#my mom also has a dough machine and it's really fun to just

[aroacewxs]

im strangely attached to my house's home appliances. what do you mean these machines have been created to serve a singular purpose for humanity's convenience. what do you mean no matter what, my washing machine will keep washing my clothes even when i turn off the lights and leave it alone in the dark. what do you MEAN

i like to watch my washing machine for a little bit. and appreciate it for being here.

[thatblondeperson]

maybe odd but how do you think meals would work between our lovely TimSteph. I imagine picnics and late evening dinners - both having perfected quick variations of different types of soup and mashed potatoes for when they just want to snuggle and sleep after a long patrol. I’m on team “Tim can cook” but I beileve in my whole heart Steph is the baker.

Oh man, good question!

Tbh I do love to picture Tim as someone who isn't great at cooking. Give him a recipe and he can follow it well enough, but leave him to his son devices and he burns toast.

This is a boy who has had people cooking for him his whole life, I just can't imagine he ever took time to pick up the skill.

Steph on the other hand probably does know how to cook. Her dad sucked and her mom wasn't always coherent, so she probably had to learn pretty young how to fend for herself.

And I absolutely do agree that she's excellent at baking which Tim loves. Nothing like the smell of chocolate chip cookies filling the apartment, but they both have absolutely caved early and eaten the cookie dough instead, salmonella be damned.

I think cooking is something they could have fun with together, Steph teaching Tim a few things here and there. I believe they're both one to surprise the other with dinner just because.

Fast food is a common staple when they're in the middle of a case. Can't really focus on making something or adhering to food groups when you're several hours into detective work. Food is fuel. French fries are a favorite on nights like this.

Love the headcanon that Tim likes to snack on marshmallows, so those are necessary to have around the house at all times. Comes in handy on hot chocolate nights.

While tea is the way they start their day and rely on for late nights, tea is also a love language. It's made in times of need for comfort. There's just something very intimate about snuggling on the couch with warm mugs of tea together.

They're not heavy alcohol drinkers. That's not to say they haven't absolutely gotten drunk together. They're both very affectionate, flirty drinks. Stephanie gets a bit too loud, Tim is a mess who can barely walk. It's a comedic mix.

Picnics, YES. But instead of in a park, how about on a rooftop? Sitting above the city, all the pretty lights, the terrible ambient noises, the threat of rain at any second all year round? Very romantic. Other options involve driving somewhere as far away from everything as possible, somewhere quiet and private and having a picnic on the hood of a car while they let their minds rest. It's necessary at least once a month, for their sanity.

As far as what they eat, I think they're both pretty open to trying whatever. Steph can handle more spice than Tim. They both have a major sweet tooth, but they also both eat relatively healthy on a more regular basis. Besides the quick bites of greasy food, they both have to stay pretty healthy to keep up their lifestyle. It's canon by RR that Tim has a focus on health, and I can't imagine Steph being all that different.

But comfort foods are still indulged in often as well. Tim with his gross pizza concoctions, Steph with her mountain of mashed potatoes. Tim definitely craves greasy fried foods every now and again, Stephanie has been caught eating frosting with a spoon late at night. Tim has a popcorn machine which comes in handy for movie nights, but they both enjoy seeing what kind of weird toppings and mix ins they can put on it. So far the only failed night was the night that neither of them knew that the other had already salted the popcorn, and the batch had to be thrown away.

Steph sings while she bakes. Tim is mesmerized by this.

Tim has danced while cooking on a number of occasions. He looks a bit ridiculous but Steph finds it adorable.

THANK YOU FOR THIS!!! It was really fun and cute to think about!! ❤💜

[starshine583]

New Girl on the Block (4)

(Y’all ready to read the next update??? Enjoy part four of this fic and if you’re interested, feel free to check out the mini series connected to this called the Journal Entries. It’s just little journal snippets from the two dorks that I decided to write for fun :D)

Ch.1 / Ch.3 / Ch.5

Chapter 4: Get to Know You

Marinette slipped on her white, non-flour-covered leather jacket and pushed her pigtails back so they wouldn’t be tucked into her outfit. She then smoothed out her pink dress with a smile, admiring the black flowers that she’d stitched along the bottom. This dress had been one of her stress-relieving projects, but it turned out quite well, in her opinion.

Once Papa had finished teaching her friends how to fold the dough, he put their croissants into the fridge to chill them and instructed everyone to go upstairs and wash up. Marinette dutifully took them up to her room where her personal bathroom was and taught them how to use the shower, but when she tried to lead one of them to her parent’s bathroom as well, they insisted that she take a shower there herself. 

“What kind of gentlemen would we be if we forced the ladies to wait on us?” Claude had said light-heartedly, though she could tell he meant it. Allegra’s smirk as she walked in the bathroom to take a shower first was proof of that. 

The notion had warmed Marinette’s heart, coaxing a giggle from her each time she thought about it. It might be hard to see sometimes, but Claude, Allan, and Felix truly were a considerate and chivalrous group of boys. 

Now, She’s finished her shower in her parent’s bathroom and gone back up to her bedroom, where Allegra, Claude, and Allan had been patiently waiting. Allegra was nice and clean again, wearing the long, purple shirt and black leggings that Marinette had given her, and Claude appeared to have just exited the shower, his damp hair sticking to his face and dripping across his borrowed, black and blue “O.K” shirt. Allan was still covered in flour.

Allegra smiled at Marinette from her spot on the chaise as she re-braided her long, golden blonde hair. “Thanks for the extra clothes, Mari! These are amazing.”

“Yeah!” Claude agreed enthusiastically, holding out his with a grin. “This shirt is awesome!”

Marinette glanced down to hide her blush. “I-It’s the least I could do.”

“We still appreciate it.” Allan replied.

“Oh!” Marinette said, suddenly thinking about the fact that Allan was still covered in flour. “Allan, do you want to use Maman’s shower? You don’t have to stand around waiting for Felix.”

That who she assumed was occupying the shower, anyway. The water was still running, and everyone but Felix was present. 

Allan waved a hand. “Nah, it’s fine. I’ll be getting a shower soon if Felix would hurry up.”

Marinette chuckled at Allan’s obvious call to Felix, even more so when Felix shouted back from the bathroom, “You’re the one that let me go first!”

“I didn’t know you would take a day and a half!” 

“That’s still your fault then, isn’t it?” Felix shot back.

Allan scoffed and crossed his arms, causing Marinette to offer her parent’s shower again out of guilt. She had been the one to throw flour on him, after all.

“Are you sure you don’t want to-”

The bathroom door swung open, effectively cutting Marinette off, and Felix stepped out with one hand on his hip and the other hand on the towel that was draped across his head. He shot Allan a glare, practically growling the words, “There. I’m out. Are you happy?”

“Delighted.” Allan responded sarcastically.

Marinette might have been concerned about the growing conflict had she not been focused on Felix’s outfit. Or rather, how well it suited him. The black, three-quarter-sleeved shirt that she’d given him, along with the plaid green, button-up shirt she’d provided to go underneath, clung to his waist, revealing his surprisingly slender figure. The dark grey jeans he wore in place of his dress pants didn’t fit the outfit exactly, but they worked well enough, and Marinette eagerly started taking mental notes for future adjustments.

Allan grabbed his clothes and walked into the bathroom, while Felix glared daggers at him until the bathroom door closed. 

“Woah~” Allegra crowed, easily breaking the tension. “You should wear casual outfits more often, Felix. They really suit you.”

Claude smirked. “No kidding. I swear you’ve worn the same suit for the whole two years we’ve known.”

Felix turned his glare to Claude with a scoff. “Don’t be ridiculous. I’ve worn plenty of suits, each one made differently.”

Allegra snorted. “That wasn’t.. That was not the point, Felix.”

Felix narrowed his eyes, the barest hint of confusion finding its way to his features, and Marinette took that opportunity to speak up.

“How’s the outfit? Does it fit alright?” She asked. Hopefully she can find the original measurements for the outfit if it does fit fine, because Felix was most likely going to become a regular customer. Maybe he wouldn’t hire her for actual commissions, but she might end up making something for him on impulse. (as you do)

Felix caught her eye, his glare slowly fading as he registered her question.

“The fabric is extremely comfortable, and the clothes fit perfectly.” He said after a moment. “You said you made these?”

She nodded. “With my sewing machine. I was thinking of putting a green paw print on the shirt too, but I haven’t gotten around to it.”

Felix hummed, idly pulling his towel from on top of his head to around his shoulders. “I see. Thank you for lending them to me.”

Marinette blinked, suddenly finding herself captivated by the way his hair fell across his face. Still being damp, various strands stuck to his forehead and cheeks, and he reached up to brush them away. This brought her attention to his face, which, for some reason, she hadn’t quite noticed before. The defined jawline, the subtle-yet-there cheek bones, the pointed nose- all of his features were sharp. Even his eyes held a silver tint to them that reminded her of steel. 

These observations dragged her to one, rather important revelation: Felix Culpa was actually a fairly handsome person.

“Marinette?” Felix said, drawing her from her thoughts. “Are you alright?”

A rush of heat swarmed her cheeks, and Marinette straightened. “W-what? I mean yes! Yeah, I’m totally fine, I.. yes.”

“Hey, speaking of clothes!” Claude piped up, graciously saving Marinette from her own awkwardness. “How’s my prince costume going?”

Marinette twirled around in her rolling chair and grabbed for her sketching notebook. A distraction was definitely something she needed right now.

“I’ve got a few different ideas, but you need to come tell which one you like best.” She explained as she flipped open the notebook.

Claude hopped up from the stray chest he’d been sitting on and practically bounced over to her seat. She let him scan each page, smiling when he started humming “Ooh’s” and “Aah’s”.

“I can only pick one?! But they’re all so good!” Claude remarked, almost exasperated.

Marinette chuckled. “Well.. I guess I can make all of them for you, but you at least need to choose which one I start on.”

Claude gasped. “You mean you’re going to make all of these for me?”

“It’s going to take a month or so to get them all done.” She warned. “But-”

Claude scooped her into a bone-crushing hug, briefly reminding her of her father. “Thank you, Mari! Thank you, thank you, thank you! You’re the best!”

Marinette laughed and gave him a light pat on the arm. “You’re welcome.”

Her smile widened as Claude eagerly grabbed the notebook and ran back to his designated chest to look through the drawing again. It was nice to see someone who was also enthusiastic about fashion. She’d gotten tired of talking to people who simply didn’t understand the hype of creating unique styles of clothing. 

“You know he’s never going to leave you alone now, right?” Felix commented next to her.

Marinette offered him a glance as she said, “I think I can live with that.”

Felix shrugged. “Suit yourself.”

She smiled at that. Felix may be striking, but that didn’t have to change anything. Lots of people were striking. And lots of people remained friends despite that.

“Oh,” Felix muttered, seeming to remember something, “Where do you want me to put my clothes? They’re still in the bathroom because of Allan, but..”

“Uhm.. I think Maman said she was going to wash them.” Marinette answered. “She wanted to try to get them clean before supper for all of you.”

“Ah, supper.” Claude cut in, heaving a jokingly wistful sigh. “I can’t wait for that. If your mom’s croissants can taste that heavenly, then her full meals must be amazing.”

He sunk against the chest for emphasis, not realizing that there was a gap between the chest and the wall. The sudden weight threw the chest off balance, and it tipped forward, causing Claude to get jerked backwards. He flailed his arms briefly and yelped before crashing to the floor. The front of the chest hit the ground as well, and the impact popped it open, scattering various objects across the floor.

“Oh, Claude!”

“Are you okay?” 

The girls rushed to his side to help him up, but Felix shot him a flat look.

“First the kitchen and now her bedroom.” He said curtly. “Should we tear up the living room next? Or perhaps the dining room has more fragile items?”

Allegra rolled her eyes. “Felix, can you at least try to be sympathetic.”

“I am being sympathetic. Marinette doesn’t have the money to replace things at the drop of a hat like we do. It’s rude to behave so recklessly in her home.”

Marinette glanced up at Felix, not sure whether to find his words sweet or offensive. “Trust me, it’s fine. This chest is old anyway.”

Felix’s frown told her that he didn’t agree on the matter, but before he could argue further, the bathroom door swung open again.

“What happened?” Allan asked, his hair still dripping wet. “I heard the crash. Is anyone hurt?”

“Only my pride.” Claude groaned in response. He was sitting up now and rubbing his head as Allegra switched between scolding and coddling.

Allan sighed with relief. “Oh, good. You can’t hurt something that’s not there.”

“Hey!”

Marinette giggled at the comment. “Allan, how is your outfit? Do I need to make any adjustments?”

Allan glanced down at his clothes. She’d given him a maroon shirt with a blue heartbeat line in the center, a black and blue shirt to go underneath, and a pair of black jeans. He didn’t appear to be wearing the second shirt, though.

“Oh, they fit great.” He said, twisted his torso a bit to get a better feel for the new clothes. “I didn’t have time to put on the second shirt, though. I heard the crash and panicked.”

Marinette offered him a smile. “That’s fine. I can just put it back in the closet.”

Allan nodded and looked down at the mess. “So Claude spilled this chest?”

“Yeah, he was being an idiot.” Allegra remarked as she picked up one of the trinkets. “You know. Nothing new.”

“Wow. can you guys lay off for two seconds?” Claude huffed. He reached forward to pick up one of the objects as well, curiosity overtaking his annoyance. “What is all of this stuff, anyway?”

Marinette glanced at the miscellaneous objects to check- she had several trunks that acted as ‘junk drawers’ -and immediately cringed when she recognized a black hat with rainbow colors stitched along the bottom.

“Oh..” It was Adrien’s gift chest. She’d almost forgotten that she had it. “They’re, um.. They’re just crafts, really.”

“Just crafts?” Claude repeated, holding up a crocheted Ladybug doll. “These are awesome!”

Marinette watched them for a moment. “...do you want them?”

The group looked up in shock, and Marinette quickly added, “Y-You don’t have to take them! I’ve just.. Uh.. they’re like junk? I mean, not junk, but this is my junk chest.. Sort of. I’ve just been meaning to get rid of them. So if you want them, you can have them.” 

Allegra frowned. “Are you sure? It looks like you put a lot of effort into these.”

Marinette nodded. “Positive. Take whatever you want.”

Although hesitant at first, the group continued to look through the gifts, and little by little, they started to take some. A smile came to Marinette’s lips as she watched the pile of Adrien junk dwindle. She had spent a lot of time on making the presents, but there was no way she’d be giving them to Adrien now. So what was the point of keeping them in her room? To serve as a mocking reminder of how blind she had been while loving him? No thanks.

By the time they were done, the chest only had half the gifts it used to, and Marinette quickly decided that she would donate the leftovers once she got the chance. 

“Thanks for the stuff, Mari!” Claude said cheerfully, his hands full of various objects.

Allegra nodded, holding a few things herself. “Yeah, you really do spoil us.”

“Which is saying something, considering we’re rich.” Allan teased, pocketing the two items that he’d decided to snatch. 

Marinette chuckled. “You’re helping me more than I am you.”

She stood up and walked to the bathroom to grab the boys’ old clothes. “I’m gonna bring these down to Maman, but feel free to look around until I get back.”

The group voiced their agreements, and Marinette climbed down the trapdoor ladder with the pile of clothes in hand, feeling like another weight had been lifted off of her shoulders.

Getting rid of Adrien’s gifts was one more step towards happiness, and she couldn’t wait to keep walking.

~~~~~~

One can tell a lot about a person by their bedroom. How clean they were, whether they were sentimental, which things they found important- a bedroom could quite literally be considered a box in which someone stored their entire personality. That’s why Felix had been anticipating this part of the visit. Someone can be a master manipulator, but their room would always show their true selves. And it only took one look for Felix to know..

Marinette really loved the color pink.

Seriously, she had it everywhere. The walls, the furniture, the carpet- How was she not sick of the color by now? Felix was sick of it, and he’d only been there for about twenty minutes!

Pushing the pink thought aside, he continued poking around her room. Marinette had gone downstairs to pass his clothes off to her mother, so that gave him a bit of time to inspect the space unsupervised. Not that he was planning on doing anything scandalous. It merely gave him the opportunity of observing Marinette’s room on his own terms.

When she told him that her room was up in the attic, he’d been understandably shocked. The attic didn’t sound like a spacious place to sleep, let alone work on homework and other personal things. Seeing it now, though, Felix realized that that wasn’t the case. The attic was actually quite open. There was a desk, a closet, various chests, a bathroom, and she still had a good portion of the room empty. He wondered if that was thanks to the original size of the room or thanks to Marinette’s resourcefulness.

Her cleaning style wasn’t too bad, either. Don’t get him wrong, there were things scattered everywhere, but it was a specific type of scattered, like an organized chaos. He had a feeling that she knew where most of her necessities were. 

Felix moved to her desk, where most of the mess was focused. There were papers, sewing needles, scraps of fabric, and pencils spread across the surface. Her interest in fashion certainly shined through, as most of the papers were filled with various sketches and measurements. He found that admirable. When someone usually speaks of their ‘dream job’, they speak of it as a fantasy, one that they never intend to fully pursue, but Marinette was obviously reaching as high as she could to grasp her goal. She even had a mannequin in her room.

“Marinette’s room is so cool!” Claude exclaimed from the loft up top. “She even has a balcony!”

Felix glanced upwards, briefly setting the papers he’d been studying aside. There’s a balcony upstairs? He didn’t recall seeing a balcony on the way in.

“Claude, you have a balcony.” Allegra reminded him with an amused smile.

“Yeah, but mine only extends from the side of the building.” Claude defended. “This one’s on the roof!”

Ah, so that’s why Felix hadn’t seen it.

Allan frowned. “Really? Isn’t that a little dangerous?”

“It’s got a rail.” 

“Oh, okay. That’s fine then.”

Allegra chuckled as she brushed her hands against the hat on Marinette’s mannequin. “Marinette’s room is pretty neat, though.”

“I think it’s just Marinette who’s cool.” Allan remarked.

Allegra and Claude heartily agreed, and Felix nodded. “Cool” probably wouldn’t be the exact word that he’d use to describe her, but overall, it wasn’t far off.

“Can you believe we’ve only known her for a week?” Claude asked as he climbed down to their level. “It feels like we’ve known her forever already.”

“Yeah, but I think that’s just how she is.” Allegra smiled. “She draws you in and makes you feel like family.”

“Her parents are the same way.” Allan said. “You can really tell where she gets it from.”

“Where who gets what from?” 

Felix, along with the rest of the group, turned to the trapdoor, where Marinette was standing about halfway through. She didn’t have the clothes anymore, but she did have a tray of drinks.

“Oh, it’s nothing.” Allegra said dismissively. “What are those?”

Marinette set the tray on the ground long enough to climb through and close the trapdoor as she explained, “Maman and Papa thought you guys might be thirsty, so she sent me up with a bunch of different drinks to choose from.”

“Sweet!” Claude grinned, swiftly walking over in case she needed help. “Do you have Dr. Pepper?”

Marinette smiled and turned the tray to reveal a deep red can of soda. “Yep! I know it’s your favorite.”

“You truly are a blessing.” Claude replied, grabbing the soda off of the tray.

Marinette giggled and brought the tray forward for the rest of them to pick. Allegra chose a pepsi, while Allan snagged a coke, and Felix grabbed the slim cup of coffee that sat to the side.

He took a sip of it, enjoying the warmth of the bitter liquid. It didn’t escape his notice that Marinette had brought up all of their preferred drinks. She even got his coffee right (Black with three sugars). 

Despite how scatter-brained she could be, Marinette still paid attention to details, which was impressive. Felix didn’t know anyone else who could space out during an entire conversation, yet remember the exact type of drink everyone ordered during lunch.

“So what do you guys want to do now? We still have about half an hour before supper is finished.” Marinette asked, setting the tray aside. 

Allan shrugged. “What do you have?”

Marinette thought for a moment. “Well, we have board games, card games, Mecha Strike 3-”

“Mecha Strike 3?” Claude perked up. “Yes, please!”

Marinette laughed. “Is everyone else okay with that?”

“Sounds great.” Allan smiled.

Allegra shrugged. “I’m fine with it.” 

Felix, being satisfied with his inspection for now, sat down on the chaise. “I’ll watch.”

The rest of the group huddled around Marinette’s computer while she turned it on, and after a bit of debating, they decided on ‘winner faces next player’ and started with Allan and Claude. Felix watched the first two games, just long enough to see Marinette cream Allan, before reverting back to his studious ways. He scanned the bedroom again, hoping to catch something new, when his gaze landed on the trunk that Claude had tipped over earlier. With everyone bustling around it, Felix hadn’t gotten a chance to sift through it, but now that they were occupied with Marinette’s game..

Felix shifted in his seat and re-opened the chest. It was only half full, as opposed to its previously overflowing contents, but that didn’t bother him. There were still plenty of things inside, such as shirts, figurines, hats, and other things. He pulled out a jacket and turned it in his hands, admiring the handiwork. The hood, along with the cuffs of the sleeves and zipper were pitch black, but the rest of the jacket was a deep red, save for the black spots that littered it. “Miraculous” was written on the back in cursive as well. Was this supposed to be based off of the Parisian superhero Ladybug? Why would she want to get rid of this? At the very least, she could make a profit by selling it.

What did she use to make this? The material is so soft.. Felix thought as he unzipped the jacket. It was completely black on the inside, save for some tiny, golden lettering near the section wear the pocket would be.

“To: Adrien

From: Marinette”

Felix frowned. How strange. Why would Marinette be giving away things that she made specifically for someone else? He dug through the chest some more, this time looking for names, and what he found was shocking. 

Almost every gift had the name ‘Adrien’ on it somewhere, whether it be a card or stitching or marker. Some gifts didn’t have a name, but at that point, Felix felt it was safe to assume that everything in the chest was supposed to be for this ‘Adrien’ person. 

That begged the question, though: Who was Adrien? And why would she create so many gifts for him just to give them away?

A small card stitched on the ear of a stuffed cat gave him his answer.

“Dear Adrien, 

Happy 19th birthday! It’s officially been five years since we’ve known each other. Isn’t that crazy? Anyway, I just wanted to say happy birthday (even though I’ve already said it) and that I’m really happy we got to meet. Enjoy the cat!

With all my love, Marinette”

Felix glanced up at Marinette, who was blissfully ignorant of his findings as she defeated Claude for the second time at Mecha Strike 3. Did she intend to use all of these as birthday presents? How many gifts were in there? Did she expect this person to have the same interests twenty years from now? He couldn’t decide if this level of planning was due to over-thinking or just plain obsession. Maybe both.

“Hey, Felix!” 

Felix flinched at the sudden call of his name, weirdly feeling as if he’d been caught in the act of some crime. He looked up to see Claude waving a controller at him.

“Are you sure you don’t want to play?” The brunette asked.

“Talk to me when you have chess.” Felix replied shortly, going back to the chest. He had hoped that seeing Marinette’s room would provide more answers to her life, but it only issued more questions. Did she have this amount of gifts for all of her friends or was Adrien special? If he was special, what way would it be? Was he possibly an ex-lover? She dated him for a while, and they had a recent falling out, which was why she was getting rid of the gifts. That would make sense.

“He just wants to talk.”

Her words from last week resurfaced in his mind. The person who chased her that day was the only one she reacted bitterly towards. Was Adrien trying to get back together with her? 

Was he the reason she left her old school in the first place?

My, my Dupain-Cheng. Felix thought. Aren’t you just full of secrets?

Tag List:  @artbyknigit @athena452 @nickristus-dreamer @throneoffirebreathingbitchqueen @arsaem @abrx2002 @neakco @pawsitivelymiraculous @too0bsessedformyowngood @nathleigh @lusicing @officiallydarkgeek @all-mights-asscheeks @tbehartoo @woe-is-me0 @raeuberprinzessin @lazuli-11 @miss-chaos27 @trippingovermyfeet @sadpotatoondrugs @ladybug-182 @jaggedheart11 @marinahrasauce

[supercorpkid]

A week without Lena.

Supercorp, Kara Danvers x Daughter!Reader, Lena Luthor x Daughter!Reader, Alex Danvers x Niece!Reader.

Word count: 1382.

“Uh.” You complain as soon as you walk in the front door. Kara has left her shoes, purse and laptop on the floor and you almost tripped over it. You kick all of it aside, and throw your backpack close to them. “Momma, are you home?”

There’s no answer. You know she’s probably on another Supergirl call. Lena went on a business trip the day before, and you two promised you could go a whole week without her. Now you’re looking around and you don’t know how she believed you guys. It’s day one without her and the house already looks this clutter.

You shoot Kara a text saying she needs to pick up some food on her way back. She texts back “🔥🔥🔥🌬💨🍕👍🏻”. Great, she’ll put out some fire and get pizza.

In the meantime you decide to organize the house. Less than two minutes later you give up. What’s the point, anyway? It’ll be a mess tomorrow, and your mom’s only coming back in a few days.

It doesn’t take too long before Kara flies through the window with some bags and four pizza boxes.

“There’s nothing in here but ice cream, candy bars, cookie dough and canned frosting.” You say looking inside the bags. “Have you ever shopped before?”

“Hey! I thought you would like only eating sweets while your mom is out.” She shoves everything inside the fridge not looking at it, and definitely not organizing them inside. “But if you want, I can go out and buy some kale.”

“Ok, no need to be mean.” You open one pizza box and start eating right away. She helps herself with some slices too. You’ll never get tired of seeing her inhaling the food.

“Should I also make some tater tots?” She asks, picking the package on the fridge. Four boxes of pizza should be enough, but you know she was on some Supergirl call and that means she always comes back home starving.

“’Is that a real question?”

“No.” She says putting them on the fryer. She looks back at you on the other side of the counter. “So, do you want to watch a movie tonight?”

“Can’t. I have a French test tomorrow I haven’t studied for.”

“BOOOO.” Kara puts her hands in front of the mouth to echo the sound and you roll your eyes while laughing.

“Why are you booing me? Thought you would want me to study.”

“Not at the expense of watching a movie with your dear momma.” She eats another three slices while you think about an answer.

“Man, you’re really lonely without mom, aren’t you?” You laugh at her, and she furrows her brows in response.

“BOOOO.” She does it again. “Go ahead, leave me too. I don’t care.”

It’s day four. You’ve basically been living on pizza and sweets. You can’t really blame it on Kara because there was a crisis with an alien, and the past two days she was barely home, which means you were kind of living alone.

Then you come home from school, and you hear a loud noise in the laundry room, so you run there with your super speed.

“Oh my god, what have you done?” You look around and the place is exploding in bubbles and water and your momma is in the middle pressing every button she can see to make it stop.

“Oh Rao, kid. Make it stop.” She asks desperately and you make your way inside to reach the washing machine.

“Aren’t you supposed to be the grown up here?” You ask, pulling the cable out of the plug. Everything stops, but the whole room is still full of soap.

“You be the grown up!” She throws soap at your face and you nearly swallow it. You’re shocked.

“No!” You pick up some bubbles on the floor and throw at her too. “You be the grown up!”

“You know what would be fun?” Kara holds your hands to make you stop. She has the craziest smile on her face. “If we looked into each other’s eyes and wished to be each other at the same time, and we could totally pull a Freaky Friday.”

“Mhm. You just want an excuse to go around acting really immature.” You roll your eyes.

“So?”

“So, we don’t have to pull a Freaky Friday for that, do we?” You say pointing at your situation at that moment and Kara laughs.

“KARA? What’s with all the mess?” You hear Alex's voice coming from the front door and you both get a little desperate.

“Clean it up.” She says almost leaving through the door and you pull her back inside.

“No, it’s your mess. You clean it up.” You complain.

“It was your clothes I was trying to wash.” She says and you both look at the door to see Alex there. She shoots a disappointed look at you both.

“Honestly, I expected more from you.” She sighs turning on her heels. You and Kara both follow her to the kitchen.

“I’m trying my best, but there’s always an emergency and…” Kara starts.

“I didn’t mean you. I obviously meant your daughter, who is much more mature.” Alex puts a casserole on top of the counter. “Kelly made you guys some homemade dinner. We figured you’ve been surviving on pizza and potstickers.”

“Potstickers!” Kara yells. “I knew I was forgetting something.”

“You know, kid, you can always come stay with us these next few days.” Alex looks at you in pity, and you try to hide a laugh.

“I’m ok, aunt Alex.” Kara is pouting behind Alex and you smile. “It’s not that bad, we just had a little incident.”

“Ok, ok.” Alex looks around. The house is a mess, it does not look like just a little incident, but she doesn’t push further. “The offer stands in case you change your mind. And Kara, please, you’re the mom here. Could you, please, just… Just please be the mom. Ok? Just… Please.”

“In my defense we are Freaking Friday right now, so she is actually the mom.” Kara says making you laugh, but that makes Alex roll her eyes.

“Just don’t kill the kid or Lena will kill you, ok?” She turns on her heels and leaves. You look at Kara.

“You clean up the laundry room.”

“You meme the meme room.” It’s her answer and the only thing you can do is laugh again. You end up helping her clean the laundry room, and then the house. It’s not that bad ‘cause you’re using your super speed and flying around the house for the first time and blasting loud music with your momma.

“See.” Kara looks around very proud when you two are finished. “I knew we could do this.” She hugs you sideways. “We’re both very mature young women.”

“Young women?” You laugh. “Really? I mean, how old are you now? 70?”

“I don’t look a day over 35.” She laughs and you agree.

“You’re right. You don’t.”

When Lena comes back from her trip, you and Kara have finally figured out a way to live without destroying the entire house. As for food, you’re still mainly living on tater tots and potstickers, but it’s ok because you know Lena is going to make you eat vegetables as soon as she is back in the kitchen.

“Oh wow, look at this house!” Lena says putting her bags down. You and Kara run to the front door to welcome her. “I’m so very proud of you two.”

“Aw thanks, love. But it was all me.” Kara says running to hug your mom and you roll your eyes.

“Come here, babygirl.” Lena opens her free arm and you hug her too. She kisses your head, then Kara’s mouth. “I’m so glad you guys could do this. I have so many more trips planned.”

“Oh Rao, please no. You can never leave us again!” You say hugging her with a little more strength that you planned.

“Please don’t make me be the responsible adult again.” Kara asks on your side.

“Please don’t make me make her be the responsible adult!” You pout and Lena laughs at your reaction.

“Feels good to be home.”

[roswelldetails]

Episode 2x04 - What if God Was One of Us

EPISODE SUMMARY:

AN ACT OF GOD — On the verge of a breakthrough in her quest to save Max (Nathan Dean), Liz (Jeanine Mason) turns to Kyle (Michael Trevino) for one last favor that could potentially land him in hot water. Meanwhile, Michael (Michael Vlamis) and Alex’s (Tyler Blackburn) investigation into Nora (guest star Kayla Ewell) leads them to a farm, where they meet a historian named Forrest (guest star Christian Antidormi). Elsewhere, Cameron (guest star Riley Voelkel) confronts Jesse Manes (Trevor St. John) about her sister’s whereabouts, and Isobel (Lily Cowles) uses her powers for good. Amber Midthunder also stars. Shiri Appleby directed the episode written by Steve Stringer & Christopher Hollier (#204). Original airdate 4/6/2020.

DETAILS:

Roy said that he took veterinary training, which is how he was able to help with Louise and Nora's injuries.

"How come it feels like you don't know what I'm saying, but you know what I'm thinking?"

Roy moved the truck (with the pods in it?) to the livery.

"Boss's wife won't let him blame the drought on God so that honor goes to his foreman -- that's me."

Kyle on The Science:

"You're telling me that Michael Guerin used pinball parts and a car battery to cause cutaneous perfusion?

(Cutaneous perfusion...i think it is circulation of fluid/blood through tissue, but it's a bit above my head)

The device Liz needs is a "Personal Genome Machine". She ordered it when she still worked at the hospital.

Before entering the Crashdown, Graham Green tapes a Missing sign on the door for Hank Gibbons (who Noah killed in 1x13).  Apparently someone covered it up.

The sign is HARD to read, but I think it says:

"All viable leads reported to Graham Green's UFO Emporium will receive a free keychain.  Make certain you subscribe to the Weekly Probe as we dive deeper into the untold stories of Roswell and answer the question on everyone's mind.  ARE YOU NEXT?"

Graham Green references that he's the "creator of last week's 39th most downloaded true crime podcast." (Assuming that this is the Weekly Probe, referenced on the poster).

Graham Green is opening a 1947 themed malt shop at the UFO Emporium

U.F. Doughs (the Crashdown's new donuts).

Isobel's been coming to the Crashdown every day for weeks.  (Note that this episode is the first one that really doesn't have a clear time context).

"Feliz cumpleanos, mama!" Happy birthday in Spanish, of course, but note Kyle's choice term of endearment for fic purposes!  And she responds in kind "Gracias, mijo!" (Mijo = male version. Arturo calls Liz mija = female version)

"A wild Michael Guerin finally emerges from his weeks-long hibernation in a lab and a library."

Again, non-specific time frame.

"When every other farm was struggling, the Longs experienced record-breaking crops.  Summer of '47. No one could explain it…till October '48. The day after that photo ran in the paper, the farm was devastated by a massive fire.  Foreman, entire staff killed. Whole place burned down."

"What caused the fire?"

"Well the paper called it an act of God.  Said it was a freak storm. Bolt of lightning strikes the barn the same night that my mom's caught and locked up in Caulfield."

Wyatt Long's horses are named "Diamond" and "Silk".

Jesse Manes' beer of choice is "Polestaff".

Cam's postcard from Charlie (Likely the reason she came back to Roswell) says:

"See you back in Roswell --Charlotte"

Top left corner says "Greetings from Roswell, NM".

It was mailed to Jenna at the Green Hill Motel in Dayton, Ohio.

Jenna says it's not Charlie's handwriting.

Isobel in the mindwarp: "And what's your dream, Arturo? What would be your miracle? What do you pray for?"

Arturo & Rosa's fight… 

"Did that fool give you drugs? I'll kill him!"

"Ow! You're hurting me! That's child abuse!"

"Everything I do I do to hold you up and you see it as abuse. I don't know what to do anymore!"

"Yeah right." Rosa falls down and laughs.

"This isn't funny! Sheriff Valenti won't give you any more chances."

"You should be happy. You wanted me to be on the field hockey team, remember? You said I should make friends and have good American fun."

"Who sold you the pills?"

"I stole them."

"Was it Frederico?"

"You wouldn't believe me."

"Tell me the truth!"

"It was Mom! She's either too high to notice that they're missing, or she knows and she doesn't care."

"You're lying to me. I don't know how to help you."

"So stop trying then. I'm beyond hope anyway, right? That's what everyone else in this town thinks."

"Maybe you're right. I'm going for a drive."

Arturo tried to register with Instagram as PancakePapi!! He ended up with PancakePapi58!

Scene with Steph and her dad...FIRST MENTION OF SOPAPILLAS ON THE SHOW!!! 🤤🤤🤤🤤 (They're the best...in New Mexican restaurants they're like, both an appetizer and a dessert.  They're like hollow fried bread that you eat with honey. Delicious.)  See here:

Plus it gave the show another opportunity to be authentically New Mexican through food references.  (Last season it was in episode 2 when Arturo asked,"red or green?" And Liz replied "Christmas!". In New Mexico that means half red half green chile smothering her plate.) Like so: 

1948...unclear how much time has passed, but Louise says months.

The kid's name is Walt.  (Walt Long?? Some other last name?).

Nora says that under the tarp is the "pumpkin launcher" and it's a surprise.

Nora says it's not safe for Michael here, "but soon."

"Hey do you smell that? It smells like rain.  It's what you smell like under all the grease and bourbon.  It's what your workshop smells like. Something alien happened here. Not that I can still smell it 70 years later."

"This is the best evidence I've seen that Max and Isobel's mother survived the initial firefight. This is something that you do with family."

"Nora's my mother. If she was here at the same time as Louise…"

Note - when did they confirm who Louise was or that she was Max & Isobel's mom? This has not happened narratively yet.

Since Walt was a young kid, Alex thinks there's a chance he's still alive (though at the end Nora definitely thought he died when the barn blew up. I suspect that Walt survived and is the key to the story...not fact, just speculation.)

Forrest: "The foreman, Roy Bronson, was definitely hiding something.  But it wasn't Little Green Men. It was Nazi spies."

"This is like Junior Year eraser room, getting caught by Coach Wiggins."

OG callback to the eraser room being the high school makeout spot. OG, "the eraser room takes our innocence." 

Rosa in Spanish "¿En serio?" Basically "are you serious!?!" Or "really?" When the blender shorts out (awfully similar to her first Noah nightmare in 2x01)

"...when Charlie told me she had stole classified documents, I reported her.  I thought I was doing the right thing and the military put her in prison."

"Right. Where she was safe."

"No. I… I didn't know who she really was when I turned her in. I didn't know what prison would do to her."

"She wanted you to turn her in, Jenna. She set you up to do so. She knew that as long as she was in government custody no one could get to her."

"Charlie fought in two wars.  Who was she afraid of?"

"A private securities firm, most likely.  You know that I met her? She was working on this genetic sequencing project that had the potential to save lives, but also destroy them. And there were some people out there who saw applications for her research that went beyond her intentions."

"She was doing research that could help save lives, and people wanted to use it to create a bioweapon."

"Well yeah, she created this pathogen that could seek out and dismantle specific sequences. Just think about it -- a smart bomb that could be detonated in the middle of a crowded city, only harm it's intended target. Think about the innocent civilian lives saved while you take out leaders of terrorist organizations."

"Or commit genocide. If her work fell into the wrong hands, it could quietly wipe out entire groups of people because they share a certain genetic code, while their neighbors go about living their lives.  Why do you know so much about this? What's your interest in my sister?"

"I believed that I had a use for her pathogen, at one time. But my fight is over now."

A few notes about this exchange.

Clearly Charlie's pathogen is the key ingredient in the smart bomb that Flint was developing, as discussed in 1x12.

Liz's "personal genome machine" can break down the alien genetics and give Project Shepherd what they need to use a smart bomb on the aliens. 

Don't forget, her lab is protected by Air Force security set up by "Alex's team". (Badbadbadbad!)

Rosa describing her bipolarism. 

"I get these mood swings sometimes. Like, I can be happy and singing one minute, and then, all of a sudden, this darkness just closes in over me, and I have all these voices telling me that I'm worthless."

Jesse gives Cam the name of the security firm looking for Charlie.  We don't see the name of it. He warns her to be careful. "I may be hobbled but they are not."

"Now, you were hunting aliens, and I gave you Max's name. Why didn't you lock him up in Caulfield with the rest?"

"I don't know.  I guess I feel like there's a story unfolding in Roswell. Has been for more than 50 years.  You can't blame me for wanting to see how it ends."

Catherine Zeta-Jones in a laser maze -- Liz is referencing the 1999 movie Entrapment.

Liz trying to science-intrigue Kyle….

"Interesting historical footnote. There was an internment camp in Roswell. Nazi POWs built half this city.  Hence the iron crosses. My great-great grandfather BoDean's foreman got busted for hiding a couple of women here. According to him 'A couple Nazi spies escaped and strudeled their schnitzel for room and board right here on this very farm.  See, I was never really as into shooting squirrels as Wyatt is, so, when I came out here for summers as a kid, my cousin Kate and I -- we'd prowl the property for artifacts."

"You know, what we're doing you and me -- it doesn't only have to be for Max...once Max is healthy, we could use this genome machine to Target cellular apoptosis.  I mean, we could craft polymerase sequencing in human DNA. We don't have to stop. We have no boards, no restrictions…"

Apoptosis is also sometimes referred to as "cellular suicide" or "spontaneous single cell death".

Polymerase is like the building blocks of DNA.

In other words, Liz is really, really smart.

FORREST LONG!!!!!! 😂😂😂. 

Alex on the bullet shells: "These match the M1917s the airmen used in '48.

"They were scattered all over the property. Legend has it the Nazis we're building some kind of bomb in the barn. Then one night the Air Force showed up."

"The night of the fire."

"The blaze burned so hot it turned sand to stone. Papers say that lightning struck the barn and everyone died in the flames, but...that's bull.  See I think the Air Force covered up the massacre that happened when they discovered that weapon.

A few things on this scene… 

Forrest mentions his cousin Kate...Wyatt's sister who was murdered by Noah in 2008.  So Forrest is Wyatt Long's cousin. 

Substitute Nazi for alien and it's probably all based somewhat based in truth.  In the 1940s that definitely would have been a reasonably obvious way to cover it up, especially given the history that Forrest cites and the military culture in Roswell.

Note: POW = prisoner of war

The iron crosses Forrest references…

Article on the German POWs in the Roswell Daily Record…

Walt was hiding in the barn when Tripp made it explode.  Explosion looked shimmery, like the alien ship & tech. 

Also, more info than you ever wanted to know about the Roswell Army Air Field/Walker Air Force Base/Roswell International Air Center...including some info on the POWs.

Sheriff Valenti's theory on Noah's death:

"I think Max Evans poisoned Noah and left him in the desert the night of the lightning storm, and I think Isobel Evans was in on it."

Kyle says it would take gallons of acetone to poison someone.

Tripp was Alex's great uncle

Nora was working on a ship to take the pods home.

TRIPP MANES!!!  Full name is Eugene Manes III.

Alex finally gives Michael the piece of alien ship he's had.  He doesn't want to be another Manes man standing in Michael's way.

Cam's voicemail to Liz.

"Got a lead on my sister.  Give me a call when you get that tin-star-wearing E.T. awake, so I can curse him out for worrying us all. Good luck Liz. Bring Max home."

Arturo's Spanish to Liz and Rosa.

"Das gracias a Dios.  Gracias todos los dias."

Translates generally to "Thank God.  Thanks every day."

Isobel's monologue at the end:

"The idea of God always freaked me out. Like, apparently he made people in his own image, which, first of all, get over yourself. And also, does that apply to us? Does every planet have its own God? Let's say that we're all clones of the big guy in the sky. Well then, doesn't it stand to reason that we're all capable of slinging light? Well I guess by that same token we're all capable of tremendous wrath. We're walking contradictions. A never-ending mercurial rise and fall. Darkness and light. I guess the real miracle is choosing the light. Despite the ever-present darkness. Look at us. You're in the middle of a downright biblical desert, galaxies from where we started. I mean, our very existence is a miracle. I'm capable of so much more than I thought I was, Max. I really think that maybe I could do great things. I need you to come back, okay? I need you to be the thing that I can believe in. That doesn't let me down. I just need this one little miracle, and I promise I won't ever ask for anything ever again."

MUSIC:

1. LEN "Steal My Sunshine"

2. Spacehog "In The Meantime"

3. Duke Ellington "Take It Easy"

4. Maná "Como Te Deseo"

5. Oasis "Don't Look Back In Anger"

6. Ben Harper "Waiting On An Angel"

[coll2mitts]

#88 Tommy (1975)

The Who’s well-loved 1969 rock opera album Tommy has been adapted for the screen, and is almost the furthest thing from a feel-good picture that you can get.  Who knew that the sound of childhood trauma could be so goddamn catchy?

When I was a young girl, my father would play the album Tommy, he really liked the band.  Tommy was one of those albums I played on repeat when I was elementary school-aged.  My dad had copied the album to a cassette, and me and my yellow Walkman would head to the bus stop every morning blasting “The Acid Queen”.  I’ve mentioned before I was an obnoxious kid, and one memory that has unfortunately stuck with me for like 25 years is this guy on the bus asking my sister to tell me to stop singing out loud to “Pinball Wizard” because it was annoying.  I sunk into my seat as if he had punched me straight in the gut.

Being young, my understanding of the plot was pretty basic, and oh boy, the movie translation of this was um... I was not prepared for the ride I had boarded.   Even as someone who is unbelievably familiar with the source material, this was a rough watch.

Tommy begins during World War 2, and England is getting bombed by Nazis.  Tommy’s mom and dad are on their honeymoon, and when they return, Tommy’s father is sent off to war and is presumably killed in action.  Tommy is born on V.E. Day and never knows his biological father.  His mother (Ann-Margret) hooks up with a dude she met on vacation, Uncle Frank, and when Tommy’s father returns unannounced 6 years later, her lover kills him by hitting him with a lamp.  Dude lived through a plane crash, and its the bedside lamp that finally gets him.  Tommy witnesses the murder, and Uncle Frank and his mom plead with him not to tell anybody.  The trauma of this event triggers psychosomatic deafness and blindness in Tommy.  His parents are understandably concerned about him, even though they are the whole reason this happened in the first place.

His mom is weirdly fixated with his salvation, and takes Tommy to church to see if a supremely uncharismatic Eric Clapton and statue of Marilyn Monroe can heal him.  The congregation, in a very classy move that is not at all disparaging to Marilyn Monroe’s legacy, downs alcohol and prescription medication as communion.  The healing goes about as well as expected.

After this, his Uncle Frank takes Tommy to a prostitute, who drugs and presumably rapes him, thinking it might snap him out of it.  When that doesn’t work, his parents then leave him with one babysitter that beats and tortures him, and another that sexually molests him, so... fun times.  My notes perfectly illustrate how glad I was to watch this series of events unfold.

Realizing Tommy can entertain himself just by looking in a mirror, his parents get loaded on the couch, leaving him alone to wander out of the house.  He stumbles upon a pinball machine in a junkyard.  His parents discover he’s really fucking good at it, and introduce him into the very financially lucrative world of pinball competitions.

My favorite scene in this movie is watching Elton John play a keyboard attached to a pinball machine while wearing the largest shoes I’ve ever seen on a human.  They hinder his movement so much he can only point with his left arm over and over again to show his enthusiasm.  When Tommy wins the Pinball championship, a pack of Waldos haul away Elton’s defeated body.

Now that Tommy’s family is rolling in dough, his parents buy a mansion and a yacht, and Ann-Margret tries to bury her guilt surrounding Tommy’s condition through retail therapy, and literally smothering her grief with chocolate pudding.

I swear to god, Ann-Margret is the only person who actually knew what kind of movie she was filming.  She’s crazed, dramatic, and her voice is so fucking awesome (unlike some of the other actors they cast...).  Still, the disservice of making her swim in a sea of baked beans... which, FUN FACT: sent her into the ER because part of the broken champagne bottle rocketed out of the television when they were pelting bubbles at her and cut her hand large enough that she needed 27 stitches to close it.  She came back to film the next day because she is a fucking queen.

Tommy’s parents take him to Jack Nicholson putting on an haughty accent to see if he can fix Tommy, and all he succeeds in doing is putting the moves on Ann-Margret.  She takes Tommy back to the house and dances him into the mirror, which sets him free to swim and run shirtless across the country without shoes on.

It’s around this point of the movie that I realize Ann-Margret and I have *a thing* for young Roger Daltrey, and I don’t know what to do with this knowledge.

Seriously, she’s only like 3 years older than him and she’s supposed to be playing his mother.  The film industry is so fucked up.

Tommy tells his mother than she needs to relinquish all her material possessions, baptizes her in the ocean, and forms his own pinball-based religion.  His followers treat him like a messiah, looking for him to provide the path to salvation.  He invites them onto his compound, puts his child molester Uncle Ernie in charge of a bunch of children, and Uncle Frank in charge of recruitment and merchandising. 

His campers are fairly pissed they’re being milked for every dime they have, but Tommy is all, “I haven’t handed out my syllabus yet, wait until you hear what the curriculum is going to be!”  When they discover it’s about turning off all distractions and only playing pinball, his congregation are all like, “Fuck that!” and riot, murdering both of Tommy’s parents.  Now that his oppressors are dead, Tommy is truly free.  He runs through literal fire, jumps into a lake in jeans, and climbs a slippery waterfall AND a mountain in bare feet, making me wonder what kind of insurance they had on this picture that they allowed Roger Daltrey to do all of that and hang glide into a sea of bikers. The 1970s were an unencumbered time.

I watched several interviews with Peter Townshend to understand where the idea of this rock opera came about, and holy shit, this story is just based in his own traumatic childhood experiences.  From his perspective, after WW2, the people in England who had lived with the constant fear of sudden death internalized all of their associated trauma.  They had children they weren’t emotionally equip to parent, leaving them to be vulnerable to people who wanted to exploit them.

Tommy’s constant plea in the movie was to be seen and heard by those who were supposed to protect and care for him, only for them to be ignorant to the affect their negligence was having on him.  Tommy tries to save other broken people who need to feel safe, only for them to revolt, take the only family he’s ever known away from him, and abandon him.  This is an unbelievably depressing movie, and the fact it resonated with so many people, I just... I don’t know how to process that, because it’s heartbreaking.

So, yeah, this movie is weird as shit, but it does try to impart that people who are exposed to repeated stressful events will only hurt themselves and those around them if they try to repress those experiences.  I’m not sure the movie effectively communicated what The Who was trying to convey in the original album, however.  I think the message is overshadowed by the strong aesthetic.  

I suffered with intense anxiety as a child (still do, although I have mechanisms now as an adult to help manage it) and my parents didn’t know what the fuck to do with me.  I would say 90% of the time they’d treat my anxiety like I was personally trying to inconvenience them, and the other 10% they’d make fun of me for it.  So there I’d be, trying to hide my anxiety attacks and feeling like I was going to die (or if I was lucky, just vomit) because they’d get angry or tell me to suck it up if they knew what was going on.  I did not have a happy childhood.  I, like Tommy, just wanted them to understand me and show any amount of compassion.  However, watching this movie, I somehow did not find myself relating to his story at all.  I was too distracted by Marilyn Monroe-dressed nuns, a 2-story tall Elton John, child abuse and molestation played off as a joke, and Ann-Margret drowning in bean syrup that I completely missed the intention.  I also think 1970s religious movements had a tendency to be rather exploitative, and I have listened to far too many My Favorite Murders to not see Tommy’s fans and think, “You’re in a cult, call your dad.”  It’s hard to be automatically empathetic to the abused when they lead others to be victimized by their abusers.

I would 1000% recommend Tommy the album.  This movie is worth a watch if you like The Who, but even as someone who loves the original music, I’m probably not going to put it in my constant rotation.

That concludes rock band movie musical week!  The orchestra nerd inside of me is excited to move on to Carmen Jones next.

[dateflight398]

Dating As A Single Dad Reddit

Dating As A Single Dad Reddit Free

Dating Single Parents Reddit

Reddit Dating Advice

A few years ago, I started cracking jokes regularly about hot dads. Then when I met a charming, handsome dude with good taste in music and tacos at a secret Santa vinyl swap party last winter, I started dating one. Suddenly the jokes seemed a little creepy, and although I actively pumped the brakes on making them, those familiar with my menagerie of hot dad puns rose a skeptical eyebrow. I didn't seek out a hot dad, it just happened. Hotness aside, there's some unexpected things that happen when you date a single dad.

I've dated ('dated') divorced dudes before, which might be a little similar, but this relationship marks my first with a parent. When the relationship was brand-spankin' new, a lot of close friends lamented renditions of, 'I could never DATE A PARENT.' They echoed sentiments of kids being deal breakers. But I just figured, we're getting older. Everyone has a past and brings baggage into a relationship. And sometimes that baggage needs soccer lessons. Although, of course, I find my partner's child a deeply charming, fun, hilarious little human who doesn't qualify as 'baggage.' You know what I mean. A man willing and thrilled to take on the dad role shows commitment. It shows a patient man who gives a damn and has a loving heart. These are positive things. However, yeah..dating one of these men summons some unique situations sometimes.

Aug 27, 2018 Single dads have responsibilities, and that’s a sign that they’ll be able to handle a relationship maturely. Speaking of fatherly responsibilities, single dads have to take their kids to the Dentist, the Doctor, and other appointments. This means that it should be relatively easy to meet a single dad if you’re looking to date one. If you’re newly single, ease into it. Remember, you’re the grown-up here. “The decision to date is 100. Single Officers, hows your dating life? I am a Deputy that is currently working in the county jail. I was recently set up on a blind date with a friend of a friend. She was was really cute from her pictures and i was told she was a great person so i agreed. We met for dinner and I was actually having a good time.

He gets along great with your dad

I already knew I was dating a sociable, nice guy, and my dad is the same way, but I don't know how I failed to predict this easy bond. It's kinda unbelievably cute to watch them nerd out on fatherhood together.

He moves easily in different social situations

If he has to make pleasant conversation with other parents during tae kwan do, he can flow harmoniously through your old coworker's new girlfriend's potluck.

Finding tiny clothes in your clean laundry

Or..not even that tiny. Just not yours and not big enough to be his. I recently unearthed a red T-shirt that was definitely not mine in a batch of clean laundry I did at bae's house. Granted, I'm a fairly petite person and my boyfriend's child is seven. Even though I modeled it for jokes above, I resisted the urge to actually don and sport it around. That seemed too far.

Reexamining past relationships

Every situation is different, but my boyfriend is still on amicable terms with his child's mother, who also lives near us. Matters are so peachy that she even shared me on a Google Calendar she, her boyfriend, and my boyfriend share re: who has chief parenting duties when (it's half-and-half, really). This kind of amazing camaraderie made me really look at past relationships I'd previously kept duct-taped in a box and tossed the way-back part of the closet. I'd like to say this exercise made me resurrect toxic romantic relationships as healthy friendships, but that hasn't quite happened yet (and with some specific ones, I honestly can't see that ever happening). More than anything, I think it's helped me recognize the hard fact that all humans have faults and, in general, good intentions. Harmony can exist with a little work. (Though to be fair, I can't take credit for the calendar. That's all his superstar ex's handiwork and maturity.)

Realizing people sure like to make fun of/talk about dads

I actually muted #dadbod from Twitter and had to fake a million smiles for people trying to relate to me by bringing the meme up IRL. Also very tired of the dad joke thing (which is real, sure, but still not a phenom I care to discuss for the 999th time).

There's far less invented drama

Dating As A Single Dad Reddit Free

When a person has to care for another human, they simply have less emotional and physical energy to invent snafus or hang-ups. Nothing is a big deal unless it's an actual Big Deal. He has developed a wisdom to help him identify the difference between the two, and if you haven't already done the same, hanging with him long enough will be educational.

You have an incredibly patient partner

Someone who had to teach a tiny, indignant child how to master the toilet isn't gonna flip when you need to take nine breaks hiking back out of a canyon.

You save money

I've never considered my income sizable until I started thinking of the glaring fact that I don't have to split it with anyone. Since single dads still have to, you know, fund their child, there isn't always a ton of extra dough to fund flippant outings to fancy cocktail bars or jump onto tubing trips you didn't even want to attend in the first place. It inspires you to be more mindful of your own spending habits. As such—

He's wildly creative with cheap and free activities

And knows every single dope park worth visiting in town.

It forces you to address your own insecurities..

So when the kid asks, 'Why are you wearing lipstick?' You can actually think to yourself, '..Yeah. Why am I doing that?' And in a more serious sense, it forces you to dissect immature impulses. Like when you're running late to meet a friend because you're stuck in a child-stuffed lantern parade one town over, you're not allowed to bitch and force your S.O. to help you summon an Uber to pick you up, STAT—because he's too busy pushing the kid on a skateboard inside the festivities to indulge your princess agenda. It makes you take a more discerning look at this princess agenda and brainstorm ways to be more reasonable in general.

..and to be an adult yourself.

I was playing with the kid at a playground near my boyfriend's apartment and when an authority figure from the attached daycare came out to ask if we had permission to be there, I immediately turned to the child. Then I realized, 'Oh fuck. I'm supposed to answer here.' I've always been a touch afraid of authority but knew I had to handle the current situation. It turned out fine, by the way.

Conversely, it means you can't let jealousy get to you with exes. I used to let envy blind me badly in the past—even if a boyfriend managed to remain congenial with an ex, the whole bond made me feel rattled as hell. Now that I'm with a person who's ex will be around in a close way forever and ever amen, I have to be OK with that. Which is the adult thing to do anyway. We can't let ourselves feel threatened for no viable reason.

He knows the world doesn't revolve around him

This can be a difficult quality to find in this world of overgrown Peter Pans on the hunt for their own Mother figure—a person to handle all the less savory household duties, remind them to go to the doctor, praise them constantly, hinge their daily or long-term plans on what Pan wants or says he needs. This situation is different, because he already takes on that role for his child while still taking decent care of himself. Playing Mother to a series of adult Peter Pans got old, so this kind of attitude is a very welcome change of pace.

He is deliberate

Since there's a kid involved, he isn't trying to be all willy-nilly with decisions in life—both those that do and don't concern you. That's pretty hot, TBH.

You can dodge responsibility for your music choices

When 'Uptown Funk' happens six times in a row, I can blame that on the kid (which is true). Same with Katy Perry (which might be an extrapolation or even just my idea).

It's hard to gross him out

Possibly one of the best treats of dating a dad. If your cat got secretly sick and he steps barefoot into a pile of barf, he doesn't love it but he understands that happens (probably because he has experience direct skin-to-someone else's-barf contact before). He also doesn't panic about periods or farts or other body stuff.

Dating Single Parents Reddit

His place is gonna be messy..forever

Cleaning is one of my favorite forms of therapy, likely because if I'm in a highly cluttered space physically, that transfers mentally and makes me feel like a stressed-out trashcan. Very early in this relationship, I suggested I help my boyfriend with an intense cleaning sesh of his kitchen. We had a lot of wine and played loud punk and soon it was gleaming. This lasted about 36 hours. With a child and full-time job and other luxurious duties such as bathing oneself and staying fed (AND keeping the kid fed), cleaning falls to the wayside. Besides not having enough time to clean, kids are just miraculously mess-inducing machines. Tireless ones. As such, I try to see this situation as an opportunity to relax my OCD tendencies and work to become a more patient, understanding person. Of course my apartment is much cleaner—because I only have to account for me. It isn't fair to hold him to the same standard.

You learn how to relinquish some control

I recognize I have some control freak tendencies, relationships included. A lot of life is outside our control and dating someone with a child is a very effective reminder that no matter what, we can't always call the shots. We have to be adaptable. As such, I waited until my boyfriend thought it would be OK to introduce me to his kid. And even then, it's not like I leapt from a cake and shouted, 'I AM YOUR NEW MOM!!!!!!!!!!!' Not at all. I'm still just a buddy who kicks it from time to time to join in on eating pizza or playing 'balloon' or the occasional ride home from school. When and if my boyfriend wants to explain my role in his life to his child, that's not really up to me. It's a discussion he and I can have, but it's not my endeavor to pilot.

You get a bit of perspective about your own age..

It's fun to make fun of Oldsters until you realize you are now one. This is highlighted by the frequency at which you offer anecdotes children don't want to hear, always marked with the beginning, 'When I was a kid..' They don't care, probably. They just don't need to hear about how your lack of skills with Donkey Kong at age seven feeds into your lack of skills with Mario Kart Racing at age 27. They're just stoked to authentically beat an adult.

..and your general level of importance.

Not to say my boyfriend treats me like I'm not important; He treats me with total kindness and respect. It's just that I have dated people in the past who put me on a pedestal, and you know what? The oxygen gets pretty thin up there. Although I'm sure it's meant as an appreciative gesture, it's unrealistic and puts a lot of pressure on the person sitting on top of it. Dating a parent, though, means no matter what, there is always going to be someone more important than I am in the mix. And I am so so OK with that.

There's no room for jealousy

If a sitter falls through last-minute, that means reservations gotta be canceled and dinner gets moved to the living room and the main dish will probably be pizza. You can't take it personally if homie is late because his child's mother got a flat tire so he had to go help out. You also can't get suspicious when he's on the phone with her a lot. These are complicated waters to navigate and if you're even to dip a few toes beneath the surface, you gotta be able to resign yourself to faith and trust—two things that ought to be present in any grown-ass relationship anyway. It's just here, it's especially non-negotiable.

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Reddit Dating Advice

Shit doesn't have to be so serious

I never babysat growing up and none my nieces and nephews live close by, so I don't actually have much experience hanging out with kids. The first time I met my boyfriend's child, I was 900 times more nervous than meeting any adult. What were we supposed to do or talk about? 'Seriously, whatever,' he instructed. After a while, the nerves dissolved and we were playing a stirring game of 'balloon,' which entails whacking a balloon back and forth between two or three people in a living room. Extra rules vary, but usually Taylor Swift is a necessary soundtrack. Things just don't have to be so serious in the sense that kids are very fun and it's almost astounding how quickly you can reverse back to such an easily entertained brain space. It's freeing to launch into some weird accent and spike a deflating balloon in the air without fear of being judged. It scratches a specific existential itch.

There's no ego

Because guess who makes the weird accent and plays balloon when you're not around? Conversely, though— Gaydia gay dating site reviews.

You can have serious conversations without scaring each other

Although I'm sure there are exceptions, most of the time when a single dad is dating, he isn't just screwing around. It's surprisingly refreshing to sink into a relationship and have the comfortable freedom to discuss individual big-scale hopes and goals. In other relationships, talking about the future at all can often be exactly the catalyst to send Pan off packing for a return and permanent trip to Neverland.

You retain a lot of your own time

Often, especially in new relationships, it can be hard to balance love stuff and friends. https://dateflight398.tumblr.com/post/658104267855577088/catholic-dating-app-free. Assuming you're in a situation with split custody in a local setting, that means half the time you get to yourself. It helps slow things down early on and maintain other hobbies, tinkerings, friendships, and such in your own life. It's the antithesis to smothering and fosters vital independence.

Images: TriStar Picturs; Giphy(23); Beca Grimm

[deeeelightfuldee]

surveyss 005.

When’s the last time you ran?  Last week. blegh. Do your jeans have rips, tears, and holes in them? some of them do, some of them don’t... just depends on my mood. What are you dreading right now? this grad school drama.. it makes me physically ill to think about. Do you celebrate 420? Nope. Definitely not anything im interested in.

Do you get the full 8 hours of sleep at night?  Consecutively? no. Sporadically? No.

If anyone came to your house on your “lazy day” what would ya’ll do? probably order food, watch bobs burgers, do surveys, play board games, etc. Who last grabbed your ass? Oof... either a former coworker or my last boyfriend. Eerrr, actually I think it might have been a guy I was dating briefly. Have you ever been on your school’s track team? Uh, sure. I was homeschooled so I guess if I was running in highschool then I was the track team. Do you own a pair of converse? I don’t have any, no. Do you eat raw cookie dough? oh heck yea. Have you ever kicked a vending machine?  I don’t think I kicked it, but I definitely shook and smacked the one at work. It would always get stuck. Don’t you hate it when radios ruin good songs by playing them over and over? Nah, I don’t listen to the radio a lot, so it doesn’t bother me much. Do you watch Trading Spaces? Back in the day I used to. Is it still on? Man that show used to make me so angry how people could do their neighbors so dirty. How do you eat oreos? Either dunk in milk or eat as many of the chocolate bits first and then save an enormous amount of the creamy goodness to eat at one time. Have you ever stayed online for a long time waiting for someone? AHHHHHHHH yes. Then it turned into staying awake to see if someone would message me. No more of that. Are you cocky? Nope. I can be confident about things, but not cocky. Could you live without a computer? Not at the moment, that wouldn’t be feasible with school. Do you wear your shoes in the house? Sometimes, yeah Who or what sleeps with you? Pillows. Occasionally benny. At what age did you find out that Santa wasn’t real? So, I never stood a chance because my siblings are all older than I am and definitely ruined that for me. Which is so sad because my neighbor used to dress up as Santa and his son would be an elf and they’d come over with gifts and I was like 5 years old and said “you know my siblings ruined this for me, right?” How many phones are in your house, that includes cell phones? Oooof.. umm three. I forgot we got rid of our landline. What do you do when you’re sad? I either stay in my room or I go for a really long drive to places I’ve never been and I don’t bother to keep a map up. Do you know anyone born in the year 1985? Yes Who would you call first if you won the lottery? My mom. I don’t know who else hahah Last time you saw your best friend?  I saw my besties today. Are you in high school? I am not What jewelry are you wearing? I have a necklace on still. Is anyone on your bad side now? Yes. It doesn’t happen often that I get this way, but I’m just so tired of being treated as garbage  When did reality become tv? Whatever happened to sitcoms, game shows  What’s the first thing you do when you get online? usually check emails or open up something fun. When I’m in school it is all business. Do you watch Grey’s Anatomy? I used to love watching it. How do you most people spell your name? Some people spell it correctly, though some people add two n’s or swap an A for an E. I think some people do it on purpose. Would you wear a boy/girlfriends clothes? If it fit, yah. But historically the guys I have dated are muscular but slim.  What are you doing tomorrow? Putting together the pool and patio, sorting out retirement info for mom, planning 4th of july plans, planning birthday plans, meal planning. 

Where do you draw the line? Depends on what the situation is. I typically have pretty high self-respect, so if I am encountering a situation that is disrespectful towards myself, then I am normally out. The exception to that rule has been for someone I genuinely love and care about. Finding that line has been unclear. I think I found the line now that it’s becoming a safety concern. Favorite name for a girl? Violet, Eleanor, Faye.  Favorite boy name? I love soooo many. Jack Montgomery, Theodore (Theo) Graham, etc. Will you keep your last name when you get married? Doubt it. I am okay with letting this one go.  When was the last time you left your house?  I left the house today.  Do you return your cart? HECK YES.  Do you have a dishwasher? I do. Thank gooooooooooodness.  What noise do you hear? Well, I have four separate fans running, so that’s a large amount of the noise. I also have Bob’s Burgers playing in the background because that’s my happy place. Also, my phone is going off like crazy. Would you survive in prison? Probably not. Guilt would get to me for whatever got me there in the first place. I’m not an aggressive person and I know you have to be in order to make it. Who is the youngest in the family? you’re talkin’ to her Road trip! Who would most likely overpack? Most likely me. Do you know anyone with the same name as you? I used to work with a lady who had my name. She was notttttt my cup of tea.  What’s the last thing you purchased?  food.  Do your siblings ever pay for stuff for you? Yeah, my sister notoriously tries to pay for me. My brothers not AS frequently, but my older brother will occasionally offer to buy food for me. My other brother is pretty skint. What brand are your pants right now? No pants. But my bottoms are black What brand is your digital camera? I wish I remembered.... kind of.  Do you own expensive perfume/cologne? One or two.  Do you watch movies with your parents? never my dad. Occasionally mom.  Ever been to Georgia (the state)? Yup! Planning to go again soon.  What irritates you the most? either being taken for granted, or lack of concern for safety.  Are you taking college classes right now? Graduated! I am ready to re-enroll haha.  Do you like sushi? I really, really, really do not.  Do you get your hair cut every month? Ok, sadly I have not gotten my hair cut in probably... 7 years?  Do you go online everyday? yes.

[thedappleddragon]

I just had SUCH a rdeam

I think the kicking off point was that my mom wanted my sister and I to perform in a group piano recital neither of us ever practiced for and I couldn't find a yellow shirt and then my mom and I got into a screaming match and asked me why I did a bunch of stuff I didnt remember and I just had to keep screwing “I dont know / I dont remember” and at some point I was screaming for the sake of screaming and it was awful. then I was sat in a desk chair backwards hugging the back part of the seat as it slowly spun and my sister approached me and help my hand. then I was sent to some sort of prison/camp/club/island/facility and when I arrived all I could do was cower under the desk and shake. the lady in charge walked past and we stabbed daggers at each other (metaphorically) and she told me physically that I better find some yellow. a bunch of really nice inmates (?) came up to me and talked to me and said everything was gonna be fine and told me their stories and talked me down and I talked with them until I could get out from under the desk. then I walked through a big hall and sat at a huge long bar where tons of inmates were gathering. the bar was tended (?) by a bunch of little highly advanced animatronics doing shows at the same time. but the thing is they were all doing prerecorded shows and sometimes climbed up into the bar and I was backed up as far as I could be in my seat because I didnt want them to touch me. a few more people came to talk with me. then the real show began, where the host came out through a big doorway and he gave an introduction about the latest inventions made here. he said “lets say a girl scout has the sniffles” and a drove flew out with a bag of peppermints because they weren't allowed Girl Scout cookies on the island. “I know you like thin mints, new one” and the bag landed in front of me and everyone looked towards me with smiles, either welcoming or just impressed with the drone. I took one out of the bag and handed them around, but there were suddenly piles of peppermints and caramels all down the bar for people to take. someone sat to my right and asked about how I was and how I got here and stuff. I told them “I screamed at my mom and thought I might have DID or some memory problem because I dont remember anything my mom was yelling at me about and then had a panic attack under a desk but im better now but tbh I’m not sure this diemtnion is real.” he jokingly pulled back and was like “what, you dont think I'm real?” and I laughed and explained “no, you might be real, just not here.” at some point during conversation I went “well im rally good at butter” and a little butter making machine appeared out of the bar counter and some dude leaning in from behind it started making butter. but it looked like he was shaving a block of cheese in reverse. a girl next to me started making butter but it looked like she was tightly rolling up rainbow pay dough. each time I tried to help I messed it up so I stopped. after the show it was break time for everyone, like after school where everyone had free time was it was implied you had to do your homework. everything became pretty casual so I slid down off my chair and sat on the floor, and a few others joined me. we all talked and had fun. some commotion caught out attention as 2 presumably older vets of the camp stood up and whoops built up and some friendly sparring was going to begin. the 2 were team captains of sorts. they both told the other what kind of competitor to choose, and one went “ah but all my bald ones aren't bald enough.” some short haired kids began raiding their hands or standing up and eventually one was chosen that looked like a teenage Ang with tattoos that look like that traditional Japanese wave painting. turns out there were elemental bending powers in this universe? but the air bending mastery tattoos were for every element and granted through that element naturally, so not actually tattoos. the other competitor had to have a lot f hair, so the girl sat next to me who my brain registered as an irl friend turned her (irl friend uses they but in the dream it was a girl so) phone to me and it had written out “I dont actually think you could win but I nominate you because you got hella hair.” I just remember being pleased and a general sense of getting along with all these people and hair in my face as my dream shifted to nonsense and reflecting back on itself until I woke up.

two disconjointed dream segments

I was looking into my backyard while there was a terrible storm that blew over something in my backyard. there was also a dense line of freshly planted trees, and overall my backyard was in ruin and misshapen and not how it would be. when I turned around from the glass door, the vent on the floor was huge and I could see rainwater and pine branches stuck in there from the storm. there was moss and rain all over in a 10 foot radius from the door, and all the power was out

I could feel my finger hurting and it felt like it was cramping up and curling in on itself and dying so while half asleep I peeling off the bandaid and reached across the bed to touch it against my laptop I left laying there. I didnt remember this until I got out of bed for a second to grab my laundry, and my finger feels fine now

[kmp78]

Christmas fest in Budapest 🇭🇺

Okay, first things first: 

sadly but not surprisingly the ripple effects from last year´s massacre in Berlin were clearly visible: the Budapest Christmas markets were surrounded by concrete blocks and ever-present police officers were packing not just tasers and hand guns, but also actual machine guns! 

I gotta say, it makes Christmas spirit a bit harder to come by when you have an Uzi in your line of sight at all times... 😔😨

But, it is what it is and all we can do is look forward to better times!  

If you are looking for a budget-friendly, extremely well-located, spotless AND FABULOUSLY NAMED hotel in Budapest, you need not look any further than...

Ehe. 😁

When I was surfing the net for accommodations and came upon this gem... Well, it was a done deal at that point!

The only thing that annoyed me were, shockingly, other tourists! I´m sorry all you Russians out there but I have to say it: learn some ferkin´ manners, Jesus Christ! Is Vladimir banning all citrus fruits from your country or was it just plain greed and nastiness that drove one of your countrymen to dip elbows deep into a bowl of lemons and shove them in his pockets?! Like... really? Couldn´t leave just one for my tea? Not that I would have wanted it anyway, what with his disgusting bare hands having groped them... Sick. 😠

Also the Brits sitting next to me were at their best (?) behavior and judged absolutely everything in sight. Apparently “this English breakfast isn´t proper English”.

Well... DUH! You ain´t in good ol´ Blighty now, guvnor! Suck it up! You can munch on your bangers and mash back home!

And fun fact: almost directly across from our hotel was... 😒

Mom´s comment when she saw these:

“Oh my, those pants are way too short! That looks so stupid! What kind of man would want to wear those?!”

I just wept in silence. She does not need to know. 🙊

MOVING ON!

Some local treats: the Hungarian KFC (shut up) offered something I had never seen nor tasted before called a “Qurrito box” which consists of a semi-Mexican style burrito thingie with chicken and rice and all that good stuff inside - it was really good! 😋

In some more non-fast foody selection, the markets had plenty of amazing and curious offerings!

An interesting observation about the Christmas markets in Budapest: they are very different from their counterparts in Berlin and Vienna etc. in the sense that here the stalls are very “down to earth” and not at all “mass production-like” as they tend to be in bigger cities. 

The goodies and crafts for sale were a lot more personal and homely, which I absolutely adored!

They utilize pine cones, dried fruits, vegetables, meats etc. in all imaginable ways with amazing results! 😍

If air travel wasn´t such a god damn hassle these days and bringing liquids on-board wasn´t a capitol offence, I so would have bought those pickled jalapeno/cabbage/paprika kitties! Look how cute, @ginie62! 😍

And yes, the markets were as picturesque as I had hoped for! 👌

Something that no decent Christmas market could ever be short on: BOOOOOOZE! ☕

To balance out all that drinking, you have to get some filler for your tummy as well, and when in Hungary you absolutely have to go for the most traditional Hungarian food of them all: goulash!

Really tasty and cheap! And on a chilly winter day, it also warms you up inside so win-win! 👌

If goulash does not tickle your fancy, you could try another local treat called lángos which is deep-fried dough topped with whatever you fancy, basically. Could be savory or sweet, anything goes!

I went for sour cream and grated cheese. YAS!

On another day I tried a lángos which was wrapped up in burrito-style, with salami, onions and cheese inside - yet another success story! 👏

And for dessert you have to sample another Hungarian delicacy: chimney cake!

It´s basically a wheat coffeebread which is first rolled around a mold and roasted over an open coal fireplace...

... and then while it´s steaming hot (aka steam rises from the center, making it look like a chimney!), it is rolled around in an assortment of flavoring options, such as cardamon, chocolate, cinnamon etc.

I went for the basic and traditional option aka cinnamon and sugar! Yumz! 👍

And for @kweenbeyass who might want to add Budapest to that bucket list: you´ll be happy to hear that they are extremely tourist-friendly over there! For example, on their main tram lines they have clearly marked all interesting sights along the way (in English) and indications where you have to get off! Very handy indeed! 😉

And any English language help you can get will be a plus, because the language is...

Yikes. 😨

And speaking of traveling: did you know that Budapest has the world´s 3rd oldest metro system? It dates back to 1896, and while it may not look like it belongs in the 21st century...

... I can assure you that it works like a charm! We never had to wait for more than 3 minutes for the next train! Sometimes I did almost wish we did have to wait around a bit longer because the stations were so adorably quaint!  😍

Another fun activity I always enjoy while abroad is lurking around the local grocery stores for all sorts of weirdness, and Budapest did not disappoint in that regard!

Gyros chips? Cheeseburger chips? Hotdog & ketchup chips? Pizza chips?

WHAT?

And this banana has got to be 11 and then some inches...

Ugh. 😵

The Market Hall is also worth checking out, if not for anything else then simply for the vibes of yesteryear. You can really sense the Soviet era still.

Fun fact: they had a random scale screwed to a wall which we could not figure out the purpose for, until we saw that people who had just purchased their potatoes and peas and whatnot marched over to that scale and measured what they had just bought aka they made sure the seller had not screwed them over with the weight of their produce! I guess not all people can be trusted...

And for any communist enthusiast, there were lots of trinkets on offer...

While in town, I discovered they had a Titanic exhibition which I naturally wanted to check out since Leo is my friend-in-law through six degrees of separation from Daddy-o and all.

They had built replicas of the cabins for the richies and the poor folks...

... and had actual items salvaged from the wreck itself! Whoa!

Budapest is also “littered” with fun and curious statues, like this little fella who I met alongside the Danube river.

This guy here had the best business idea! He juggles and entertains in front of cars who are waiting at the red light, and then before the light turns green he takes his hat off and does a quick round from car to car, collecting donations for the little show he put on! Genius! 👏

And while Bucharest may be the “official” residence of Count Dracula, Budapest also boasts some eerily majestic castles.

A nighttime activity you absolutely HAVE TO experience is a trek up to the Fisherman´s Bastion. Holy bejeebus, the views are... yes I will say it... INCREDIBLE. 👀

The Parliament House is also worth a closer look!  🤩

But please do be careful when trekking around after dark as the surrounding park is very poorly lit and there are dangerous steps and ledges all over - we had a near-catastrophic incident which luckily only resulted in a banged-up lip and bruised knees. 🙁

All in all, I can recommend Budapest as a vacay destination to anyone who is looking for a little taste of old time glory and ascetic vibes mixed with modern day comforts and conveniences! 👍

[wasabi-duck]

enemies to lovers yoongi

wanna say this one goes out to my mom aka @warmau who inspired me to start my writing blogs so please check her out and send her love because she is my absolute favorite author on this site

but this au seems wild and im wildin today and blowing money on cherry bomb photocards so why not

you and yoongi both work in the food court of your local mall, but at different restaurants

he works at the pizza place and you work at the chinese restaurant

ever since you got the job, yoongi most definitely caught your eye from across the way

his dark, black hair that hangs in his sleepy eyes…

his pretty, pouty lips, that are forever in a permanent scowl...

his resting bitch face as he tries to convince people to waste their hard earned money on a combo meal…

yoongi is really the whole package

half of your work shift is spent just staring at him and hoping to the good lord above you don’t get caught

you have a few times but that is beside the point

you just stare wistfully and imagine what would happen if you crossed the food court and ran into his arms-

but alas, you cannot do that because if you’re in the restaurant business, you can’t just spend time with the enemy

even if you’re craving pizza, it is forbidden by restsurant law to even give your thoughts to the competition, so you’ve never actually talked to yoongi

ever

but that is a okay because your spot as cashier is the perfect viewing place to glance over at yoongi when you have a free moment

yoongi totally knows you’re checking him out at all seconds of the day, but he’s too shy to ever go over and say something to you, even when he’s not working, so he pretends that you don’t exist

besides, he has lyrics to write on the back of used receipts, melodies to tap out with spoons and knives

customers to swindle

but hoseok, who works at the pizza place too, totally realizes you two have the hots for each other so he’s always like “oh yoongi i think we should get chinese for lunch today, im really craving it”

“it’s not even our lunch break??”

“okay well go get me a snack then, some lomein sounds amazing right now”

“hoseok, no, i know what you’re trying to do”

“oh come on yoongi, all you ever do is stare at them all dreamy!!”

and then hoseok clasps his hands over his heart and wails, “oh young, forbidden love, is there anything more romantic than that?!”

the whole food court has stopped to stare at him, including you, and yoongi is redder than the tomato sauce on the pizzas so he just ducks down behind the counter and doesn’t come up for like the next ten minutes

since you two never actually interact, you think all is lost but then

then

one day it’s particularly slow in the mall

it’s summer so you have a full day of work ahead of you, and you’ve gotten maybe ten customers in the four hours you’ve been working, and you still got like six hours to go

yoongi is in the same predicament, if not worse, because his dearest hoseok has off today and yoongi doesn’t really interact with his coworkers unless they’re hoseok so um…

the two of you are lazing around, stealing the additional glance at each other

when your boss comes over and is all “hey, we really are doing poorly today, we need to change our tactic to get some customers in”

he hands you a tray with little food samples on it and shoves you outside the safety from behind the counter, then says, “go out near the entrance to the food court and try to convince some people to get over here and eat our food”

“isn’t that a little i dunno… pushy.”

“do you like your paycheck or not”

so with some huffing and puffing and grumbling you take the tray and shuffle over towards the food court entrance, trying to pretend you aren’t embarrassed

but the pizza place is not having that, oh no, they also are under target today for sales and they won’t just have prospective customers snatched away like that

“alright yoongo, time to go win us over some customers!!”

“actually my name is yo-”

“use that charm of yours on the ladies, alright?”

“as long as i can use it on the dudes as well”

“sure sure whatever, just get out there and win us over some customers”

they hand yoongi a tray with some little pizza bites in little cups in it and he starts walking to the middle of the food court but his boss shouts, “no no, you need to be right over there with that chinese food! SHOW THEM THE SUPERIOR CUISINE”

if youre wondering, chinese food is better than pizza #facts

yoongi is a little freaked out by his boss’ enthusiasm for making sales but he does what’s asked of him because the only other place hiring right now is gamestop and he doesn’t wanna be stuck with jungkook every two seconds he weebs out over overwatch and persona so like… this job is pretty important

but then yoongi realizes you’re the one who’s also trying to sell food and now he’s all flustered and embarrassed and he doesn’t know what to do so he just kind of stands there and gapes for a few seconds

but then he gets on his #customerserviceface and traipses over to you, smiling that cute lil gummy smile of his face

“i’m gonna take you down” his smile only grows bigger and you’ve never been so attracted yet so afraid of someone in your life

“oh it is SO on dough boy”

“shut up you noodle brat”

“pepperoni person”

“you really don’t have anything better than that, you piece of kung pao shrimp”

“like that was any better pineapple pizza”

“you take that one baCK”

“mAke mE”

you two are so busy squabbling that you kind of ignore would be customers for like the first fifteen minutes

but then you remember what you’re supposed to be doing and with one final glare at yoongi, you snap “i was here first anyhow”

“it’s a mall, not your backyard” yoongi rolls his eyes “i can be wherever i want”

“except on top because i bet i can give out all my samples before you can!”

yoongi laughs and nods “you’re on. first one out of food officially has the best food in the food court”

the two of you spend the next hour trying to shove people down shoppers throats, and most of them end up at the mcdonalds, but you and yoongi are so damn absorbed in your competition that you don’t even care that you’re not actually doing your respective businesses any good

but it’s fun?? you’re having fun??

you don’t think you’ve laughed harder in a work shift ever before, especially when yoongi starts trying to do some god awful italian accent to try and win some customers over about it being authentic pizza

and he can’t help but smile fondly when you try to explain to customers for the millionth time that no, you can’t make szechuan chicken mild when it’s already premade with the szechuan sauce on it already

and when there aren’t any shoppers around, you and yoongi just kinda.. talk

he tells you about his dream to get to college to work with music production and how he doesn’t have the money right now, which is why he’s working at the freaking food court right now

and you tell him about yourself, and your reason for getting the job, and your hopes and dreams for the future as well

he tells you about his friends, about hoseok, the loud one who’s always screaming when there’s a flame in the oven because it’s scary

and about jungkook, who has the audacity to order dominos instead of visiting yoongi

and jin, who hogs the blankets all the damn time but washes yoongi’s uniform so him so it’s even

you talk about your friends too, but none of them seem as interesting as the people that yoongi hangs out with and you kind of hope that one day maybe yoongi will introduce you to them…

but then you realize that means hanging out with yoongi… as like friends or something…

and now you’re blushing

things have gotten pretty quiet now, and you think that maybe you should head back to actual work…

“wait, we both still have one left”

he shrugs and points to your little cup

your brows furrow and you frown slightly, then start to scan around the food court for anyone who someone to take your food so you can end this battle once and for all

but there’s a sudden weight on the tray, and you spin back around, and there’s yoongi, holding the cup up to his lips

and then he just chugs the freaking lomein like that, he just goes for it, finishes up your last sample

your eyes go wide and you smile softly

“well i guess you win” he says cooly, but there’s a noodle hanging from his lip and you point

he gets all red and quickly wipes it away

you take a deep breath, then reach over and grab his last pizza bite, then pop it into your mouth

“hey, this is actually pretty good” you nod

“the best food this damn place has to offer” he says with a wink

“hey wait a second-”

now you’re both laughing again

but your bosses are tired of you guys flirting instead of erasing the competition so they both call you back over so you can man the cash registers

but you and yoongi were having fun, a good time, and you don’t really want that to end?? so uh now you’re both waving over at each other dumbly from behind your counters and smiling and mouthing things to each other that you can’t really understand but hey, it’s the thought that counts right?

and as it comes to the end of your shift, you feel kinda upset because it’s been fun goofing off with yoongi??

like you’re so overwhelmed with butterflies that you actually spoke to yoongi?? like not only did you like introduce yourself?? but you had a real, actual conversation?? amazing??

you hope that tomorrow will be even better…

your clocking out right

the mall is shutting down for the night

the lights are all turning off

you’ve done all your side jobs, cleaned up for the night, restocked the sauces, cleaned all the machines and what not

you grab your jacket from the back, but when you come back out yoongi is standing there, hands in his pockets, looking all shy and cute

you blush and smile and give a lil wave

he smiles and waves back

“so…” you both say in unison

you both laugh and now you’re both tomato red

“today was fun” yoongi says slowly “so i was uh… i was wondering if you wanted to um…”

he starts to fumble over his words

“wanted to get some ice cream maybe?’ you suggest

yoongi’s eyes light up and he nods excitedly

you usually take the bus home, but yoongi drives, so you go with him to the ice cream parlor and you two share a banana split and maybe even a cute kiss too

the end

[suckitsurveys]

Do you like your pop tarts toasted or cold? Either way

Do you like sitting in the front, back, or middle of the classroom? The back, usually.

What color is the last rug you stepped on? Grey.

Who was the very first person you sent a text message to? A boy.

Do you ever see commercials for restaurants that aren’t even in your area? I don’t think so. Not recently, anyway. A few years back they’d play Jack in the Box commercials and the closest one to Chicago is near St. Louis. which is like 3-4 hours away...

What’s your least favorite flavor of candy? Grape.

Do you know anyone who has been struck by lightening before? Nope.

Which is worse: living where there’s lots of tornadoes or lots of hurricanes? I wouldn’t know, I haven’t been in either.

Do you prefer baths with or without bubbles? Bubbles are nice but it’s not a necessity.

Have you ever thought your pet was dead but really wasn’t? Yes. My dad’s dog cosmo freaks me out all the time like that. He’s very old and we’re pretty sure he’s semi deaf so sometimes you can like stomp right next to where he is laying and he won’t even flinch.

What would you do if you had the world to yourself for a day? Nothing too out of the ordinary unless this day to myself also came with a bunch of money.

Would you consider becoming a stripper if it was the only way to support your child? There’s nothing wrong with that.

Do you take anything for your cramps during that time of month? No.

Are you good at remembering little details? Yeah, usually.

What do you think you’d be better at: being an artist or a musician? Artist.

Have you ever seen a black rose? Yes.

Do you blog? Tumblr barely counts.

Are you a fan of cottage cheese? No.

Do you believe in angels? I like to believe my mom is somewhere looking after me.

Do you have any window stick-ons? Yeah.

Would you pay if your dog needed an operation? ...Of course?? If I owned a dog (the dog mentioned a few questions back is my father’s), I would definitely pay for it to have an operation, I have a soul.

Is your coffee machine plugged in right now? We don’t have one.

Do you write words on your knuckles? No.

Have you ever been a SCUBA diver for Halloween? Nope.

Have you ever taken a picture of a sandwich? Oh yes.

Have you ever seen elephant droppings? At the zoo, yes.

Would you like to visit Play Dough Land? That sounds like fun.

Have you ever read about Rome? Sure?

Do you remember Topanga from Boy Meets World? How could I forget our lord and savior Topanga Lawrence? <---I like Kayla’s answer.

Have you ever lost your parents in the grocery store? Yeah.

Have you drawn a star today? I have not.

Is anybody in your house sleeping? The cat might be.

Are you older or younger than fifteen? I am 13 years older than 15.

Do you have any friends that got married within the past year? Hi Hannah! <--Oh jeeze that’s me.

When was the last time you used a pair of ear/headphones? Yesterday at the gym.

Have you ever tried to count to infinity? Nope.

Do you like making mixed cds? I loved making them when they were still a thing.

Would you want to live forever if it meant being a tree? Eh.

What is the strangest thing you’ve put chocolate on? I’m not sure. I’ve had a chocolate bar with bacon in it, and one with potato chips in it. Does that count?

Could you earn a good living selling weed? Nah.

How would you use a photographic memory? Uh.

Who would you like to keep in your trunk? I’m okay.

What would you do tomorrow if you had $500? Oh my god that would be AMAZING.

What body hair gets the most attention? Wait, what do you mean? Like from other people? Or what I give the most attention when caring for? This is weird.

What’s your favorite commercial? I don’t have one right now.

Do you like pie? Pumpkin pie, yes.

Do you appreciate dishwashers? I get waaaay too heated about dishwashers. Why would you go through the extra steps of loading a machine and buying extra soap when you have to pre-rinse the dishes anyway? Just take the fifteen minutes and wash your fucking dishes. <---Dishwashers are WAY more sanitary and you don’t have to stand there and rinse them 100 times to make sure they are clean. And it doesn’t take up counter space where you’d have to dry the dishes.

If you could change someone else’s past, what would you change? I’d change my sister’s past to where she never fucking met her fucking piece of shit fucking husband. But somehow also keep my niece here and the same cute little person she is

What’s the worst experience you don’t remember? Apparently I used to projectile vomit A LOT as a baby.

Are your dreams usually cheerful? No.

If you’re a girl, what’s your favorite color of eyeliner? Black is fine.

How’s the weather where you are at? It fucking snowed and I hate it.

Anything bad happen today? Miles almost started on fire. He had a vape battery in his coat pocket and he went to pick up his coat and the battery and his pocket were flaming.

Can you solve a Rubik’s Cube? No.

What was the last thing that you microwaved? Soup yesterday.

Did you have an easy-bake oven when you were little? No.

Have you ever seen a donkey? Yeah, at a petting zoo.

Do you like sheep? Sure.

Do you like dogs? Yeah, not as much as I like cats, though.

Do you have one? Cosmo, my dad’s dog. He’s kinda mine too.

Do you ever want to be married? I am.

Do you take a lot of pictures? I do.

Where is the boy you want most? At home. We have a date tonight!

Where will you be 2 hours from now? Home. Maybe on out way to Outback to beat the crowd.

What is your current mood? I hate. But I am also excited.

Where are you going tomorrow? We might go hiking in a forest preserve unless its ungodly cold and snowy again tomorrow.

Who was the last person you yelled at? Mark, maybe.

Do you think you’ll be a good Mother/Father? I’m not going to find out.

The last thing you drank? Water.

What’s in your pocket? Nothing.

What colour are your fingernails? There are chips of black paint on them from Halloween.

Have you ever left school just because you didn’t want to be there? Yes, in college.

Did anything cute happen today? Mark kept sending me gifs of Dustin from stranger things.

What are you currently hearing? My coworkers talking in the distance.

Are you afraid of the dark? Only in an unfamiliar place.

Do you usually tell people when they hurt your feelings? Depends on the person and the degree of hurt feelings.

[magma-paint]

Some Sun and Moon headcanons

Okay, mostly Guzma and Plumeria, but I’m gonna try and cover as many characters as possible. And of course, be advised for NSFW ones.

Professor Kukui is actually a distant cousin of Archie’s. They don’t talk often but when they do, Kukui is confused and disappointed that his cousin started an evil organization hellbent on expanding the ocean, but finds amusement that he’s dating the leader of his rival team, Maxie of Team Magma. But no, really, he’s glad his cousin has sought reform and found a partner he’s happy with. Kukui will still joke with Archie asking when the wedding is.

The closest thing Lillie had to a first Pokémon other than Nebby was a Ducklett named Odette. She let it go to be happy when it became a Swanna. She dearly misses Odette, though, and hopes maybe she’ll see it again.

Hau started watching El Tigre: The Adventures of Manny Rivera after finding out that Frida, like him, enjoys delicious sweet fried dough treats (churros for Frida, malasadas for Hau). Now he likes the show for the family dynamics and got Kukui to watch it as well. The two often joke who would win in a match: Kukui as the Masked Royal, White Pantera, El Tigre, or any other character adept at fighting.

Mallow would love to go on Master Chef or Hell’s Kitchen, but she’s a bit terrified of Gordon Ramsay in addition to absolutely admiring him.

Mina is a low-key hippie/stoner. That explains why she looks stoned the majority of the game. Although she’ll only tell her friends about essential oils and other medicinal herbs, especially hemp products that don’t come packaged with the bad psychoactive effects.

Sophocles and Molayne would be great at Cinema Sins. And Gaming Sins.

Gladion is a huge fan of Shadow the Hedgehog and you cannot tell me otherwise. Plumeria and Guzma are jokingly regretting the day they got him that plushie.

When the day comes that Kukui and Burnette announce they’re going to have a baby, Guzma will be the first and probably only one whose mind will go in the gutter, screaming “They had sex!” in his brain so loudly he has to look around to make sure no one can actually hear what’s going down in his mind.

When Guzma dissolved Team Skull, he watched people leave from the balcony of the Shady House. Once he was alone he snapped off his necklace and threw it away, just like how Ralph did in Wreck-It Ralph.

Type: Null (and Silvally to a certain extent) really doesn’t behave like a typical animal but it does have more canine mannerisms than anything. It also loves playing fetch.

Plumeria really does not like to talk about her family at all, having rejected them and making Team Skull her real family. Cliffnotes version is her mom was a raging alcoholic, her dad was a habitual cheater and pathological liar, and her two older sisters had mixed results. Her oldest sister, Chrysanthemum, did go on to become a successful fashion designer and own her own shop, and the other sister, Dahlia, pretty much ended up as high-school dropout, teen mom, freeloading trash with a rap sheet and won’t take any responsibility for her actions. But wait, if Chrysanthemum was the good girl, why doesn’t Plums just stay with her? Well, no matter what, Plumeria was always thrown to the wayside and she decided to look out for herself and eventually ran away from home to find some friends she could call family and treat just like a loving family. That, and Chrysanthemum scoffs at how horrible her family is and turned her nose up at Plumeria after finding out she got involved with Team Skull.

Lusamine has tried sexual advances on Guzma at one point. He wasn’t comfortable at all and post-Ultra Space he doesn’t want anything to do with her. No one knows exactly what happened but Guzma has confirmed she tried to get in his pants.

Lillie is actually a fan of My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic and relates to Fluttershy the most. Hell, Gladion got her a big plushie for her birthday to make up for not taking her with him away from the Aether Foundation.

Mohn doesn’t reminisce about Lusamine and the kids because it could be likely he suffers from some degree of retrograde amnesia after his studies on the Ultra Wormholes.

Ever wonder what’s going on when no one dares go in the arcade on Royal Avenue or in the Hau’oli Shopping Mall? All of Team Skull is spending their coins on the DDR machine. DDR just seems to be a thing they do a lot and something you gotta be good at if you wanna join.

Also, everyone in Team Skull has their nails painted. Everyone. Female grunts have the pinkies painted hot pink, the other fingers with black, and the Skull X on the thumb, male grunts have the thumbs painted electric blue, the other fingers black, and the Skull X on the pinkie, Gladion has his painted all black but with a red edge like Shadow’s color pattern, Plumeria has her index, middle, and ring fingers painted black, her thumbs fuchsia, and her pinkies yellow, and Guzma’s all black or a special color of polish that accurately represents Dark Eco.

Plumeria will not let Guzma go out with certain Grunts while bored, drunk, or impulsive. The last time it happened he came home with his belly button pierced (he kept it, by the way).

Acerola is a HUGE fan of Homestuck, and Rose and Nepeta are her favorite characters.

Guzma has been found to give Nanu volumes of Garfield comic collections for his birthday. Nanu has also said they’re some of the best gifts he’s ever gotten and he’ll read them with his squad of Meowth and Persian.

Gladion will deliberately show Kill la Kill to Lusamine during one of their video chats while she’s undergoing treatment. Either it’ll cause some self-reflection or she’ll blow it off.

Hau has been known to sing “Hawaiian Rollercoaster Ride” while on walks with his Raichu. The result is adorable.

Ilima doesn’t care if people refer to him as a boy or a girl, he even likes to watch people try to figure it out. But he utterly HATES people turning everything into a matter of identity politics.

Wicke’s cup size is a DD at MOST. She really doesn’t get why she’s told not to look up art of herself and even more confused when she DOES look up art of herself.

Calling Plumeria flat-chested will get your ass kicked. She’s between a B and a C cup, and to Guzma that’s fun enough to play with.

Wicke is the aunt of Velma from Scooby Doo. She wants to visit her niece as much as possible and learn about her adventures but working for the Aether Foundation shoots that plan hard in the foot. They keep in touch by mail, though, and Velma has at least one wall of her room she plasters with postcards from Alola.

Faba is low-key gay for Colress, but he’s perfectly content with just hanging out with him or “partaking in gentlemanly endeavors”, as he calls it. He’s too posh for the term “hanging out”.

Yes, Team Skull is considered a family, but Guzma isn’t exactly a Father to His Men. He tries, though, but since he came from a sh1t family it comes across more as the older brother but mostly boss role.

Hala won’t admit he adores the “You’re welcome!” song from Moana. Not even after he’s been caught singing it in public or by himself.

Olivia has heard these jokes about rocks before and she hates them, so stop it: “That’s a leaverite, you leave ‘er right there!” “Oh, that’s an Indian sex rock. You know, another fucking rock.”

Guzma hates wearing jeans or other pants that have a fly on them because the edge of the fly digs into his belly button.

Not an excuse for her behavior, but Lusamine’s obsession with beauty stems from her own mother’s obsession with glamour and beauty. She wanted Lusamine to be as pretty as she could possibly be, and Lusamine is the one who took it too far, where enough screws came loose and she concluded that the only thing capable of achieving God Tier levels of beauty were the Ultra Beasts. Cue insanity after research on the Beasts became her undoing.

On that note, Lusamine is the daughter of Queen Barbee from Panty and Stocking. She took hairstyle tips and fashion advice from Stocking and Weiss Schnee, respectively, growing up, went to college with Gol and Maia Archeon and their insanity rubbed off on her, and took parenting advice from Medusa Gorgon and Ragyo Kiryuin.

Lana was endearingly nicknamed “Ponyo” as a baby. Only her family knows about it, though.

Kiawe has seen quite a number of burns throughout his life. By now he’s practically indifferent to any new ones he sustains and has even kept a record of how many he’s gotten. Currently he has dealt with 209.

Nanu once took an Espurr under his care and Acerola fell in love with it so much he eventually entrusted it to her.

Hala isn’t just Hau’s grandpa, he’s considered to be everyone’s grandpa, because wouldn’t it be cool to have a grandpa who specializes in Fighting Types, is an island kahuna, AND will mentor and help you become one of the best trainers ever? And still give it to you straight what you need to fix?

Plumeria has some of the most miserable periods ever, even on birth control. We’re talking an emotional trainwreck where she’ll either ragequit or cry at the drop of a hat and some of the worst cramps imaginable. When that happens, stay away and let either the Grunts or Guzma take care of it. The Grunts will usually try to make her some herbal tea or even cheer her up with some artwork and a pillow and blanket nest she can curl up in. Guzma makes sure to get back as quickly as he can with dark chocolate, the biggest toy panda he can find, and DVDs of South Park and Panty and Stocking.

It actually takes a lot to get Guzma to cry, but thinking about how Lusamine threw him away in Ultra Space and the fact he’ll never live up to his father’s expectations are the fastest shortcuts.

Wicke has tried to get Lusamine some help in regards to how she treats her children, but it usually got brushed off or denied. To say Wicke was tired of seeing Lillie and Gladion be treated like dolls, toys that could be easily disposed of when interest was gone, is the biggest understatement of the century.

Team Skull used to have rollerskates/rollerblades as part of the uniform. The lack of decent stretches of level ground where they could actually be useful resulted in the retirement of them, but they’ll still rollerblade near Po Town.

Lillie plays piano, and her favorite song to play is Chocolat. She had no idea it was from the Panty and Stocking soundtrack until Gladion pointed it out and then he had to explain the series.

Someday the news will cover what happened with Lusamine, which will bite the Aether Foundation pretty hard in the ass.

Mina has made so much art that Hapu has had to let her rent out a shed on her property to store it all.

Kukui would love to see the moves Precipice Blades, Origin Pulse, and Dragon Ascent in action. Even more so in Primal status. Although Burnette jokes that he wouldn’t be able to survive the intense nerdgasm that would ensue.

Hau doesn’t just have an appetite for malasadas, he also likes orange poached squash. Hell, he could eat a whole pan of it at once if you let him.

Mallow preaches that you don’t put pineapple on pizza. Olivia and Kiawe disagree.

One time Plumeria made better-than-sex cake for dessert, and Guzma half-jokingly and half-seriously said “Challenge accepted” to the namesake.

After becoming champion and their final battle, the player character will INSIST Guzma to stay at their place or Hala’s so he can get back on the road to becoming a great trainer and keep him out of his parent’s house and the toxic environment that created his anger issues. They care about this dork.

Hapu’s Mudsdale is named Big Macintosh and is capable of saying only one human word: “Eeyup.”

Although Nanu is a cat person, he really dislikes people shaming Absol for its tendencies and its infamy. He’ll take one under his wing in a heartbeat if he finds one.

As a little kid, Acerola was TERRIFIED of the movie Coraline. Now it’s one of her absolute favorites and what may have helped her gravitate toward Ghost types.

Plumeria’s Salazzle is kind of a brat. She’ll bite at your ankles if she doesn’t know you or if she doesn’t get what she wants, Grunts have complained of stomach problems caused by drinking from cups they left unattended as she left poison spit in the ones she drank out of, she has burned Guzma at least once when she tried to jump in the bath with him, and on occasions has given her own trainer poisonings, scratches, and burns when Plumeria tried to get her off the bed. But if anything threatens a member of Team Skull, it’ll probably be the last thing they do. She’ll also try to seduce you into giving her your food.

Guzma’s first Pokémon was his Golisopod. He caught it as a Wimpod when he was a kid. Every day he’d go out to the nest to try and lure the bug out with some berries and try to catch it, but usually with no success. One day he went back out there to get his mind off a recent whooping he got but all the times he failed to catch the Wimpod just kind of caved in on him and he sunk down by the hole in the rocks crying. The Wimpod came out, nudged his hand, and crawled in his lap to try and console him. As Guzma left to go home it followed him and since then they’ve been inseparable.

Burnette has partaken in the pet-shaming fad on the internet with Kukui’s Rockruff once. The cheeky little puppy had a sign propped against him that read: “I buried my human’s Z-Ring on the beach at low tide and he couldn’t get it until the tide went out again.”

Cynthia and Grimsley often get into arguments with Steven and Wallace over who’s the better Elite Four/Champion couple.

Red and Blue aren’t dating in the Alola games. It’s more of a “take your frenemy on vacation” outing.

When Lillie and Gladion were younger, they asked Wicke if she could be their new mama. By the end of the day Wicke’s chest was hurting from crying so hard.

Burnette’s team consists of Pokémon she brought from Unova; a Musharna, a Gothorita, and a Beeheem. The outlier is a Comfey she acquired when she and Kukui got married.

Sophocles’ Togedemaru thinks he was destined to be an alarm clock. Every morning at 5 he jumps up on Sophocles’ pillow and starts chittering loudly, quickly hopping as he does to emulate a vibrating cell phone.

Guzma’s Golisopod is highly protective of his trainer to the point he will attack anyone who tries to hurt him. This overprotectiveness stems from when it was a Wimpod and it couldn’t do anything about Guzma getting beat by his father with golf clubs. It really wanted to do something to protect his trainer and once it evolved it finally could, although it seems like a vast overcompensation. The two people that Golisopod will be very dangerous to approach when in the vicinity are Guzma’s father (if that bastard tries to lay a hand on that boy again this bug will fuck his sh1t up) and Lusamine (he didn’t even trust her to begin with and he was right all along).

Type: Null (and Silvally) loves having its belly rubbed. It even curls up next to Gladion while he sleeps.

Ryuki (the Dragon user who appears as a challenger for the Champion Title) used to be the Trial Captain at Poni’s Abandoned Trial Site. He quit the position to pursue his rock star career and by the time he returned he was no longer eligible to retake that position. Thus, the Trial Site remains without a Captain.

Guzma really doesn’t like Kahili or her guts. He always lost to her when they were kids because her Bird Pokémon held advantage over his bugs, and after his last battle with her she said he could train until he dropped dead from exhaustion but he would never be good enough and that he was absolutely pathetic. Kahili really didn’t care how talented Guzma was, if he never placed first in any competition he entered, he wasn’t worthy in her eyes. Not even the Dawn Stone he won for his first ever victory was warranted. To Guzma, Kahili was just like his father and that’s why he refuses to have anything to do with her.

Mohn is actually pretty damn strong physically and used to be in really good shape. After getting married, having kids, and the stress from his studies on the Ultra Wormholes, however, the pounds started packing on. Eating all those Poke Beans doesn’t really help.

Lillie made a lemon cake for Lusamine to commemorate her 4th consecutive week on the mend and showing good progress in recovery. Lusamine loved it and broke down into tears after Lillie revealed that Burnette taught her how to bake, going on to profusely apologize and vent her regret for not teaching Lillie or Gladion anything about baking or something they may have been interested in.

Tapu Cocoa has a similar history as that of hot chocolate’s evolution in Mexico, but what helped shape Tapu Cocoa is the fact it was a drink created in honor of the Tapus. Koko, Lele, Bulu, and Fini were so pleased with the respective concoction prepared for them as tribute by the mortals, that each kind of Tapu Cocoa was adjusted and perfected for consumption by all. On Melemele, the drink is prepared with a splash of coconut; Akala, often served with a strawberry tea cake or with crushed raspberry; Ula’ula, prepared with chile peppers; and on Poni, prepared with orange peel or served with a macadamia nut cookie.

The only way that Kukui can get away with the assumption that the Masked Royal is someone entirely different is that he can pull of the character well enough that the illusion stands. Unfortunately the player character can see right through it (he shouldn’t have spoke with his usual speaking pattern when the player got to Royal Avenue).

Headcanon voices of the Tapus: Koko’s voice sounds similar to the Guardian of the Cave of Souls’ from The Book of Life, portrayed by Eric Bauza; Lele’s voice would sound similar to a very serious Pinkie Pie from Friendship is Magic, portrayed by Andrea Libman; Bulu’s voice would be similar to that of the Cave of Wonders, portrayed by Frank Welker; Fini’s voice would be reminiscent of Rarity’s from Friendship is Magic, portrayed by Tabitha St. Germaine.

Guzma’s Golisopod and Plumeria’s Salazzle have an interesting take on the friendly rivalry relationship. They’ll fight each other and give each other sh1t, but they’ve got each other’s backs. Mess with one, you mess with both. And if left to their own devices they can restrain each other if needed (although Salazzle is the one doing the most restraining).

Golisopod, Salazzle, Rockruff, Silvally, and to a certain extent, RotomDex, are on the cock block squad; Golisopos and Salazzle to Guzma and Plumeria, Rockruff to Kukui and Burnette, Silvally to Gladion, and RotomDex to the player.

Kahili comes across as pushy and having no time for anyone’s antics, but in reality she pushes herself to perfection way too hard and blows off people who try to help her. She’s so focused on trying to be the best in the golfing world that when she eventually cracks under the pressure she’ll have no idea how to get back on track or reach out for help.

The tattoos that the Team Skull higher-ups wear are actually made from a cosmetic paint that’s highly durable and can last for a whole year. Hence why they easily disappeared post-game, Guzma and Plumeria scrubbed them off (and it took 2 and a half hours straight to scrub them off).

Faba can admittedly be very cocky about his position, which he may have been able to get away with while Lusamine was running the Aether Foundation, but Gladion can easily one-up him and put him in his place.

The whole squatting thing among Team Skull actually started with Guzma. The guy suffers from quite a bit of back pain, which stems from all the times he was beaten by his father. His hunched over posture, not only a sign of someone who’s been browbeaten to the point their self esteem has sunk to the lowest doldrums, is the result of poorly set broken bones that have since healed over (Plumeria and especially Hala hound him on getting into a therapist to get that fixed as soon as possible) and when he does stand up straight his back cracks very loudly. While hunching over helps the pain a bit, in the long run it makes it worse; the pain also seems to worsen while sleeping in a weird position, slouching while sitting, or during sex on some occasions. The only thing that really seems to help his back outside of Plumeria cracking his spine back in place while lying face down is squatting down when he needs a break from standing. Some Grunts asked why he squatted down when he needed to rest and he just responded “It helps my back and I just think it’s cool.” Cue the Grunts joining him and soon it was a thing all across the team.

The Seafolk Village in Poni Island takes a lot of cues from Adabat from Sonic Unleashed as the two locations are in close proximity (at least a 5 hour boat trip). Probably explains why the night theme sounds like it was inspired by the Jungle Joyride night stages.

The old lady in the trailer that Plumeria and some other Team Skull members live in post-game is actually a very grandmotherly family friend of one of the Grunts. She’s helping them get back into good standing.

Mimikyu could disguise itself as any Pokémon it pleases if it wanted, but it sticks with imitating Pikachu because of it being the mascot and because it wants to nab a share of all that glory and attention.

After battling Lana, the reason why she doesn’t pop up again until after the player is crowned Champion is because she took the boat near her house to go look for Kyogre. She didn’t find it, but she made friends with a lot of Water Pokémon out there.

Despite Plumeria sounding irritated with Guzma post-game, she’s actually worried sick about him. When she does meet up with him again she can’t even pretend to be mad at him, she’s just so happy he’s okay and is actually brought to tears when he reveals he’s taken Hala up on his offer and is back on the road to becoming a great trainer again.

Personal Headcanon! Based on my experiences at the Hau’oli Battle Buffet, I don’t think my character could actually eat 5-10 servings of a single item in one go (whenever I see text like “You got _ plates of (whichever food)” I tend to think the plate size reflects the average plate size at American buffets—they’re big, about 12” in diameter). So, I like to think that once I’ve gotten my haul I actually share my food with my team.

Adding onto an earlier headcanon, Plumeria and Kahili didn’t like each other at all either especially because of his past with the latter. After Plums went through the Elite 4, Kahili mentioned Guzma and that Plumeria could do better than him. Plumeria got so angry about her attitude that she had to give her a verbal dressing down and once Kahili found out that Guzma got HURT by his own parents for losing, she actually felt sick to her stomach after remembering everything she ever said. She still fears it’s too late to apologize even behind her cutthroat demeanor. And if she attempts, man will Plumeria have to serve as the most patient mediator ever. Apologizing to Plums is one thing, apologizing to Guzma is another.

Gladion won’t admit it, but he likes it when Hau invites him over to his house. One time he brought over his console and some Sonic games for a sleepover and it was the most fun he’s ever had.

Olivia has encouraged Mallow to make her own YouTube channel where she makes videos about her latest recipes. While Mallow hasn’t made her channel at all—besides, she’s too busy with her duties as a Trial Captain--she still wonders about how well her show would do if she made it. She’d call it “Mallow’s Kitchen” or “Sugar, Spice, and Delish Tamato Slice!”

Kiawe would never have considered putting Wyoming on his bucket list of places to travel to had someone not mentioned Yellowstone National Park and the supervolcano slumbering beneath it. Now he’s gotta check that sh1t out.

Colress is a secret agent for the Aether Foundation.

Ilima was bumped up a couple grades because of his maturity and willingness to accept greater responsibilities as a Trial Captain.

Plumeria knows firsthand that the “skinny penis” joke associated with Guzma is a flat out lie.

Wicke jokingly checked out some Steven Universe episodes at Faba’s recommendation. One season later, she became infatuated with the series.

Guzma has a very bad habit of lying to his mother and he hates himself for it. The reason why it sprung up as bad as it did is because his mother, while well-meaning, is really none the wiser about her husband’s behavior. Mother asks about his bruises? Guzma says he fell on Route 3 even though the bruises came from, well, the obvious. Mother asks why Guzma can’t get out of bed? He says his stomach hurts even though he was hit so hard last night he was still in too much pain to get up. Mother asks about Team Skull? Guzma says he had no involvement even though the news HAD to have covered them at some point and may have footage of him. Even if he did tell the truth growing up what could she even do about it? Sit his dad down and talk about what’s going on and try to resolve it? Guzma still loves his mom, but he’s starting to get tired of her laze-faire attitude and naivety that would make Lianne Cartman look like she’s got her ducks in a row.

Ilima makes either sugar cookies or macadamia nut cookies when friends come over for tea. They just seem like just the kind of fancy cookies that would be served with tea, in his opinion.

Hau faced Hala first in his run through the Elite 4 and convinced him to go all out against him. Considering that Hala unintentionally scared Hau when he was little and refused to unleash his fury since then in battle, Hala took that challenge. At the end of their battle, both of them were crying as Hau went to hug him; Hau was proud of his grandpa for unleashing his full fury in battle, and Hala was proud of his grandson for how far he’s come and bringing his best.

Mina has always had paint in her hair. Finger paint, acrylic, oil, you name it. When you get super artistic from a young age you never really pay attention to where your painting tool goes outside of the canvas.

Guzma’s hair is hella SOFT. It’s like petting a cloud made of very plush microfleece. To keep it that way, Plumeria lets him use her shampoo and conditioner and he makes sure to wash his hair every other day.

Molayne likes to think of the frequency of his friends cussing on a scale from 1 (no swearing here) to South Park (they swear so much you’d think they need their mouth washed out with soap). Molayne ranks about a 3 (some swearing, but only as needed), Kukui is about a 4 (might need a stronger word on occasion for things), Sophocles ranks about 4, Hala ranks about 3, Hau is a 1, Nanu is a 6 (frequent low-key swearing to infrequent strong swearing) Plumeria is a 9 (uses stronger words very frequently), and Guzma ranks at South Park (he swears a LOT). The player character… well it depends on who you are, I guess.

The best place to get Tapu Cocoa is at the Observatory. Especially at dusk.

Guzma and Plumeria rarely get completely unclothed for sex because their outfits are just too comfortable. All they really gotta do is kick off their shoes and socks, Guzma will get rid of his glasses, off go Plumeria’s pants and sports bra, and Guzma just has to yank the front of his pants down, pull the crotch of her panties aside and stick it in. Plumeria also pulls her shirt up over one or both boobs for him to grab. Sex after showering or bathing only really calls for Plumeria to clip her hair back. Condoms only used to protect against STD’s since she’s on the pill (this is the only relationship they’ve ever been in, but you never know).

Sorry, Grunts, you may be sexually attracted to Plumeria or Guzma (it seems to be a rite of passage for a Grunt to find themselves attracted to either of them during their involvement) and you can fantasize about fucking all you want, but sex between the Grunts and the higher ups is off limits.

If you want to know how bad Ultra Space affected him, Guzma has had to confide in Hala and Nanu about a particularly bad nightmare he had one night about being tentacle raped by Lusamine as the Mother Beast. Sure, he’s had nightmares for a while as a result but damn…

Professor Willow is Guzma’s biological father. Because Guzma’s mother isn’t the most trustworthy in long-term relations, she was seeing Willow on the sideline while already in a relationship with the man she would later marry. Guzma was then conceived by Willow in a time frame so close to sex with the husband that the mother and her husband both thought Guzma was of the man we see in the game. The mother continues to see Willow on the sideline while pregnant and he’s well aware of her having an affair with him and tries to get her to just come clean to her husband and he’ll help mediate the fallout. She really doesn’t think it’s that big a deal. Willow takes her to the hospital and at birth it can be seen that Guzma’s hair is a dead giveaway of his parentage (black and white, just like Willow’s). The husband eventually finds out and puts two and two together when Willow comes over to see the baby. The mother gets caught with her cheating but still treats it like no big deal, Willow is forced to stay out of his son’s life indefinitely, and Guzma looks forward to a miserable life with this man as his father. If Willow could do it over again, he would’ve just walked right up to the husband, told the truth about the affair, and accept a role as a single father to raise Guzma on his own once he was born. Professor Willow misses him so much and he knows he’s going to have a lot to talk about with Guzma when he finally sees him again.

While going through some of Plumeria’s music, Guzma and Gladion found a couple of ‘N Sync CDs. Wondering why Plumeria listens to them a lot they decide to play them for the lulz. The next day they’re in the nearest media store looking for their own copies.

THIS WAS 10 PAGES OF HEADCANONS IN MICROSOFT WORD WHAT THE FUCK???

[signbrake9-blog]

The ‘Why Didn’t I Think of That?’ Trick for the Best Chocolate Chip Cookies

Want to Change the Way You Bake? We do. And no, we’re not talking about adopting eight sourdough starters or making cakes with a sous vide machine. We’re talking about smart, savvy, and totally simple tricks that change everything. Or, you know, at least your next batch of baked goods.

Chocolate chip cookies are already perfect, so how do you make them even better? Bakers have been answering this question with new recipes for over a century. (Toll House boasts that Ruth Wakefield debuted her now-famous cookies 81 years ago, but head to Stella Parks’ award-winning cookbook BraveTart for the untold history of chocolate chip cookies, which actually dates back to the late 1800s.)

Search “Chocolate Chip Cookies” on our site and you’ll find—let’s see—a lot of results. All smartypants in their own right! For example:

But! My favorite chocolate chip cookie hack right now is none of these. It’s even simpler and, dare I say, even more obvious: Use different types of chocolate.

The chocolate chip cookie recipe that all other chocolate chip cookies shall be measured against—hi, hello Toll House—uses semi-sweet morsels. But what is semi-sweet chocolate? And what is a morsel? And why should this variety get to have all the fun, huh?

Well, semi-sweet chocolate and bittersweet (which sometimes goes by “dark”) chocolate are not, technically speaking, all that different. According to the FDA, the only requirement for both is that they contain at least 35 percent cacao, so it really depends on the manufacturer what you're going to get. Which means that you could buy a “dark” chocolate expecting a deeply bitter flavor, but get something just as sweet as semisweet. Which is to say: Read the labels and see if you can figure out the percentages yourself; this number will communicate just how sweet or bitter your chocolate will be.

Now, about those morsels. I like to think of this shape, now iconic to the Toll House chocolate chip cookie, as a teeny-tiny, itty-bitty Hershey’s kiss. Because it’s a factory-made product, each one is exactly the same.

The irony is: It’s called a chocolate chip cookie, not a chocolate morsel cookie. When you chop a larger block of chocolate into literal chips, they’re inevitably irregular, yielding a cookie with big pockets of chocolate, wispy streaks, and everything in between.

Despite being raised on the Toll House version (very happily, too—thanks Mom!), I ditched semi-sweet morsels years ago for one reason: I wanted more control. (To know me is to not be surprised by this.) I wanted more control of the chocolate intensity (60 percent cacao or more became my go-to). And I wanted more control of the shape, too (any knife and cutting board does the trick).

But I never thought to mix and match chocolates until I met Julia and Thomas Blaine.

Head with me to North Carolina for a minute. You’re in the countryside, driving along tree-lined roads that roll up, down, up, down, like a roller coaster, until you reach a ranch house. It’s the humble headquarters of Strong Arm Baking.

Bakers are a tight-knit crew in this section of the south and, after I started working as one myself, it didn’t take long for me to meet Julia and Thomas and spend time in their kitchen, where they churn out some of the best-tasting baked goods I’ve ever had. Like, ever. That’s where I learned their chocolate chip cookie secret: equal parts dark and milk chocolate, by weight.

“We wanted dark for richness, and milk for candy flavor and creamy qualities,” Julia told me. “The dark chocolate has to be super high quality, and pack a punch without adding much sweetness. But the milk is all about tempering the richness. It calms the chocolate level down a bit and adds new flavor.”

Their brand of choice is Callebaut for both, but the shape and percentages couldn’t be more different. For the dark, they use 60 percent morsels. For the milk, a 30 percent bar that they chop by hand.

Just because? Of course not.

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The morsels are “for consistency,” to keep the sharp, bitterness of the dark chocolate in check. Meanwhile, chopping the milk chocolate “gives us widely varying sizes.” The tiny shavings, Julia explained, “add a caramelized quality to the dough,” while larger pieces “create big, beautiful pools of chocolate.”

My favorite part? You can apply this trick to literally any chocolate chip cookie recipe. Just take the weight of chocolate recommended and swap in equal parts of dark and milk. Or heck, swap in whatever ratio of whatever chocolates you want.

In BraveTart, Stella Parks also uses this blended-chocolate technique, calling for “mixed dark, milk, and/or white chocolate,” leaving the specifics up to you.

I reached out to Stella and asked when she started using this technique:

"For most of my professional career," she told me, "since restaurants and bakeries often stock all sorts of chocolate percentages and styles for various applications, in blocks or discs or batons." And in professional kitchens, nothing goes to waste. "All that sort of stuff needs to get used up, and chocolate chip cookies are a pretty reliable/low stakes home for all that chocolate."

Like Julia and Thomas, Stella loves the way combining chocolates yields a standout taste: "It creates such an interesting depth of flavor and complexity."

Of course, she pointed out, not mixing chocolate isn't a deal-breaker: "It's not that cookies can't be great with one type of chocolate, but in that case it better be great because every bite is exactly the same."

In other words? Mixing varieties takes the pressure off the chocolate to be super-duper high quality. (Your wallet can thank you later.) Because instead of focusing on Whoa, this is the best chocolate ever! you're being wow-ed by the dynamic, contrasting flavors:

"Each bite can be a little more exciting, ooh, here's a big nugget of that caramely milk chocolate, and ahh, this next bite is so dark and fruity."

Stella Parks

Unlike Julia and Thomas, Stella "almost never" sticks to the same ratio of chocolates. "It really is a 'let's clean out the pantry' sort of affair where I'm just chucking stuff on the scale til I have enough. For me, that's part of the fun."

So the quality of the chocolate you use is important, and whether you buy morsels, chunks, or chop it yourself is also important. But what might be the most important is how you mix those varieties. The only question is: What combination will be just right for you?

There’s only one way to find out.

What makes a perfect chocolate chip cookie, to you? Tell, tell in the comments!

Source: https://food52.com/blog/23629-easy-recipe-trick-for-the-best-chocolate-chip-cookies

[snakecolumn95]

Maile Carpenter Always Chooses Sparkling Water - Grub Street

At Dickson’s Farmstand in the Chelsea Market. Photo: Melissa Hom

Since its founding in 2008, Maile Carpenter has been the editor-in-chief of Food Network Magazine, spearheading its quick rise and populist approach. (Since last year, Carpenter has also run The Pioneer Woman Magazine.) The recipe-centric FNM draws on the network’s chefs and personalities, and Carpenter shares the hosts’ unpretentious, easygoing attitude toward food. She’s a big fan of Panera ( “they’ve got it figured out”), while she’s also found time recently to check out Dave Chang’s new Bāng Bar, make sticky buns, and eat plenty of candy. Read all about it in this week’s Grub Diet.

Thursday, December 6 I got up at 5:30 a.m. to make four batches of sugar cookie dough before our kids woke up. My older daughter was having friends over for a Secret Santa exchange and cookie-decorating party on Friday night, and my only window for making the dough was Thursday at the crack of dawn.

I finished the dough, packed school lunches, then threw two slices of “grandma bread” in the toaster. My mom supplies us with homemade raisin bread and English muffins almost every week. I don’t remember when this program started but I’m so glad it did. As I toasted the bread, I noticed a stray egg that was supposed to be in the cookie dough. Eff. I panicked, but then my husband, Wylie, reminded me that he makes dough for a living — he owns a doughnut shop — and asked me why on earth I didn’t just have him do it in the first place. I hate subcontracting this, it feels like cheating, but I had no choice. I was out of time.

I don’t usually eat anything until I get to work, but my daughter left her raisin toast behind, so I took half of it on my way out. I ran on the treadmill at the office gym, then went downstairs to Café 57 (the Hearst cafeteria) for my usual breakfast: a latte and a bowl of half Rice Chex, half Lucky Charms with totally out-of-season strawberries. The cafeteria espresso machine was broken. In lieu of a caffeine high, I ate two small bags of Chewy SweeTarts from my stash of leftover Halloween candy. (I’d never seen them before, they just came in this multipack I got. I loved them, so I dug them all out and they’re my secret stash.)

Around 1 p.m., I went to check out Dave Chang’s new Bāng Bar with a couple of editors. We were happy to find that we could sample everything for less than $20: They serve only two sandwiches, pork and chicken ($5.79), and two dips, eggplant and chickpea ($2.99). I couldn’t imagine that these things would live up to the hype, but they were actually super tasty. I drank a can of LaCroix grapefruit seltzer, because I hate still water and never really drink it, unless I’m exercising. I find sparkling to be so much more fun. Why wouldn’t you just drink it? It’s like drinking a party, instead of just keeping yourself alive.

By three o’clock, I couldn’t take it, I needed coffee. I went to Birch for a small latte that cost almost as much as my sandwich from Bang. It was worth every penny. An hour later, I drank a bottle of Hal’s cherry seltzer. Of all the seltzers, I like Hal’s the best — it has big, bouncy bubbles.

I had hours of baking and icing-making ahead of me, so I ordered from Panera for pick-up: chicken noodle and tomato soups and Southwestern chicken salad for four. I love Panera. I go every weekend. The kids eat what they have there, which is not something I can say for my home-cooked food. The tomato soup is delicious. They’ve got it figured out.

The kids jumped up and down when I got home — they’d much rather have this than anything I make. Oh my God, they’re picky. You have no idea. We recently decided — it’s kind of pathetic that we’ve never done this before — to eat dinner together as a family every night. It’s super hard because they don’t like anything. They like spaghetti and meatballs and I got them to eat lasagna, which is a big thing.

But … we unpacked and discovered the bread was missing, which is the whole point of ordering from Panera. My younger daughter cried; my husband and I just started drinking. We were all still hungry after dinner (we really needed the bread) so we ate raw cookie dough while I rolled out the cookies and Wylie made the two of us a Manhattan. I rolled and baked until almost midnight and drank a strawberry Bubly seltzer while I watched Seth Meyers.

Friday, December 7 I went for an early run at six, then came home and cleaned the house for the kids’ party. I ate a bowl of Chobani strawberry yogurt with Brandless blueberry flax granola. I would never buy a product with flax in it, but it was sent to me at work and it’s delicious. I assumed the espresso machine at work was still broken, so I made a latte on our Breville Oracle machine at home and took it with me in a thermos. I love this machine; ever since we got it, I can make a latte that’s as good as any I can buy nearby.

For lunch, I met Clarkson Potter publicist Kate Tyler at Marta and — super bonus — Ina Garten was with her, along with Ina’s assistant, Lidey. I couldn’t possibly put together a better lunch date for a Friday. Marta was bustling and festive and smelled like fire and dough and Christmas. Kate, Ina, and Lidey were wrapping up their tour for Ina’s new cookbook, and were happy to be home. We shared a tricolore salad and two pizzas: mushroom and potato-carbonara. The carbonara pizza was a textural wonder — a crackly thin crust that seemed like it could barely hold all the potatoes and cheese loaded on top, and yet it did. We each ate our piece of the pie while we talked about Ina’s early days at her Barefoot Contessa store. I feel lucky to know her. (Everyone always asks if she’s as lovely in person as she is on TV and the answer is yes, and more so.)

I left work early, around five, to race home for the kids’ party. I ordered three pizzas from Tappo the minute I emerged from the subway. It’s part of a chain of thin-crust pizza shops (along with Gruppo, Vezzo, Spunto, Brado, and Posto). I’ve moved three times in the past 15 years but have always managed to land in a delivery zone. I ate one piece of pizza, under the assumption I’d have a real dinner with Wylie later.

The kids and I attempted a new cookie-decorating technique: We made a thin royal icing, dotted it with food coloring, swirled the coloring, then dipped the cookies in facedown and pulled them up, to form a swirl design. I made a batch of icing for each kid, and we failed spectacularly at our swirling. The cookies looked insane and the kids’ mouths were dyed blue and green. How about a Christmas movie instead?

Three parents arrived for pickup and, because it was Friday, they stayed for a drink. I gave up on the idea of a real dinner and ate another slice of pizza with arugula and mozzarella salad on top, plus all the grapes and sliced cucumbers that the kids left behind. Wylie made a cocktail that we both decided was weird (I would tell you what was in it, but Wylie was like, “Why are you going to put in a gross cocktail?”), so I reverted to Grüner Veltliner. After the kids went to bed, I ate the one remaining blank star cookie and half of a red velvet doughnut that Wylie brought home from work.

Saturday, December 8 A 7:55 a.m. departure for Trader Joe’s. If I get there early, when it’s empty, I can pull my giant red wagon through the store and no one seems to mind. I filled it up with our weekly essentials: salad kits, cheap basil, granola, hummus, Just the Clusters cereal (ginger-almond-cashew version), sweet potato fries, raisin bread for whenever we run out of grandma’s, and crazy cheap, really good macarons. They’re made in France, so … they’re legit? Back at home, I tasted three other doughnuts that Wylie had brought from work — blueberry, gingerbread and passionfruit — while I drank a homemade latte.

We got a small black truffle this week in our advent calendar from the Made Nice guys. Every year, they send out this insanely thoughtful box containing 25 little boxes, each with a meaningful gift inside, like a bottled cocktail from Leo Robitschek. Wylie made scrambled eggs, put them on top of one of my mom’s toasted English muffins, covered the whole thing with grated truffles, and served it to me while I played a game of cards with my daughters. Wylie posted his creation to Instagram, thanking the Made Nice guys and also @mysticgrandma for the English muffins, which was funny because my mom was getting tons of follow requests from chefs around the world who were wondering about this unknown baker called Mystic Grandma. Sorry, mom!

The kids wanted to go ice skating in Stuyvesant Town, but we needed lunch first. I blended a batch of pesto, then made pesto and mozzarella grilled cheese sandwiches for all of us before we left. At the rink, we bought cheddar Ruffles and drank hot chocolate that Wylie had brought in a thermos. It was a terrible combination, but we polished both off anyway.

We went home to warm up for a bit, then at 6 p.m. we went to Pasta Flyer to say goodbye. We had just heard that it’s closing. The chef and owner, Mark Ladner, is a friend of Wylie’s and we were happy to see him at the counter. He brought out a bottle of red wine, spaghetti and meatballs for the kids, a bowl of fettuccine Alfredo smothered in truffles, and a side salad filled with these curiously small, super-satisfying pellets of goat cheese. Mark told Wylie that he extrudes them from a meat grinder. Genius. If you close your eyes while you eat anything at this place, you could be at Del Posto; the pasta is so good.

After dinner we went to Venchi, a gelato and chocolate shop that just opened near our apartment, for dessert. I spent $26 for four cups of gelato, and two of them were called “baby” size. Not cool. Back at home, I made cinnamon-roll dough for Sunday brunch so it could rise overnight, and Wylie made us a cocktail he invented called the Chair Lift. It’s two ounces bourbon, one ounce sweet vermouth, ¼ ounce China-China, ¼ ounce Zirbenz pine liqueur, a dash of lemon and Angostura bitters, and the tiniest pinch of salt. Shake, strain, serve on a giant cube of ice.

Sunday, December 9 We had my dermatologist and her family over for lunch. Well, technically we had my younger daughter’s classmate for brunch, but by coincidence, her mom is my longtime dermatologist. I promised myself not to ask her anything about my face while she was here.

I finished the cinnamon rolls while Wylie prepped potatoes rösti — a thick potato pancake, crisp on the outside, like a giant latke without the egg. He scrambled eggs and fried bacon while I sliced pineapple and prepped a fruit plate. We ate all of the above and brunch stretched into the afternoon.

At 3 p.m., I went downtown with my daughters and we bought gifts for our school’s toy drive. While we waited for the subway, both girls told me they were hungry. I dug in my bag and found three squished mini candy bars: two Snickers and one caramel-apple Milky Way. I took one of the Snickers and left the others for them.

Home for dinner. We had some pork sausage from Dickson’s Farmstand in Chelsea Market and we needed to use it. Wylie turned the sausage into a pasta sauce that, miraculously, the kids loved, too. We had that plus a kale salad kit from Trader Joe’s and a Last Word cocktail, because we were out of bourbon.

Monday, December 10 I ate two spoonfuls of oatmeal I made for the kids, and half of a leftover cinnamon bun. It was stale but still kind of delicious. At work, I ate the usual: Chex with Lucky Charms. The coffee machine was still broken.

I met HGTV Magazine editor-in-chief Sara Peterson for lunch in the Hearst cafeteria. It was taco day at the Action Station, which was kind of like having Chipotle without the line or the cold walk across the street. I ordered two chicken tacos with black beans and cheese; Sara hit the Middle Eastern table. It’s a very multi-culti cafeteria. Back at my desk, I was still hungry, so I ate a few handfuls of trail mix, one pack of chewy SweeTarts, and one stick of a Kit Kat bar. I keep a ton of candy in my office for people. My entire filing cabinet — it’s a deep drawer — is full of bags of candy.

I was supposed to meet my friend and former co-worker Gina after work for a drink at Existing Conditions, my brother-in-law’s newish bar, except I arrived to find they were closed for a private party. I saw Dave through the window and he let us have a quick drink (I got a Professor Plum, made with prune-infused bourbon) before we moved on. We tried to get a table at Loring Place, because after a Professor Plum, I was just that bold and irrational. We failed, of course, so Gina suggested Pearl Oyster Bar. It was every bit as perfect as ever. We grabbed a tiny table by the window, ate bowls of New England clam chowder and shared a lobster roll and a pile of shoestring fries while we talked about the good old days in publishing. On nights like this, I feel like I’ve lived in New York forever, and I never want to leave.

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Source: http://www.grubstreet.com/2018/12/maile-carpenter-grub-street-diet.html

[gonewithawhimm]

Postcards from San Francisco

This is possibly my 5th or 6th visit to San Francisco, I have stopped counting. I never grow tired of visiting this fast-paced city. Some of my best friends live here and no matter how many times I visit, there is always something to do and the energy and vibe of the city is infectious. Last time, I visited the city with my mom and we spent an afternoon with two alpacas at the Golden Gate Park. This time we discovered a nudist beach with a great view of the golden gate, dispensaries that sell marijuana legally {sort of like an Apple store for weed lol and also weed is legal to sell in SF; people were locked up for decades for selling weed a few years ago and now this}, and delicious Burmese fermented tea salad amongst other things. There is always something new, weird, and happening here. SF feels like a smaller and newer NYC and it’s proximity to the Silicon Valley and its status as a tech hub is super exciting, to say the least, especially since I’m in software too. Going to a coffee shop means you never who’s going to be sitting next to you and I always catch tidbits of people’s conversations and the plans for future and I love it. {eavesdropper alert :P} I always dream of what’d be like to live here. The city is built on seven hills, there are many wonderful and diverse neighborhoods scattered around to explore; the restaurant/coffee/bar scene is popping, there are plenty of tech companies and startups on the verge of the changing the world as we know it today, there is an ocean around the corner {I grew up next to a beach and I miss seeing the ocean on a daily basis. No need to remind me that despite that I can’t swim, the water is cold that’s not really an option :P} and there are green parks and oasis in the middle of the urban jungle to enjoy some peace and calm, should I need it, the undulating city landscape means that a walk could double up as a great workout and rest of the Californian/Mexican/West coast is a hop, skip and drive away. So much to explore and so much to do. Like I said before, some of my favorite people live here and I even have some family around so if my parents visit, they can catch up with them too. The only deal breaker is the weather; it’s perpetually windy and cool in SF. I have four “I heart SF” hoodies of different pastel colors for each time that I visited and underestimated how cold it would be. I think I’d rather take four seasons with a hot summer and a cold winter for a few months than a cool climate around the year. I mean it’s not like someone’s waiting with a “welcome here” platter, a six-figure job, and a million dollar house and begging me to move to the Bay but a girl can muse, right? 😀

We go way back

Sukanya and Chinnappa moved to SF from the Bay area to live the high-roller city life for a year and this was the last weekend in the city. They have been ushering us to visit and we decided to make a dash before they moved to the burbs. 😛 Make no mistake, the city life is not for everyone. It costs a pretty penny to live here, you gotta learn how to hustle and you spend a kidney’s worth ever time you step out of the house, so it’s been an interesting year for them. Regardless of whether I move there or not, here are a few photos of the super fun long weekend with them and Vivek and Lakshmi. Vivek, Chinnapa, Sukanya, Gree and I went to GT together and Lakshmi is Vivek’s dancing-diva wife who grew up in the Bay area. It’s always a blast when we get together. I haven’t laughed like this in a long time, my sides still hurt and I’m already plotting a reunion. *glee*.

Chinatown

The Chinatown in SF is the largest Chinatown outside of Asia as well as the oldest Chinatown in North America. It feels is like stepping into a time machine and entering a different world. The typical buildings of SF give away to the pagodas and temple architecture, the grocery stores are teeming with Chinese vegetables and other specialties, signposts and street names are in English and Mandarin; you can hear various dialects as you walk. I love walking the streets. We bought some Chinese eggplants seeds to give our friends lol.

The busy streets of Chinatown

Teracotta warriors of Chinatown

Dragons everywhere, including the fruits

City Lights Booksellers & Publishers

I make sure to visit a library or a bookstore everytime I’m in a new city. City Lights dates back to the 1950s and is oozing with charm. Brick and mortar bookstores are sadly diminishing and I make it a point to buy a book to support their existence. I hope to come back someday, ensconce myself in a corner and finish a book, cover to cover and discover more about the history of this store.

A magical bookstore, City Lights

Baker’s Beach

We went to Baker’s beach shortly before sunset and I must say the setting of this beach is simply stunning. The beach is flanked by the Golden Gate Bridge flanks the beach on its right and craggy cliffs on its left. The sky was engulfed in swirls of blue and pink as the sun set and a few puppies sauntered up to us for cuddles.

Canine cuddles

Palace of the fine arts

Vivek suggested that we visit this place in the night after Baker’s bridge and I wasn’t too excited tbh. We had been walking all day and I was a little groggy with the time difference. But walking into this palace took my breath away. This monumental structure was built in 1915 during the Panama-Pacific exposition to display some work of arts and while we didn’t get time to see any of the art, the architecture itself was marvelous and regal. The palace was lit up, there were a few people scattered about and there was a street artist performing classical music. So serene and peaceful. *goose bumps*.

Sinfully good chocolate souffle cake at Tartine

I had a near-religious chocolate experience at Tartine. The chocolate-souffle cake is dense, rich and exquisite. It elevates you to a different plane with each bite. My only regret was that I didn’t eat a whole cake.

Working remote from Reveille Cafe

Monday morning, Gree and I woke up early and headed to Reveille Cafe near the Embarcardero to get our caffeine fix and work. The beautiful cafe with its tall ceilings and a tiled counter was dappled in sunlight and adorned with the perfect smattering of plants. We ordered cappuccinos, shakshuka, and an acai bowl. The coffee was excellent and sadly the shakshouka was just alright, tbh I can make a better one. Shakshouka is relatively simple to make and it’s one of my favorite weekend brunch recipes. Nonetheless, it was a productive morning and I highly recommend this place if you want to get good coffee or work remote in SF for a few hours.

Pinsas at Montesacro (a slice of Roma in SF)

I had never heard of pinsas until I went to Montesacro. Turns out Pinsas date back to the Roman empire and are the predecessors of pizza; their crust is thin, crisp and airy and the dough is made from a blend of rice, soy, and wheat flour. It is also claimed to be low-fat, low-calorie and easy to digest. I don’t know if that holds true when you wolf an entire oblong pinsa, a glass (or two) of red wine and follow it up with a cup of espresso, but I like to believe that. 😛

We ordered two Margherita pinsas, and they arrived with perfectly charred sour crusts, juicy tomato sauce topped with clouds of creamy mozzarella, a smattering of basil leaves and spicy Calabrian peppers. Perfection in every bite.

Distressed walls, mismatched metal chairs, vintage photos of Roma, old school weighing scales, the restaurant has a rustic and charming vibe. 10/10 would go back for the food, décor and the vibes.

Walking the SF golden gate bridge

It takes about an hour to walk the SF gate but honestly, it was a bad idea. When we walked, it was extremely windy and the gate was reverberating with the ongoing traffic and by the time we were done, Gree and I had a terrible headache when we reached the finish line. lol. If you plan to walk or bike the gate, go when it’s less windy or not windy at all, if that’s possible. 😛 Nonetheless, the views were phenomenal.

Dreamy flaky Kouign Amann at B Patisserie

A good Kouign Amann can cure any problem. This obscure pastry is the French croissant’s distant cousin from the region of Brittany. Flakier and denser in form, it is caramelized with a little sugar to add the perfect crunch. Oh so good. I have never had one before, but to me it seems like th pastry chefs at B Patisserie nailed it lol. Please go if you are in SF!

These are few of my favorite SF things. Have you been to SF? Would you want to live there?

    Postcards from San Francisco  Postcards from San Francisco This is possibly my 5th or 6th visit to San Francisco, I have stopped counting.