzzing about an event called “Confurence” which was happening that weekend in Orange County, California.

I had my “bee girl” moment. I soaked up every zine I could find. Alt.fan.furry was my new hangout. I had an account on Furrymuck and explored more.

I felt like I belonged somewhere. I made a trip in January 1995 to Confurence Six and soon connected with virtual friends.

I wanted to get more involved. I wanted to give back. I didn’t want to just be a passive fandom participant. I put my art out there—though I knew I would be mocked and ridiculed for my lack of skill (I was). I started the first openly gay furry zine, Ten Furcent, in 1995.I published a comic book, Milikardo Knights, in 1997. In 1999, when Ed Zolna’s Mailbox Books folded, I was one of several who tried to open a zine distribution business to fill the void—mine having been Bronzebear Media. And in 2001, I founded Florida’s first furry con, Furry Spring Break, which folded after an internal coup in late 2001 and became an event you may be familiar with today.

Yet while most (sane and rational) people would have denounced the fandom and moved on, if not taken up ranks with folks like the Burned Furs (whose ranks were pretty much filled with fandom failures who could not adapt to the growing and changing nature of the fandom and began pre-Trump cries of “take back our fandom!”) and becoming toxic and bitter fandom saboteurs, I stayed in to help how I could. I involved myself with the staff of events like Mephit Furmeet, Furry Weekend Atlanta, and Midwest Furfest.

In 2011, I took a break. I finally realized after a social breakdown that I was grinding metal and stepped away. I’d moved to North Carolina in the wake of the Great Recession, and I decided to focus on my career. Thus, for years, I was the guy at the Triangle Area Furries meets who stood off to the sides and only chatted with one or two trusted friends, as I licked my metaphorical wounds from the 90s and 00s.

But I never quit, I never left, I never got bitter, and I never tried to sabotage the fandom. For me, furry fandom was my family. You don’t abandon family because of a few toxic relatives. Like the odd cousin at the family gathering, I just stepped away a bit because the obnoxious aunts and uncles had finally taken their toll.

In 2015, I finally got some forward motion on my career and returned to fandom activities, with MFF 15 being my first con back since 2010. In the summer of 2016, I thought about the fact that there were no cons or large “destination” events in or around Raleigh, in spite of the large community. I talked to an old friend, and in early July 2016, Tarpaw Furmeet was born. We staged a “practice” event in November 2016, which then gave way to events that grew in May and October of 2017. As they grew, we eventually had a staff, with whom I started to bond.  People were friendly to me at the Triangle Area Furries events and actually started to talk to me.

I actually thought that I was “in,” but got blindsided by my social eagerness, as several of you now know.

To really get this, you need to understand a little of my history and romp through some trauma baggage. I was in a family with two emotionally abusive parents. I not only heard the constant barrage of how I was “not good enough” from both, but during their divorce, each specialized their skills by projecting their spousal loathing onto my brother and I.

My mother played the diehard Christian card, completely modernizing the “spare the rod, spoil the child” concept by making my brother and I draft up “contracts” that opened with “PAIN + FEAR = RESPECT” then laid out multiple violation clauses. Usually, the clauses in these contracts varied by my mother’s mood and often had a bad habit of doing so when she’d had a bad day at work.

My father, meanwhile, decided to simply deploy a forever-scarring tactical nuke on a school morning in early 1981. As my mother was helping my brother and I dress, my father came downstairs, looked at us all and said simply “bye guys, have a nice life” before walking out the door. We knew our parents  were divorcing, so my brother and I spent five minutes trying to persuade him to stay—and by “persuade” I meant that my mother held one sibling while the other sibling laid behind the tires of Dad’s Corvette, then swapped places when she would pull the other one from behind the tires. A few hours later, when I had a hysterical breakdown in my third grade classroom, neither my teacher nor principal believed me. I was sent to the office, and the principal called my father’s office to follow up on the “lie.” Upon calling my father’s office, I was told that he’d flown to Acapulco to holiday with the women he was (then) leaving my mother for. My mother at least intervened to back up the “have a nice life” story, because I had to go home since I was a basket case. Dad came back tanned and whored, and acted like nothing had happened—not even an apology.

Since then, I’ve had a nagging fear of abandonment and all purpose fear of letting people get control over me. I’ve tried to address it by simply not letting people connect to me emotionally and living a life of fierce self-sufficiency. I’ve heard “aloof” pushed on to me so many times in my life, I’d have assumed it was my name if I didn’t know better. After all, I figure, everyone leaves me eventually…so why attach to them? Likewise, my other coping mechanism is to just quit when things turned bad—a trend in my early relationships. Imagine that Kermit/Dark Kermit meme: “Things going bad in the relationship… Bail on them before they get to bail on you!”  I tried to not quit a spiraling situation once. I made the mistake of entrenching on Furry Spring Break when the coup’s instigator began to get out of control in mid-2001 and fought suicidal urges for most of 2002 once I’d been ousted.

I’ve been used to being left out of things. It was the hallmark of my adolescence. When it wasn’t a point-blank, mean girls style rejection (no seriously, I got “you cant sit here” in the school lunchroom), the reasons were a bit softer on the blow. “Sorry, we just didn’t think you were interested” or “Sorry but there just wasn’t enough room for you” were the popular go-tos.

Once, when I was fourteen, I let my guards down. My father went to the “country club” church in Flint Michigan, First Pres—the one where the shi shi white people went to escape the lower classes. One afternoon, I got a call from one of the students in “the Pipe,” their Wednesday night youth group. “Hey, can you come to the meeting tonight? We’d love to have you there!”

I was beyond elated. Someone called me to come out. They wanted me out there.Me, worthless, stupid me. When my father got home from work, I told him in no uncertain terms that I had to go to church that night, for the Pipe. When I got there, people were friendly towards me. Then the meeting started. Eventually, one of the leaders came out playing “Sasha Cashachek,” a taunting (yet Christian) Russian femme fatale (it was 1986. Russians and Iranians were stock bad guys then) who was gloating that the Pipe wouldn’t make their ski trip. Eventually, we stopped for snacks, and a few people came up to me during the break.

“So we know you like to ski, and we’ve got a big weekend ski trip scheduled to (some shi shi place I can’t remember) in a month, but we need a few more people to help pay for it! Want to come?”

I told them that I’d already booked with my high school ski club on a trip to Killington, Vermont, and my dad was tapped.

“Oh.” No one talked to me as soon as I’d announced that. Not even a “goodbye” when I left.

Remember that scene in “A Christmas Story” when Ralphie learns that Little Orphan Annie’s important “secret message” was nothing more than an Ovaltine ad? I got the 80s church group version of it.

When I said no to the ski trip, I went back to either being invisible in that church group every Sunday (I never went to another Wednesday night meeting), or I existed only when I wore or did something worthy of social mockery. I never got an invite back to the Pipe.… After that, I shut down. I stopped trying.

Given that I’d taken to emotional avoidance since late childhood, I was used to it. I took jobs in college that kept me working Friday and Saturday nights, so I didn’t have to worry about feeling slighted from collegiate social events, and I always had an excuse when people felt crazy enough to ask me to do something. And as an adult, I became a hermit who spent most weekends alone, playing video games or working. I never kept friends because I didn’t think friends wanted to keep me around. I feel emotionally uncomfortable when people press me into social conversation…unless I’ve been drinking or that weird cluster of neurons has fired that say “we can trust this person Lighten up, badger.”

But I thought that things were going differently in the Triangle. I felt my guards dropping. I didn’t feel that “fuck! Fly now! Flee, fatass! Get small or invisible!” reflex when I talked to people.

So on January 1, 2018, I became aware of a New Years party via Twitter. I saw friends names. I saw friends pictures. And I didn’t even know about it. In a split second, I was caught off guard.

And I felt stupid. I felt like I’d been left out. Knowing that people there were talking about con plans, I had fears of another Furry Spring Break style coup. But most importantly I felt worthless, like I did in childhood and adolescence because I wasn’t good enough to get invited. I felt like I’d made inroads, that people liked me and wanted me around, and I felt foolish for letting my guards down. It was like finding out that the people at the Pipe only wanted me there to make a ski trip happen, and threw me aside as soon as I couldn’t help them do it.

So I made a nudging reply that my invitation must have been lost. I later vented because I felt like all I was good for was making the con happen. Then the messages started piling in…

“No one owes you anything!”

And they were right.

And that was my mistake. I own that. No one has to be my friend, and no one owes me a damned thing. I had thought that because we had bonded as a staff, because we had broken meals together at staff meetings, that I was more important than I was in the collective zeitgeist —namely, that I’d finally gone from beyond being the “creepy” guy to someone that people actually wanted to know and interact with. Again, my mistake.

As our event has grown, I’ve been mulling over the #FurryOver30 hashtag from Twitter—the reaction to an ageist movement that suggested that anyone over 30 should leave furry fandom. As of 2017, I’d been a formal part of the fandom for almost 24 years, and at 45 years old, I’d more than outlived my socially-decreed “time” by the claimants standards. Likewise, as I was pulling locals together to build this event, I remembered a friend telling me recently that I’d been described to him as “creepy” by at least one local furry in the early ‘10’s, before I stepped forward to begin building things. Despite groups in fandom who told me I didn’t belong, I actually felt like I did here—like I wasn’t just “buying” my way in by making a convention happen in the area.

I had gotten a little comfortable and let my guards down. I had thought that I’d had my “Bee Girl” moment and found my community, and that being excluded from the party was a harsh reality check. So I got angry on Twitter. I apologize for any assumptions made, and I assure folks that I’ll maintain my social distance as I keep looking for my “bee girl” moment elsewhere in the fandom.

For four days now, the people I've hurt told me how I disappointed them.  That happens a lot, believe me.  Just ask my parents for the last fourty-five years, so it's nothing new.  If this is your first time, I'm sorry I hurt you.  I'm not always going to be able to be the unflappable badger, or an unmoveable rock.  I'm broken.  I've been broken most of my life, and for the first time in a long time, I feel like I'm on my way to being whole.  Only to be reminded of just how very far I have to go.  I'm not convinced I'll ever be whole?  But I'm going to keep trying.  And I'm hoping to keep trying with the those around me.

Once again, I apologize.

[goldenleafholdings]

A Mission to Serve

When veteran marketing executive Jeff Yapp was named CEO at Golden Leaf Holdings last September, he became the fifth person to occupy the position since December 2018, a sign of the pioneering Portland cannabis company’s precarious financial position.

Shortly afterward, Golden Leaf’s biggest revenue stream — vape products — dried up amid a mysterious health crisis.

So when the Covid-19 pandemic began to unfold this year, it was easy to wonder how Golden Leaf, in an industry where federal prohibition translates to unique tax, banking and financing challenges and no prospects of aid, would make it through.

The answer, so far at least, has been astoundingly.

“It’s just been amazing,” Yapp said recently. “It’s probably the most incredible experience for me in my career that, I hate to admit it, is closing in on 40 years. To watch the way this team has performed, the way they worked and had each others’ backs, it’s just been amazing.”

In a January interview at the company’s Portland headquarters, Yapp had talked optimistically, if cautiously, about the company’s bounce-back prospects. New products, revamped marketing, a more cost-efficient approach to getting into new states and, especially, personnel additions buoyed him.

“The guy that’s running our retail started Apple in China, which is their single biggest market,” he said, referring to John Ford, vice president of retail. “Now he running a small but growing chain of cannabis stores in Oregon. That’s pretty amazing.”

More than once in that January meeting, Yapp said, “We’ve got a long way to go, but I like the direction we’re headed.”

Golden Leaf got the chance to stay on course when it and other Oregon cannabis businesses were spared from closure in Gov. Kate Brown’s March 23 stay-at-home order. Industry lobbying had emphasized cannabis as medicine.

“To shut down cannabis stores would be a disaster,” Yapp said then. “I don’t know where that would push consumers. Pharmaceuticals? Alcohol?”

Governors in California and Washington state, where Golden Leaf sells products, kept cannabis open. And in Oregon, the state moved to make access less cumbersome, allowing curbside pickup of online orders.

“That turned out to be really important for us,” Yapp said in mid-May. “The customers were incredible because they knew we were working very hard to keep them safe. So they were distancing, waiting in their cars, texting when they were in the parking lot. Meanwhile, we got our delivery program going then expanded it and that just added to the momentum.”

Understandable fears initially kept some employees from work, but before long, Yapp said, they gained confidence in the protocols that were in place and returned.

“I think a big part of it, too, was we felt like we had a mission to provide our product and services to people at a really difficult time,” he said. “I think everyone took it very personal and wanted to make sure we’d be there when our customers needed us.”

There was a lot of talk around the country about how stay-at-home orders would put a damper on the annual 4/20 cannabis “holiday.” It did curtail the hoopla in Oregon, where special events, if they happened, moved into the virtual realm. But there were plenty of deals, and Golden Leaf worked overtime to have products in stock.

“We set a single-day sales record and we stretched it out the whole week, a record week, and sales have continued strong,” Yapp said.

This month, the company began a program to provide meals for frontline Covid-19 workers and boost business at local restaurants. It started with 250 meals from Nicoletta’s in Lake Oswego, delivered to Legacy Emmanuel Medical Center, then continued with 150 more from Tacos El Padrino, a Dundee food truck, that went to Providence Newberg Medical Center.

“You see things like that, you see the way we’ve been able to serve customers, and it makes you proud to be in this business,” Yapp said.

He’s hopeful a sense of the industry’s value to society could be spreading now, an unforeseen consequence of Covid-19.

“I’ve got an 80-plus-year-old father who, up until Covid-19, we really had not had lots of conversations around the cannabis business,” he said. “But it was interesting to him that it was treated as essential. And we had some constructive conversations (about) … cannabis as an alternative to alcohol and pharmaceuticals. I think there’s a lot of that happening now, in different ways. That’s how change is going to happen.”

View Full Story on the Portland Business Journal

The post A Mission to Serve appeared first on Golden Leaf Holdings.

https://goldenleafholdings.com/a-mission-to-serve/

[jonathanbelloblog]

Michigan Winter and the Holidays in Our 2017 Land Rover Discovery

Tip for 2017 Land Rover Discovery owners: Don’t try to install your own roof rack crossbars. Let your dealership’s service department do it, whether or not they charge you. Of course, if you’re a typical Disco driver, you’re probably not calling upon the utility component of the sport/utility vehicle as much as we are.

Your humble servant spent late fall after the run to Tire Rack’s Street Survival School for young drivers, and the first half of winter, piling on the miles. This included a couple of quick weekend runs up to a cottage in the mid-north woods. Last November, I drove the 180 miles north-by-northwest with one of my dogs, Django, along for company so I could empty the water heater and close the place up. Though there was light, slippery snow, and though there are some deep-dirt roads in the neighborhood, this was no off-road expedition of the sort that established this brand’s reputation in the mid-20th Century.

By now, I was lowering the air suspension without thinking about it every time I parked the Disco. At 73.5-inches normal ride height, this makes getting out and getting back in again as easy as climbing aboard a more car-like crossover vehicle.

I’ve grown used to (though I’m still not happy about it) the radio sometimes needing 10 or 20 seconds or more to start up, as if it was a pre-transistor AM tube radio. I haven’t grown used to touchscreen audio, HVAC, and seat-heater controls that require too much diversion of my eyes from the road. I had become used to the turbo lag at tip-in. No more trying to beat cross-traffic if it’s traveling at 40 mph or more.

The air suspension’s generous travel makes the Disco a supremely comfortable ride even on long trips, though of course this comes at the expense of cornering prowess, and while squat and dive are nicely controlled, physics inevitably rules when you’re forced to brake hard. A bit of high center-of-gravity tippiness is part of Land Rover’s DNA, even though engineers have reduced this to a minimum for the modern age.

Fuel economy ranged from as low as 18.6 mpg in early January to 23.4 mpg of mostly freeway driving. There was much idling in cold December and January Michigan weather.

In short, the 2017 Land Rover Discovery HSE Td6 Luxury, especially with that Ford-built and developed turbodiesel V-6 has just about all the luxury and comfort of one of its near-perfect Mercedes-Benz or Lexus rivals, but still with its own character. One doesn’t need to leak oil or dim the headlamps to betray one’s British quirkiness.

Snow came early to Metro Detroit, before the Thanksgiving weekend, and again afterward, into early December. About time for Thanksgiving weekend, the Discovery topped 14,000 miles and the dashboard message center indicated it was time to replace the diesel emissions aftertreatment. It wasn’t yet time for an oil change though, our local dealership service department said.

Meanwhile, “The Disco needs winter tires,” Eric Schwab, AUTOMOBILE’s chief commercial officer declared. He’d been driving the Land Rover as most owners would, with the second-row and sometimes the third-row raised, for local trips with his family or sometimes for a night out with another couple. (With collies for our kids, we usually keep the second and third rows folded.) Four-wheel-drive, Eric knows, will help you get going in deep snow or slippery snow and ice, but it will not help you turn or stop. Eric offered to have Tire Rack’s boffins change out the LR’s Goodyear Eagle F1s for a set of Pirelli Scorpion Winter tires while he visited company HQ in South Bend, Indiana. Total cost for the four Scorpions, size 225/55R-20 on the Discovery’s stock wheels is $918.92 plus tax, mounting and balancing, and includes Tire Rack’s free road hazard protection. With a large fuel tank full of diesel, Eric made the round-trip to South Bend, which is 215 miles each way, without having to refuel until his return.

Meanwhile, the Discovery’s message board continued its countdown to “limp” mode, with 494 miles to go after the Tire Rack trip. Cost to refresh the diesel exhaust fluid would make all but the owners of $80,000 SUVs flinch. It’s was a cool $263.44 plus tax. If you’re the type of armchair economist who compares the fuel economy savings per mile to the higher cost of a diesel option, don’t forget to figure in this aftertreatment, once every 15k.

It may be costlier for buyers of the new 3.0-liter PowerStroke diesel Ford F-150. Based on the same architecture as the 3.0 in our LR Disco, but beefed up to meet the demands of pickup truck owners, the new F-150 turbodiesel needs aftertreatment refills every 10,000 miles, Ford told auto journalists in a December briefing.

You’d maybe have to be the owner/lessee of an $80,000 SUV to not order the accessory crossbars ($389.67), but my wife and I take our dogs along to Wisconsin for the Christmas holidays, and no, we don’t charter a private jet for this purpose. Gifts and luggage go in a Thule rooftop carrier and the collies ride in the back (cue the photo of our annual December 27 visit to Leon’s Frozen Custard). Land Rover kindly shipped me the requisite roof rack crossbars well ahead of the holidays, but because of all its miles on the road, driven by executive editor Mac Morrison over Thanksgiving as well as by Eric Schwab and myself, I didn’t get the Land Rover into our handy Detroit Bureau garage until December 21st. By now, our 4Seasons 2017 Land Rover Discovery had a healthy 15,000 miles on the clock, after six-and-a-half months in service.

Long story short, I spent most of the night in the garage attaching the “clamp on” crossbars—and even then, they weren’t on quite right, though they were on solidly. But then, the next night, after work, I found–cue the wah wah trombones–that I had spaced the two crossbars too far apart for the Thule carrier. Unclamping the rear crossbar and sliding it forward should have been a 20-minute job, but again, it took all night. I was able to clamp them down, but not if I wanted the mechanism to click into place so that I could lock the covers on with the keys. I left them in the clamped/uncovered position, and the next morning hurried over to the local dealer to see if anyone in the service department was working the day before Christmas Eve.

There was, but the service manager said he had never seen a set of crossbars applied to the latest Land Rover Discovery. I drove the Disco to Milwaukee that afternoon, with my wife and our three collies inside, and the rooftop carrier securely on the half-locked crossbars—I checked them constantly—with no issues.

We returned to Metro Detroit on the 28th, and the next day my sister-in-law and her 14-year-old son, Landon, visited for New Years’ weekend. This led to a self-inflicted wound on the Disco. On New Year’s Eve, we prepared to leave for a 10-minute drive to a restaurant for 8 p.m. dinner. Because of our visitors, the second row was, uncharacteristically, up. I began to back out of the driveway, thinking all the doors were closed, but Landon still had the right-rear door open, and I hit a tree stump in our front yard next to the curb. I needed to close the door from outside – it was misaligned.

The day after New Year’s, I Disco’d over to Suburban Jaguar Land Rover, which sent me directly to its contractor body shop nearby, and where I had the best body shop experience, ever. The shop realigned the door for me, no charge, and it opens and closes just like new. I returned to the Suburban JLR service department to have a slow leak in the right rear Pirelli Scorpion patched (nail, $39.99), and the service department finished properly installing the rear roof rack crossbar, for free.

Said service department told me they had a new guy in from California, who is more accustomed to working with these things. I guess it’s true—Californians are more active. Or, they don’t rely on private jets to take their dogs along on vacation. But the service manager admitted the crossbars were hard to install, and even the California expert worked on the rear bar for 40 minutes.

Having thoroughly bonded with the luxurious British off-roader, I reluctantly handed its keys over to Nelson Ireson, who drove it back from the 2018 North American International Auto Show with the all-season tires taking up space in the back. As compensation, I flew out to L.A. in early February to drive back the Four Seasons Mazda CX-5. It’s a nice, actually fun-to-drive two-row SUV, but this one doesn’t even have a roof rack.

OUR 2017 LAND ROVER DISCOVERY HSE Td6 LUXURY

MILES TO DATE 17,011 GALLONS OF FUEL 672 OBSERVED MPG 23.2 FUEL COST TO DATE $1,902.53 AVERAGE COST/GALLON $2.83

MAINTENANCE

DEF refill $269.65

RECALLS and TSBs

Exterior A-pillar molding N042 Deployable luggage compartment floor operating arm N060 Air suspension and adaptive dynamics warning N135

OUT OF POCKET

Winter tires $918.92 Tire patch $39.99

SPECIFICATIONS

AS-TESTED PRICE $79,950 ENGINE 3.0L DOHC 24-valve turbodiesel V-6, 254 hp @ 3,750 rpm/443 lb-ft @ 1,750-2,250 rpm TRANSMISSION 9-speed automatic LAYOUT 4-door, 7-passenger, front-engine 4WD SUV EPA MILEAGE 21/26/23 mpg (city/highway/combined) L x W x H 195.6 x 87.4 x 73.5 in WHEELBASE 115 in WEIGHT 4,916 lb 0-60 MPH 6.9 sec TOP SPEED 133 mph

OUR OPTIONS

360-degree parking aid $275 Activity key $400 Autonomous emergency braking $125 Capability Plus package $1,250 Drive Pro package $2,350 Front center console cooler compartment $350 Full-length black roof rails $400 Full-size spare wheel and tire $440 Head-up display $950 Loadspace cover $150 Loadspace partiton net $100 Namib Orange paint $1,495 Park Assist $800 Rear-seat entertainment $2,270 Rover Tow package $650 Vision Assist package $1,000

  IFTTT

[eddiejpoplar]

Michigan Winter and the Holidays in Our 2017 Land Rover Discovery

Tip for 2017 Land Rover Discovery owners: Don’t try to install your own roof rack crossbars. Let your dealership’s service department do it, whether or not they charge you. Of course, if you’re a typical Disco driver, you’re probably not calling upon the utility component of the sport/utility vehicle as much as we are.

Your humble servant spent late fall after the run to Tire Rack’s Street Survival School for young drivers, and the first half of winter, piling on the miles. This included a couple of quick weekend runs up to a cottage in the mid-north woods. Last November, I drove the 180 miles north-by-northwest with one of my dogs, Django, along for company so I could empty the water heater and close the place up. Though there was light, slippery snow, and though there are some deep-dirt roads in the neighborhood, this was no off-road expedition of the sort that established this brand’s reputation in the mid-20th Century.

By now, I was lowering the air suspension without thinking about it every time I parked the Disco. At 73.5-inches normal ride height, this makes getting out and getting back in again as easy as climbing aboard a more car-like crossover vehicle.

I’ve grown used to (though I’m still not happy about it) the radio sometimes needing 10 or 20 seconds or more to start up, as if it was a pre-transistor AM tube radio. I haven’t grown used to touchscreen audio, HVAC, and seat-heater controls that require too much diversion of my eyes from the road. I had become used to the turbo lag at tip-in. No more trying to beat cross-traffic if it’s traveling at 40 mph or more.

The air suspension’s generous travel makes the Disco a supremely comfortable ride even on long trips, though of course this comes at the expense of cornering prowess, and while squat and dive are nicely controlled, physics inevitably rules when you’re forced to brake hard. A bit of high center-of-gravity tippiness is part of Land Rover’s DNA, even though engineers have reduced this to a minimum for the modern age.

Fuel economy ranged from as low as 18.6 mpg in early January to 23.4 mpg of mostly freeway driving. There was much idling in cold December and January Michigan weather.

In short, the 2017 Land Rover Discovery HSE Td6 Luxury, especially with that Ford-built and developed turbodiesel V-6 has just about all the luxury and comfort of one of its near-perfect Mercedes-Benz or Lexus rivals, but still with its own character. One doesn’t need to leak oil or dim the headlamps to betray one’s British quirkiness.

Snow came early to Metro Detroit, before the Thanksgiving weekend, and again afterward, into early December. About time for Thanksgiving weekend, the Discovery topped 14,000 miles and the dashboard message center indicated it was time to replace the diesel emissions aftertreatment. It wasn’t yet time for an oil change though, our local dealership service department said.

Meanwhile, “The Disco needs winter tires,” Eric Schwab, AUTOMOBILE’s chief commercial officer declared. He’d been driving the Land Rover as most owners would, with the second-row and sometimes the third-row raised, for local trips with his family or sometimes for a night out with another couple. (With collies for our kids, we usually keep the second and third rows folded.) Four-wheel-drive, Eric knows, will help you get going in deep snow or slippery snow and ice, but it will not help you turn or stop. Eric offered to have Tire Rack’s boffins change out the LR’s Goodyear Eagle F1s for a set of Pirelli Scorpion Winter tires while he visited company HQ in South Bend, Indiana. Total cost for the four Scorpions, size 225/55R-20 on the Discovery’s stock wheels is $918.92 plus tax, mounting and balancing, and includes Tire Rack’s free road hazard protection. With a large fuel tank full of diesel, Eric made the round-trip to South Bend, which is 215 miles each way, without having to refuel until his return.

Meanwhile, the Discovery’s message board continued its countdown to “limp” mode, with 494 miles to go after the Tire Rack trip. Cost to refresh the diesel exhaust fluid would make all but the owners of $80,000 SUVs flinch. It’s was a cool $263.44 plus tax. If you’re the type of armchair economist who compares the fuel economy savings per mile to the higher cost of a diesel option, don’t forget to figure in this aftertreatment, once every 15k.

It may be costlier for buyers of the new 3.0-liter PowerStroke diesel Ford F-150. Based on the same architecture as the 3.0 in our LR Disco, but beefed up to meet the demands of pickup truck owners, the new F-150 turbodiesel needs aftertreatment refills every 10,000 miles, Ford told auto journalists in a December briefing.

You’d maybe have to be the owner/lessee of an $80,000 SUV to not order the accessory crossbars ($389.67), but my wife and I take our dogs along to Wisconsin for the Christmas holidays, and no, we don’t charter a private jet for this purpose. Gifts and luggage go in a Thule rooftop carrier and the collies ride in the back (cue the photo of our annual December 27 visit to Leon’s Frozen Custard). Land Rover kindly shipped me the requisite roof rack crossbars well ahead of the holidays, but because of all its miles on the road, driven by executive editor Mac Morrison over Thanksgiving as well as by Eric Schwab and myself, I didn’t get the Land Rover into our handy Detroit Bureau garage until December 21st. By now, our 4Seasons 2017 Land Rover Discovery had a healthy 15,000 miles on the clock, after six-and-a-half months in service.

Long story short, I spent most of the night in the garage attaching the “clamp on” crossbars—and even then, they weren’t on quite right, though they were on solidly. But then, the next night, after work, I found–cue the wah wah trombones–that I had spaced the two crossbars too far apart for the Thule carrier. Unclamping the rear crossbar and sliding it forward should have been a 20-minute job, but again, it took all night. I was able to clamp them down, but not if I wanted the mechanism to click into place so that I could lock the covers on with the keys. I left them in the clamped/uncovered position, and the next morning hurried over to the local dealer to see if anyone in the service department was working the day before Christmas Eve.

There was, but the service manager said he had never seen a set of crossbars applied to the latest Land Rover Discovery. I drove the Disco to Milwaukee that afternoon, with my wife and our three collies inside, and the rooftop carrier securely on the half-locked crossbars—I checked them constantly—with no issues.

We returned to Metro Detroit on the 28th, and the next day my sister-in-law and her 14-year-old son, Landon, visited for New Years’ weekend. This led to a self-inflicted wound on the Disco. On New Year’s Eve, we prepared to leave for a 10-minute drive to a restaurant for 8 p.m. dinner. Because of our visitors, the second row was, uncharacteristically, up. I began to back out of the driveway, thinking all the doors were closed, but Landon still had the right-rear door open, and I hit a tree stump in our front yard next to the curb. I needed to close the door from outside – it was misaligned.

The day after New Year’s, I Disco’d over to Suburban Jaguar Land Rover, which sent me directly to its contractor body shop nearby, and where I had the best body shop experience, ever. The shop realigned the door for me, no charge, and it opens and closes just like new. I returned to the Suburban JLR service department to have a slow leak in the right rear Pirelli Scorpion patched (nail, $39.99), and the service department finished properly installing the rear roof rack crossbar, for free.

Said service department told me they had a new guy in from California, who is more accustomed to working with these things. I guess it’s true—Californians are more active. Or, they don’t rely on private jets to take their dogs along on vacation. But the service manager admitted the crossbars were hard to install, and even the California expert worked on the rear bar for 40 minutes.

Having thoroughly bonded with the luxurious British off-roader, I reluctantly handed its keys over to Nelson Ireson, who drove it back from the 2018 North American International Auto Show with the all-season tires taking up space in the back. As compensation, I flew out to L.A. in early February to drive back the Four Seasons Mazda CX-5. It’s a nice, actually fun-to-drive two-row SUV, but this one doesn’t even have a roof rack.

OUR 2017 LAND ROVER DISCOVERY HSE Td6 LUXURY

MILES TO DATE 17,011 GALLONS OF FUEL 672 OBSERVED MPG 23.2 FUEL COST TO DATE $1,902.53 AVERAGE COST/GALLON $2.83

MAINTENANCE

DEF refill $269.65

RECALLS and TSBs

Exterior A-pillar molding N042 Deployable luggage compartment floor operating arm N060 Air suspension and adaptive dynamics warning N135

OUT OF POCKET

Winter tires $918.92 Tire patch $39.99

SPECIFICATIONS

AS-TESTED PRICE $79,950 ENGINE 3.0L DOHC 24-valve turbodiesel V-6, 254 hp @ 3,750 rpm/443 lb-ft @ 1,750-2,250 rpm TRANSMISSION 9-speed automatic LAYOUT 4-door, 7-passenger, front-engine 4WD SUV EPA MILEAGE 21/26/23 mpg (city/highway/combined) L x W x H 195.6 x 87.4 x 73.5 in WHEELBASE 115 in WEIGHT 4,916 lb 0-60 MPH 6.9 sec TOP SPEED 133 mph

OUR OPTIONS

360-degree parking aid $275 Activity key $400 Autonomous emergency braking $125 Capability Plus package $1,250 Drive Pro package $2,350 Front center console cooler compartment $350 Full-length black roof rails $400 Full-size spare wheel and tire $440 Head-up display $950 Loadspace cover $150 Loadspace partiton net $100 Namib Orange paint $1,495 Park Assist $800 Rear-seat entertainment $2,270 Rover Tow package $650 Vision Assist package $1,000

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[jesusvasser]

Michigan Winter and the Holidays in Our 2017 Land Rover Discovery

Tip for 2017 Land Rover Discovery owners: Don’t try to install your own roof rack crossbars. Let your dealership’s service department do it, whether or not they charge you. Of course, if you’re a typical Disco driver, you’re probably not calling upon the utility component of the sport/utility vehicle as much as we are.

Your humble servant spent late fall after the run to Tire Rack’s Street Survival School for young drivers, and the first half of winter, piling on the miles. This included a couple of quick weekend runs up to a cottage in the mid-north woods. Last November, I drove the 180 miles north-by-northwest with one of my dogs, Django, along for company so I could empty the water heater and close the place up. Though there was light, slippery snow, and though there are some deep-dirt roads in the neighborhood, this was no off-road expedition of the sort that established this brand’s reputation in the mid-20th Century.

By now, I was lowering the air suspension without thinking about it every time I parked the Disco. At 73.5-inches normal ride height, this makes getting out and getting back in again as easy as climbing aboard a more car-like crossover vehicle.

I’ve grown used to (though I’m still not happy about it) the radio sometimes needing 10 or 20 seconds or more to start up, as if it was a pre-transistor AM tube radio. I haven’t grown used to touchscreen audio, HVAC, and seat-heater controls that require too much diversion of my eyes from the road. I had become used to the turbo lag at tip-in. No more trying to beat cross-traffic if it’s traveling at 40 mph or more.

The air suspension’s generous travel makes the Disco a supremely comfortable ride even on long trips, though of course this comes at the expense of cornering prowess, and while squat and dive are nicely controlled, physics inevitably rules when you’re forced to brake hard. A bit of high center-of-gravity tippiness is part of Land Rover’s DNA, even though engineers have reduced this to a minimum for the modern age.

Fuel economy ranged from as low as 18.6 mpg in early January to 23.4 mpg of mostly freeway driving. There was much idling in cold December and January Michigan weather.

In short, the 2017 Land Rover Discovery HSE Td6 Luxury, especially with that Ford-built and developed turbodiesel V-6 has just about all the luxury and comfort of one of its near-perfect Mercedes-Benz or Lexus rivals, but still with its own character. One doesn’t need to leak oil or dim the headlamps to betray one’s British quirkiness.

Snow came early to Metro Detroit, before the Thanksgiving weekend, and again afterward, into early December. About time for Thanksgiving weekend, the Discovery topped 14,000 miles and the dashboard message center indicated it was time to replace the diesel emissions aftertreatment. It wasn’t yet time for an oil change though, our local dealership service department said.

Meanwhile, “The Disco needs winter tires,” Eric Schwab, AUTOMOBILE’s chief commercial officer declared. He’d been driving the Land Rover as most owners would, with the second-row and sometimes the third-row raised, for local trips with his family or sometimes for a night out with another couple. (With collies for our kids, we usually keep the second and third rows folded.) Four-wheel-drive, Eric knows, will help you get going in deep snow or slippery snow and ice, but it will not help you turn or stop. Eric offered to have Tire Rack’s boffins change out the LR’s Goodyear Eagle F1s for a set of Pirelli Scorpion Winter tires while he visited company HQ in South Bend, Indiana. Total cost for the four Scorpions, size 225/55R-20 on the Discovery’s stock wheels is $918.92 plus tax, mounting and balancing, and includes Tire Rack’s free road hazard protection. With a large fuel tank full of diesel, Eric made the round-trip to South Bend, which is 215 miles each way, without having to refuel until his return.

Meanwhile, the Discovery’s message board continued its countdown to “limp” mode, with 494 miles to go after the Tire Rack trip. Cost to refresh the diesel exhaust fluid would make all but the owners of $80,000 SUVs flinch. It’s was a cool $263.44 plus tax. If you’re the type of armchair economist who compares the fuel economy savings per mile to the higher cost of a diesel option, don’t forget to figure in this aftertreatment, once every 15k.

It may be costlier for buyers of the new 3.0-liter PowerStroke diesel Ford F-150. Based on the same architecture as the 3.0 in our LR Disco, but beefed up to meet the demands of pickup truck owners, the new F-150 turbodiesel needs aftertreatment refills every 10,000 miles, Ford told auto journalists in a December briefing.

You’d maybe have to be the owner/lessee of an $80,000 SUV to not order the accessory crossbars ($389.67), but my wife and I take our dogs along to Wisconsin for the Christmas holidays, and no, we don’t charter a private jet for this purpose. Gifts and luggage go in a Thule rooftop carrier and the collies ride in the back (cue the photo of our annual December 27 visit to Leon’s Frozen Custard). Land Rover kindly shipped me the requisite roof rack crossbars well ahead of the holidays, but because of all its miles on the road, driven by executive editor Mac Morrison over Thanksgiving as well as by Eric Schwab and myself, I didn’t get the Land Rover into our handy Detroit Bureau garage until December 21st. By now, our 4Seasons 2017 Land Rover Discovery had a healthy 15,000 miles on the clock, after six-and-a-half months in service.

Long story short, I spent most of the night in the garage attaching the “clamp on” crossbars—and even then, they weren’t on quite right, though they were on solidly. But then, the next night, after work, I found–cue the wah wah trombones–that I had spaced the two crossbars too far apart for the Thule carrier. Unclamping the rear crossbar and sliding it forward should have been a 20-minute job, but again, it took all night. I was able to clamp them down, but not if I wanted the mechanism to click into place so that I could lock the covers on with the keys. I left them in the clamped/uncovered position, and the next morning hurried over to the local dealer to see if anyone in the service department was working the day before Christmas Eve.

There was, but the service manager said he had never seen a set of crossbars applied to the latest Land Rover Discovery. I drove the Disco to Milwaukee that afternoon, with my wife and our three collies inside, and the rooftop carrier securely on the half-locked crossbars—I checked them constantly—with no issues.

We returned to Metro Detroit on the 28th, and the next day my sister-in-law and her 14-year-old son, Landon, visited for New Years’ weekend. This led to a self-inflicted wound on the Disco. On New Year’s Eve, we prepared to leave for a 10-minute drive to a restaurant for 8 p.m. dinner. Because of our visitors, the second row was, uncharacteristically, up. I began to back out of the driveway, thinking all the doors were closed, but Landon still had the right-rear door open, and I hit a tree stump in our front yard next to the curb. I needed to close the door from outside – it was misaligned.

The day after New Year’s, I Disco’d over to Suburban Jaguar Land Rover, which sent me directly to its contractor body shop nearby, and where I had the best body shop experience, ever. The shop realigned the door for me, no charge, and it opens and closes just like new. I returned to the Suburban JLR service department to have a slow leak in the right rear Pirelli Scorpion patched (nail, $39.99), and the service department finished properly installing the rear roof rack crossbar, for free.

Said service department told me they had a new guy in from California, who is more accustomed to working with these things. I guess it’s true—Californians are more active. Or, they don’t rely on private jets to take their dogs along on vacation. But the service manager admitted the crossbars were hard to install, and even the California expert worked on the rear bar for 40 minutes.

Having thoroughly bonded with the luxurious British off-roader, I reluctantly handed its keys over to Nelson Ireson, who drove it back from the 2018 North American International Auto Show with the all-season tires taking up space in the back. As compensation, I flew out to L.A. in early February to drive back the Four Seasons Mazda CX-5. It’s a nice, actually fun-to-drive two-row SUV, but this one doesn’t even have a roof rack.

OUR 2017 LAND ROVER DISCOVERY HSE Td6 LUXURY

MILES TO DATE 17,011 GALLONS OF FUEL 672 OBSERVED MPG 23.2 FUEL COST TO DATE $1,902.53 AVERAGE COST/GALLON $2.83

MAINTENANCE

DEF refill $269.65

RECALLS and TSBs

Exterior A-pillar molding N042 Deployable luggage compartment floor operating arm N060 Air suspension and adaptive dynamics warning N135

OUT OF POCKET

Winter tires $918.92 Tire patch $39.99

SPECIFICATIONS

AS-TESTED PRICE $79,950 ENGINE 3.0L DOHC 24-valve turbodiesel V-6, 254 hp @ 3,750 rpm/443 lb-ft @ 1,750-2,250 rpm TRANSMISSION 9-speed automatic LAYOUT 4-door, 7-passenger, front-engine 4WD SUV EPA MILEAGE 21/26/23 mpg (city/highway/combined) L x W x H 195.6 x 87.4 x 73.5 in WHEELBASE 115 in WEIGHT 4,916 lb 0-60 MPH 6.9 sec TOP SPEED 133 mph

OUR OPTIONS

360-degree parking aid $275 Activity key $400 Autonomous emergency braking $125 Capability Plus package $1,250 Drive Pro package $2,350 Front center console cooler compartment $350 Full-length black roof rails $400 Full-size spare wheel and tire $440 Head-up display $950 Loadspace cover $150 Loadspace partiton net $100 Namib Orange paint $1,495 Park Assist $800 Rear-seat entertainment $2,270 Rover Tow package $650 Vision Assist package $1,000

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