#pontiac sunfire

[automotivealchemy]

Pontiac Sunfire Coupe Concept

What if... Pontiac were revived and this was apart of their heritage lineup. Playing it safe with design as it's G6 kin, the Sunfire would be an entry level affordable coupe with first time buyers in mind. In this scenario, it is equipped with an in-line 5 cylinder motor and a front wheel drive platform, this is an affordable alternative to the Solstice, Firebird, Sunbird, G5 coupe and G6 coupes. Built with safety in mind, it would be structured to ensure occupants are safe from all impacts. And complete with standard driving safety aids like lane departure and 360 camera system, to solidify it's mark as a first time buyers car.

[masoncarr2244]

[barbreypilled]

rhaegar targaryen I thirst for your blood

[doodadcrt]

I saw all these just today.

[ram-me-ramiel]

August 27th moodboard

[mightywhite]

[kcrossvine-art]

Hi friends! Just a day after this years Yule and a few days out from Christmas, regardless of what you celebrate during this winter months, we're gonna be cooking a tangy tango between two traditional english staples-

Yule Plum Pudding and Wassail from Lord of the Rings Online!

(You can find the cooking instructions and full ingredient list under the break-)

MY NAMES CROSS NOW LETS COOK LIKE ANIMALS

SO, “what goes in to this Yule Plum Pudding?” YOU MAY ASKPlum Pudding is not a "pudding" as us americans think of it; its closer to a fruitcake but less shit.

Cranberries

White raisins

Macerated prunes (in brandy)

Chopped candied peel

Blanched almonds

All-purpose flour

Cinnamon

Nutmeg

Cloves

Sugar

Breadcrumbs

Lemon zest

Unsalted butter

Eggs

Whole milk

Half a bottle of brandy

It also doesnt contain any capital-P plums! it actually does contain plums im so fucking stupid i never connected the dots that prunes were dried plums oh my god. But they still ued any dried fruit, and "Plum" here is just referring to any dried fruit. And what about the birth of todays wassail?

4 cooking apples

2 pears

Brown sugar

Cinnamon sticks

2 lemons

A bottle of sherry

The other half bottle of brandy

Wassail is very similar to apple cider drank in the fall, with a few differences like the addition of pears and different alcohol source. It was commonly drank while "wassailing" which was a Yuletide predecessor to christmas carolling. People would go door-to-door with a big bowl of wassail, play music, and give well wishes- offering drinks from the wassail in return for small gifts!

AND, “what does Yule Plum Pudding and Wassail taste like?” YOU MIGHT ASK

The puddings like a fruitcake but if a fruit cake tasted good and wasnt a brick

Its thick and rich, and somehow actually tastes like plum despite that not being intended or making sense

I love the macerated prunes so much. Juicy berries to forage for. Enrichment

The icings reminiscent of buttercream but more savory than sweet

The wassail is like drinking the golden edges off the clouds at sunset

Its got a little bit of the dryness from the sherry that makes your mouth water the moment you stop drinking it

You just want to keep drinking more to sate yourself

Even without eggs its surprisingly full bodied and thick

I had to make a few substitutions from traditional elements due to either being not available or too expensive, but with a little problem-solving nothing was too hard to do.

. Used a bundt cake pan instead of a pudding tin .  Suet (animal fat) was historically used for plum pudding. I couldnt find any and used butter instead . Used golden delicious apples when called for . Used concorde pears when called for . Some wassail recipes fold in egg whites before serving, to make the drink creamier. I didnt do this, but if you do, the recommendation to drink it fresh still stands (and strongly)

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I gotta admit, I was nervous approaching this recipe. Not only because I didn't own and couldnt find a "pudding tin" without ordering online, or because the concept of steaming a pastry(?) feels foreign and odd, but also because of how old and storied this dish is. You always run into the issue with historical foods who date back to the times where oral history was the only history. The issue of people being combative that their recipe is the only true variant of the recipe, and all the others are mucking the whole thing up.

Its good to remember that like with most dishes, cooking is something that evolved and continues to evolve overtime. Unless someones trying to rewrite history and claim that ants on a log is a creme brule in which case you should run them over with a '98 Pontiac Sunfire.

Theres a few things I'd do differently when cooking again, like chopping the blanched almonds. They were a bit too big when left whole. And adding some amount of heavy cream to the icing? Maybe? To give it a fluffier/milkier feel? But the proces of cooking itself was very straightforward and I have no real complaints or modifications to make. When having leftovers of the pudding it did seem to "mature" and taste better and better the more days i kept it in the fridge, so thats something to keep in mind! But it tastes great a day after all the same.

I give this recipe a solid 10/10 (with 1 being food that makes one physically sick and 10 being food that gives one a lust for life again.) Happy winter everyone! Congrats to another year of staying alive!

🐁 ORIGINAL RESIPPY TEXT BELOW 🐁

Yule Plum Pudding Ingredients:

16oz cranberries

12oz white raisins

9oz macerated prunes

4oz chopped candied peel (any fruit)

2oz blanched, chopped almonds

4oz all-purpose flour

Measure spices with your heart (cinnamon, nutmeg, and cloves)

8oz granulated sugar

8oz fresh white breadcrumbs

lemon zest (one lemon)

4oz grated unsalted butter

4 eggs

8oz whole milk

Pudding Icing Ingredients:

1½oz unsalted butter

1½oz all-purpose flour

10½oz whole milk

3oz granulated sugar

2 tablespoons brandy

Yule Plum Pudding Method:

A week before making, macerate your prunes in brandy.

Mix together all the dried fruit, peel, and almonds. Sieve flour and spices together then add to the fruit mixture along with the sugar, breadcrumbs, rind, and grated butter.

Beat eggs and then blend with 8oz of milk.

Stir the egg/milk mixture to incorporate into the dry ingredients. Add prunes, and stir some more.

Put batter into a well-buttered pudding basin, with parchment paper to cover.

Get a large pot and place a kitchen towel or something similar at the bottom- then place the pudding basin on top of the towel, inside the large pot.

Fill the outer pot with water until it’s halfway up the side, cover the pot with a lid (or foil).

Steam on the stovetop at 210f for 4-6 hours depending on size of pudding basin. If the water gets too low, add a bit more.

After steaming, uncover and allow to cool to room temperature. Do not remove it from the pudding basin! Cover with fresh parchment paper and foil and store in a cool, dry place for at least a day.

(optional) to reheat; steam for 40-80 minutes, until warmed through.

Pudding Icing Method:

Place butter in a medium saucepan with the flour, pour in the milk then whisk everything vigorously together over a medium heat.

As soon as it comes to simmering point and has thickened, turn the heat to its lowest setting, stir in the sugar, and let the sauce cook for 10 minutes.

Add the brandy and stir to mix. Keep warm until required.

Wassail Ingredients:

4 cooking apples

2 pears

Brown sugar

4 Cinammon sticks

2 lemon

1 bottle of Sherry

½ bottle of Brandy

Wassail Method:

Core the apples and pears, leave the rest intact, and set in a baking pan. Fill the hollow centers with brown sugar.

Add about an inch of water to the pan and bake at 350f for 30 minutes, or until the fruit is soft.

Move the fruit to a large pot, add a bottle of sherry, half a bottle of brandy, lemon peel, and 4 large cinnamon sticks. (Feel free to use less booze!)

Bring the pot to a simmer for about 45 minutes, stirring occasionally. Strain before serving!

[seat-safety-switch]

It's weird to think of the cars of your youth being exported elsewhere. In Japan, there is a strong and confident subculture dedicated to taking classic American cars and driving them around their compact megacities. It's not a stretch to say that there are more pristine-condition GMC Astros in that tiny island nation than there are in the land of its birth.

What kind of relationship do they have to a vehicle that they never got to see new? One that they never sat in as a child at the yearly auto show? As we play with their Skylines, they enjoy the comfort of our Trailblazers. It is hard to understand the appeal, but it is certainly a "grass is greener" situation. Maybe they just think an unreliable car is a strange and entertaining novelty? Hey look, I've never seen a car with bad grounds before, they say to each other, and invite their mechanic buddies over, who also remark on the amount of casting flash left over on the coolant bottle. You can make an injection mould with a seam that sloppy?

Certainly, I can't speak to the Japanese mindset on these vehicles. I could ask someone who actually lives there, but it sounds like I might accidentally embarrass myself, or give the whole game away by inadvertently telling them that the Pontiac Sunfire actually sucks out loud. And I'd be lying to say that I don't enjoy a little bit of the mystery surrounding the shitboxes that they've given up on and exported into my country. What's that weird robot voice talking about whenever I turn the car on? Nobody can tell, but it sure sounds cool, and cool is what cars are about. Knowing things is what another, lesser, hobby is about. Maybe chess, or performing CPR on strangers for the adrenaline rush. Not this one.

Maybe it doesn't matter. We have what we enjoy, and they have what they enjoy. Europeans? I'm sure they have cars too, and some of them seem very exotic, but none of them are showing up on a roll-on/roll-off ferry in huge numbers at the local port. And their manuals are in a language I can actually read, which is a huge turn-off. If I can read them, then I might know something about them. See previous complaint.

[prototypesteve]

Solo Travel: Find Magic.

Venturing out on a solo vacation can be daunting. There’s a shit-ton of adulting you’ll need to do:

It’s up to you to make your flight. It’s up to you to not lose anything. It’s up to you to stay hydrated and healthy and mindful and motivated.

It can be easy to give in and say “hard nope” and stay home, even if you really want to start travelling solo.

How do you get past all that, and find the will to save up, plan, gear-up, get a passport or a reliable road-trip vehicle, and go? Magic. You believe in magic and you let yourself want it.

When I was in my late teens I was in a waiting room and idly flipping through a magazine (it was the late 80s). I turned the page and there was a two-page tourism ad with a massive photo of Lake Louise, in Banff National Park. Supernaturally milky blue water, tiny red canoes, backed by a colossal wall of mountain capped by an ancient glacier. I remember murmuring aloud, “I want that.” I wanted to feel what that photographer felt. I wanted awe. I wanted magic.

Years later, I finally had enough of my shit together to go there, and it was everything I expected, and it made all the hard adulting worth it. (I wound up moving to Calgary so I could go to Lake Louise any time I wanted to.)

Photo 1: Lake Louise, Alberta. (This is from 2012, and taken with an old iPhone 4S, but it most closely resembles the view I saw in the magazine ad.)

In 2003, I saw a video about Tofino and Pacific Rim National Park. By 2003 I had plenty of experience going on budged-friendly road trips to Vancouver, where I’d stay in the (at the time, affordable) Jericho Beach Hostel. But Tofino would cost more, require a longer vacation, and take me way out of my “there’s always a city close by” comfort zone. But I wanted to see real waves, walk through a real coastal rain forest, and see the ocean fog roll in. I wanted magic,

Photo 2: My (used) 1998 Pontiac Sunfire, and a budget kayak, and my mediocre Norco mountain bike, somewhere at a rest stop along the trans Canada Highway, in British Columbia

By 2005 I had the right gear, a decent budget, and enough self-confidence to drive out and hike down sketchy wooden stairs to Half Moon Bay near Uclulet and see the actual Pacific Ocean—not the Salish Sea between Vancouver and Vancouver Island—for the first time. That week I felt the magic of being at the edge of my world. It made all the adulting easy.

Photos 3 & 4: The first time I saw the Pacific Ocean without Vancouver Island or the Olympic Peninsula lining the horizon, and the first time I saw fog move in over Vancouver island from the Pacific Ocean,

Ever since my 8th and 9th grade teachers told us stories about the old Globe theatre, I’ve dreamt of seeing a play in the rebuilt Globe in London (back then, even rebuilding the Globe was still a dream that wouldn’t be finished until the late 90s). But I live an ocean away, in Canada, I’m introverted, and no matter how much money I make, I have always felt like I’m out of my class-depth at any social gathering. Wrong childhood neighbourhoods, wrong schools, wrong career field. It took me until my 2nd trip to England to work up the nerve to buy a ticket to see a play at the Globe. I wanted to be there like one of the people I imagined during English class as we studied Romeo & Juliet, Julius Caesar, and The Scottish Play. I wanted the magic.

Friday night, August 23, 2024, I spent two hours almost dizzy with a flood of feelings I’m going to need months to process, because I sat in Bay H, Row C, Seat 29, at Shakespeare’s Globe, in London, and watched a beautiful, perfect, magical performance of Much Ado about Nothing, and like I said, I’m going to be sorting out my feelings about this for months.

Yes there’s the Osemanverse overlap, Much Ado appears in Loveless. There’s the Aroace angle, watching two seemingly aro characters get shipped by their friends and family, bla bla bla. There’s a lot. But whatever. For me the magic was being the adult who teenage-me grew up into, sitting there in my seat that I absolutely belonged in, on my trip that I put together for myself, to chase down dozens of my other lifelong dreams, sitting there, and feeling that I was allowed to be there, and then delighting in the magic of live theatre, compounded by the magic of loving myself enough to push through every excuse not to be there.

Photos 5, 6, and 7: The Globe Theatre (there’s no photography during the performance, and I don’t think I’d have bothered, if there was.

Find your magic. Thrive. It doesn’t have to cost a lot: My first solo trips cost me a tank of gas and a tenting campground fee, or a night’s stay at a hostel. It doesn’t need to be risky: Backpacker hostels and modern hotels often have more sophisticated security than your home or workplace. It doesn’t have to be ambitious: Maybe it’s lunch at a diner in a small farm town nearby, maybe it’s a low-key late summer concert in a park, maybe it’s building that sandcastle you never got to build because you grew up far away from water. Whatever it is, go find it! Let it change you.

[masoncarr2244]

Pontiac Sunfire GXP Concept

[bleedingtodeath]

Judge Dread on tour in August 2007. All five of them went on tour in a Pontiac sunfire, got the ferry to Nova Scotia, and put together their cds and vinyl on the ferry on the way over. Some of these dudes are like 16 here. Death rattle (2007) is a great ep, definitely one of my favourites. Big shoutout to my friend David for hooking these photos up.

[barbreypilled]

BARBREY DUSTIN IM SOOOO DRUNK

[cator99]

the first person to ever keep it real with me was a gay serbian man who worked at the treatment home I was in. He told me I was being stupid and dramatic whenever I was trying to kill myself and while his methods were unorthodox he was right and it always made me feel better because other staff would just be like wah wah you have so much to live for omg let's talk about your feelings but he would just be like "you're not even serious the most you'll get is broken legs out of this idiot" and then take me for a ride in the front seat of his purple Pontiac sunfire convertible and blast music and get mcdonalds and he would smoke in the car because he trusted I wouldn't tell anyone he was everything to me and single-handedly got me thru the rest of my adolescence but anyways one time he told me he didn't think I was transgender and that he suspected there was something even more wrong with me and if I was born a man I would've cut my dick off

[shapeshiftersvt]

My Encounter With the Jersey Devil

Every Spring, since 1984, the New Jersey Audubon Society hosts the World Series of Birding (WSB). Much in the vein of fundraising walks and runs, the WSB is a marathon aimed at raising money and awareness towards a specific cause (bird and nature conservation). Competitors in the WSB are tasked with identifying, by either sight or sound, as many bird species as they can in a 24 hour period. While there are multiple ways to compete, the top level teams, which often include career birders, collect pledges through their own dedicated website, travel all over New Jersey in that 24 hour period to identify birds, and must be present at the finish line at Cape May Point State Park at midnight at the end of the competition.

Around 2005, a friend of mine (we’ll call her Robin) was enthusiastically getting me into birding and proposed we compete in the WSB. She had another birding friend from the West Coast (we’ll call him Jay) who wanted to come visit and the WSB was the perfect excuse. We competed under the second level, which allowed for a more casual competition, essentially treating the weekend like an excuse for an intensive birding holiday, without the fundraising and finish line requirements. This was at least in part because of my own inexperience; but I was excited and eager and, equally important, had a car and the ability and willingness to chauffeur the three of us around Cape May County for the weekend.

Robin and Jay spent the days leading up to the WSB mapping and scheduling out the birding spots we would hit, while I spent them studying up on my visual and audio ID’s (a harder task back before there were easily accessed videos and archives of bird call recordings online). The morning of the competition, we piled into my little Pontiac Sunfire and headed south.

The original plan was that we’d arrive at our hotel in Cape May in the afternoon, eat, get some sleep, and then head out to hit our first spot at midnight. Unfortunately, late in the night, Robin wasn’t feeling well. So we pivoted. Robin would stay at the hotel to get some more rest while Jay and I headed out to the first spot. After we were done, we would swing back by the hotel and, hopefully, Robin would feel better and we’d all pile back into the car to continue competing.

Since the start of the WSB is at midnight, the first spot on our list was a prime location to identify the nocturnal birds on the species list — owls, of course, but also water birds called rails. This brought us to one of the most rural spots we visited that weekend, the kind of rural spot that most people don’t believe exists in New Jersey. Jake’s Landing is an earthen boat launch in the middle of a wetlands creek, that’s accessed via Jake’s Landing Road, a 1.3 mile long dirt road that winds through a white pine forest. While you can see the light pollution from the surrounding towns in the distance, the area immediately around the landing is so dark the only light is from the moon and the vast expanse of stars.

ID-ing rails required parking at the Landing and listening for the birds out in the marshy waters. But since it’s such a well-known spot for good birding, there were always other birders standing out there with you, also desperately listening for the rails. The owls, however, weren’t out in the wetlands, they were back in the woods. Which meant that to ID owls, we had to pull over to the side of the road, turn off the car, turn off the headlights, get out of the car, and stand there in the middle of the woods in the middle of the night in almost complete darkness to listen for owls. Now, I am a child of suburbia. I wasn’t used to that kind of darkness. I wasn’t used to just being outside in the middle of the night without a car between me and whatever might be lurking beyond what my eyes could see. I definitely wasn’t used to spending time that deep in the woods, and certainly not at night. Not to mention that just a few years before this, in 1999, The Blair Witch Project had come out to the kind of hype we hadn’t seen for a horror movie since Nightmare on Elm Street and wouldn’t see again until Saw. A found footage film about three college-aged film-makers camping out in the woods to investigate the local legend of the Blair Witch, only to become victims of the Witch themselves, I loved The Blair Witch Project, it’s probably my favorite horror movie to this day. But part of that love came from the fact that it scared the crap out of me.

I was not looking forward to owl hunting.

Jay and I left Robin at the hotel to sleep and drove out to Jake’s Landing. We stood around listening to rails for a while; I don’t remember if we ID’d any on that particular stop, but we did close out the weekend with at least one rail ID’d on our list. Then we drove back into the woods, pulled over, turned off the car, and got out … 

And everything was fine. Really. I mean, we didn’t hear any owls, which sucked (spoilers: I wouldn’t hear an owl in real life for another 5 years or so). But I actually wasn’t bothered at all. It was dark and quiet and I couldn’t see anything beyond about three or four rows of trees beyond the road, but it wasn’t even a little bit freaky. After a while we both agreed that we weren’t hearing anything and it was about time for us to go pick up Robin, so we got back in the car and headed back to civilization.

We spent the rest of the day traveling all over Cape May County, hiking around bird sanctuaries and nature preserves, tromping over farms, strolling along boardwalks. I got to see red-tailed hawks and bald eagles and egrets and a purple gallinule that had made its way up to New Jersey from Florida for some reason. We stopped for snacks and meals at the whatever the nearest Wawa was, caught naps in parking lots, saw other birders ranging from casual twenty-somethings like us, little kids on school field trips, and well-aged professionals with camera equipment that probably cost more than my used Sunfire.

Then, as night fell again and the diurnal birds tucked into their nests for the night, there was only one thing left to do: head back to Jake’s Landing to try again for the rails and owls. I wasn’t worried this time, since I’d gotten through the first time without getting even a tiny bit spooked. We drove out to the Landing, and listened for a while; again, I don’t remember which trip it was, but we were only able to ID one rail all weekend. Then we headed back into the woods, pulled over, turned off the car, and got out to listen.

But something was different. It was still just as dark, just as quiet, just as isolated, though this time we had another person in our group. By all rights, I shouldn’t have had any trouble standing out there and listening for owls. But the second I closed my car door, I could feel it. Something was wrong. I still couldn’t see anything past the third or fourth line of trees past the road, but it felt like I was being watched — we were being watched. The longer we stood there, the more time my imagination had to run wild, the more certain I became that whoever — or whatever — was out there, intended us harm. We weren’t welcome. I couldn’t have focused on owls even if there’d been any to focus on, I could only think about the growing feeling in my gut that someone or something was out there in the dark seething at us, watching and waiting.

Finally, just as the feeling was becoming too much, just as I was about to suggest we go, Robin spoke up. We weren’t hearing anything, it was getting close to midnight anyway, we should just head back to the hotel and get some sleep before we had to drive home in the morning. I don’t think I even responded, I just remember snapping open my door, practically throwing myself inside, and turning the car and headlights back on before Jay and Robin had even sat down, so eager was I to be in the relative safety of my little Sunfire. We finished the drive along Jake’s Landing Road in silence. I was perhaps driving a little more quickly than I should have along a dirt road a little too narrow for two cars to comfortably pass, but I was beyond ready to get back to the main road with its asphalt and street lights and unblocked views of the surrounding area.

After having the uneasiness of the darkness washed away by blessed halogen, I finally told Robin that if she hadn’t said something when she had, I’d been ready pull the plug over how freaked out I’d felt. Which was when she admitted that the reason she’d spoken up was because she’d also felt freaked out and couldn’t stand out there any longer. We spent the drive back to the hotel comparing notes, Robin expressing a similar feeling about being watched, and me explaining how I hadn’t experienced anything close to that on my earlier owl hunt with Jay.

Robin and I had both been raised in New Jersey, had grown up surrounded by stories of the Jersey Devil, and knew when we set out on this trip that we’d be spending much of the weekend hiking around areas within the Pine Barrens, the alleged territory of the Jersey Devil.

So what other conclusion could we come to than that we’d just had an encounter with the Jersey Devil itself?

-Krista

[eddiediaaz]

i feel like typing some feels idk. ignore this lol it's probably not interesting at all. so last night i dreamed that i was going through/decluttering everything in my childhood bedroom. a few nights ago i also dreamt that i was redecorating that same childhood bedroom. this morning i woke up feeling really sad and nostalgic because it's something i never got to actually do.

when i was 17, in 2010 right after high school, i left that childhood house where i lived with my mom, younger sister, and (ex) step father. i moved in with my beloved grandparents for my first year of college. i don't remember the moving at all actually, only the last conversation i had with him the night before (where he said he loved me and would always think of me as his daughter and that i was welcome back anytime). all i remember is that i packed some things i wanted with me there (my grandparents live almost 2 hours away from my hometown). my mom and sister remained there for a few months until my mom was finally able to buy a house for us (we were living in his house since 1998).

my ex step father was/is (idek anymore) an alcoholic and he was very abusive, mostly verbally, and mostly towards me. mostly because i was (still am) fat. he bullied me my entire childhood because i was a fat kid. it was quite horrible at times, like stopping him from going to kill my dad with his hunting guns while barefoot outside in the rain at 13 years old. like him throwing an axe in my computer screen (a big fat one from the late 00s lol) because my teenage self didn't want to do the dishes right away (my sister and i handwashed the dishes every single day, he of course never did). like him putting my school book for homework in my bowl of ice cream (dessert that he bought!) and getting it all dirty and wet (i don't remember how i explained that at school yikes). stuff like that. he never got physical towards us at least. but it was always verbal abuse and mind games like that. i'm so glad my sister avoided a lot of that (she wasn't fat), but i know it must have been so difficult for her too to live in that household. and for my mom as well, who was working so hard for us. she was a victim too. she worked night and evening shifts for a bit, so there are a few things she didn't witness. things i will never tell her cause she already carries such heavy guilt about "putting us in that situation" (her words). i didn't know at the time, but now we've had some talks about it and i know she was severely depressed and on multiple meds. she had no money because my dad ruined her credit when they were still together. anyway that's a whole ass other story lol

so yeah when i was in my senior year i knew i had to think of an escape plan. when college applications time came around, i applied to a school near where my grandparents live and moved there. i had to, for my mental health. that was hands down one the best year of my life and i am so grateful to them. also grateful my mom was able to get me a cheap used car (a 2000 pontiac sunfire, iykyk) so i could be more independent as i reached adulthood. when my mom and sister moved to my mom's house, they packed some of my things, like a few plushies and some clothes, but that's about it. we were supposed to go back there and pack our other belongings. we were welcomed there. my ex step dad didn't hate us. he knew he made mistakes, he knew his disease (the alcoholism) was what drove us away. he wasn't a bad man when he was sober, but as time went on under his roof, he was only sober when he was working. i moved back in with my mom and sister after that first year away and we stayed there for 2 years until my sister and i moved in together for 3 years when i was in film school.

anyway yeah. i feel weird today. i am mourning all the toys and clothes and books and trinkets and memories i never got to keep because i left so fast and never went back like i was supposed to. even some vhs tapes of my sister and i as kids remained there when my mom left not long after me and it saddens me. we were always supposed to go back for our things because it ended "amicably" (in his mind, i guess), but we never had the nerves and courage to go back. i have regrets about that now, but at least that dream was a bit healing. and at least i had an "escape plan". many people don't so i'm glad i did.

i know there are much worse things in life than not having much physical things left from your childhood. i know that. people lose their homes all the time. but i'm still sad about it i guess. even if it's been close to 15 years.