#name one fat with no crash dieting history

[dippyface]

I want someone to try to untangle gallbladder disease from a history of crash diets and prove that fat bitches get gallstones independently of crash dieting or eating disorders. you can't

[afatlotofchance]

The Traditional "Burst-your-Gut" European Calendar

The Traditional Burst-Your-Gut European Calendar!

One of my various subjects of interest includes holidays and festivals – mostly of folkloric nature. And Europe is certainly filled to the brim with them, ranging from remnants of religions of Antiquity, to neo-pagan recreation of holidays that maybe never existed, passing by “folk-Christian” celebrations taking back Christian rituals to a more… “pagan” flavor).

And given one of my other big passions is weight gain and stuffing, I thought why not ally the two? More specifically, the idea behind this whole research was inspired by this joke running around of the “weight gain season” in the United-States, centered around the most fattening holidays of the calendar, all piled up at the end of the year: Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year’s Eve, an infernal group that ruins everybody’s figure and prompts some slimming down New Year resolutions. A Franco-Chinese famous Youtuber talked of a similar alignment, in videos covering his weight gain and successful diets – he explained that he almost got “destroyed” at the beginning of one of his diet by the cumulation of Christmas, New Year celebrations AND Chinese New Year meals.

All of that made me think about how there are these alignments and series of very-fattening, stuff-your-face holidays, and as I was doing research on old French society, and European folklore, and old England, and whatnot, I collected information, elements and other stuff here and there that explained the origin of these “fattening festivals” as well as presented to me the existence of an entire year-system centered around basically gorging yourself on given dates. I already evoked this briefly in my previous posts, but I want to fully and completely talk about this subject here. And this is why this post is called “The Traditional Burst-Your-Gut European Calendar”. I will focus here mainly on medieval and Renaissance Europe, when this “fattening calendar” was created – and while this exact system was modified and changed past Renaissance and into modern age, the very reason we have today collections of fattening holidays is the existence of this ancient year division and celebration system.

This can be just your random informative post about European culture and history. It can be an inspiration if you want to write gaining stories or make fat art inspired by some folkloric or medieval stuff, I don’t know. You might also completely skip it if you want – I know very well people in the kink circles aren’t here to read crash-courses about medieval society. But hey, I like to talk about “scholarly” things while also talking about fattening up and intense stuffing, so, here I go!

[Oh yes and due to being more familiar with England and France of all European country, with a handful infos about Scandinavia and Germany thrown into the mix, I will focus mostly on Western Europe – though when we talk of European holidays and folklore, they tend to also apply, in variations, to Eastern European countries.]

I) Fat Tuesday, Blubbery Easter, and the diet Christians will NOT stick to

Chubby Easter, Gorging Christmas – and the binging-duality of old timey Europe

One of the “fattening holidays” most American tend to be familiar with, but often without knowing that it is a “fattening holiday” is the famous Mardi Gras. If you are from the USA, Mardi Gras will be for you the New-Orleans celebration – and it is quite interesting that Mardi Gras is so strongly associated with this city, where everybody who stays even just for a week gains at minimum five pounds thanks to how rich and fatty (but delicious) the food is. New-Orleans is one of those cities where you can get overweight pretty quickly if you are not careful, and it is quite fitting that its most famous celebration is actually going by a French name meaning… “Fat Tuesday”. Yep, the glamorous Mardi Gras just means “Fat Tuesday”.

You see, the Mardi Gras celebration originally comes from France (obviously), even though it was celebrated as “Fat Tuesday” or “Pancake Tuesday” in English-speaking countries. Fat Tuesday itself comes from the Carnival season, and the Carnival season comes from Lent, and Lent comes from Easter. So let’s start with Easter. Easter is part of those Christian holidays that were so widespread, so famous and so common they became secular, non-religious holidays shared by everybody (and massively commercialized by Americans). Easter is this springtime celebration of bunnies leaving chocolate eggs everywhere – and while not one of the “great fattening holidays” of America like Thanksgiving, it still gained there a strong “put on pounds” tradition, thanks to an overabundance of chocolate, candy, and dishes such as the Easter ham. But before all that, Easter was one of the two massive holidays of Catholicism, and by “massive” I mean, when it came to the religious calendar, there’s this two behemoth that are Easter and Christmas and form the two poles of the Christian year. Easter being the celebration of the resurrection of the Christ, while Christmas is the birth of Jesus.

A very important note before going forward: the calendar I will speak about here, the calendar by which most Western Europe worked during medieval and Renaissance times, is what we commonly refer to as “agro-liturgical calendar”. Aka it is an hybrid calendar that mixes the liturgical calendar, the year of the liturgy, the various religious celebrations and Christian holidays (since Christianity was the main religion dominating and shaping all Europe at the time, with Catholicism being ESPECIALLY dominant and present, so we’ll go with this flavor of Christian, Protestants can go away), and the agricultural calendar, aka the “natural year”, the various celebrations and holidays related to the seasonal changes and the fieldwork and the farmer’s life. The latter calendar was the one with the strongest “pagan” flavors, since it kept alive traditions and superstitions inherited from ancient religions and forgotten mythologies – and as the two mixed in everyday life, they forged this new “folk-Christian” calendar that was the basis of European culture and beliefs.

So, Easter. Easter was this big, big, very important event. And to prepare yourself for Easter, you need to be REALLY clean and pure, and to help you with that, a thing was invented – a thing commemorating the forty days Jesus Christ spent alone in the desert with no other company than the Devil trying to tempt him into turning rocks into bread, or whatever. This thing is called “Lent”, and it is a BIG European thing (in French “le Carême”). Lent was a forty-days long sequence preceding Easter, and during Lent you had to go on a very strict diet. A diet of everything. You had to limit your meals and food intake drastically so as to fast, but you also were prohibited from having any sex, in fact weddings were forbidden during Lent. It was a time where you just shut down your body and refuse all pleasures whatsoever – this is why in France an old-fashioned expression was “face de Carême”, “face of Lent”, to designate someone who liked skinny and pale. And if Lent was to help you prepare Easter, you were given an additional time period before that to prepare yourself for Lent, a little thing called Shrovetide. Except, where the Church planned for Shrovetide to be all spiritual preparation and good little planning for forty days of nothing in your plate, things got… a little wild.

Shrovetide became the time of the Carnival. THE original Carnival, the Carnival season, a time of wild amusement, savage fun, of misrule and chaos where everybody drank and sang and made dirty jokes and put on offensive disguises. People understood that Shrovetide was the last time they could have any kind of fun before Lent began, and so they went WILD with crazy parties, forming the Carnival time. And the last day of the Shrovetide, the last day before Lent began, Shrove Tuesday, became Fat Tuesday – Mardi Gras. The “fat” part comes from the fact that during Shrovetide/Carnival, people didn’t just ate, they GORGED. Given they wouldn’t be able to eat much for a very long time, people did excessive feasts and over-ate merrily as much as they could, especially on Fat Tuesday, which was a true belly-busting day. One of the specific parts of Lent was that any food deemed too “rich” was forbidden, so it meant that all meat, and all fat-related food (like butter, eggs or pastries) were prohibited during Lent. As a result, during the Carnival, fat was in every plate, and you had tons of greasy meats and deep-fried pastries and so on – hence the “Fat” part of “Fat Tuesday”. Shrovetide became really all about putting on pounds before the “forced hibernation” of Lent. In fact, the more common name of Shrovetide was “Fat Week” or “The Seven Fat Days”, as “Fat Tuesday” was merely the last of the “fat” days, preceded by Fat Monday, Fat Sunday, Fat Saturday, etc…

In return, the same way people got wild before Lent, before also got wild AFTER Lent. If you think Easter is a sinful feast of food today, oh boy, you can’t imagine what it was before! As the Easter celebrations rolled in, people could once again eat all their meat and all their fat and all their pastries, and so Easter was yet again a feast of large meals – though, due to the very religious nature of Easter, it never ended up being as debauched and revelry-prone as Carnival/Fat Tuesday. But it was still a day all about eating a lot of the best and most fattening food.

What is quite funny is that, even though Lent was harshly respected during the Middle-Ages, by the Renaissance (at least in France, I don’t know for other countries), people got a bit more lenient towards it, and decided to had one more “Carnival day” to “break down” Lent into two, so it would be a bit more bearable. So, right in the middle of the forty days, a celebration called “Mi-Carême”, “Half-Lent”, was created, which was a twin of Fat Tuesday, right in the middle of Lent. Officially, the explanation was that on Fat Tuesday men tended to do a lot of favors, gifts and promises to women, and so Half-Lent was created so that women could return them the favors (and indeed in France, the Mi-Carême celebrations are dominated by female figures and female participants), but researchers agree that the true reason Mid-Lent was created was probably because, since eggs turned bad beyond twenty days, people realized they couldn’t stock them before Lent and reuse them by Easter, and to avoid ending up with a bunch of wasted rotten egg, came up with this holiday.

The most interesting thing for us, however, is that it means that traditionally, Lent was actually a time where you had to feast and gorge yourself on greasy and fatty food three times in a row – before Lent, mid-Lent and after Lent. To tell you about the strong presence of the Carnival vs Lent in European spirits, I will direct you towards a very recurring motif throughout medieval and Renaissance art: a motif known as the “Battle of Lent and Carnival” or “The Fight between Lent and Fat Tuesday”. These paintings and drawings typically embody Carnival or Fat Tuesday as a male and fat, jolly, chaotic, drunkard entity, while Lent becomes a female, skinny, elderly and austere figure. One of the most famous variations of this theme was done by Pieter Brueghel the Elder: it is his painting, “The Battle of Carnival and Lent” (in French it has such a nice tone, Carnaval et Carême). At the forefront of this painting you can see the two embodiments, the obese, red-faced Carnival riding a beer barrel and holding a food-covered spear, opposing the thin and sickly Lent on an uncomfortable chair. Behind Carnival, bizarrely-attired and strangely-masked fools come out from an inn, while behind Lent dark nuns walk out of the shadow of a church, surrounded by hungry beggars and children. All is told.

II) Chubby Christmas, winter weight, and the binging-duality of old Europe

I talked before of how Easter was alongside Christmas one of the two big holidays of the European Christian calendar. Well then, let’s talk about Christmas!

Christmas which truly formed with Easter a complete parallel back in the days. Birth and rebirth, one for the “bright” season, summery part of the year, the other for the “dark” and wintery half of the year, AND both preceded by a time of preparation. Lent for Easter, Advent for Christmas… Let’s stick to Advent. Nowadays, we all know the “Advent Calendar”, which is about having a little chocolate or candy every day of the December month until the fateful 25th. The Advent period became a period of waiting-and-snacking. Interestingly enough, this couldn’t be further from what the Advent originally was. While everybody in Europe still remembers Lent, because it was still in practice up to the 20th century, people actually completely forgot that there was a twin to Lent… a winter Lent, a Nativity fasting, and this was the Advent.

Yep, the Advent was originally a forty-days period of full abstinence of all bodily pleasures (so no sex, and lot of fasting) to prepare yourself for Christmas. And do you know what this meant? It meant that, just like with Lent, people went NUTS and gluttonous at both ends of the Advent. The gluttonous nature of Christmas in old Europe stayed prevalent still until today. Good old jolly Santa Claus is the inheritor of the overweight, paunchy giant Father Christmas. Up to the 19th century there were caricatures and illustrations of fat people gorging on enormous Christmas meals. Even today Christmas is one of the most dreaded periods for people who want to stay slim or lose weight, as it is all about eating enormous feasts. So people did went wild once the Advent was over.

But what about before the Advent? Was there some “fattening holiday” equivalent to Mardi Gras? Well, technically yes, even though it isn’t very well-known today. It was the holiday (or feast day) of saint Martin. Aka, Martinmas. Also known sometimes as the “Old Halloween”. Martinmas, the day of saint Martin, was a celebration that corresponded to the end of the harvest season and the beginning of winter. As a result, it mixed the unconscious need to put on pounds for the dark season with the typical festivities of any “harvest festival”. Martinmas was mostly celebrated in England and in Germanic countries of Europe, and it involved 1) tasting the new wine of the season (and getting drunk on it), 2) feasting on the nicely fattened up and recently slaughtered cattle (in Germanic countries, the main course of Martinmas is Martin’s fattened and roasted goose, whereas in England it is rather Martin’s greasy beef) and 3) giving lots of treats, cakes, nuts and apples to children. The latter part is why Martinmas was called “Old Halloween”, because it was a Christianized form of many Halloween traditions – kids wandered with lanterns made out of beets, and saint Martin was supposed to give them lots of candies and sweets in exchange.

What is much more interesting, in relation to Christmas, is the fact that the Christmas belly-bursting did NOT stop at just Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. Oh, no! Ever heard of the “Twelve Days of Christmas”? Yeah, well it wasn’t just about giving gifts to someone you like and singing silly songs. Oh no. The Twelve Days of Christmas were a full festival to themselves (and in European folklore you will find many ghosts, monsters, fairies and spirits manifesting themselves during the “Twelve Nights”, considered magical and supernatural) – and in England especially, the Twelve Days were supposed to be all around feasting, merriment and fun, a Carnival-time under the command of the Lord of Misrule. Beginning with Christmas Eve, each day was about more dancing and singing, more drinking, and especially more eating, until it all culminated into the Twelfth Night. Nowadays, the Twelfth Night is mostly known in Christian countries as the Epiphany – you know, Epiphany? The Feast of the Wise Men? The Day of the Three Kings? The holiday where three old men supposedly gave gifts to baby Jesus, and where people eat a special cake and the one who bites onto a little statue is crowned king or queen of the day? That’s the one. Well originally it was basically the wintery equivalent of Mardi Gras, and the culmination of the Twelve Days. The Epiphany “Christmasy” connotations can still be found in Spanish-speaking countries – in Spain for example, the Epiphany is actually the local “Christmas” and the time where people stuff themselves on large meals and pound-putting pastries, while kids receive gifts from supernatural elderly male figures. To use a literary reference, the famous play “Twelfth Night” by Shakespeare has a character designed to embody the spirit of the Twelve Days: Sir Toby Belch, an eccentric, comical and hedonistic man all about making jokes, drinking and eating (hence his name), and truly being a living “Lord of Misrule”.

But if you think the Christmas season ends with the Epiphany, think again! The Epiphany is merely the end of the intense festivities of the Twelve Days (or Twelve Nights). The actual Christmas season, or Christmastide, only comes to a stop much later, to a day that is commonly known as Candlemas. Candlemas is technically supposed to be the Christian holiday of “Jesus being presented at the Temple”, but in truth, let’s be honest, it was just a cover-up by the Church in an attempt to bury the pagan festivities around this time (the Roman Lupercalia, the Celtic Imbolc, and others). Candlemas is not very well-known in the English world today, but it is still a very famous holiday in French-speaking countries, as the Chandeleur, and it does has its food theme, since Chandeleur is the official day of eating crêpes (a French dish that Americans insulting translate as “pancakes” even though crêpes are completely different).

So, in conclusion we have a true duality in this year. On one side, you have the “Lent season”, with the Fat Days of Shrovetide, and Fat Tuesday, as an opening, and the Easter feasts as a closing (plus the Mid-Lent) ; on the other, you have the whole Christmas season, from Saint Martin’s Day, to the Twelve Nights, to the Epiphany and Candlemas. Between those two intense periods alternating between extreme fasting and binging overeating, life returned to a “regular” rhythm. But here’s the twist: the Church was quite intelligent, and didn’t chose to have Lent and the Advent at just any random dates, oh no!

Lent and the Advent, as forty-days periods of fasting, actually corresponded to the times of the year where the food stocks were at their lowest, and there was no new harvest in sight. It was during those specific times (mid February to March ; and November to mid-December) that famines were the most likely to actually appear. As a result, the Church placed these fasting periods there, choosing carefully the times where people would suffer the most from hunger and lack, but giving them an actual reason and a sense of holiness for their starvation. Of course, the result was far from perfect, given it resulted in the very unhealthy behavior of starving yourself forty days between two week-long sessions of overeating, but old times were never healthy to begin with…

III) Other food seasons

Beyond those two “gorging times”, were there other “belly-bursting seasons” in this calendar?

Well… Not really. Usually the three main poles when it came to folkloric and social celebrations in old Europe were the springtime celebrations (Easter for example, but also May Day), the winter celebrations (Christmas and New Year) and the midsummer celebrations (Midsummer, Midsummer’s Eve, Walpurgis Night, etc…). While we saw above that two of these poles had their overeating (springtime and winter), the Midsummer celebrations never really were much about eating… They were more about dancing in the wilds, drinking a lot of alcohol, jumping over bonfires, picking up magical herbs, fearing witchcraft, and the like. In the Christian calendar, there is also a third very important era, beyond the Easter-centric and Christmas-centric periods – it is the time slot beginning with the Feast of the Annunciation, and ending with the Pentecost. But again, there was no big food-focus there, so we’ll put that aside.

What I can add however to this calendar is a certain focus given to harvest celebrations and harvest festivals. For example, let’s take a little look at the “quarter days”. In the British Isles, the year was usually regulated around four important celebrations. These are a leftover of the four main Celtic holidays, which were Imbolc, Beltaine, Lughnasad and Samhain, but it was all Christianized and the result goes as such: Lady Day (the feast of the Annunciation), Midsummer Day, Michaelmas and Christmas. At least, that’s the English version – in Scotland they rather go, Martinmas, Candlemas, Whitsunday (Pentecost) and Lammas. The Scottish divide does recut onto a secondary system to the English one, called the “cross-quarter days”, aka four intercalary celebrations to be placed between the four quarter days. These are Candlemas, May Day, Lammas and All Hallows.

Long story short, what am I trying to say with all that? Well I am trying to say that there is a sort of additional period of food-and-eating related celebrations around the “end of the harvest”, the “closure of the harvest season”. Basically, harvest festivals. I talked about Martinmas before, which was indeed a feast marking the end of the harvest and the opening of winter – but in the same line of thought, the holiday of Michaelmas can be evoked. Michaelmas, originally the day of Saint Michael, aka Archangel Michael, was then extended as the day of “Michael, Raphael and Gabriel”, or as the “day of Archangels” or as the “day of Michael and all the Angels”. All in all, for the Church it is an angel-celebrating day, but in a more down-to-earth approach, it was a harvest festival, marking the end of the harvest. As a result, Michaelmas in the British Isles for example is a day where you eat a roasted goose, special bannock cakes, big heaps of blackberry pies, lots of nuts, and all sorts of other goodies to make a rich and heavy meal celebrating your efforts in the fields. To Martinmas and Michaelmas I will add a third tradition, a purely English celebration: Lammas, also known as the Loaf Mass Day, which is another harvest festival, this time supposed to celebrate the “first fruits” of the harvest, as well as the “first loaf”. Whereas Michaelmas marks the end of the harvest, and Martinmas the arrival of the dark wintery season, Lammas is all about people starting to reap what they sow, and it opens a “season of plenty and abundance” (Lammas is in the beginning of August, while Michaelmas is in September and Martinmas early November). So, technically speaking, there is a sort of “harvest festival” season that could be added to our belly-filling calendar.

And of course, this season overlaps with another series of holidays I have to mention, and that I briefly talked about above: Allhallowstide. Aka, the Hallows celebrations, of which the most famous to this day is without a doubt Halloween. Halloween, All Hallows’ Eve, aka the Eve of All Saints Day, needs no presentation as THE holiday of candies and sugary treats, as well as of apple and pumpkin based foods. What people tend to forget is that in Europe, the Halloween candies were associated with another cake-filled day. I am not speaking of All Hallows/All Saints Day, because there wasn’t much to say there, but I am speaking about All Souls Day, happening on the 2nd of November (right after All Hallows Day). All Souls Day is the European “ancestor” of the South-and-Central American Day of the Dead, for example, as it is a Catholic holiday all about celebrating the dead and visiting graveyards. But All Souls Day had a specific tradition confused and fused with the trick-or-treating of Halloween, called “souling”. It was originally about giving special “soul cakes” to the poor and the beggars, so that they would pray for the souls of those stuck in purgatory (or something like that), but it then became more of a trick-or-treat situation where kids performed songs and entertainment for people, in exchange for good amounts of yummy soul cakes to eat. Not really “belly-bursting”, but it deserves a mention alongside Halloween (and Martinmas) as this time of the year, at the beginning of November, where kids end up overstuffed with candy and sweets.

In fact, it is very interesting to note that while the Carnival is attached to the Lent season, and the Twelve Days of Christmas have a Carnival-nature to them, in some countries and regions of Europe, the Carnival is not a beginning of the year matter, but rather an END of the year matter, and thus they can actually start at either All Hallows Day, or around Martinmas, turning these November/Autumn holidays into masked revelries and belly-bursting debaucheries, just like the rest…

What is a quite interesting, and will serve as my conclusion here, is that the two main opposite Carnival seasons, the Lent one and Christmas one, actually form only one big season in some time eras and countries. Because you see… Some chose to have the Carnival season start at Candlemas. Meaning that right as the Christmas season ends, people threw themselves into the mad parties of the Carnival in prevision of Fat Tuesday… Imagine, stuffing yourself all throughout autumn to spring, only resting for a brief summer and beginning it all over again. Of course we have to forget the whole nasty things of the past such as the famines of old – but just extrapolating those celebrations and literal feast days, and projecting them onto a new, gaining-designed calendar…

Hey, that’s something I might do for fun!

[gnomeyflamingo]

✮ Best Friends & Black-Market Potions ✮

We’re back! At long last! I'm gonna risk it despite being plagued with game bugs. Fingers crossed nothing game breaking happens. 

Riku: “I love rain walks out of my house full of arguing daughters.”

Bob: “I missed you glorious Watcher.”

Okay Bob.

Atreo: “Yay I'm a scout, now it's time for homework.”

Alejandro: “Okay, what was the biggest financial crisis in Simnation history?”

Atreo: “The Currywurst crash of 1892.”

Alejandro: “That’s correct, well done!”

Atreo: “Yay learning useless facts got me promoted!"

Acco woke up and realised he absolutely loves it.

He then uses the potty whilst Alejandro takes a bath, because privacy doesn’t exist when you are a parent.

Alejandro: “Papi has to go to work now. Be good for the nanny and enjoy your breakfast cake.”

Acco: "Love you Papi."

Acco: “You f-f-f-fired?”

Nanny Keohola: *nervous laugh* Nooo I didn’t get fired for starting a fire that nearly killed your brother! I’m totally allowed to be here. I see you struggle with F’s, don’t you worry, nanny will teach you with these handy flash cards.”

Later Atreo brings Kiry home from school.

Atreo: “So if you get the loose tooth moodlet, the tooth-fairy will come to break your nose and jaw-”

Kiry: “WHAT?! Why?!”

Atreo: "Cuz it's evil and obsessed with teeth. Scientist say it alters the DNA of its victims."

Kiry: 😰

Kealoha: “I’m sorry for sneaking in. Being a nanny is my passion.”

Brielle: “You know what my passion is? Sims standing united. We’re all the same deep down with our new glitchy milestones."

Keoloha: “I like that. You have my vote."

Brielle: "Great. Now get out of my house."

When Alejandro gets home, just on cue, the washing machine breaks.

Alejandro: “Time to vacuum up puddles and fix the broken plumbing by wiring in this PC hardware.”

I’m constantly amazed by how clever sims are.

Atreo: “This was fun. I’m happy I got the option to invite you home from school.”

Kiry: “This pleases me too. I have been ever so lonely."

Atreo: “Want to become Best Friends Forever?”

Kiry: "Yes! How could I say no to a feature carried over from The Sims 2?"

Alejandro: “Hmm I’ve been thinking… Those insta-lean potions are still in our inventory being wasted. Summer sucks but-"

Brielle: “Yes, screw diet and exercise. Let’s drink them.”

Alejandro: “Really? You sure? Because you’re beautiful the way you are-”

Brielle: “Bottoms up!”

One potion later… 😬

Brielle: “So... Weak... No fat or muscle left... Just skin and bones. Barely. Any. Energy. Left... To breathe."

Alejandro: "What kind of black market insta-lean did Summer get us?! Argh *weeze* the pain...”

Atreo: “Acco get out of my room!”

Acco: “Play with me?”

Atreo: “No! Drop my toy now!”

Acco: “Atreeo-”

Atreo: “That’s not how you say my name! MUM! ALEJANDRO!”

Alejandro: “Atreo is calling... I’ll go.”

Brielle: “Be careful honey, try not to break yourself. You’re so frail.”

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❧ Back to the Legacy Archive

[kassandras-one-braincell]

Kassandra x Fem!Reader - The Most Peculiar Wingman

Can be found on AO3 here.

Summary: You recently moved into a new flat and you’re hearing some rather unusual sounds from your next-door neighbour’s abode. You’re worried the mysterious woman next door is involved in something dangerous. Kassandra is worried that you’re the landlord about to bust her for her lease violation.

(Sorry if you don’t like coffee and/or you speak fluent Greek.)

Word count: 2568

.

Damn, you’ve lucked out with your new flat. The area is pleasant, the décor is tasteful – the windowsills could use a bit more greenery, but you’ll get to that – and the letting agent wasn’t a dick. Zero hassle with bills, minimal scuffs on the walls…it’s bizarre how simple your moving process has been.

But nothing can be perfect, can it?

Over the few days you’ve lived in your new home, you noticed some rather disconcerting sounds coming from the apartment next door. Nothing that disrupts your sleep, thankfully, although your post-unpacking nap was interrupted by a very loud thud against the thin wall connecting the two flats. Thumps, crashes and very disgruntled cursing in a language you can’t quite place tend to crop up in quick succession once or twice a day. Today, though, the odd sounds seem to be omnipresent.

The strange symphony is starting to get alarming; you’re beginning to ponder if the seemingly perpetually angry woman next door is involved in violence…or, forbid, organised crime? That would certainly explain the forceful thuds and grumbling. God, what if she manages to rope you into her shenanigans? What if she is armed?

After a loud bang and an exasperated “oh, fuck you” reverberates into your apartment, you decide to investigate.

Anxiously, you pop on some slippers and step into the hall, locking the door behind you (‘I’m not about to get robbed less than a week after moving,’ you think to yourself, ‘Oh, shit, I need to get insurance…’). Stomach churning with speculation, you make the arduous four-metre trek to your neighbour’s door. Biting your lip, you rap your knuckles against the wood.

A chorus of panicked shuffling echoes through the door, causing your throat to tighten. Footsteps sprint from one side of the room to the other, the sound of shattering ceramic shrill against the heavy thudding. “Shit, shit, shit, shit,” the woman hisses, muffled by the walls, followed by some shushing and the rattling of something metal. Who is this woman, what the fuck is she hiding, why am I doing this—

Suddenly, the door swings open, revealing…oh, wow.

Your neighbour is an amazon.

Flawless bronze skin, chocolate hair strewn into an unruly braid, tall and shredded with lean muscle. Her eyes are a gorgeous tawny brown, the split second of alarm disappearing from her gaze, replaced by a sparkle that makes your heart hammer against your chest. Very kissable lips upturn into a charming smile, bringing your attention to a small scar above her upper lip quirking adorably. A deeper scar sits on her nose, and the pang of anxiety returns, but your eyes need only flicker back to hers and it melts away.

“You’re not the landlord,” she says with a rich accent and curious lilt. Your cheeks feel warm.

“Uhm, hi.” You fiddle with your thumbs, mouth suddenly dry. “Sorry, I moved in a few days ago next door. I just heard some loud noises and was wondering if everything was alright?”

Lips curving furthermore, she braces her arms on the doorframe above and, fuck, are they nice arms. Sun-kissed, bulging against her white t-shirt, three gnarly rings cutting into her right bicep that just scream to be touched. Is this her distraction tactic?

“Oh, sorry about that. I hope I wasn’t too much of a disturbance?”

When you finally pry your eyes from her arms, a tiny smirk registers on her handsome face. Bashful, you stammer, “No, it’s fine. But, uh, what caused it, if I may ask?”

The woman cranes her neck to scan the hall. “Can you keep a secret?”

Mob boss? Arms dealer? Axe murderer?

Clearly, your nervous speculations are apparent, because her eyes widen slightly. “Don’t worry, lovely, it’s nothing dangerous. I just have a pet bird.”

Breathing a shaky sigh of relief, you run a hand through your hair. Just a bird. Just a bird. Her face relaxes back into a casual smile. A fresh wave of warmth caresses your cheeks at the name she gave you.

Chuckling, you joke, “Must be one big bird.”

“He’s…an eagle.”

You blink back your shock. “How on earth did you manage to get a pet eagle?”

She laughs, the melody warm and addictive. “Poor fucker followed me all the way from Kefalonia. I didn’t have it in me to say goodbye, even if it violates the lease.” Her tone is affectionate, despite her less-than-endearing name for the bird. Pushing back from the door frame – hands flexing wonderfully while she does so – she gestures for you to step in. “Come and meet him, if you’d like.”

Everything about this woman is so inviting, you can’t help but gravitate into her apartment.

“I don’t think I caught your name?” you ask shyly.

“Kassandra,” she replies, flipping the ‘r’ in her buttery accent. “And what can I call you?”

Anything you fucking want. “(Y/N) is fine,” you manage, debating whether her flat is hot or your face is akin to a beetroot.

“That’s a lovely name. Suits you perfectly,” she winks. She saunters over to a shelf with a blanket hastily thrown over it. You can’t help but observe her firm-looking behind through her jeans. Kassandra tugs away the blanket, revealing a large eagle sitting grumpily in a cage. It remains put when she unlocks the cage, standing almost defiantly.

“Don’t be like that, Ikaros,” she chastises. The eagle – Ikaros – begrudgingly flies out of his confines, perching atop the sofa in the middle of the open-plan room. “He’s gentle, I promise.” You’re doubtful, but he isn’t making any sudden moves.

“He just likes winding you up?”

“Loves it,” she grins. “He’s a little bitter I put him on a diet since he was getting a bit fat. That’s why he’s been throwing some tantrums lately.”

You smile as she scratches the top of his head before heading to the kitchen. “Can I get you anything to drink?” Kassandra asks, giving you another heart-melting beam. “I have coffee, orange juice, I might have some tea somewhere—”

“Coffee would be nice, thank you.” She asks your preference and you state it, taking in the layout of her apartment. The place gave off a very homely, Mediterranean vibe, with warm colours and white furnishings. A few hand-painted ceramic vases were dotted about – maybe she did pottery – alongside some family photographs. Atop the dining table was a woven basket brimming with ripe fruits, as well as a laptop with a pile of messy papers next to it.

“Have a seat, get comfy,” she calls over the whirring of an expensive looking coffee machine. Shyly you take the chair by the unoccupied end of the dining table. Feeling nosy, you scan the documents by her laptop, but the handwriting was all in Greek.

A minute later, Kassandra joins you with a steaming mug in her hand. “Your coffee, madame,” she announces with a pantomimic bow, evoking a laugh.

“Merci,” you thank her. “How would I say that in Greek?”

“Efharistó,” she replies. You test the word hesitantly, wincing on the second syllable, making her laugh. “Not bad,” she chuckles.

“I butchered it.”

“Try it a little softer,” she smiles, lowering her voice, giving it a sensual cadence that made your head spin. Oh, she knows she’s attractive.

“Efharistó,” you border on whisper, gay little brain surging with the overwhelming instinct to do whatever she tells you.

“There we go!” The proud quirk of her lips is all you need to see.

Feeling your cheeks flush, you bring the coffee mug to your lips, hoping the steam from the beverage will help mask your fluster. You blow on the liquid and take a sip, immediately regretting the decision as you scorch your tastebuds, repressing the urge to hiss in favour of looking cool for the hot Grecian.

“Do you, um,” you start, ignoring the numbness of your tongue, “work from home?” You wave your hand at the paperwork by her seat.

“As often as my job lets me.”

“What do you do?”

“I’m a museum curator,” Kassandra beams, evidently proud of her job. “A glorified history nerd who couldn’t be fucked with the extra academia, basically.” You snort against the mug, nearly spluttering coffee over her. Smooth.

“What time in history?” Her eyes sparkle at the question, passion shining through her irises.

“Mostly the classics, ancient Greece and Rome and all that. But I did my thesis on the evolution of weaponry.” You prop your chin up on your hand as she talks, eyes lazily focused on her lips. If not for the conviction in her tone, you would have zoned out and chased some daydream about kissing those lips. Kassandra reclines back in her chair. “Enough about me, though. Tell me about yourself.”

“You sounded really passionate, though. I don’t mind if you keep talking about your job.” God, you sound like a dizzy schoolgirl who’s hot for teacher. You scald yourself with another sip of coffee in reprimanding.

Kassandra’s eyes twinkle. “I don’t usually invite beautiful women into my home to ramble about cool swords.” You blush and set down your coffee.

The two of you talk for quite some time, getting to know each other, peppering in the occasional flirtatious remark. In her company, you somehow simultaneously feel comfortable and skittish. She’s so relaxed and easy-going, but her physique and seductive demeanour fills your stomach with butterflies.

An irritated squawk cut your conversation short.

Kassandra shoots Ikaros a look before turning back to you. “Sorry about him.”

You shake your head. “It’s fine, really. Damn… What was I saying again?” you ask sheepishly.

Squawk.

“Nevermind, I was probably babbling anyway,” you dismiss, sipping on your now cold beverage.

Kassandra chuckles softly. “Don’t be silly, you have the voice of an angel. You could read me the dictionary and I’d still be interested.” She probably said this to every woman she took a liking to, but you can’t bring yourself to care, far too flustered and feeling, for once, special.

Squawk.

Her eye practically twitches in anger as Ikaros flies over to the windowsill, makes unwavering eye-contact with his owner, and shits on the wood.

Kassandra looks like she wants to be euthanised.

“My god,” she mutters as you burst out laughing. She awkwardly rubs the back of her neck and grimaces, mouth parted as if trying to form some kind of apology for her eagle’s behaviour.

“I’m guessing you’re used to being the only one doing the flustering?” you tease, trying to lighten the mood.

Her disgraced expression shifted back to a playful one. “If I say yes, do I sound like a whore?”

Grinning, you shake your head. “A little cocky, perhaps.”

“I’ll take cocky.” She winks and gets up. “Your coffee is probably cold, can I get you a fresh one?”

“Oh, no, thank you. I’m fine.”

“The finest,” she smirks.

“Real smooth,” you roll your eyes, smiling regardless.

Ikaros caws from the windowsill, as if mocking Kassandra’s advances. Once again, her effortless charm dissolves into a look of frustration. She grabs kitchen towels and a bottle of disinfectant from by the sink and walks over to the window, nudging the eagle so he’d move out of the way. “Maláka,” she groans, cleaning up the mess from the surface. “Μη μου το χαλάς αυτό,” she mutters to Ikaros, earning a confused look. Kassandra sighs. “Usually I wait until after the first date before introducing a beautiful lady to this little shit. That way people don’t immediately think I’m just a weird bird lesbian.”

Testing the waters, you remark, “I happen to quite fancy women with an affinity for animals.” You bite your lip and add, “And, well, you’re…very attractive.”

Smugly, Kassandra finishes disinfecting the windowsill and walks to the kitchen with a little more vigour, your compliment proving to be an ego boost.

Once again deprived of attention, Ikaros decides to flap over and join you at the table. Instinctively, you flinch as the large bird flies in your direction, but all he does is stare at you, trying to analyse the stranger in his home.

“Does – does he bite?” you ask, hesitantly standing up.

Kassandra discards the kitchen towel in the bin, washing her hands. “No, he’s very kind to everyone who isn’t me.” She flashes you a wicked grin. “I only bite when asked.”

Stammering, you choke on air, struggling to find a response. Ikaros gives her a disappointed look.

“Shit, too forward?”

You shake your head. “Not at all,” you blush. “I’ve just…never met anyone quite like you before.” Ikaros seemingly gives you a judgemental leer, and you swiftly find yourself adding, “I-in a good way, that is!”

“Oh?” Her brow is upturned, her interest piqued.

“It’s…exciting.” The eagle shuffles towards you and nuzzles your hand, apparently deciding you’re worthy of his affections. The dark feathers atop his head are surprisingly soft to touch. Smiling, you give his head a few pats, inhibitions to the wind when cute little coos vibrate from his throat. “I’m rambling, aren’t I?”

“I think it’s adorable,” Kassandra says softly.

You look up. “Really?”

“Really.” She joins the two of you and plucks a damson from the fruit bowl, feeding it to Ikaros while you pet him. “You’re the loveliest person to have ever set foot in this building, that’s for sure.”

Ikaros cocks his head in agreement. His beady eyes meet yours, damson juice dribbling from his beak. Do it, he’s silently telling you.

Screw it, let’s shoot our shot.

You clear your throat, mustering up some courage. “Are you free next weekend?”

Kassandra beams amorously. “I was about to ask you the same thing,” she grins. “How does dinner sound?”

Fuck yes. “Really good,” you blurt out excitedly.

“There’s this great Persian restaurant a couple streets over. I’ll book us a table?”

You gasp, having seen the building on the drive when you were moving in. “The place with the garden and the pretty lights, right?”

“That’s the one.”

“Sounds amazing.” Red in the face and heart pounding, your eyes dart about the apartment, fearing that you’ll combust if you look at Kassandra any longer. They settle on Ikaros, who gently butts his head against your hand, almost like a fist-bump. “Well, uh, I have a home insurance company to ring up, so I should probably get going,” you stutter.

“I won’t keep you, then,” Kassandra says, a tinge of disappointment in her tone. Ikaros squawks sadly.

“Thank you for the coffee.”

“It was my pleasure. Thank you for staying,” she winks. The eagle coos in agreement. You give him one last pat before walking to the front door.

“Oh, before you leave, there is something you should know…” Kassandra calls, moving over to you. She delicately takes your hand, frying your brain, and leans down to your ear. You feel faint. Lowly, she whispers, “…Our Hermes guy likes to drop-kick our parcels.”

Snorting, you look up at her in disbelief. I mean, what was I expecting? A kiss? Get a grip, woman. Kassandra laughs at your expression. “Use the amazon locker down the road instead.”

“You’re amazing,” you murmur, grinning. “I’ll probably see you before next weekend, but bye, I guess?”

“Chaire,” she bids softly, opening the door for you.

When the door closes behind you, you let out a ragged breath, excitement coursing through your veins.

You are so glad you moved here.

.

( The Greek clause is meant to say "Don't blow this for me" but I used 5 different translators and all 5 came back with slightly different things and I sort of ip-dip-doo'd it and chose one at random...sorry. )

[themuseandantarctica]

* 𝒎𝒂𝒏 𝒘𝒂𝒕𝒄𝒉𝒆𝒓

sentence starters based on jill mccorkle’s short story collection crash diet, from the story “man watcher”.  change however necessary.

tw: drugs, suicide

❝ what’s my sign ?  slippery when wet. ❞

❝ have you seen me somewhere before ?  maybe , since i’ve been somewhere before. ❞

❝ what’s my line ?  well , i’ve got quite a few , all depends on what i’m trying - or not trying - to catch. ❞

❝ it’s not so hard to pick up a man , matter of fact it’s one of the easiest things i’ve ever done.  a good man ?  well , that’s something entirely different. ❞

❝ i have the kind of migraine that blinds you. ❞

❝ [name] knows a lot about everything and she has experienced the world in a way nobody can come close to touching. ❞

❝ i’ve thought about publishing a book about it all , all the different types of the species. ❞

❝ i’d break it all down so even the inexperienced could gain something. ❞

❝ why don’t men have partitions between urinals ?  is there a history of liking to watch or something ? ❞

❝ does it all go back to the greeks and romans where a little homosexual activity was perfectly in order ? ❞

❝ i’m still working on a lot of topcis , as you can see , but quite a bit of my research is already mapped out. ❞

❝ you got the kind who might do all right in a job and lead a relatively clean life , but they bore you to tears. ❞

❝ he likes to chew tobacco while drinking beer and talk about what him and the boys done and seen while hunting up some good fat quail and some bambi. ❞

❝ well , just be sure you put it back. ❞

❝ i worked as a secretary in some very dull and very official office where there were a lot of very dull and very official men. ❞

❝ you’d be lucky to get a man like [name]. ❞

❝ there are very few men in his category. ❞

❝ what do you mean , his category ? ❞

❝ he likes chains and medallions and doesn’t believe in shirt buttons. ❞

❝ you’re some kind of bad off , aren’t you , [name] ? ❞

❝ don’t you have any respect ? ❞

❝ it’s not like he can send me to my room and keep me from going to the prom. ❞

❝ he wasn’t respecting me when he and mama were out cutting up all over town , pickling their livers and getting emphysema while i was babysitting every night of the week to pay for my own week at girl scout camp , which i ended up hating with a passion anyway because it was run just like a military unit. ❞

❝ you could have benefitted from the military. ❞

❝ i’ve said it before , and i’ll say it again.  i would never have a man of the church , and i would never have a man of the military. ❞

❝ i don’t want anybody telling me what to do or inspecting me. ❞

❝ who’s to say they’d have you ? ❞

❝ i could have that old piece of crap who just left here if i wanted him. ❞

❝ we are in love. ❞

❝ it’s easy to fall in love , easy as rolling off a log. ❞

❝ i know your soul is in the devil’s hand.  you wouldn’t know love if it bit you. ❞

❝ it’s easy to fall in love.  what’s hard is living with it.  and if you can’t live with it , you’re better off without it. ❞

❝ if i want lots of drama , i’ll turn on my tv set. ❞

❝ what do you do for a wandering eye ? ❞

❝ you do like men , don’t you ? ❞

❝ it’s amazing how whenever a woman is asked this question , other women get real uncomfortable while waiting for the answer. ❞

❝ i like men the same way i like people in general.  some i do and some i don’t. ❞

❝ the truth of it all is that i’m ahead of my time.  i have already figured out what i need to live a happy healthy life and i’m no longer out there on the prowl. ❞

❝ if my life takes a swing and i meet mr. right and settle into a life of prosperity then so be it , and if i don’t then so be it. ❞

❝ i’m in lover’s purgatory.  i’ve seen hell and i’m content to stay here in all my glorious neutrality. ❞

❝ i was unhappily married to a man who wanted me to be somebody i wasn’t and was forever making suggestions. ❞

❝ i once knew a girl who went to lunch from her secretarial job and never came back. ❞

❝ i once knew a girl who went to lunch from her secretarial job and never came back.  i knew another girl who woke up on her wedding day with bad vibes and just hopped a jet and left her parents with a big church wedding mess.  i admired them both tremendously. ❞

❝ drugs came first for [name] , and we tried singing a few times just  the two of us , but she’d get really strung out and just go wild with a cowbell. ❞

❝ she’d call me on the phone in the middle of the night to ask about a gig. ❞

❝ nobody wanted us and i knew that. ❞

❝ i passed my time by searching for the perfect male , dissecting specimen after specimen only to find his weaknesses and toss him aside. ❞

❝ i met my husband at a halloween party and married him in the next week. ❞

❝ all i had to do was become a drug addict and hallucinate that everything was hunky-dory. ❞

❝ i was there when it happened.  she said she was so high the only way down was to jump , and i was too busy talking to this matty-haired man to notice she meant business. ❞

❝ he was wearing some of those suede german sandals that make people’s feet look so wide ; you know they kind , they’re real expensive but they make you look like you don’t have a pot to pee in and couldn’t care less about your appearance. ❞

❝ lay off the stuff , don’t play on fire escapes , don’t let yourself become so lonely. ❞

❝ if you can’t make it in life all by yourself - and by that i mean without the benefit of people and substances and gigs of whatever sort you might crave - then you simply can’t make it. ❞

❝ his lines are blurred and intertwined.  he’s a little bit of a lot of things , and a lot of what counts. ❞

❝ to think that a man can fill up whatever space you have is just stupid if you ask me.  he can’t do it any better than a box of twinkies or a gallon of liquor , and to ask it of him is unfair. ❞

❝ these days i’m constructing a little diorama of my apartment kitchen and in it i have a little clay figure who looks just like me and is working on a diorama of her apartment kitchen. ❞

❝ i have always loved the concept of infinity ; it makes me feel good. ❞

❝ well , how do you propose that ? ❞

❝ you gonna wire them up so if they touch themselves it’ll set off bells ? ❞

❝ a solemn vow to god is good enough for me. ❞

❝ what do you know of god ? ❞

❝ why , [name] , i never noticed how hairy you are. ❞

❝ call me an optimist.  i’m sitting here in a pile of ashes , waiting for the phoenix to take shape and rise. ❞

[magic-and-moonlit-wings]

Chapter 53: Identity

Becoming The Mask

Barbara was at work when her phone buzzed. She didn't have time to check it – she was busy with a toddler who had swallowed a paperclip.

If it had gone into the kid's stomach, things might have been okay. There was some risk of the sharp point doing damage, or the wire catching and tangling in the intestines, but the rounded ends of the paperclip meant there was also a chance it would simply be passed through.

Unfortunately, instead of ingesting the paperclip, the child had aspirated it, so it needed to be removed from her right lung.

Immediately after Barbara got out of surgery, she had to work up the x-rays of a teenager who'd crashed his Vespa into a tree. Nothing was obviously broken and he didn't have a concussion, but there was a risk of hairline fractures.

And then, (because why not,) there were three successive cases of people who had stuck odd things up their butts and gotten those things stuck.

By the time she was able to sit down for two minutes and gulp some coffee, she had forgotten about her buzzing phone.

She didn't even look at her phone until she was leaving for the night. Barbara got it out to turn the ringer off, since she wasn't supposed to be on call that night, which never stopped anyone when they were short-staffed, which was often, and she was tired enough it would probably be dangerous for her to be treating patients again until she'd had some sleep.

(Also, she was probably tired enough that she shouldn't be driving, but Barbara never let herself think about that.)

After finding out she'd missed something as big as her kid sneaking around to fight a secret magical war, Barbara was trying to reassert some boundaries between her time at work and the rest of her life.

Her phone announced that she'd missed a notification.

It was just an exclamation point. What had that been supposed to mean?

Barbara turned her phone off and drove home.

"I'm back, kiddo!"

"We're in the kitchen!"

'We' meant Jim and Toby. Jim was pulling a shepherd's pie out of the oven. Toby and Barbara both inhaled appreciatively.

"You said it's lean ground beef, right?" asked Toby. Jim smiled and rolled his eyes.

"Yes, Tobes. You know if you cut all the fat out of your diet you'd get protein poisoning, right? Mom, back me up."

Barbara took a moment to remember this. She wasn't a nutritionist – she'd encountered this concept in a novel a few years ago and looked it up to see if it was true.

"He's right," she said. "It's the rarest kind of food poisoning. Not much risk of it happening here and now." Not in a city in the United States, haven of processed and instant foods.

Jim portioned out the steaming vegetables and meat and mashed potatoes. Barbara added some sour cream to hers.

"Is Nana out tonight?" she asked Toby.

"Yeah, she and some of her chess buddies are doing a tournament. Informal, I think, but maybe a prize? Like, a gift certificate or something."

"We should see if we can get her and Mr Strickler to play a match sometime," said Jim. "I think I heard once that he's a grandmaster, but I don't know how often he plays anymore."

That combination, Nancy and Walt, made Barbara's brain click and remember the significance of that exclamation point she'd sent herself.

"So … it's been a month. Have you made any progress on telling your friends' families about trolls?"

Both boys froze.

"We gave Vendel a bunch of family stories," said Toby. "Once he's done reading it, we'll find out if we have permission or we're going behind everybody's backs."

"Guess I should warn him the clock's ticking again," said Jim.

"We could maybe tell people now and say we're LARPing, and tell the whole truth later?" Toby suggested. "That's what my therapist thinks is going on."

"You told your therapist?" asked Barbara and Jim together, in very different tones.

Jim's eyes were huge. He had a white-knuckled grip on his silverware. "Tell me you didn't use the word 'Trollhunter' in front of her."

"… No?" said Toby in confusion. "I just said your character was a magic knight on a quest to fight an evil troll."

Jim sighed. "Okay, that's generic enough it's probably safe. Don't use any specific names or terms, though."

"Dude, you seriously think someone is spying on a random high schooler's therapy appointments?"

"Someone is spying on a random high school's entire history class," Jim pointed out.

The rest of the meal was tense. After they were done eating and cleaning up, Toby went back home, and Jim went upstairs to do homework.

Jim's yearbook from the previous year was on one of the shelves in the living room. Barbara brought it over to the couch.

She could use this to get an idea of who Jim and Toby's classmates were, at least.

Jim didn't have many signatures in the book. There was Toby's, of course. The rest all had generic messages – "Have a great summer" from Eli Pepperjack, "Have fun this summer!" from Shannon Longhannon, "See you in September" and a doodled smiley face from Claire Nuñez, and "Enjoy summer break" from Seamus Johnson.

People Jim knew? Or random classmates he approached so he wouldn't look 'weird' for not caring about yearbook autographs?

Barbara made note of all the names. She felt like Jim had let slip that the other children who knew about trolls were girls, early on, but she couldn't quite remember for sure and didn't want to rule anyone out. She flipped to the class photos to match names to faces, so she could keep watch for the signatories hanging around her house or across the street.

+=+

Enrique carefully printed the English alphabet. It hadn't been that hard to mimic from a reference image, but this was his first time writing it independently. He haltingly hummed the song to keep track of his place.

"Pretty good," said Claire, reading over his shoulder. He fought the urge to turn and strike. He was (supposed to be) safe. Claire wasn't purposefully lurking in his blind spot to attack him. "Definitely way better than my first scribbles. I guess next you should learn to write your name."

On another piece of paper, she printed it for him to copy.

The first letter was N. Sensible enough. Except wasn't that one pronounced 'nuh' instead of 'en' when it was in a word and not the alphabet? He shrugged. Claire knew this writing system better than he did – if she said Enrique started with N, he'd go with it until he had some evidence otherwise.

The second letter was O. He frowned. That … didn't feel right. Shouldn't it be an R?

The third letter was T. He stopped.

"Read it," he said to Claire, trying not to growl.

"Not Enrique," she said, without shame. "You only copied the 'Not' part so far."

Angrily, Enrique scribbled out the letters he'd written so far and the bit he'd copied from. In fast, shaky letters he copied out the rest of it and underlined it.

"No," said Claire, getting angry in turn, "you don't get to use that name. That's my brother's name, not yours."

"The kid can share. It's mine now."

"Oh, come on," Claire scoffed. "You're, like, hundreds of years old. I get that Jim's used to being called 'Jim' after sixteen years in deep cover or whatever, but you can't possibly have gotten that attached to 'Enrique' in just a few months."

… Did she really not know?

"It's the only name I've got."

"Bullshit. Other trolls had to call you something when you were in the Darklands."

Now he growled for real. "That wasn't a name."

"What, some kind of codename system? Then I'd think you'd welcome the chance to start using your real name again."

"I don't know what it used to be!" he snapped. "No one exactly kept track of who they were grabbing. And if we lived, it was 'Changeling' this and 'Impure' that if it wasn't just 'hey you'! Enrique's the first name I can remember having and you don't get to take it away from me!"

He stood there breathing hard for maybe a full minute. He'd cracked the pen. There was gloppy ink on his clenched fist. He licked it off before ink could drip on the floor, and popped the plastic into his mouth.

Claire's voice, when she spoke again, was a lot softer.

"How did anyone tell the Changelings apart, if … if you didn't have names?"

Enrique snorted. "You think they bothered? One Changeling's as good or as bad as any other. S'probably part of why Jim and the big Boss Man were so quick to change sides when they had the chance."

"Even the other Changelings?"

"The rule about not getting attached starts early."

Claire looked like she was about to cry. That … that wasn't fair, she didn't get to make him feel bad for her when they were in the middle of a fight …

"We give each other nicknames, sometimes," he admitted. Imp had been a popular one, if nothing else about a Changeling stood out. "Us or the goblins. But then when we get up top, it's like a rite of passage, you know? We get a name then. Using the old nickname's … like an insult. Saying you weren't worth making a surface agent."

Claire blinked rapidly a few times, then hugged him. He almost clawed her before realizing it wasn't an attack.

"Oi, easy!"

"You can't have my brother's name," she said stubbornly. "But we'll figure something else out."

"Not exactly your call to make," Enrique retorted.

"Don't ruin the moment."

"What moment–?!"

+=+

Previous Chapter (Troll Dads become official!)

Table of Contents

Next Chapter (Angor Rot’s debut!)

Not featured in the above chapter: Jim's internal panic, as he frantically tries to figure out how much Toby has already told Dr Archenn and how to warn Toby off telling her anything else, without exposing yet another Changeling's identity to humans.

Featured in the above chapter: my headcanon that Otto addressing Not Enrique as 'Imp' in early Season 2 was a deliberate insult. I've actually got a different nickname in mind for Not Enrique, it just didn't feel natural to bring it up in this scene. Imp, short for Impure, is basically a 'starter nickname' that all Changelings have in the Darklands, until and unless something about them stands out enough that the other Changelings start calling them something else.

[instapetskx]

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[tabloidtoc]

Globe, June 22

Cover: O.J. Simpson was framed by cops

Page 2: Up Front & Personal -- AFAIK none of these unflattering pictures came from Instagram -- Ben Affleck walking his dog, Lady Gaga bares her tummy, Dennis Quaid plays golf 

Page 3: Melanie Griffith, Hugh Grant, pregnant Katy Perry at the beach with her dog 

Page 4: Screen stud Brad Pitt is stuffing his face with fast food and his unhealthy diet is threatening his bottom line: his once beautiful behind, just-married Bindi Irwin won’t take her new husband Chandler Powell’s last name because she wants to honor her late dad Steve Irwin 

Page 5: Gwen Stefani has three sons with her ex-husband Gavin Rossdale and now the 50-year-old is desperate to have a baby girl with boyfriend Blake Shelton 

Page 7: Image conscious First Lady Jackie Kennedy Onassis followed a bizarre beauty ritual that included rubbing facial toner into her armpits, Kanye West is threatening to sue a former bodyguard for at least $10 million claiming the security specialist ran his mouth and breached a confidentiality agreement 

Page 8: Lori Loughlin’s spoiled daughter Olivia Jade was slammed by online critics who say the rich kid was tone deaf when she shared an online message about using white privilege to fight racism

Page 9: Glamorous Jennifer Lopez is taking on the role of one of the most vicious female criminals in history -- drug queenpin Griselda Blanca who murdered at least 250 people -- in a brazen bid to win an Oscar 

Page 10: Disgraced Prince Andrew’s twisted life as pedophile Jeffrey Epstein’s pampered house pet is being exposed by the murdered billionaire’s former butler who blows the lid off naked pool parties, kinky sex toys and cash payments to young girls recruited as sex slaves 

Page 12: Celebrity Buzz -- Busy Philipps (pictured), chipper Clint Eastwood says he doesn’t mind growing old while in gloomy contrast Woody Allen whines his pampered life is pointless, Kelly Clarkson still has babies on the brain despite having had her tubes tied but (soon-to-be ex) husband Brandon Blackstock doesn’t want another child, Reese Witherspoon admits nabbing Kerry Washington’s fountain of youth secret -- a veggie concoction she’s chugged each morning for more than eight years that includes lettuce and spinach and celery and banana and pear and apple and lemon with the seeds, Yolanda Hadid the ex-wife of two multimillionaires has found love again in the arms of 70-ish farmer Joseph Jingoli who also happens to be the stinking-rich CEO of his own company 

Page 13: Justin Bieber (pictured), Ashley Benson (pictured), Hugh Jackman buys flowers in NYC (pictured), Bryce Dallas Howard finally graduated from NYU 21 years after commencing collegiate courses

Page 14: Parkinson’s disease isn’t knocking down Alan Alda anytime soon, Octavia Spencer is finally owning up to her real age after having fibbed for years that she was two years younger; she was found out by pals from her school days, Fashion Verdict -- Sarah Hyland 9/10, Padma Lakshmi 8/10, Rumer Willis 2/10, Tracee Ellis Ross 7/10, Keri Russell 4/10 

Page 16: Faith Evans was busted for domestic violence by cops who say the singer assaulted her producer husband Stevie J., radio talk show host and self-proclaimed marriage expert Dr. Laura Schlessinger has vowed to give up men and chances for a third marriage because today’s guys are not up to her high standards 

Page 17: Money-grubbing celebs are nickel-and-diming hardworking fans for the privilege of receiving a new form of the paid autograph -- personalized videos -- Jeff Ross, Tom Arnold and Caitlyn Jenner are some of the celebs involved although Cait says she’s doing it for charity 

Page 19: 10 Things You Don’t Know About Pat Sajak, Lori Loughlin’s devastated daughters think it’d be surreal to visit her in the slammer, Britney Spears is one of the hottest pop babes but she felt like an ugly duckling as a kid

Page 20: True Crime 

Page 23: Gary Busey claims he met angels during a near-death experience after a devastating motorcycle crash in 1988, country singer Rosanne Cash is singing the blues after a vulgar MAGA blowhard blasted one of her four daughters for wearing an anti-COVID mask to a Nashville grocery store 

Page 24: Cover Story -- rogue cops faked O.J. Simpson murder case -- Simpson was the target of racist payback after Rodney King beating embarrassed police 

Page 26: Health Report -- Gene ID’d that can fight fat, quick test for kidney stones, junk food dims your wits, easy way to get health insurance online 

Page 32: Nicole Kidman and Tom Cruise’s secret chats that she kept a secret from Keith Urban -- since their bitter 2001 divorce after ten years of marriage Nicole hated Tom’s guts but he’s really mellowed lately and they’ve been secretly mending fences and the glue fusing their new connection is their adopted kids Isabella and Connor, breastfeeding has freaked out first-time mom Karina Smirnoff 

Page 38: Real Life

Page 39: Livid Lionel Richie has vowed to kick Scott Disick’s butt after the sleazeball’s split with his daughter Sofia Richie -- Sofia’s been spending a lot of time with her dad and some of the stories she’s been sharing about what Scott put her through have been hair-curling 

Page 40: David Hasselhoff is such a sex machine at age 67 that his nearly three decades younger wife Hayley Roberts is asking for time-outs in the bedroom 

Page 44: Straight Talk -- Enough already with Matt Lauer’s moaning 

Page 45: Makeup mogul Kylie Jenner tearfully worries about being tossed into jail over shocking fraud allegations -- the panic comes after Kylie was cut from the famed Forbes World’s Billionaires List with the magazine claiming Kylie and her mom Kris Jenner may have forged tax returns and lied about the value of her Kylie Cosmetics brand, Lea Michele is being accused by former Glee co-star Samantha Ware of making her first television gig a living hell 

Page 47: Hollywood Flashback -- 1983′s The Right Stuff, Bizarre But True 

[cecilia771101-blog]

The Best Diet Get Rid Of Weight.

Juicing to lose weight is a simple and efficient way to tackle losing excess pounds. While you won't be consuming anything except vegetable and fruit juice, the nutrients are quickly absorbed towards your body. Juicing is more nutritious than trying to count calories or consuming diet foods that aren't really good for weight impairment. To lose my love handles, I've tried pills which forced me to feel negative. Please look for a faint disclaimer or warning in the bottoom of websites that sell keto pills. Most keto pills are not regulated and may be harmful with your body. Even prescribed ones has its side-effects, systems work efficiently consult you pharmacist or physician really carefully. You might usually encounter miraculous pills that promise great leads to just a few months. If a product sounds simple to be true, it probably is going to be. Be careful not to discover a fancy sales try to sell. 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[bibleteachingbyolga]

His eyes became bright. Jonathan put his sugar-coated hand to his mouth and displayed the power of one of God’s good gifts in his created world. It’s a power we all have known, indeed tasted, and yet many of us have grown so accustomed to it as to hardly recognize it anymore.

At that moment, what the weary, hungry army of Israel needed was fast energy. They “had been hard pressed that day” as they pursued the fleeing enemy, but their king, Saul, Jonathan’s father, made a rash vow: “Cursed be the man who eats food until it is evening and I am avenged on my enemies” (1 Samuel 14:24). In hot pursuit of their foe, the men entered a forest and found themselves surrounded by God’s provision: “behold, there was honey on the ground” (1 Samuel 14:25). Golden, viscous, liquid sugar — like the manna, which tasted of honey, that covered the ground for God’s people each morning in the wilderness (Exodus 16:14). God had provided. But Saul had made his foolish oath.

Jonathan, however, had not heard his father’s words. So he walked into the forest, received the divine gift, and “his eyes became bright” (1 Samuel 14:27). Just the quick energy he needed to finish off the foe. Just what the whole army needed.

Saul’s army did catch the enemy, and overcome them, but because of Saul’s rash vow not to eat, “the people were very faint.” In victory, they lost self-control, and “pounced on the spoil and took sheep and oxen and calves and slaughtered them on the ground. And the people ate them with the blood” (1 Samuel 14:31–32). What pain and misery they would have been spared if only, like Jonathan, they had “tasted a little honey” (1 Samuel 14:29, 43) to brighten their eyes and revive their strength.

In the end, their victory is not without grave and unnecessary difficulties. The people do redeem Jonathan from falling victim to the vow, and he declares his father’s folly:

My father has troubled the land. See how my eyes have become bright because I tasted a little of this honey. How much better if the people had eaten freely today of the spoil of their enemies that they found. For now the defeat among the Philistines has not been great. (1 Samuel 14:29–30)

Twice Jonathan says “a little honey.” Just a little did the trick. Too much would have made him all the worse for war. Yet, here, in this seemingly minor episode in the history of Israel, we have what might be an unnerving peek into our modern world, where we are surrounded by honey and have great difficulty limiting ourselves to just a little.

Spoonfuls of Sugar

From a historical perspective, it is stunning how much sugar we consume today. What came in a golden, sticky ooze in biblical times comes to us today as refined, white, granulated table sugar, already baked and boiled in excessive proportions into many of the foods and drinks we commonly consume. According to Jay Richards, “In 1700, Westerners ate very little sugar — say, four pounds per year. Even in 1850, we averaged only a few pounds per person per year. Now, each of us, on average, eats well over one hundred pounds of sugar per year . . . much of it in processed foods that don’t even taste sweet to us” (Eat, Fast, Feast, 42–43).

Estimates do vary. “Americans consume as much as 77.1 pounds of sugar and related sweeteners per person per year, according to the United States Department of Agriculture data” — but still — “That’s nearly twice the limit the department recommends, based on a 2,000-calorie diet” (“The Barbaric History of Sugar in America”). But what no one questions is that objectively, demonstrably, and almost without exception, we consume far more sugar today than humans have throughout history, barring only the last century.

Obesity among Americans has grown nearly 30 percent in just the last three decades, while the rate of diabetes has almost tripled. It would be naïve to consider sugar the only cause. And perhaps just as naïve to not consider the overconsumption of sugar to have played a significant, if not the major, part. And of course, none of us wants to hear that, because it just tastes so good.

Heavier, Slower, More Unhealthy

For many readers, this is not news. For more than a generation, a growing chorus of voices has been suspecting that “we are consuming way more sugar than our bodies are equipped to handle” (“What’s Wrong with the Modern Diet?”). “Equipped” — don’t miss that. By whom?

When dealing with the human body, it’s difficult for even the most ardent of evolutionists to avoid words like “equipped,” “built,” and “designed.” The human body and brain, with its abilities to move and adapt, is the most impressive masterpiece in all of physical creation, the crowning jewel, and culminating creation, of those first six days (Genesis 1:26–31).

God’s good design comes equipped to handle sugar — both the slow-release of glucose as digestion breaks down complex carbohydrates and its fast release from simple carbohydrates (none faster, and more difficult to handle, than when we drink sugar-water — soft drinks and juices).

Glucose, from sugar, can be a source of needed energy to the muscles, but it is toxic in the bloodstream. Our brains summon insulin to the rescue to remove it from our blood, and when muscles, which have little storage, are already well supplied, the sugar is converted to fat and stored in a nice central location — the waste and hips. Despite the popular myth that eating fat makes our bodies fat, it is the overconsumption of sugar, for most of us on the modern diet, that contributes far more to our undesired fat stores.

Tragically, generation by generation, those commissioned to image God in his created world are becoming heavier, slower, lazier, and more unhealthy, while a growing train of maladies like obesity, heart disease, high blood pressure, type 2 diabetes, stroke, and cancer shorten and encumber this vapor’s breath of our lives even more than they already are.

Little Theology of Honey

Many today might be surprised to find that the Scriptures have timeless truths to speak into our modern malaise about sugar.

Sugarcane was rare in the Middle East in biblical times, and may receive an obscure reference in one or two texts (“sweet cane” in Isaiah 43:24; Jeremiah 6:20). But what was not obscure, and is one of the great concentrated sources of glucose still, with the same essential sweetness as table sugar, is honey. There is “a little theology of honey” in the pages of Scripture — and those of us confused today about what to do, and not do, for ourselves and for our children, might get some fresh help and orientation from the biblical principles.

Good: Eat Honey

The Proverbs give us two key orienting words. The first is Proverbs 24:13:

My son, eat honey, for it is good, and the drippings of the honeycomb are sweet to your taste.

Sugar, and its being “sweet to your taste,” is God’s idea and good design. Not only do we have the story of Jonathan’s eyes becoming bright — characterized as a good thing — but again and again, beginning at the burning bush (Exodus 3:8), God promises to give his people a land, he says, “flowing with milk and honey” — which is emphatically and manifestly a good gift.

Honey is identified with sweetness, pleasantness to the taste (Ezekiel 3:3; Revelation 10:9, 10), as a lion with strength (Judges 14:18). God provided not only nourishment for his people in the wilderness, but manna tasted good — “like wafers made with honey” (Exodus 16:31).

God’s first-covenant people treated honey as a valuable product and resource: among the “choice fruits of the land” (Genesis 43:11), fit to give a king (2 Samuel 17:29) or prophet (1 Kings 14:3), or God himself as firstfruits in worship (2 Chronicles 31:5). Honey could be a mark of prosperity and abundance (Isaiah 7:15, 22), even royalty (Ezekiel 16:13). “Honey” even became an endearing name a husband and wife might co-opt for each other, as did the lovers in the Song of Songs (4:11; 5:1), and still today.

Not Good: Much Honey

However, honey is powerful enough to come with user warnings. This should be no surprise to Christians who have learned elsewhere — with marital intimacy, for instance — that God’s most precious, and sweetest, of gifts can be prime targets of our sinful world and flesh and the devil. Again, Proverbs sounds the orienting word:

It is not good to eat much honey, nor is it glorious to seek one’s own glory. A man without self-control is like a city broken into and left without walls. (Proverbs 25:27–28)

Not good to each much honey. The pronounced good of honey calls for the virtue of self-control, the absence of which will soon destroy the benefit. So also, another warning proceeds it, earlier in the same chapter: “If you have found honey, eat only enough for you, lest you have your fill of it and vomit it” (Proverbs 25:16).

Professor Slughorn’s warning to his Hogwarts students about “Liquid Luck” potion might just as well be applied to sugar: “Too much of a good thing, you know . . . highly toxic in large quantities. But when taken sparingly, and very occasionally . . .”

Sugar-Coated, Growing Fat

Just as Jonathan did well in the forest to have “a little honey,” and not much, so do we today, surrounded as we are by the forest of sugar that is modern life. As with sex and alcohol, we learn to take some of the greatest care with God’s greatest of gifts because they are so potent. Honey is good — so good that it’s not good to eat much of it.

Consider what that momentary sweetness in the mouth, whether honey or sugar, has come to represent in common speech. “Sugar-coated” is no compliment; sugar has become symbolic for “empty calories,” for a momentary pleasure with a “crash” soon to follow. Proverbs 5:3 even warns that “the lips of a forbidden woman drip honey.” There is a paradigm here: feeling good in the moment, with great regret and disgust to follow (Proverbs 9:17; 20:17; Job 20:12).

Even before God brought his people into that “land flowing with milk and honey,” he warned of what such luxuries would produce in them because of their sin — warnings we too should take seriously today. Over time, they would forget to handle his gifts with care:

When I have brought them into the land flowing with milk and honey, which I swore to give to their fathers, and they have eaten and are full and grown fat, they will turn to other gods and serve them, and despise me and break my covenant. (Deuteronomy 31:20)

In sin, God’s people came to presume his gifts and eventually forsake him. Even the “honey out of the rock” he provided to keep them alive in the wilderness (Deuteronomy 32:13; Psalm 81:16) they came to take lightly: “But Jeshurun grew fat, and kicked; you grew fat, stout, and sleek; then he forsook God who made him and scoffed at the Rock of his salvation” (Deuteronomy 32:15).

What We Learn from Sugar

Honey is indeed a divine creation and gift. Sugar is a good to handle with care. A gift from God to delight our tastes — and teach us of himself. Taste honey, he says. See how good it is, and ponder how the one who made it is every bit that good, and far better.

Not only is our God one who provides honey for his people in the wilderness, sweetness in the midst of our grueling times, but his words are “sweeter also than honey and drippings of the honeycomb” (Psalm 19:10). “How sweet are your words to my taste,” celebrates Psalm 119:103, “sweeter than honey to my mouth!”

And unlike honey and sugar, you cannot have too much of the sweetness of God. And our desire for more of him just might help with our penchant today to swing from overconsumption to overreaction and back.

A biblical theology of honey speaks a chastening word to both sides of today’s sugar divide. Apart from the guidance from God’s word, we are prone to gravitate to extremes: misusing God’s good gift through presumption and overconsumption, or misguided avoidance and overreaction, treating as evil, or simply toxic, what he has given as good.

Enjoy “a little honey” — it is good — so good that it’s not good to eat too much.

[ourmarcojohnson-blog]

How To Reduce Sugar Level Without Medication

What is Diabetes?

Diabetes is a disease that happens when your blood glucose, also called glucose, is exorbitantly high. Blood glucose is your standard wellspring of essentialness and begins from the sustenance you eat. Insulin, a hormone made by the pancreas, empowers glucose from sustenance to get into your cells to be used for imperativeness. Every so often your body doesn't make enough or any insulin or doesn't use insulin well. Glucose by then stays in your blood and doesn't accomplish your cells. After some time, having an extreme measure of glucose in your blood can cause therapeutic issues. In spite of the way that diabetes has no fix, you can figure out how to manage your diabetes and stay sound. On occasion, individuals call diabetes "a touch of sugar" or "negligible diabetes." These terms suggest that someone doesn't, for the most part, have diabetes or has a less certifiable case, yet every occurrence of diabetes isn't joking.

Sorts of Diabetes

Three vital diabetes types can make Type 1, type 2, and gestational diabetes.

Type 1 diabetes

Otherwise called youthful diabetes, this sort happens when the body fails to convey insulin. People with sort I diabetes are insulin-subordinate, which means they should take counterfeit insulin step by step to stay alive.

Type 2 diabetes

impacts the way where the body uses insulin. While the body still makes insulin, not in the slightest degree like in the sort I, the cells in the body don't respond to it as enough as they once did. This is the most generally perceived kind of diabetes, as shown by the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases, and it has strong associations with heaviness.

Gestational diabetes

This sort occurs in women during pregnancy when the body can end up being less unstable to insulin. Gestational diabetes does not occur in all women and as a rule, settle in the wake of considering a posterity. Less ordinary sorts of diabetes consolidate monogenic diabetes and cystic fibrosis-related diabetes.

Purposes behind Diabetes

Diabetes causes move dependent upon your genetic beautifiers, family heritage, ethnicity, prosperity, and environmental segments. There is no essential diabetes since that fits each kind of diabetes. The reason there is no described diabetes cause is that the explanations behind diabetes vary dependent upon the individual and the sort. For instance; the explanations behind sort 1 diabetes change essentially from the purposes behind gestational diabetes. Furthermore, the purposes behind sort 2 diabetes are undeniable from the explanations behind sort 1 diabetes.

Type 1 diabetes causes

Type 1 diabetes is achieved by the safe structure pulverizing the cells in the pancreas that make insulin. This causes diabetes by leaving the body without enough insulin to work routinely. This is called a safe framework reaction, or safe framework cause in light of the fact that the body is ambushing itself. There are no specific diabetes causes, in any case, the going with triggers may be incorporated:

• Viral or bacterial malady

• Chemical harms inside the sustenance

• Unidentified portion causing an invulnerable framework reaction

• The covered-up inherited disposition may in like manner be a sort 1 diabetes reason.

Type 2 diabetes causes

Type 2 diabetes causes are commonly multifactorial more than one diabetes cause is incorporated. Normally, the most overwhelming variable is a family parentage of sort 2 diabetes. This is no doubt type 2 diabetes reason. There are a variety of risk factors for sort 2 diabetes, any or all of which add the chances of structure up to the condition. These include:

• Obesity

• Living a stationary lifestyle

• Increasing age

• Bad diet

Another sort 2 diabetes causes, for instance, pregnancy or ailment can be type 2 diabetes peril factors. High glucose happens when your body can't satisfactorily move sugar from the blood into cells. Exactly when left unchecked, this can incite diabetes. One examination from 2012 uncovered that 12–14% of US adults had type 2 diabetes, while 37–38% were named pre-diabetic. This suggests half of all US adults have diabetes or pre-diabetes.

Gestational diabetes causes

The explanations behind diabetes in pregnancy generally called gestational diabetes remain cloud. Regardless, there are different risk factors that extension the chances of structure up to this condition:

• Family history of gestational diabetes

• Overweight or fat

• Suffer from polycystic ovary issue

• Have had a gigantic kid weighing over 9lb

Explanations behind gestational diabetes may in like manner be related to ethnicity – some ethnic social affairs have a higher threat of gestational diabetes.

Distinctive diabetes causes

There is an arrangement of other potential diabetes causes. This fuse the going with:

Pancreatitis or pancreatectomy as an explanation behind diabetes. Pancreatitis is known to extend the threat of treating diabetes, like a pancreatectomy.

Polycystic Ovary Syndrome (PCOS). One of the fundamental drivers of PCOS is robustness associated insulin deterrent, which may in like manner manufacture the threat of pre-diabetes and type 2 diabetes.

Cushing's issue This issue grows the age of the cortisol hormone, which serves to extended blood glucose levels. An overabundance of cortisol can cause diabetes.

Glucagonoma Patients with glucagonoma may experience diabetes because of a nonattendance of harmony between measurements of insulin creation and glucagon age.

Steroid-impelled diabetes (steroid diabetes) is a phenomenal kind of diabetes that happens in light of postponed use of glucocorticoid treatment.

Here are 15 basic ways to deal with lower glucose levels ordinarily

Exercise Regularly Standard exercise can empower you to get more slender and addition to insulin affectability. Extended insulin affectability infers your cells are better prepared to use the available sugar in your dissemination framework. Exercise moreover empowers your muscles to use glucose for imperativeness and muscle pressure. If you have issues with glucose control, you should routinely check your measurements. This will empower you to make sense of how you respond to different activities and keep your glucose levels from getting either unnecessarily high or too much low. Extraordinary sorts of action join weight lifting, fiery walking, running, biking, moving, climbing, swimming and that is just a hint of something larger.

Control Your Carb Intake Your body isolates carbs into sugars (generally glucose), and a while later, insulin moves the sugars into cells. When you eat too various carbs or have issues with insulin work, this methodology crashes and burns and blood glucose levels rise. Regardless, there are a couple of things you can do about this.

The American Diabetes Association (ADA) recommends controlling carb utilization by counting carbs or using a sustenance exchange system. A couple of examinations find that these procedures can moreover empower you to structure your suppers fittingly, which may further improve glucose control. Various examinations also exhibit that a low-carb diet diminishes glucose levels and hinder glucose spikes. Moreover, a low-carb diet can help control glucose levels as time goes on.

Augmentation Your Fiber Intake Fiber moderates carb digestion and sugar maintenance. Thus, it propels a dynamically persistent climb in glucose levels. Moreover, the sort of fiber you eat may accept a vocation. There are two sorts of fiber insoluble and dissolvable. While both are noteworthy, dissolvable fiber unequivocally has been seemed to bring down glucose levels. Besides, a high-fiber diet can help administer type 1 diabetes by improving glucose control and diminishing glucose lows. Sustenances that are high in fiber consolidate vegetables, common items, vegetables, and whole grains. The endorsed each day affirmation of fiber is around 25 grams for women and 38 grams for men. That is around 14 grams for every 1,000 calories.

Drink Water and Stay Hydrated Drinking enough water may empower you to keep your glucose levels inside strong limits. Despite thwarting absence of hydration, it helps your kidneys flush out the plenitude glucose through pee. One observational examination exhibited that the people who drank more water had a lower threat of developing high glucose levels. Drinking water typically re-hydrates the blood, cuts down glucose levels and lessens diabetes shot. Keep in mind that water and other non-caloric refreshments are perfect. Sugar-improved drinks raise blood glucose, drive weight expansion and augmentation diabetes risk.

Execute Portion Control Section control coordinates calorie confirmation and can incite weight decrease. Along these lines, controlling your weight advances sound glucose levels and has been spoke to diminish the risk of treating type 2 diabetes. Watching your serving sizes in like manner diminishes calorie affirmation and subsequent glucose spikes. Here are some helpful insights for controlling portions:

• Measure and check isolate.

• Use more diminutive plates.

• Avoid all those you-can-eat restaurants.

• Read sustenance stamps and check the serving sizes.

• Keep a sustenance journal.

• Eat step by step.

Pick Foods with a Low Glycemic Index The glycemic record was made to assess the body's glucose response to sustenance that contains carbs. Both the aggregate and sort of carbs choose how sustenance impacts glucose levels. Eating low-glycemic-document sustenance has been seemed to diminish whole deal glucose levels in sort 1 and sort 2 diabetics. Regardless of the way that the glycemic rundown of sustenances is huge, the number of carbs consumed similarly matters. Sustenance with a low glycemic record fuse fish, meat, eggs, oats, grain, beans, lentils, vegetables, sweet potatoes, corn, yams, and most verdant nourishments exhausting vegetables.

Control Stress Levels Stress can impact your glucose levels. Hormones, for instance, glucagon and cortisol are transmitted during weight. These hormones cause glucose levels to go up. One examination showed that movement, loosening up, and thought in a general sense reduced weight and cut down glucose levels for understudies. Exercises and loosening up strategies like yoga and care based weight reduction can in like manner address insulin outflow issues in unending diabetes.

Screen Your Blood Sugar Levels

"What gets assessed gets regulated."

Assessing and checking blood glucose levels can in like manner empower you to control them. For example, keeping track makes you choose in the event that you need to make adjustments in meals or medications. It will in like manner empower you to find how your body reacts to explicit sustenances. Try assessing your measurements every day, and observing the numbers in a log.

Get Enough Quality Sleep

Getting enough rest feels inconceivable and is basic for good prosperity. Poor napping penchants and nonattendance of rest in like manner impact glucose levels and insulin affectability. They can extend yearning and advance weight gain. Absence of rest lessens the entry of advancement hormones and extends cortisol levels. Both of these expect a huge activity in glucose control. In addition, extraordinary rest is about both the sum and quality. It is perfect to get a satisfactory proportion of splendid rest every night.

Eat Foods Rich in Chromium and Magnesium

High glucose levels and diabetes have similarly been associated with micronutrient inadequacies. Models join deficiencies in the minerals chromium and magnesium. Chromium is locked in with carb and fat assimilation. It moreover empowers control to glucose levels, and a nonappearance of chromium may slant you to carb partiality. Regardless, the frameworks behind this are not completely known. Focuses also report mixed revelations. Two examinations of diabetes patients showed that chromium had benefits for whole deal glucose control. In any case, another examination exhibited no favorable circumstances. Chromium-rich sustenances fuse egg yolks, whole-grain things, high-wheat oats, coffee, nuts, green beans, broccoli, and meat. Magnesium has moreover been seemed to benefit glucose levels, and magnesium deficiency has been associated with a higher peril of treating diabetes. In one examination, people with the most surprising magnesium confirmation had a 47% lower threat of getting the chance to be diabetic. Nevertheless, if you starting at now eat a ton of magnesium-rich sustenances, by then you in all likelihood won't benefit by improvements. Magnesium-rich sustenance joins diminish verdant greens, whole grains, fish, diminish chocolate, bananas, avocados, and beans.

Endeavor Apple Cider Vinegar Squeezed apple vinegar has various focal points for your prosperity. It advances lower fasting glucose levels, possibly by decreasing its age by the liver or extending its use by cells. Furthermore, considers exhibiting that vinegar inside and out effects your body's response to sugars and improves insulin affectability. To merge squeezed apple vinegar into your eating schedule, you can add it to a plate of blended greens dressings or mix 2 teaspoons in 8 ounces of water. In any case, it's basic to check with your master before taking squeezed apple vinegar if you are starting at now ingesting medications that lower glucose.

Examination with Cinnamon Extract Cinnamon is known to have various medicinal points of interest. For one, it has been seemed to improve insulin affectability by decreasing insulin resistance at the cell level. Studies show cinnamon can in like manner lower glucose levels by up to 29%. It directs the breakdown of carbs in the stomach related tract, which traditionalists the climb in glucose after a banquet. Cinnamon similarly acts thusly as insulin, notwithstanding the way that at a much slower rate. A practical bit is 1–6 grams of cinnamon for every day, or about 0.5–2 teaspoons. Regardless, obviously, don't take past what that since a great deal of cinnamon can be hazardous. If you should need to endeavor it, Amazon has a better than average assurance open.

Endeavor Berberine Berberine is the dynamic fragment of a Chinese herb that has been used to treat diabetes for an enormous number of years. Berberine has been seemed to help lower glucose and improve the breakdown of carbs for imperativeness. Moreover, berberine may be as practical as some glucose cutting down meds. This makes it a champion among the best upgrades for those with diabetes or pre-diabetes However, an impressive parcel of the instruments behind its effects are so far cloud.

Eat Fenugreek Seeds Fenugreek seeds are a phenomenal wellspring of dissolvable fiber, which can help control glucose levels. Various examinations have exhibited that fenugreek can feasibly bring down glucose in diabetics. It furthermore lessens fasting glucose and improves glucose strength. In spite of the way that not all that standard, fenugreek can without quite a bit of a stretch be added to a warmed product to help treat diabetes. You can similarly make fenugreek flour or mix it into tea. Fenugreek seeds are in a like manner seen as one of the most secure herbs for diabetes. The recommended part of fenugreek seeds is 2–5 grams for every day. In case you'd like to endeavor it, Amazon has a tremendous assurance available. Additionally, it may have a few indications. The detachment of the insides, blockage, and tooting and stomach anguish have been represented. A run of the mill estimations show for berberine is 1,500 mg for consistently, taken before meals as 3 measurements of 500 mg.

Lose Some Weight It's a simple choice that keeping up a sound weight will improve your prosperity and neutralize future restorative issues. Weight control moreover progresses strong glucose levels and has been spoke to lessen your risk of treating diabetes. For sure, even a 7% decline in body weight can decrease your threat of treating diabetes by up to 58%, and it seems to work incredibly superior to the medication. What's more, these lessened perils can be upheld consistently. You should similarly know about your waistline, as it is possibly the most huge weight-related factor for evaluating your diabetes shot. An estimation of 35 inches (88.9 cm) or more for women and 40 inches (101.6 cm) or more for men is connected with an extended peril of making insulin check, high glucose levels, and type 2 diabetes. Having a strong midriff estimation may be considerably more noteworthy than your general weight.

[lids-flutter-open]

more character development for an evil teacher from my book under the cut, sorry if ur on mobile

 Okay tv show

 Open on JULES VERNON HOLMES, at home in his kitchen. JULES is 36, with thinning brown curly hair. He has a pinched look to his face, because he recently lost eighteen pounds in three months. He wears glasses when he teaches high school history, but he is not wearing them now. The kitchen is cramped and made of a series of brown uniform prefab cabinets. There are no dishes in the sink and the counters are clean except for a piece of buttered toast without a napkin that sits next to the sink with one bite taken out of it. A long garland of garlic and onions hangs over the window like a party decoration. It is dark outside, and rain spatters the glass. JULES is standing on one leg in his kitchen, bracing his hip against the edge of the formica counter while he scratches at his calf with his bare right foot. He is wearing underwear and a T-shirt emblazoned with the name of a diner. He is struggling to open a pickle jar.

The phone rings from the next room. JULES starts, and his hand slips on the lid. He looks over at the oven. The clock on the oven displays the time as 12:18. JULES glances in the direction of the next room and scowls. He runs his tongue over his top teeth inside his lip, and does not move towards the ringing phone. JULES puts new effort into opening the jar of pickles. Across the room, there is a framed group photograph of college-age men standing with oars on the bank of a river. It includes JULES sixteen years before, when he was a member of his university’s rowing team. He is smiling; his arms are larger in the photo than they are in real life.

JULES opens the pickle jar with a pop. The phone is still ringing. There is only one pickle and a number of garlic cloves left at the bottom of the jar. He digs into the jar with his fingers, stretching his hand, and puts a garlic clove into his mouth.

 EXERCISE 2

 Jules was caught again by the display of different kinds of canned soup. He stood with his shopping basket on the linoleum tiles and held two cans of tomato soup in front of his face, studying the ingredients. One had cream and one had milk. There was another can of tomato soup on the shelf before him that had lentils in it, too. When he was younger there had only been one kind of canned tomato soup in every grocery store, or two. There were eighteen different things in front of him, all with different caloric and fat content. Jules was paralyzed. He put the soup with cream back on the shelf, and then picked it up again. It had higher fat content. Jules measured his blood pressure every morning before he ate breakfast. He threw the can into the cart, thinking that it would be better to eat real food than to find some watery diet version and be dissatisfied and end up binging on chips and peanut butter in the middle of the night. He would get the low sugar juice to compensate.

A man approached Jules in the aisle. He was older, and wore a gray sweatshirt and gym shorts. His shoes were dirty sneakers.

               “Excuse me,” he said to Jules. “Sir I don’t mean to bother you, but I’ve got no way else to do this, my daughter has a baby at home and we’re here to buy formula but it’s 37 dollars and they don’t let me put that on my credit card and I’m out of my EBT for the month.”

               Jules, whose mind had been in an alternate dimension of calories and aspartame and ideal blood pressure, jumped when he realized the man was speaking to him.

               “I’m sorry?”

               “Sir, it’s like a thing at this store, they don’t let you buy the formula with credit cards because some people just charge it on a stolen card, and I don’t have enough cash, and my EBT is all out for the month. But we have a baby at home and we need the formula, we’re all out. It’s my daughter. I wouldn’t ask for anything normally, I’m not that kind of man. Sir, I’m a military veteran, I served in Vietnam.”

               “Uh,” Jules said. He was not sure whether to look at the man’s eyes or not. “I don’t know what you’re asking me. I don’t have a lot of cash on me. I can give you a couple dollars.” He remembered he had only a fifty and a ten in his wallet, and tried to change tacks. “I think there’s an ATM outside the store to get money from a bank account.”

               “I don’t get paid till Friday,” the man said. “I don’t have money in my account.”

               “Oh,” Jules said. “Well, that’s—I’m sorry. And your daughter doesn’t have cash either?”

               “She’s at home with the baby,” the man said. “I didn’t want to ask her to come. Her husband left her and she’s saving as much as she can. Please, I just have to buy some infant formula for her.”

               Jules glanced desperately back at the soup, and then accidentally made eye contact with the man. He hated the way it made him feel to think of moving away down the empty aisle. He looked in his wallet and dug in it. His fingers hesitated on the ten and then took the fifty and thrust it at the man. “Good luck, sir,” he found himself saying. He couldn’t look into the man’s eyes. Jules already felt the sweat dripping down his back and a pillow of guilt emerging in his solar plexus, simultaneously related to giving the man too much money and at the same time to not being able to look in his eyes.

               “Thank you, sir, god bless you,” the man said. “I’m Boris. My name’s Boris. You’re a good man, you know that? Thank you, this means a lot. I won’t forget it.”

               “It’s no,” Jules said, and stopped, because it really was a problem. “I’m Jules. I hope you’re okay and the baby’s okay.”

               “We’re all getting by,” the man said.

               Night came. Jules’ cupboards were lined with the cans of tomato soup. He took an Ambien to sleep and then wandered around the house, looking out the windows.

                  Jules is holding the receiver of the phone up to his ear.

               “How have you been, then?” Jules says into the phone. He is still wearing the collared shirt and tie he wore to work. The papers he is grading are spread out on the table in front of him. He wants to make the kids excited about the grimy parts of history and he wants to make them understand the reasons their state developed the way it did.

               “Well, after the crash I’ve been just eating like frozen dinners,” Michelle says on the other end. “My arm is in the sling and all.”

               “Crash?” Jules tries to remember anything about a crash from the last time he and Michelle talked two weeks ago.

               “Mom said she called you. She didn’t?”

               “No,” Jules says. “Well, maybe if I was at work, but she didn’t call back.”

               “You don’t ever check your messages. I got in a motorcycle accident, isn’t that funny? Okay, it doesn’t sound funny, but here’s the context: I ran into an ice cream truck that didn’t signal and I literally flew over the top of the truck into the street and there were like four kids staring with their mouths open and one dropped his ice cream. I love like the mental image of everyone’s faces, it’s gonna bring me joy till the day I die.”

               “Michelle! Jesus!”

“My boss let me have the time off, it’s one of the good things about working as a nanny for a nice family, there’s no regular hassle about taking sick leave cuz she knows me. She’s even giving me a week’s pay, which like, must be nice to be rich, right? She’s so sweet though, and the baby’s so sweet.”

               “I warned you about that motorcycle,” Jules says. “Didn’t you already crash on a motorcycle a year ago?”

               “That time was worse. I got thrown into a tree! I mean, I was on more a path than a road. It was dumb. This time it wasn’t my fault, the ice cream company is even gonna give me compensation maybe if I can figure out a lawyer.”

               “You could seriously die, Michelle. Just get a car.”

               “I mean, I may have to. For now I’m using Mom’s.”

               “How is she getting around? Are you driving with, what, a broken arm? Why does nobody ever catch me up on this shit?”

               “Because you’re like this,” Michelle says. “And you don’t call, either. If you called Mom once a week you’d know what’s going on with everyone.”

               “You know how I feel about Mom,” Jules says. “I know you’ve sort of mended your relationship with her, but I still can’t forgive her. Especially after how she treated you and Ed when we were kids.”

               “Whatever, Jules,” Michelle says. Jules can see her rolling her eyes. “She’s here now and who knows for how long we’ll have her, you know? She’s a good person. I know she and you fought last month again, but just let it slide. She is how she is, and anyway she’s a lot better now. She just has her weird manias sometimes. She didn’t mean it about the nose job. She’s working at a paper here, you know. Or a gazette I guess. It’s about seafood restaurants. She’s working and getting up every day and she’s a decent, pleasant person. You can’t hold a grudge forever. She has all kinds of fun friends now too from her weird weed group. They’re really fun, there’s this gay truck driver who drops in whenever he’s in the city and has a ton of stories.”

               “This is crazy. I’m not going to talk to her. You said last year—do you remember what you said? Do you remember Mima’s funeral?”

               “So she got a little drunk. You can’t expect her to be well behaved at her ex husband’s mother’s funeral.”

               “So why did she even go?”

               “She just likes to have some fun. Like me. She’s just a little more messed up. Think about it this way, Jules, at least she left Scientology. Imagine if she’d stayed in it and we’d been raised like that. She’s gonna deal with this stuff the rest of her life but she’s like, in general a functional person. And she paints. It’s nice to have a mom who paints.”

               “She paints aliens.”

“How are your students? Are you teaching them about how to be good little mini George Bushies?”

“Michelle, so, I’m going to get off the phone now. I have papers to grade and I’m not having this conversation. I will say that I love you and I am asking you to please get a car, or take the bus, or something. I’m going to have nightmares about you on that motorcycle.”

“I could get a little quad. You know, four wheels.”

“Are you able to shop for yourself? Do you need anything?”

               “Jules, we’re really all right here.” Michelle takes a thin breath and Jules hears her exhale and imagines her smoking a cigarette on the balcony of his mother’s apartment in Seattle.

[trywithpopchips-blog]

Try With PopChips

Are you avoiding your favorite snacks because of its unhealthy? Do you have cravings for chips but you are on diet and not being able to eat the family pack of your favorite snacks? We all know that packed and frozen foods are not good for our health. Some of us planned to start avoiding crackers but its not quite easy because everyone loves to eat crunchy and spicy snacks. Packed food is usually made with deep frying and has low-quality ingredients. Especially when we talk about most favorite snacks of people from every age the first thought comes in our mind is chips. Chips are the most demanded snack all over the world but some brands In fact mostly brands make our favorite snacks with low-quality materials. These products having nothing but junks and unhealthy stuff to disturb our metabolism. But still, we have some high-quality crackers to treat our self on snacks time.PopChips is also famous and most demanded snack which has many unique flavors. This product is famous for its healthy composition. PopChips are usually said as its a snack for those who can afford it. But its total roamer this product is pocket-friendly but the stock may be limited because it is special.  

What is PopChips?

PopChips is a brand of chips basically made with potato and corns. These are not simple or local chips it's a high-quality brand which has made this with certified methods of packed food processing.

Who has invited this magical formula?

Mainly the idea of this matchless snacks comes in Keith Belling ’s mind and he teamed up with Patrick Turpin to act upon this delicious plan.

History of PopChips:

In 2007 Keith Belling who is also a co-founder of PopChips teamed up with Patrick Turpin and they created this amazing and yummy product and name this product PopChips.

What is the science behind the name of this product?

Keith thought that this invention should be named with a classical and matchless combination of words. He named it PopChips on this scenario that cravings to eat this snack will pop up instantly if someone tastes at once. And the second and basic reason for this name is that pop chips are made with popping method.

What is popping?

Popping is a process to cook food without using oil. In this method, the manufacturer uses high-quality equipment to maintain certain pressure and provide the required temperature to allow the food to cook or bake nicely.

What is the main method of making these amazing chips?

From day one PopChips are prepared in high quality and certified methods of cooking light snacks. These PopChips made by slicing and crashing the potato and corn and press it with high pressure and then cooked at high temperature with high-quality equipment. This method of cooking is known as popping.

Claims:

PopChips are a crunchy and delicious snack. The manufacturer says that everyone who eats this snack once will fall in love with the product. They also claim that: It is totally oil free It contains no saturated fats It is 100% chemical free

Is it true that pop chips are a blessing for the people on diet??

Yes!! You heard right PopChips is a blessing for the people on diet and struggling to get rid of from extra fat. Usually, we match the packed food with oil and fat but when it comes to PopChips it is totally safe for dieting. The reason is first it is made with healthy and tested ingredients, secondly, because its oil free and fat-free it will reduce your food craving as you eat this and it makes you feel full so the intake of others junks will automatically decrease. PopChips are scientifically lower in calories and saturated fat so its safe for your diet.

What is the secret of this crunchy snack?

PopChips also consider as a most daring brand because they have mentioned all of the information about the ingredients on the back of its packing. This delicious snack has: Dried potatoes Rice flour Sunflower oil Seasoning( sugar, brown sugar, salt, yeast, smoke flavor, paprika, torula, citric acid, spices, tomato powder, garlic powder, onion powder) Cornstarch Potato starch PopChips also declared the percentage of the calories and other essential components of the product such as: Calories 120 Fat 4g Sodium 190 mg Carbohydrates 19g Protein 1g Saturated fat 0 Fibber 1 g

Award list:

PopChips have a long list of awards the company wins many awards in regards to using the right and healthy way to prepare it. The manufacturer said that they work day and night to polish our brand. It's true because everyone can clearly see the success of the award list of PopChips. The product won many awards since 2007 such as: Best crispy snack for kids- Best chips- Real simple Best chips under 100 calories- Not this, Not that(magazine) Outstanding snack- Sofi awards Best snack- Shape(magazine) Best potato chips- Men’s health(magazine) Best low calories snacks Good housekeeping(magazine) #1 potato chips kiwi(magazine) Best chips- Health(magazine) One of the most 8 addicting snacks- Foods-Yahoo&shine Best crunchy snack- slash food

Flavors:

PopChips offers a variety of flavors such as:

Potato:

Sour cream& onion Cheddar cheese Barbeque Sea salt and vinegar Parmesan and garlic Jalapenos Ketchup Thai sweet chili Sweet potato Cheddar and sour cream Chile lime Crazy hot Salt and pepper Tortilla: Chilli lemon Ranch Salsa Nacho cheese Corn: Katy’s kettle corn

So how long PopChips stay fresh?

PopChips can stay fresh in a seal pack bag for up to 12 months. And in case if you have self-resistance on its peak and you can store it in your cupboard then you can store it for 1 month in an open pack but we suggest you clip the seal to store it longer.

Where is the headquarter of PopChips and when it was formed for official use?

The headquarter of PopChips is in Southern California and it was formed in November 2007 for official use right after two months of the first successful the production of PopChips.

How many chips the does company retail in a year?

In the first 5 years when the brand was not so known the company retails about 5 million chips. In the year of 2012, the demand of PopChips increase gradually and overall sale become 15 million chips which were a great achievement for the company and then the sale increase from 15 million to 30 in between 2012 to 16 and for now the overall sale of the year is about 242 million chips.

Is it available in the market?

For now, PopChips are available locally in a few places such as: United States Canada United Kingdom

Pros of eating PopChips:

You don’t have to worry about fat It has 15+ flavors Diet friendly Tested and chemical free Have no filler or chemical in it You can customize your order

Cons:

You can not found it easily because its only available in 20 countries No money back guarantee It's not pocket-friendly

Conclusion:

PopChips is high-quality chips brand. This snack is safe for the people of every age. This crunchy formula has been invented by Keith Belling with the help of Patrick Turpin. The product is made with popping. This delicious brand is not available easily its majorly an online product.

Is there any reaction or side effects?

Apparently, PopChips are like simple and delicious snacks with a spicy crunch. But if you are allergic from seasoning and sunflower oils then you may experience: Red and dry spots on your body High blood pressure

Precautions:

Read the manufacturing and expiry date before eating Do not eat and return if the expiry date is near Avoid eating if you are allergic to paprika and another seasoning You can eat only a 3ounce pack in a day otherwise you may suffer from high blood pressure due to carbs Return and complain if found the security seal open or broken Do not trust any duplicate brand Use a clip to close the seal of the pack to preserve it for future You can store an open bag of PopChips for a month Give proper information before order Keep it at a cool and dry place

How to get this crunchy snack?

PopChips are available online and you can order your package from the there official website PopChips.com. You can get your bag in some easy steps: Simply go to the official website any retailing &online marketing store. Search for the required product Customize your order like how much packs you want to order or which flavor you want to have Read the terms and conditions for order Place your order Give required information about yourself and give a valid phone number so they can contact you if required Wait for the shipment Receive your order and enjoy it with your favorite movie. Read the full article

[gettzapped]

Want more sacred TRUTH & fun, smart-mouth brutal honesty?

TAP FOLLOW!!

#JoinTheConsciousRevolution

This message is for anyone it reaches.

This is the story of The Decline of Civility & How We Rise to the Occasion, in a NUTSHELL.

Dare ya to read til the end.

Namaste.

You know you’re climbin’ the hill when yer having your morning coffee & you look up & see Bob Marley’s grown grandson jammin’ on Good Morning America. At age 16, I literally drove up & down all the back roads of my neighborhood, just to smoke weed & sing along to the entire Bob Marley box set word for word. I would totally crush that category on Jeopardy right now. Bob had it right, from the get go. Bob to me then… was this super awesome human that ruled the world.

He was young-ish to me, even though he had already passed away by then via a sudden death, & would have been around 45, my age now. Back in the 90s he was this bold & beautiful teacher & preacher who was & is one of my most cherished & significant life-altering mentors to date.💯 He was the dude who taught me the real meaning of God & love, going way beyond the antiquated & limiting, many times hypocritical, beliefs of the Catholic church, with all due respect.

Everything I was taught to believe growing up via the Catholic curriculum, was tainted with guilt & repetitive prayers that underhandedly belittled our beings as if our duty was to grovel at the foot of a holier than thou God Man in the sky. Bob Marley was a pure channel of the most high without the filter of man. He told the TRUTH, not the bent or twisted truth version. Looking back in retrospect, what a special soul, nothing short of a GIFT to this world. Fast forward… THIRTY years later…

Times, they are ‘a’ changin’.

Here we are, circa 2020. Is it me? Or, does being alive right now, in this strange day & age feel just a wee bit kinda heavy, too serious, a small drag even, & not very sweet or free spirited? Travel is either banned or limited, stay at home orders are either being encouraged or enforced. Mask wearing has us all hidden from each other. Not to mention, events, celebrations, Sunday Funday, Date Night or Girls Night Out… are just not the same with a mask on. Ya think? Masks, the Corona Virus itself, a giant dense dust cloud aptly named Godzilla, & recently banned choke holds, are literally limiting our ability to breathe in not just fresh oxygen, but also Prana life-force. What a sad state of affairs.

Massive locust swarms are ravaging Africa, the Middle East & India in record numbers causing all kinds of serious problems. There is such a thing as a murder hornet, & you might have one in your back yard. The impending election is more like an impending knock down drag out street fight to the death. Can you picture it?

Trump Vs Biden>>>

  Calling the cops right now for regular community concerns is debatable. Law enforcement folks everywhere are either getting hemmed up or resigning. Skeletons are coming out of high places & are causing people to step down from offices. Fatal “lost” footage of incidents of police brutality are now surfacing every week & these incidents contain absolutely unacceptable & shocking behavior.

There are protests all over the world, daily & for the 5th week in a row now because of this. National statues & monuments are being defaced & knocked down. New laws are being passed, executive orders enforced, states of emergencies declared, & Constitutional rights are in major question. Not to mention, the official 2020 hurricane season just began. And, oh yes… wild fire season is coming for ya too… I can already see the ominous glow strewn across the horizon.

Cyber bandits are in hacker heaven as they ruthlessly stalk work at homers like never before. Glitches have been common place beginning with PPP loans going to businesses that didn’t even need it. Our federal government just sent 1.5 BILLION dollars in stimulus payments to deceased people by accident. Can someone tell me how it makes any sense that people are still starving in other countries when dead people have that much money? And, if millions of mistakes were made with stimulus checks… imagine how many mistakes will be made with mail-in-ballads?

Social distancing has us all separated & suspicious of each other.

Hugs, kisses & mingling are frowned upon. Vacationing is practically prohibited, & god forbid you might want to casually date, have a cocktail, see live music… or get on a dance floor. Many pools are closed & you could get a hefty fine if you are on a beach without a mask. There is crazy talk about mandating vaccines, & that if you don’t comply, you could be dragged into a clinic & forced to take the needle. Did someone say “Police State?”

po·lice state /pəˈlēs ˈstāt/ noun [a totalitarian state controlled by a political police force that secretly supervises the citizens’ activities. A police state is a government that exercises power through the power of the police force. Since the beginning of the 20th century it has “taken on an emotional and derogatory meaning” by describing an undesirable state of living characterized by the overbearing presence of the civil authorities. The inhabitants of a police state may experience restrictions on their mobility, or on their freedom to express or communicate political or other views, which are subject to police monitoring or enforcement.]

SOUND FAMILIAR? You tell me…

There continues to be an uptick in cases, a reverse in openings, a rise in unemployment, & many small businesses do not have a fighting chance. Our economy is crashing & I wouldn’t be surprised if front line workers across the globe either seek an early retirement or become alcoholics at the end of this. Just the words alone “Corona Virus,” are enough to drive anyone mad at this point. If I have to hear David Muir say those two words one more time, I think I will just… spit. lol

What I would give to just have another go at summer camp ’85… when Tom & Jerry & a fat bowl of Apple Jacks ruled Saturday mornings, MTV was the greatest new invention, the pool & the ice cream man were the highlights of my day. Ah, days of innocence, ignorance & bliss, pig tails, & pink glitter jellies…  I was 8, lol.

The Old Earth is dying to make way for the New Earth that is emerging.

I feel sad, I can’t help it. There is a death taking place. A grieving period is at hand. The old familiar is being laid to rest. If you are a Gen-Xer, & you don’t feel just a wee bit sentimental right now, you might just be a robot with wirey machine guts & no soul. Those do exist ya know. They work for the impostor network, fondly named  hu-bots in our likeness. 🤖🤖🤖 Just making that up. But ya never know… 😳

As far as I am concerned, we have all been here on earth before, many, many times actually. Indeed, according to the Akashic records (or book of life), we have all lived on Earth in various other forms & dimensions or lifetimes of experience & expression that took place among all the many chapters of human existence. The returning is called reincarnation.

That said, I’m really not being a brat when I snip snap how annoyed I am right now. We might have cell phones & instant gratifications all over the place, & could be considered the most spoiled of any generation before us. And, no, we are not having to run for cover from bombs or hide from dictators, forage for food, or travel for days on horseback just to get home, but… god damn it…

We ARE having to endure a planetary transformation, like none ever experienced before. 🦋

Akashic Records Explained: click here!

There has got to be something said about that, right? I mean, come on. Let’s not sugarcoat. This entire stranger than fiction scene via 2020, is a straight shit show, if I ever saw one. If Aliens were looking down on us right now, they’d be like, “pass the space curls, Bra, what do ya say we kick it at the ship for a bit, rock some Netflix & chill… looks like the Earthlings are straight freaking out.” 👽👽👽

Ya think? Just when ya think it can’t get crazier, IT DOES. Am I lying? You just can’t make it up. And, every time ya turn on the talking head show… Blondie’s at the center of it all with some variation of reckless tweet in hand & that weird game face grimace that was solely constructed to throw people off. That part frown, part scowl & part smirk face. The smirk scowl frown. Trump has officially coined it, for sure.

To be clear, I’m not for or against Mister Trump, for several valid reasons.

But, as far as lip service is concerned, his stage presence could use a little pick me up. You know I’m not lying. We could really all use an articulate leader right about now, who knows how to speak from the heart & genuinely channel some wisdom, grace, goodness & guidance. But… we have the game show host of the Apprentice instead. Oh well. Looks like it’s up to us to be individually empowered cheerleaders then. 😎

I gotta say, if you are truly what you eat, then Mister Trump is definitely a hot dog. His diet is not a healthy one. I kinda feel sorry for the guy a little, I really do honestly feel like he is missing LOVE in his life. It just goes to show that you can have all the money & power in the world, but still be empty inside. No wonder why he insists on holding these big rallies, it’s the only way he receives the praise he needs to feel loved. Even Donald Trump deserves that. I think someone needs to tap ’em on the shoulder & when he turns around, just pull ’em in for a great big 5 minute bear hug. He needs it.

Anyway… going back to what’s happening to society at large, our entire infrastructure of how we KNEW things, what we grew up on, have been accustomed to, & familiar with… is crumbling. It’s a hard pill to swallow, any way you look at it… no matter who you are & how you slice it. Even history is being rewritten, if that even makes any sense. Sometimes deep down in that remote part of me, I just wish I was time traveled back on that horse in the Midwest riding through hills & valleys marveling at the sunset on the stretching vast horizon, chewing on a stick, tipping my hat to strangers, the whistle in the wind, my zen.

No more innocent puffy cotton candy days of ignorance & bliss for us.

The truth is all over the place now, in our face, on sidewalks, picket signs, park benches, billboards, bumper-stickers, brands, sides of buildings, peoples masks & tee shirts. Truth messages are everywhere ya turn. We can no longer get away with being spaced out, uninformed, unaware or broken. It is the information age after all. Now-a-days, ignorance is a choice.

Healing your demons or not, is also a choice, with so many various modalities currently available to clean, clear & help navigate through problematic issues, mental illness, or psychological challenges. Shame on you if you choose to continue to stay sick, stuck or stewing. For the love of God, you have a duty to the human race to be your best self. Stop being a pussy (with all due respect). There are no more excuses that give you a pass. We are all NOW WOKE, almost upon every single level, & if you are not… well, you must be either living under a rock, in major denial, not have internet, in a coma, really stoned, zoned out or zooted.

Speaking of which, opioids are NOT cool anymore, kids. They used to be though, in the Frank Lucas days of the sixties, or back when Sid Vicious shouted obscenities all over London town like a raging mad lunatic. They were even cooler when the garage band, grunge era squeezed every melodramatic dark & stormy personality out of the wormwood-work in the 90s. Kurt Cobain was smashing guitars & falling off stages, the ghost of Jim Morrison was God, mosh pits were a local staple, & droves of squatters, “gutter punks,” & “Deadheads” traveled in packs. They were a movement of sorts blanketing the nation with their knotty beaded dreads, guitar cases full of coins & joints, scabies, body odor, stray dogs, tatts & green & gold mohawks.

Just loitering all over your town, this brand of misguided youth had a knack for learning the hard way, & probably really thought they could put Raves & Dead shows on their resume under the relevant experience section. In those days, a Rock Stars’s M.O. was: dead in a hotel room at the ripe age of 27… The magic # for dying young. Being found dead with a needle in your arm under a bridge was not all that uncommon. Back in the day, that was actually a dignified way to to go, of sorts, in a twisted poetic kind of way.

EVERYBODY was high back then.

  Nothing mattered. No one cared. No one had to, really. Cause we all had a slew of good excuses memorized that made total sense & could hardly be denied by the status quo. Society was in the throes of dirty secrets, social injustice & an impending civil war, not to mention WAR. The kind where 1000s of soldiers are senselessly killed on foreign soil. Irac war, Desert storm, Gulf war, Afghanistan, Al-Qaeda, eventually 911 & the war on terror. I’m no war buff but if you Google “war from 1990-2002,” Wikapedia produces a list 50+ long. War List

We were the rebellious kids making noise all over the place that carried the sins of our fathers to the extreme & acted out on the world stage because of it. That was the way we protested for change. Black painted nails, lips & eyes, ripped flannels, fishnets, chains, piercings, steel toe Doc Martins, patchouli, & cloves. Mosh pits, crowd surfing, a week long Dead show tripping balls was how we channeled our inner rage & copped right out of society.

We all had shitty childhoods. We all were scarred by religion or abuse. All of our genes were compromised & most of our family units were broken & dysfunctional. Many of us came from drugs & alcohol & poverty in the first place. Especially those who wound up trapped in a broken system disguised as a rescue mission called “Foster care.” We were bullied, outcasted, still in the closet, & also still secretly separated by race, gender, sexual preference, religion, nationality & class, whether anyone wanted to admit to it or not. There was an underlying segregation on every level.

We all smoked cigs, blunts, bowls, hit bongs, you name it.

There was the straight edge crew, however we all had the same core emotional discourse with each other. Speaking from the perspective of the darker end of the spectrum, we were constantly skeeming, scamming, bending the rules & breaking the law. School royally sucked & prospects for college weren’t a priority. We were gonna play music, hang on the corner or in a yard, get high n live in the basement or a back seat of a car forever & pan handle, dumpster dive, table score, & steal shit to stay afloat. Most of us wound up addicts or alcoholics & had to diligently dig ourselves out of a big black hole eventually later on, me included. Jay & silent Bob ring a bell? Yep, totally my generation.

Jackass anyone? Yep, also my generation… 😬

I wonder whatever happened to the many peeps of crazy Gen-X? I bet at least half are dead.

News update: those days are over, people. Heroin, dope, smack, whatever ya wanna call it, is OUT, not in. Heavy drugs & any kind of substance abuse is super frowned upon now. Copping out, dropping out & nodding out is no longer a thing. Can’t get away with shit, now. Not to mention there are cameras on every single stitch of every single corner. Big brother is not only watching, but if you have your location feature turned on, on your phone right now… the feds can show up at your exact location within seconds. Back in the day, drug dealers had cops paid off. Crooked cops & local politicians were not uncommon. And when the warrant unit kicked in the door with a Rolodex of mug shots, a blow job for a blind eye was an even exchange. Not to mention, no one had phones with recording  or location devices back then, no body cams… it was easy to be a stealthy deviant.

Can’t even get high, now-a-days, cause you are more likely to die first. Heroin packets are laced with Phentanol, first & foremost, AND ALSO… many other cuts that kill. Now, is not the time to be an Amateur. Heroin is no longer a recreational drug people may casually partake. It was always a risk & had always been abused to the max, no doubt… BUT NOW>>> it is a bonafide death wish, 100%, hands down. Russian Roulette, anyone? Doing dope is dangerous circa 2020, now more than ever before, simply for this very reason.

JUST SAY NO, is an understatement.

There is no endearment in the dope department, no fondness of the “nod,” or the punk rock kid just wigging out on the front lawn. No, we are woke now. Ignorance & bliss no longer exist. Period. End of story. Now is the time to get clean, if your not. Seriously, it’s just not cool anymore. The opioid crisis as they call it now, is such an F-ing, annoyance of our day. If you are not a part of the solution, then you are absolutely part of the problem. We frown upon problem people with issues, & addictions. The world today doesn’t play that mini violin for ya any more. Either you utilize the massively funded system in place to stop using drugs, get help, get healed & get completely redirected or go to jail & stay there. Zero tolerance is en vogue now. People are sick & tired of dealing with the folks who are sick & tired.😕

Back in my day, you were lucky if you could get into a 3 day detox… & if you did, there was a good chance you wouldn’t get any further treatment after that. The government didn’t care about us. We were scum of the earth to them. Not to mention, that 3 day detox was likely located right in the heart of the hood where you got high in the first place. All we did for 3 days was throw back orangy shots of methadone, gobble carbs, binge on sugary snacks, slirp serious coffee & smoke loads of everybody’s cigarettes.

With any luck, we’d catch a 5 cent rehab romance or two & get laid in a maintenance closet. Then we lazily lounged around in our shower shoes, with our “poor me” hats on… bragging about endless war stories, each one trumping the next. Squeeze a few mandatory NA meetings in there, & we were all feeling like, (big fat L on the forehead) Laaa—ooosers. By the time they let us back out… we weren’t clean or rehabilitated, we were worse, with brighter bad ideas & way better connections to way better shit. And waiting right outside, strategically placed there I’m sure… was the pusherman across the street on the corner, with your fresh blue Bart Simpson wake up bag to boot.

Once again, in case you haven’t noticed there is zero tolerance these days for any of that business. No body likes drug dealers who pollute our youth & no body wants to see anymore succubuses running around dumbfounded by life. Go get yourself some help, & stay there, ride it out & come out the other side with some sense, bro. Our world needs people with clarity, useful knowledge, skills & INTEGRITY. Not drop out losers & leechers. Take that shit elsewhere.

Maybe the Aliens will let you kick it with them in some space pod, where you will be welcome to space out. Cause this world today that we live in? Ain’t playin’ that runaway train wreck shit. 76 is the new 46 & Jerry Springer is probably floating around on a catamaran somewhere in the south of France right about now, puffin’ a Cuban & sippin’ Scotch from a lowball. And 81 year old Maury Povich is finally retired, probably livin’ in a Hawaiian shirt on a fishing dock in the Keys, sittin’ pretty on that heap of stock he invested in the paternity test market back in the early 2000’s.⛳🏌🌴

Yes… okay, it’s the 21st century, so let’s be reminded that unlike ever before, a large demographic of opioid addicts are actually functional responsible adults. The addict avatar is no longer just the junkie.

I see you…

“Soccer mom” types top the list. Suburbia pill pushers that have normal 9-5 lives & even go to church on Sunday are the new brand of dealers on speed dial. Attention: YOU TOO… need to snap out of it. You’re not foolin’ anybody, with your salon fresh, tennis mini skort wine Wednesday happy pill prance. You’re not foolin’ anybody with your side part Rico suave, plaid golf shirt little league coach next door swagger. We know what you have in your purse or back pocket. No matter who you are, it’s all the SAME GAME. Substance abuse doesn’t discriminate. Your behavior is no more useful to our society than the kid stoned on the step. You are reading this for a reason. Pass this message on to your base!

Remember when the Jehovah Witness folks used to go around knocking on everyone’s door & then leave those sunshiny pamphlets all over town for the pigeons to shit on? Those “Watchtower” pamphlets some with the heading: “The New Earth,” had pencil sketches of the world all happy, free & in perfect harmony. Well, turns out they weren’t too far off base. This historic moment now, is the long awaited age of Aquarius which has been described in religious literature to be the fateful end of times & the birth of the New Earth times.

However, the fantasy cartooned depiction of a mass “Rapture,” where only those who are saved fly up to heaven on some wondrous beaming holy elevator, while all the others are left here to go up in the flames of hell fire, isn’t accurate. This implication of impending doom was & is simply just a tall tale or fantastic fable construed to depict an exaggerated version of events that would come to be. The truth of the matter is, yes, while it may look like a shitshow here on Earth right now, there will be no actual Rapture. There will be a rather, gradual process of renewal, redefinition, reinvention, restoration & new beginnings here on the planet as we get through to the other side beyond the death & destruction of the old familiar ego-based infrastructure. “Oh so that’s what those cats were talkin’ about…”

This era we are living through & particularly this year 2020 phase of it… is the day & age when all the old distorted programs get extinguished.

Any & all the sludge that is leftover stuck to the streets, bathroom walls, or to peoples attitudes… will be exterminated. Up to & including the opioid crisis. This opioid crisis is gonna get flushed right down the toilet of yesteryear with the rest of the outcasted old paradigms, bad habits, poor patterns & expired programs. 🚬🚽💉💊 The system has already been implementing pseudo opioid pharmaceutical maintenance drugs such as buprenorphine, for some time now, which will indefinitely replace actual opioids in the end, for good. Going forward from now on, these controlled substances will initiate a mass rehabilitation like none ever seen before. No exceptions. So if you are a drug addict… you best rethink your position & consider jumping on the bandwagon… before one of those itty bitty bags or homemade pills drops YOU like a fly. Cause it’s only a matter of time.

Just like Antifa… there are underground militia that are wired for active duty, who work for the upper echelon who are given special orders to corrupt the system in special very intentional ways. Opioids are deliberately laced with lethal chemicals. You don’t know?? Nothing is an accident. The system will clean up these streets one way or another. May as well go get on the all expenses paid million dollar maintenance plan express. Choo! Choo! That’s what the system has set up for the substance abuser, the addict & user, at this time.

Then, you too can start being an asset to the community instead of a billowing idiot who nods out on steps & forgets to eat & shower, work & be responsible. Society has outgrown the drone. Bands like Alice & Chains, Stone Temple Pilots, Tool, Slayer, Marilyn Manson, Danzig, Disturbed… just to name a few, aren’t relevant anymore. On the other end of the spectrum, Biggie Smalls, Tupac, NWA growin up in the hood type stuff that was super fueled with aggressive tones, egregious frustration, anger, revile & retribution, too, are not relevant any more.

That kind of corrupt cryptic culture no longer serves us.

Teenage angst, overdosing, gang banging & suicidal tendencies are no longer en vogue. The heavy wave of darkness that was held in place by art imitating life like that… is no longer drowning our culture in lament & contempt.

Rolling Stone is now about the band or musician most likely to start a non profit & raise a skillion dollars for hungry kids & starving goats somewhere in Thailand. These artists today are all evolved & enlightened with backstories of triumph & positive vibes. Most of the musicians & artists who created memorable moments back in the day, did so from a place of total unrest, rebellion, anger & anxiety & as a reflection of the dark underbelly of a society gone rogue on so many levels.

It was the beautifully flawed artistic era of the creative expression of the “shadow.”

It was where conflict, dark emotional stuff, pain, grit, grief, & escape mechanisms lived & were even celebrated. Being stoned to oblivion, tripping balls for days, slingin’ rock, dope or weed, partying overboard or head banging with a vengeance was a common thread. However what the world needs now… is LOVE, sweet love, drug & hostility free. All that crazy immature rigmarole that made us pumped for destruction before, is simply not accurate or useful anymore.

Geez, for the past 100 years, since Al Capone days, our culture has both feared, served, & glorified gangsters. The Italian Mob, The Irish Mob, The Cartels. These people were glamorized for their bad attitudes, & bass ass personas. They were esteemed for their violent no nonsense malevolent activity. Story after bloody story told, movie after movie made to showcase their swag. Talk about art imitating life, the general populous romanticized De Niro movies & the Sopranos. And, Al Pacino? The holy grail. Every drug dealer’s house I ever went to back in the day had a “Scarface” poster on the wall, no kidding.

“Say hi to my little friend…” was like a friggin mission statement to them.

  I mean, don’t get it twisted, I am 100% Italian from Philadelphia Pa, & these people were my ancestors. They have an endearing quality to me more than anybody. But, just because that’s what one is familiar with, doesn’t make it right. These guys look like my Dad, brothers, grandfather, uncles & cousins. I get warm & fuzzy just seeing their stony mugs. Somehow, It makes me feel safe & like Spaghetti dinner on Sunday. And, voila! That’s how they get ya. A good mastermind lures you in with Ted Bundy charm, smarts & swagger & then when you’re not looking, he beheads the dog & cuts you into pieces & sends them in a box to your mother.

Our culture has put bad characters on pedestals, idolized cold blooded killers that were ruthless & dangerous.

In doing so, we basically condoned cruel & unusual punishment & just about revered made men as hometown heroes. Mafiosos were nothing short of a menace to society. These local terrorists infiltrated the streets, neighborhoods, & communities with fear, lies, deceit, drugs, infidelity, violence, greed, prostitution & organized crime. Law enforcement was in on it many times, they all were in bed together. So many senseless deaths over the years. Thank god, that craze & obsession with this avatar is expiring now. Those old gangsters need to stay right in the graves they lie in. R.I.P.

We do not have room for angst or aggression in our midst, anymore.

Don’t ya think we’ve had enough?? That tired old program is defeated & withering away with the horse it rode in on. It’s about time that we move to improve, & begin to infuse our communities with positive vibrations. Sounds familiar doesn’t it? Bob Marley box set anyone? Gee, if Bob was alive circa 2020, he would have been proud… lol. Hemp gardens, weed farms, weed bars, CBD products, cannabis culture, legalization of marijuana. I bet Bob has rolled over in his grave so many times by now, he decided to get up, climb out & do a dance. Not saying cannabis is the answer, but, it can definitely be a vice we can work with going forward, to help generations transition to an eventual substance free life mode.

That said, we now have the tools to go forth in style & become the tribe of humans we were destined to become.

Not only do we have the cannabis culture to assist by making the transitions smoother & less resistant, but we have established & secured a holistic movement. Today in this country & across the globe, there is a mass alliance of lightworker individuals who work for the highest good of humanity. This worldwide movement of people endorse, promote & practice holistic healing methods, spiritual guidance systems, natural remedies, mindset shifting, metaphysics, meditation, yoga, breathwork, & all the Spiritual Arts. In lieu of pharmaceutical drugs, holistic health practitioners now offer organic natural medicinal solutions to ailments & illnesses that do indeed work to restore & protect wellness without toxic chemicals with likely side effects.

Now more than any time in history, we have 1000s of healers (with bells on) all over the map, who are ready & waiting to help.

If you are willing, you can even learn to be one of these people, via online certification programs, classes, retreats, & live events that teach,  reveal & implement sacred knowledge. You too, can now become a life coach, energy worker, healer, wayshower, soul guide, spiritual advisor, or holistic practitioner. There are thousands of specialized programs to explore. The Mind Valley Academy, being one of the most popular educational platforms with a plethora of bootcamps, classes & programs to sharpen, shift, & assist you in becoming the best version of yourself thus fulfilling your Divine purpose. Heck, YouTube is now chock full of amazing portals of knowledge & wisdom, as is Facebook live.

No longer must we sit around waiting & wondering when & how & who & what & why me?? No longer do we need to be victims & victimizers, escape artists, fear-based hate mongers, or blind followers who avoid the true good humane experience of a life well-lived. No longer must we subject ourselves to distorted miscreated wounded identities that evolved from the lack, limitation, blocks, densities, & old stuck stuff inherited from our wounded ancestors generation after bloody generation. That’s the outdated version of the human being.

👿😟😱😠😓😫😞😒😢😐😬😶😖😵😴

It’s time for love, light & high vibration. Lets graduate.

It’s time to upgrade the system to meet the needs of the new normal the new brand of human wherefore he is mostly freed from those spiky chain links of a distorted, miscreated, wounded identity.

The melancholy of yesteryear was born from the underlying sicknesses beneath the surface.

Just look at all the sick, twisted, despicable, & most times diabolical behaviors of Catholic child molesters, Boy Scout molesters, Olympic (USA Gymnastics) molesters, & all the famous rapists like Cosby, Weinstein, Epstein, R Kelly, & Matt Lauer who ruined soooooo many lives. Look at all the covered up sex assault cases in the Military. Look at the millions of Indigenous women that have gone missing to no avail. Look at the 10’s of thousands of unsolved rape cases, with kits to prove it, dating back decades, that are still buried in file cabinets to the ceiling in warehouses across every municipality there is. Look at all the clandestine sex trafficking rings, incest cases, international gender inequalities that force females to be slaves or sexually mutilated. Look at all the insidious sex assaults that had been woven into the fabric of the dysfunctional modern day corporate world & a predominately sexist society, up until now. Harassment in the workplace, unfair treatment, unequal pay, & mad disparities between races & genders have been rampant across the board.

In the current 2020 climate, we are now seeing sex abuse, racism & police brutality unearthed center stage for everyone to witness. All the wrongdoing in our culture is now being EXPOSED in all its glory once & for all. The Twelve Step program says: “secrets keep us sick,” & this applies here. No longer can any of these unethical destructive behavioral patterns infiltrate our human society, if they are publicly displayed. As all of it becomes a secret no more… we as a nation of human beings can begin to walk down the road to recovery & heal. Recovery from the addictions humans have to each other, injustice, control, power, mistakes, missteps, fear, anger, pain, grief, greed, suffering, sex, food, abuse, overuse, the 7 deadly sins, if you will.

Originating in Christian theology, the seven deadly sins are pride, envy, gluttony, greed, lust, sloth, and wrath. Pride is sometimes referred to as vanity or vainglory, greed as avarice or covetousness, and wrath as anger. That sounds about right.

How about human’s horrible addiction to animal flesh & product, otherwise known as meat, seafood & dairy?

This unnecessary propensity to consume animal at all the levels that we do as a race… is no longer a mode of survival, it is a gross abuse & misuse of power to the absolute EXTREME. There is absolutely NO REASON we as a human race NEED to consume animal product in the excessive EXTREME way that we are brainwashed to do. IT’S WRONG.

And, I’m sorry I’m not sorry, but Asian countries are the worst. They kill dogs for food, for godsake. RIGHT NOW, terrified dogs & cats are crammed in cages in some dark back alley in China, waiting to be tormented, tortured & killed by sick & twisted bad greedy people for the sake of a sale & unnecessary human consumption. What is wrong with these people??

Animals in cages, animals shoved in pens, animals caught in traps, animals violated, tortured, taunted, hunted or executed… THIS IS  NOT OKAY. God’s creatures deserve humane rights & dignities, & deserve to be honored, respected & valued. Any human being that goes against that, is going against GOD. In circa 2020, there are millions of animals far & wide abused, hurt, tortured, imprisoned, slaughtered & murdered every single second of every single day upon this Earth planet. Any HUMAN drone, monster or blind follower that commits these heinous acts, plays any part in them, endorses them, funds them or participates in any way… will be subject to KARMIC BACKLASH. Do not be mistaken.

🐷🐮🐶🐒🐴🐑🐘🐔🐣🐖🐂🐎🐄🐟🐙🐬🐐🐏🐅🐕🐓🦌🦏🦆🦅🦁🦃🦀🦂🐰🐒🐢🐧🐦🐻🐨

Did you know that kielbasa & sausage are made of residual meat guts stuffed into a casing made of animal intestines. The chicken you ate yesterday was slaughtered inhumanely for your unnecessary consumption.

Gummy bears are made with beef gelatin. Red food coloring like in a Red Velvet cake is made of beetle bodies. That collagen in your beauty product is likely made of bovine connective tissue. Cow’s milk does NOT do a body good, either.

Maybe we should consider taking a page out of certain celebrity playbooks…

  Sugary stuff made with sweeteners such as high fructose corn syrup, “diet” stuff made with sucralose, & artificially flavored & colored stuff made with genetically modified organisms… are harmful & can even be deadly. These things if consumed regularly over a period of time, will rot your teeth, corrode your arteries, spike your blood levels, & age & deteriorate your body, heart & mind. Over time, these things will produce poisonous bacteria & micro organisms that will make a home in your G.I. track & inevitably will compromise your ability to expel waste. That means, you will rot from the inside out, like a toilet that is never flushed. Pretty gross, but pretty true.

PROPAGANDA is false advertising that is constructed for one reason: to make people believe they need a certain product in order to be healthy or happy… or else. Or else is the key catch phrase here. It’s the oldest marketing trick in the book… to employ urgency via a fear of the consequences of missing out on that benefit.

They lie to us.

  This shit is not cool or healthy or aligned with any kind of new improved direction we as humans are desperately attempting to move in. We should outlaw all of it. That stuff doesn’t reflect us anymore. Just like the Confederate flag, the slave owner soldier statues, the class warfare of our tax system, the rich getting richer & poor getting poorer system of a bogus democracy, the 9 to 5 American Dream sham model, lame excuses for hourly wages, the federal standard “minimum wage,” exorbitant student loan debt, high interest car payments & mortgages that enslave us for decades. Then we have deeply inaccurate text books, biased history books, an uninspiring school system & an outdated crooked curriculum that we have been forcing on our children generation upon generation, to learn & absorb by law. What a miscarriage of justice. None of it works. None of it even makes sense.

This is the “old familiar” that no longer serves us.

All of it is based on rotting outdated principles that do not build or advance us positively. All of it was invented by the ego-based regime of a man made system that honored a man-made rule of law. At this point, it no longer fits the bill, & has proven over time to be extremely insidiously damaging & counter intuitive, to say the least. Statistic after sad statistic we see a clear systemic failure to properly deliver life, liberty & the pursuit of happiness. Do people really still believe the BIG LIE? It’s hard to watch the mainstream media sometimes, when so many stories featured are with people who play the victim card. The system was made to label, divide, separate, brainwash, control, manipulate & victimize. It was a set up to begin with.

The entire world infrastructure has produced extreme class warfare, economic, cultural & educational disparities. The American system has produced extreme class warfare, economic, cultural & educational disparities & has been designed to work only for a select few. The system has failed the rest of us royally. The system that had been in place all these years has essentially sold us all snake oil. The road to hell is paved with good intentions. The good intention in this case is the sale of the American pipe dream. Buying into the chasing the tail mentality of a 40 hour workweek & all that goes with it, has taken our souls hostage while breaking spirits & breaking up families. Ants marching, drones, zombies, blind followers, rats in cages, sheeple, whatever ya wanna call it. The system over all, has produced & proliferated a plethora of adverse conditions. Instead of thriving citizens, we have just surviving citizens, big difference. The system of man’s government, society & free enterprise needs to be revised.

In one way or another, the current structure of government, society & free enterprise has clearly produced & proliferated the following:

[Sickness, disease, dissatisfaction, unfulfillment, obesity, struggle, fear, anger, sadness, stress, anxiety, mental illness, poverty, food deserts, food insecurity, hunger, homelessness, helplessness, hopelessness, violence, terrorism, war, slavery, addiction, substance abuse, crime, suicide, child abuse, sexual abuse, domestic abuse, unwanted pregnancies, abortion, damaging control dramas, a dog eat dog dynamic, us versus them mentality, overworked & underpaid struggling slaves to society & ultimately a compromised quality of life across the board.]

I don’t call that a successful system. That system has riddled us with issues, drama, & pain. That system has exhausted us, diluted us, damaged us, & corrupted us. What we need is reform to the highest degree. We need mass renovation, redefinition & reinvention, NOW. This unjust system must be rewired to fit a new improved system of advancement that serves us honestly, fair, balanced, efficiently, effectively for all, & based on principles with morals & values that serve God’s law not man’s.

We must ultimately move away from the “rape consciousness” of the earth & its inhabitants, to the consciousness of compassion.

By honoring Mother Earth we activate the Divine force of unity, oneness & love. We go from ego-based living to soul based living, leaving behind what no longer serves us as we go forth to unlock the Divine within. This shift must happen in order for humankind & the planet to be spared from karmic consequences of death & destruction. Matter of fact it IS happening right now as we go through this 2020 year. Lightworkers & Wayshowers are working tirelessly across the globe to download new DNA codes & upgrades so to assist humanity into moving into a 5D experience here on Earth. Not to mention, the planetary realm & the sacred science of astrology has been delivering eclipse after eclipse to assist in these massive energy shifts happening to not only us, but by & large to the very crystalline core of the Earth Star, upon every single level!

Flowers will smell more fragrant, air will be fresher, music more melodic, food will feed not just the senses, but the soul.

Our lives will no longer be burdened by old expired programs of survival, sacrifice, suffering, trading time for money, but be aligned, attuned, calibrated & upgraded, rather, to a new & improved level of existence. A new level of existence wherefore everything we have been living thus far will just BE BETTER, brighter, easier, more advanced, enjoyable, flowing & fulfilling. You could call it, moving closer to the paradigm of Heaven on Earth.

Instead of being takers, thieves, or energy vampires stealing from the planet, others, animals & resources… we become radiant evolved bringers of light, harvesters of abundance, & conscious creators. Instead of being savage scavengers, suffering succubuses, victims & blamers we become responsible manifestors of life-giving habits & practices. Habits & practices that restore, preserve, protect, fortify, revitalize, & energize. Habits & practices that produce, provide & promote peace. Habits & practices that heartily harness holistic health, happiness & harmony.

The goal & ultimate endgame, is to collectively move away from our addiction to pain, struggle & suffering.

This long overdue courageous quantum LEAP of faith begins when we give ourselves permission to level up. When we willfully choose to move into embodying our light codes, activating our light bodies & thus upgrading our beings into a higher vibratory frequency on a cellular level, we do that. Only in this way can our multi-dimensionality be integrated into our “mundane” daily lives. Mundane daily lives AKA the 3 Dimensional & 4 Dimensional realms.

Jesus said, “I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life, No one comes to the Father except through me.” (John 14:6) Christians are often criticized for claiming that Jesus is the only way to God. But what he/they meant was this: only by raising the vibration/frequency of our energetic Auric fields, can we coexist with the Earth plane & Planet Terra in a more advanced 5 Dimensional God-forward way. Raising our vibration is how we embody the Christ (Cosmic) Consciousness (essentially embodiment of said Jesus), & is indeed the ONE & ONLY way to live free & be in alignment with the totality of LOVE. Only via raising our vibration can we experience & express the “God Image” we were meant to be made in. Only by WAY of raising our vibration do we & can we embody the TRUTH & LIFE, Jesus was speaking about.

*3 Dimensional (height, width & depth physical plane)

*4 Dimensional (emotions, time, space, astral plane)

*5 Dimensional (Angels, guides, elemental beings, beyond the veil of illusion or physical/emotional planes. The Fifth Dimension is a level of consciousness. We move into this level of consciousness after Self Realization or the realization of our GOD selves has occurred.

And in & through entering the “Kingdom of God” this way… we thus free up the many burdens of this 3D level of experience. We thus loosen the chains of the 3D physical realm of low hanging fruit which has essentially bound us to the dense & heavy vibration of malevolence & misfortune. if we choose to RISE, we can & will facilitate a much smoother earth plane experience & thus exist here in a higher vibratory frequency mode. Technology is now in the process of going from 4G to 5G, just as our beings are now similarly going from 3D to 5D & beyond. It’s no coincidence this is happening simultaneously. We update & upgrade our technology as warranted, what makes our beings or souls any different? I’m like walking around with a sign that says: “Getchyour DNA upgrades here!” lol

It is now TIME to integrate our Divine Sovereignty.

There are free ACTIVATIONS available all over the place. I will list links below. That said, let’s reach up & pull that grace down into us. It is now time for us to no longer fear death by no longer fearing to live LIFE FULLY. It is now time to delete old programs & paradigms that kept harbored heartache alive. Each & every time an old pattern or program, or deceptive or negative thought arises, just consciously release it into the white light of transmutation. It’s easy. Each time one surfaces, simply acknowledge it & let it go. Catch & release, if you will. Imagine watching it rise into the light, pop & disappear with all the rest of the popping bubbles of injustice, inequity, & fear.

Then, state this powerful affirmation with conviction: “I NOW RELEASE any pattern or program that no longer serves my highest good or the highest good of others. I NOW RELEASE any & all habits or addictions that no longer serve my highest good or the highest good of others. I NOW UNLOCK my true Divine I AM presence. I NOW UNLOCK my true inner Divine avatar. I NOW EMBRACE my soul’s true purpose. I NOW EMBRACE my highest vibrational center point of gravity. I NOW ALLOW perfect union with the Divine. I NOW ALLOW the ease of this life to serve me. I NOW KNOW my next step. I NOW KNOW my next move. I AM confidently moving into Authentic Action. I AM Divinely guided & light-filled as I move forward ever-present on the Divine path of my highest calling. Easily & effortlessly do I RISE. Repeat as needed. 

Fear & scarcity only arise to protect us. These are a false sense of security & are illusions there-of. F. E. A. R. False Evidence Appearing Real.

There is nothing to fear here.

A new day has dawned, one of perfect union with the Divine, one heart, one love, together we rise. So it is!

Namaste

Jenay Zapp (keep scrolling)

One Love

Bob Marley

Press Play!

One love One heart Let’s get together and feel all right Hear the children cryin’ (One love) Hear the children cryin’ (One heart) Sayin’ give thanks and praise to the Lord and I will feel all right Sayin’ let’s get together and feel all right

Let them all pass all their dirty remarks (One love) There is one question I’d really love to ask (One heart) Is there a place for the hopeless sinners Who has hurt all mankind just to save his own beliefs

One love! What about the one heart (One heart) What about the people Let’s get together and feel all right As it was in the beginning (One love) So shall it be in the end (One heart) All right Give thanks and praise to the Lord and I will feel all right Let’s get together and feel all right

One more thing Let’s get together to fight this Holy Armageddon (One love) So when the Man comes there will be no, no doom (One song) Have pity on those whose chances grows thinner There ain’t no hiding place from the Father of Creation

Sayin’ one love What about the one heart (One heart) What about the Let’s get together and feel all right

I’m pleadin’ to mankind! (One love) Oh, Lord (One heart) Give thanks and praise to the Lord and I will feel all right Let’s get together and feel all right Give thanks and praise to the Lord and I will feel all right Let’s get together and feel all right

Songwriters: Curtis Mayfield / Bob Marley

3D… R.I.P.✌

Press Play!

Activation List:

Ask Angels website for activations

Era of Peace website for Vlog activations

New Earth One website for 100s of activations

“The name AMERICA is an anagram for the I AM RACE. This name was intended to reflect a race of God Conscious people comprised of ALL races, ALL nationalities, ALL cultures, ALL religions, ALL creeds and ALL Lifestyles. A race of people who are functioning within the full embrace of their I AM Presence reflecting Oneness, Divine Love, Reverence for ALL Life, and decisions and actions that perpetually reflect the highest good for ALL concerned.”

—Patricia Cota-Robles http://www.eraofpeace.org

It’s now up to you to decide for yourself. If you made it all the way through til the end, this message was meant FOR YOU.

Namaste 

Want more sacred TRUTH & fun smart mouth brutal honesty?

TAP FOLLOW!!

#JoinTheConsciousRevolution

My most recent BOOK HERE>>> Rise! To the occasion!

Click Link>>>View & purchase All BOOKS here!

11 ways we Birth the New Earth: 2020 edition

Ignorance & Bliss no longer exist: A message for addicts & everyone else Want more sacred TRUTH & fun, smart-mouth brutal honesty? TAP FOLLOW!! #JoinTheConsciousRevolution This message is for anyone it reaches.

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growing blackberries: Simple Guide from seed to berry [+Hacks]

Today I want to show you how to grow blackberries. I’ll take you through the steps needed to grow blackberries from seed, and cuttings, how to care for them, and when and how to harvest. Although the focus is on growing, pruning and harvesting I’d also like to share the amazing health benefits blackberries have.

These little berries are powerhouses filled with antioxidants and beneficial phytonutrients that will blow your mind!

Whether you are a complete novice or a seasoned gardener, you’ll find these step-by-step instructions helpful and easy to follow. I will share growing tips with you that I have picked up over the years as well as solutions to problems common to blackberries.

For gardeners that want quick results, I recommend choosing a variety that is suited to your region and that is ready to be planted as soon as spring begins. Your local nurseryman will guide you on what type of blackberry to get. There are many exciting new varieties of blackberry plants available and we have provided an easy-to-use chart that will help you decide which blackberry cultivars to plant in your garden this spring. Trailing, erect, arching, thornless, or prickly, there is a blackberry bush with your name on it!

Want to grow blackberries indoors? Or in tubs? We have you covered. This simple guide on how to grow blackberries will inspire you to grow blackberries as well as many other types of berries and fruit. The more food you can grow yourself the better.

Let’s get started!

The Blackberry Backstory

Before we get onto the “how to grow blackberries” section let’s learn about where they come from, what they are, and why we love them. These deep purple berries are not even berries in the botanical sense. The term “aggregate fruit” is the correct term because they are made up of multiple druplets.

Their rampant growth habit has caused them to be “outlawed” in many places. They are considered naturalized in many countries but are classified as invasive weeds. In the US thornless blackberries have been developed. The advantages of thornless cultivars will be listed further on.

Due to the extraordinary health benefits of the Blackberry, attention has been given to developing hybrids and cultivars and today we have varieties with the following attributes:

Thornless

Higher yields

Larger fruit

Tastier fruit

Fruit suited to fresh market

Fruit suited for processing

Less susceptible to pests and diseases

Can tolerate cooler and warmer temperatures than wild species

Primocane-fruiting cultivars

Traditional floricane-fruiting species

where do blackberries come from?

Blackberries are native to Europe but there are over 375 species! So it’s no surprise that various types of blackberries are found across Europe, Asia, Africa, and both the North and South Americas. Blackberries grow across the world and you will find different species in almost every country imaginable.

Many other berries like raspberries, loganberries, and boysenberries are closely related to blackberries. It is from this ability to cross-breed that we are able to have so many new varieties that are easy and rewarding for the home gardener to grow.

But the berries we get are not the result of random cross-pollination. Research and development have been going on for decades. The results of which are evident in cultivars like:

Navajo (the first thornless cultivar, floricane-fruiting),

Everthornless (cloned),

Prime Ark Freedom (thornless, primocane-fruiting),

Prime Ark (vigorous thorny, primocane-fruiting),

Triple Crown (trailing), Black Diamond (trailing, thornless), and many more popular cultivars that get adapted to a range of preferences, and climates.

There are now also varieties of blackberries that produce two crops in one year. These blackberries bear fruit on both the primocanes (1st-year canes) and the floricanes (2nd-year canes).

How do blackberries grow?

Blackberries are called brambles because their growth is so vigorous, and their stems so thorny. Left unmanaged they form impenetrable hedges. This can be useful for creating “fences” or barriers around growing areas of other fruits and vegetables that may be susceptible to being grazed by wildlife or domestic animals.

Blackberries, especially trailing blackberries, have canes that reach lengths of 20 feet (over 3m). These plants will need blackberry trellises. A blackberry trellis is not complicated to rig up.

Anyone growing blackberries with such vigorous growth must be prepared to prune, train, and trellis blackberries. This type of attention will produce strong plants that fruit well. Healthy blackberry plants are less prone to fungal and bacterial infections.

There are trailing blackberries, arching blackberries, and erect blackberry bushes. All 3 types can be cultivated by gardeners and choosing the type will depend on what you want them for (eating fresh or preserving).

There are also thornless cultivars. These are a dream to cultivate in a home garden and as you’ll see below, these new cultivars get hybridized to produce many variations suited to both domestic and commercial growing.

The erect blackberry bush is ideal for container growing. The rambling type, as mentioned, can be used as hedging. But the thornless blackberry cultivars may be best suited for the home gardener. Blackberry prickles are aggressive and sharp and make pruning and harvesting a bit of a nightmare, to be honest. I cannot stand wearing gloves when I garden so I always try to avoid thorny plants where I can.

Further down is a list of the most available and popular thornless blackberry cultivars. The advantage of the thorny types is that they produce tastier fruit and have much more vigorous growth, so of course, the yield will be higher.

Blackberries: Benefits and uses

Blackberries have been eaten by humans for over 2,500 years. They have many culinary and medicinal uses. The entire plant is used in remedies for various ailments. The leaves and shoots can be chewed for mouth ailments like bleeding gums.

Blackberry tea (infusion) treats bacterial infections, like whooping cough. The roots, with their astringent properties, get used in treating dysentery and diarrhea. And concoctions made from leaves, stems, and bark get used to treat stomach ulcers.

Today there are easier ways to treat these conditions so many of the blackberry’s healing properties belong to the history books and get filed under “Folk Remedies”. But when it comes to eating these juicy berries the benefits have not been lost.

So before we discover how to grow blackberries from seeds and cuttings, let’s see how nutritious they are and what they can do for us healthwise.

Health benefits of blackberries

1. Blackberries are high in vitamins and minerals

Blackberries are nutrient-dense, high in fiber, and loaded with anthocyanins and ellagic acid. Studies show these phytochemicals have potential to reverse damage caused by free radicals, thus offering benefits that are anti-aging, anti-cancer, and anti-oxidant.

Courtesy of verywellfit.com

Blackberries are considered a superfood because they are low carb, nutrient-dense, high-fiber, and contain protein. They are loaded with antioxidants called anthocyanins. Antioxidants neutralize free radicals within cells, these oxidized cells increase the risk of inflammation which leads to diseases like cancer.

2. blackberries are low carb and low fat

Blackberries have a low glycemic load (4). Eating meals that have low glycemic loads keep blood glucose levels stable. This prevents energy spikes and crashes (due to elevated blood glucose). Unstable blood glucose levels may lead to insulin resistance, metabolic diseases, inflammatory conditions, pre-diabetes, and eventually Type 2 Diabetes (T2D).

3. Blackberries help fight infection

The combination of high levels of manganese, vitamins C and K, along with the amino acids, fiber and antioxidants give blackberries antibacterial and antioxidant properties. By adding blackberries to your daily diet you may get the following benefits:

Strengthened immunity ( antioxidants)

Strengthened skeletal system ( Bones support immune system)

Improved blood glucose levels and blood lipoprotein profiles. (Decreased risk of heart disease, T2D, and weight gain)

Efficient nutrient absorption during digestion

When the immune system, digestive system and circulatory system function optimally then many ailments and pre-cursors to more serious diseases may be prevented. Blackberries (and other purple food) are part of the “rainbow” diet that we should all be eating for optimal health.

uses of blackberries

Blackberries are best eaten fresh. They are great on their own or served with crea or ice-cream. Some types are suited for the fresh market and others are picked for processing.

Blackberries get used for:

Canning

Preserving

Jams

Cordials

Tarts

Pies

Jellies

Frozen products

Desserts

how to grow blackberries

Blackberries can be grown from seed, leafy stem cuttings, tip layering, and root cuttings. And the home gardener can grow blackberries using any one of these methods. But it may be worth buying a young plant that has already had a year to grow. These are readily available at nurseries, garden centers, and even online.

If you are growing from seed you will have time to prepare the site where you’ll plant them out in early spring. If you buy a root stock then you can plant it 4 weeks before spring which gives the plant time to settle before the growth phase kicks in.

Blackberries need adequate sun to produce a good yield of quality fruit. Some varieties are susceptible to very cold weather and this can damage buds, which will affect the yield and quality. For the home gardener, or the small farmer, growing blackberries is easy, but it does take a fair amount of work.

There are three main growth habits and each one has its own set of requirements and advantages over other cultivars. We will discuss all three types and give simple instructions on how to care for each type.

How long does it take to grow blackberries?

In the first year, the blackberry plant will concentrate on its vegetative growth cycle. During this stage, it produces canes called primocanes. These canes do not produce fruit in the traditional floricane-fruiting varieties. In the second year the floricanes develop and fruiting begins between May and July.

Courtesy of oaksavana.org

When you transplant a blackberry from a nursery bag or another pot make sure it has been cut back. See the section on pruning blackberries. Also, if it is a trailing blackberry you can buy a ready-made blackberry trellis that can be inserted into the pot after transplanting.

The image above shows you what a typical blackberry plant looks like before planting. Obviously, when planting out seedlings the method will be similiar but the fruiting cycle will take longer.

When you plant a blackberry plant, like the one shown above, you can expect it to take about 3 weeks to start shooting out new green growth. It will take another 60 -90 days before you see budding and then a further 25-40 days before you can harvest. The time will also depend on the cultivar you have selected.

HOW TO GROW BLACKBERRIES FROM SEED

Start by buying fresh berries (or seed in a packet). If you buy fresh you will need to extract the seed.

How to extract seed: Place the fresh seed in a processor and blend to a pulp.

Transfer into a sieve, with holes large enough to let pulp seep through.

Using a spatula gently press remaining pulp through sieve.

Wash seeds (still in sieve) until the flesh is removed.

Spread seeds onto a coffee filter and allow to dry.

Place seeds onto damp peat moss.

Place peat and seeds in a sandwich bag and refrigerate for 3-5 months. The seeds will begin to crack open in the cold.

In spring remove bag and plant seeds.

How to plant seed: The container (preferably a nursery flat) must have drainage holes. Add soil to until full to the top. Water and when soil has settled and is damp right through, place seeds on top of soil.

Cover with not more than 1/16 inches of a seedling mix ( must be fine with no bark bits).

Keep moist. Place in a warm, protected area that gets partial sun. To transplant from the seedling tray into a pot you will need to get a tub and see our instructions on how to transplant into a container.

When the blackberry plant gets bigger you can either add a trellis to the pot so you can train the canes and support them. Or you can transplant into the ground on a site that has been prepared. See section titled “How much space do blackberries need?”

Where do blackberries grow?

In the US, blackberries grow in the Southeastern US, especially in Oregon. They are grown commercially in British Columbia, Eastern Canada, Midwest, and California.

Blackberries enjoy temperate regions that experience mild winters and cool summers. When the climate is too humid, too cold, or a high rainfall area, blackberries are susceptible to a host of fungal infections.

When they grow in areas that get less than 6 hours of direct sunlight, the crop will perform poorly and produce a lower yield of fruit that does not ripen properly. They also need soil that is rich in humus and drains well. If blackberries don’t get enough nitrogen, potassium, and phosphorous their leaves will turn yellow, the canes will be weak, and the fruiting poor.

How to choose the perfect site for your blackberries

When choosing a site for blackberries, choose an area that:

Gets 6 hours or more of direct sunlight every day.

Is not low-laying. This means when it rains or gets water the water must not collect in a pool around the base of the blackberry plant. This is because blackberries are susceptible to root rot.

The site should have enough space for the number of plants getting planted. (See “How much space do blackberries need.”)

If the area is protected from wind, this is even better.

Make sure no plants from the Solanaceae family have grown there over the last 5 years. These plants host a fungus that will attack blackberries.

How to grow blackberries from cuttings

Pinterest: Root cutting: #GardeningKnowHow.com

Blackberry cuttings taken from the stems should take 3-4weeks to root. Blackberry root cuttings will take the same time to shoot. The best time to take root cuttings is in the fall during the dormant phase.

Root Cuttings: Blackberry root cuttings should be 3-6 inches (7-15cm) in length. Place them in cold storage for 3 weeks at a temperature of around 40℉ (4℃). When ready to plant, plant them into a mixture of half peat and half sand. This will provide good drainage.

Root cuttings are used more often than other types of cuttings. When taking root cuttings, make a straight cut close to the crown and an angled cut further down. Bundle these roots and tie them up, before refrigeration.

Stem Cuttings: Take cuttings from the primocanes because floricanes die after they bear fruit. Cut them 4-6 inches (10-15cm). Place them into the same peat/sand mix as for root cuttings. When planting the cuttings before they have rooted, plant them 5-7inches apart.

Keep in a shady, well-ventilated area. They should root in 3-4 weeks.

How to grow blackberries indoors

Choose Blackberry plants with an erect growth habit for indoor planting.

The pot should be 12-14 inches (30-35cm).

Place pebbles in the bottom.

Fill with soil that is a mixture of organic compost and a slightly acidic potting mix. Leave a space of 1-2 inches from the top of the pot.

Transplant as you would for a container.

Before planting, water the soil and allow it to soak through so that the entire mix is moist.

Make sure it gets 6 hours of daylight. So place the pot in a suitable place. Or use a growing lamp. The advantage of planting blackberries indoors is that you can protect them from cold, which may damage new growth and young fruiting buds.

Blackberries suited to indoor growing include Prime-Jim and Prime-Jan. Both these types are primocane-fruiting varieties.

How to plant blackberries

How much space do blackberries need?

Due to the trailing, rambling nature of blackberries they must be planted with enough space between plants to allow for ample growth of the canes. Plant each plant 6-7 feet (2m) apart. And in rows that are at least 3 feet (1m) apart.

What soil do blackberries like?

Blackberries like a soil with good drainage. The soil mus be rich in organic matter, or humus. The soil must be slightly acidic, anywhere between 5.5 and 7.0 is perfectly fine. Soil that is too sandy or has too much clay will not do.

Blackberries suffer from fungal diseases so it is crucial that the soil drains well and contains enough nutrients to keep the plant healthy.

It is advisable to cover the base of your blackberry plant with a thick layer of mulch, this keeps in the moisture and cuts down on the amount of water you need. It also keeps the perennial roots of the blackberry warm.

what is the best climate for blackberries? Warm vs cold

Blackberries prefer temperate regions that experience mild winters and cool summers. That said, varieties and cultivars are now available that have been adapted to handle slightly more extreme conditions. But in general, the traditional floricane-fruiting types will do best in a temperate region. In the States, this equates to Zones 5-10. Click here to go to a chart of Zones in US.

If you live in Zone 4 you’re in luck because there are a few cultivars adapted to colder regions. “Doyle” is a thornless blackberry suited to the southern regions in zone 4 while “Illini Hardy” is a thorny blackberry that is cold hardy.

Many blackberry plants are cold hardy to -20 to -25 ℉. And most erect varities are more cold hardy than trailing types.

For regions with dry windy summers: Plants will need 200-300 hours of sunlight per season. Trailing varieties will do okay in zones 7,8, and9.

how to set up a blackberry trellis

Why do you need a trellis for your blackberries?

Well, besides the fact that they need to be supported due to their rambling, trailing growth, there are other advantages. By training your canes onto trellis wires you give the plants more exposure to light. This will increase both foilage growth and your yield. By separating the berries from the front and back, they get more light and space.

There are various ways to build a blackberry trellis and the way you set up your trellis will depend on your skillset and budget. There are loads of YouTube clips available. These clips will guide you through your blackberry trellis set up with ease.

The clip below is a very easy-to-follow guide on how to train your mature plants and cut them back. The clip following that shows you how to build your trellis before planting, and also discusses choosing a site.

The reason for trellising blackberries is threefold:

Support the canes

Increase the space between canes

Increase light to all parts of the plant

Train the plants and make it easier to maintain when the time comes to cut back and prune.

When deciding where to plant your blackberries, choose a site that has not had tomatoes, green peppers, potatoes, or brinjals growing there over the last 5 years. These plants host a fungus called Verticillium, which blackberries are susceptible to.

how to transplant a blackberry into a bigger tub

Courtesy of California Gardening Channel

This short step by step guide explains how you can get fruit from your blackberry in 130-150 days.

Transplant blackberries in late fall. Before you transplant your blackberry plant you must prepare the container. Get a container from your local nursery or recycle an old pot or tub that you have lying around. The pot must have proper drainage. Make holes underneath if need be. Then fill the bottom with pebbles.

Make your mix by adding some lime, organic pellets, and organic compost to a potting mix. You can buy ready-made mixes if you are still a novice but seasoned gardeners usually have their own soil mix recipes. As long as the soil is slightly acid and drains well, you will be fine.

Fill a third of the pot, saturate the soil, and repeat until all the soil is added. Take out some of the soil and into the hole add some rich compost mixed with a small pot of bonemeal. Your blackberry is now ready to be planted.

Once it is in the hole, cover with the remaining soil (also moist but not wet). Secure the plant by pressing lightly around the base. Add your trellis if it is a trailing variety.

How to care for blackberries

Pruning Blackberries

There are two types of pruning for blackberries and each kind of blackberry pruning serves a different purpose.

Tip Pruning Blackberries: This involves cutting the blackberry tips just above the node of the second or third leaf. This invigorates growth and will result in more foliage which means more fruit. This type of pruning must be done in early spring.

Cutting Back Blackberries: Pruning blackberries after they have fruited ensures that the next season’s growth will be lush and strong.

Cutting back deadwood (the floricanes bear fruit once and then die) is crucial to reduce the risk of certain diseases. Once the blackberries are done fruiting (late summer) then you need to cut off the floricanes, leaving only the primocanes.

You can see which canes need cutting by their color. Leave the canes that are green or reddish and cut back those that appear greyish and dry. Cut them as close to the crown as you can.

Feeding blackberries

Blackberries will need enough nitrogen in the soil during the first years growth. The following year the soil needs to be fortified with plant food high in potassium and phosphates to encourage fruiting.

Organic fertilizers are always preferable to synthetic fertilizers. This is because the soil is a living organism and applying synthetic fertilizers destroy the microorganisms that keep soil healthy and reduce the occurrence of fungal and bacterial infections.

how much water do blackberries need?

Weeks 1-3: Water often and keep the first 1″-2″ of soil moist. Water in the daytime.

3 weeks up to harvest: Water less frequently, maybe once a week. Still maintaing 1″-2″ of water.

From harvest: Increase the water to 4″ during harvest time. This means the watering will be deeper and supply the entire root system. Berries that get enough water will be that bit more plump and juicy.

Harvesting blackberries

when is the best time to harvest blackberries?

The best time to pick blackberries is in the morning, on cool dry days. This will extend the shelf-life. Blackberries are soft so they must be handled with care to avoid crushing. Pick the blackberries and place them on trays or in shallow tubs. The shelf-life of blackberries is 4-5 days. keep them in the fridge to extend the shelf-life.

You will know when they are ready to be harvested because they will be very shiny. As soon as the shine fades they are ready to get picked. Blackberries that don’t get enough sun will not be sweet.

In Oregon fruit ripens from mid-June to August. The fruiting season lasts 4 weeks for each cultivar. Commercial farmers will grow different varieties to get as long a harvesting season as possible. It is also possible for gardeners to plant some of these varieties to get fruit at different times.

blackberry cultivars: choosing the best type of blackberries for your garden

growing thornless blackberries

More vulnerable to pests like birds and grazing wildlife.

More sensitive to colder weather

Canes are softer, can only be hand-harvested.

Growing trailing blackberries

Best suited to outdoor planting.

Must have well-drained soil.

Least cold-hardy of all types.

Best for machine-harvesting

Produces the highest yields

Generally, produce better tasting fruit

growing erect blackberry cultivars

Suited to containers and small gardens

Developed for the fresh market

Can only be harvested by hand, not machine.

Primocane-fruiting varieties are erect.

The chart below gives a list of cultivars and their info. I hope this makes choosing your next blackberry cultivar easier. All the varieties chosen are suited to home gardens and small farms. Most these blackberries are suited to the fresh market only. The trailing species will usually also be good to use in preserves and jams or any other type of processing.

CultivarTypeGrowthFruitFlavorYieldObsidianTrailingVigorous thornyLarge, firmgoodHigh early ripeningSilvanTrailingVigorous thornyLarge softgoodHighCascade(Cali climates)TrailingVigorous thornySmall medgoodMedium early ripeningBlack DiamondTrailingVigorous thornlessLarge firm uniformgoodHighColumbia StarTrailingVigorous thornlessLarge firm uniformgoodHighMarionTrailingVigorous thornyMed soft unevengoodMedWild treasureTrailing thin canesVigorous thornlessSmall uniformgoodLow to high (cane damage)Triple CrownSemi-erectVigorous thornlessMed largegoodMed highOuachitaErectVigorous thornlessMed firmfairMedIllini hardyErectVigorous thornyMed largebitterMedNavahoErectthornlessSmall medgoodMedPrime-ArkErectthornlessLargegoodMed (early sep)Prime-Jan/JimErectthornlessLarge softfairMed (late aug)Prime-Ark-freedomErectthornlessSmall medfairLow-high (early sep)

Table showing blackberry cultivars suited to home gardens and small farms

Blackberries: Common Pests And Diseases

Pruning blackberries is good hygiene practice. Removing the dead canes reduces infestations of Cane Borer Beetle.

Fungal infections can wipe out entire crops. The best way to minimize fungus on blackberries is to make sure they are not grownn in damp, humid conditions. Good ventilation, adequate sunlight and space helps.

Copper fungicides can be used to treat some types of fungus but often the best route to follow is to remove all the infected parts and burn them. Sometimes it may be necessary to remove nearby plants to, especially if they are growing wild, close by.

These are the fungal infections most common to blackberries:

Algal spot – treat with copper fungicide

Anthracnose (Dieback) – more prevalent in trailing varieties

Cane and Leaf Rust – not systemic so it won’t affect blooming. Prune out infected parts and burn.

Fruit Rot – Ensure timely harvesting and spaced planting will reduce this fungus

Orange Rust – affects fruiting, fungicides don’t work. Many thorny varieties are resistant to Orange Rust.

Double Blossom – affects fruiting. Remove wild berries nearby. Remove infected parts and burn. Cut all canes right back after fruiting. New thornless varieties are less susceptible.

Leaf Spot – similar to Anthracnose, usually removing infected parts is enough, and applying chemicals is not necessary.

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Grow low-spreading herbs like mint, lemon balm, hyssop, chives, borage, and thyme. These are all excellent companion plants and get grown as groundcovers, or in between blackberries. Companion planting reduces disease and boosts the health of the plants.

conclusions

Despite what many people say, blackberries are easy to grow. They may be susceptible to fungal diseases more so than other crops but if you employ good gardening practices and maintain good plant hygiene, this should not be a problem.

With so many blackberry cultivars and varieties available it is easy to grow blackberries in the climate they are suited to. But you can also grow blackberries indoors and in pots.

Blackberries are loaded with antioxidants and nutrients that have cancer fighting properties. Adding a cup of berries to your daily diet will give you fiber, vitamins and protein. Blackberries also have antibacterial properties. Eating blackberries regularly may reduce the risk of diseases like diabetes, heart disease and obesity.

References:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackberry https://plantvillage.psu.edu/topics/blackberry/infos/diseases_and_pests_description_uses_propagation https://www.thegardener.co.za/grow-to-eat/fruit/brambles/ https://catalog.extension.oregonstate.edu/sites/catalog/files/project/pdf/ec1617.pdf https://www.gardeningknowhow.com/edible/fruits/blackberries/blackberry-pruning http://www.homegardeners.com/blackberries_propagation-seeds.htm https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2635667/ htps://www.arborday.org/trees/fruit/care-blackberry.cfm https://plantdiseasehandbook.tamu.edu/food-crops/fruit-crops/blackberry-dewberry-and-boysenberry/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4192974/ https://planthardiness.ars.usda.gov/PHZMWeb/

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