#puff cereal bar machine

[imawreck]

Trap

Pairing: Bucky Barnes/Winter Soldier x Original Character

Summary: Max is forced to go on a mission with Bucky once more.

Warnings: malnutrition, description of panic attack symptoms, cursing

Word Count: 4,269

Max-

I woke the next morning from another grueling nightmare covered in sweat and gasping for air. It was 4:00 A.M., too early to be up but too late to fall back asleep. I peeled the sheets away from my body, wincing at the muscles tugging at my still-scabbed side. It was better, but it should have been healed and gone by now. Its presence was evidence enough of my malnutrition, even if I physically looked as healthy as a horse. I needed to eat.

Hopping from the bed, I meandered to the small floor kitchen and snagged the cereal box out of the cupboard and made myself a bowl. Thor would be disappointed I missed our morning breakfast together, but I couldn't wait that long. I munched on my meal, taking a seat on the counter instead of the chair. The cool marble was jarring enough to clear the stupor of my mind as I shoveled another spoonful of cereal into my mouth.

After the encounter with Bucky last night, it was difficult to fall asleep. My body had quaked, and my lungs seemed to shrink and cause my breaths to be nothing more than short puffs of air. It was ridiculous.

After I finished my breakfast, I decided to take the time to use the empty training room. Bucky had taken to training most of his free time, so the machines and weights were usually unavailable to me, the whole room more or less. I avoided him as much as I could, not even daring to be in the same room for fear of what, I didn't know. I was simply uncomfortable with being close to him anymore.

It's funny, how one person can go from your very breath to something you can hardly look at without falling apart.

I spent most of the morning training. I had lost some muscle in the recent missions and was in desperate need of some protein supplements to which I stole from Sam's stash. I spent several hours using the bars for upper body and lifting as much as my body could handle on weights. I pushed myself, taking note of the subtle changes that had occurred over the past few weeks. It wasn't much, but it was enough to cause a change in my strength. Enough to weaken me.

I cursed myself, drying my hair with a towel as I took a break three hours later, seating myself on the nearest bench. The AC felt wonderful on my neck and shoulders thanks to the tank top I was sporting. I didn't want to risk the team seeing my injury. Tony would bar me from missions if he had any inclination I wasn't mission ready.

The elevator chimed a few minutes after I had taken a seat and my whole body froze up; a recently developed instinct. Blonde hair and a dashing smile had me blowing out a breath and dropping my shoulders.

Thor sauntered his way over and plopped down on the bench beside me, "You're up awfully early, Max."

I shrugged, "I couldn't fall back asleep, so I decided this was the best thing to do to occupy my time before you lazy bums decided to get out of bed."

Thor rolled his eyes, "Getting a normal 8 hours of sleep does not make us lazy. Some of us need beauty sleep." He slung his gold tresses to the side in an obnoxious manner, pulling a smile onto my face.

"Did you just come all the way down here to talk?" I was flattered that a god showed so much interest in befriending me.

He shook his head with a smile, "No, but it is one of my favorite things to do on earth. I actually came to inform you that Tony is calling a meeting with the team, and he wants us gathered in ten."

I frowned, "You know that you don't have to come all the way down here to tell me that, right? Tony has a whole AI system to work the building."

His smile turned bashful as he shook his head, "I know. I just like to tell you myself."

My neck turned red as my lips curved upwards at his words. I shoved him with my shoulder, "Come on, Thunder Boy. I'll walk with you to the meeting."

Thor's lumbering steps eagerly followed me out of the training room as he began a tangent about the most recent events on his planet. He liked to keep me updated ever since I asked him about it. Learning about the new developments on such a different planet amazed me and hearing Thor talk about it so passionately made me happy.

The closer we got to the meeting room, the more anxious and curious I became. It had been a while since the whole team had gotten together for a joint mission. I figured Tony could sense the tension within the ranks so much that he supposed it would be better for us all to have space and time away from each other. Something big must have come up to be calling us all together.

The door chimed and the two of us strode into the level, veering between the glass doors and joining those who were already seated at the table. Natasha, Steve, and Bucky sat at their respective seats on the farther side of the table. Bucky used to occupy the seat next to me, but it now sat empty to the left of the end. Thor decided to take it with a soft smile my way. I was truly grateful for his presence.

Clint was next, stumbling in bleary eyed and groggy. "Damn these early meetings. Can't anyone get some decent sleep around here?"

I shook my head at him, watching him take the empty chair opposite to Thor. "Of course not, it's in the fine print of the job description."

Clint groaned and let his head hit the metal table. "It's miserable."

Tony was next, strolling in all prim and ready to go. He slapped the file folder in his hands against the back of Clint's head, "Wake up Barton, we have a bright shining day ahead of us."

I had to clamp a hand over my mouth to contain the laugh threatening to escape as Clint covered his head and gave an ugly look to the back of Tony's perfect hair.

Tony spun around and addressed everyone at the table with a thin smile, "I would like to inform you all that I have been working with Thor on locating a very dangerous weapon that we believe has fallen into Hydra's arsenal."

My eyes widened and snapped to Thor who simply continued to listen to Tony with a grim look on his face. "His brother, as you all know, had a scepter that was believed to have returned with him to Asgard but it seems that it was intercepted in the process. Loki hid it on earth, and Hydra operatives located it. Now they possess a very unpredictable variable, the same power that created Wanda and her brother. There is no telling what it will do or what they will use it for."

Everyone seemed to pale at the news. No one else had known about their discussions, I realized, and Thor had kept it even from me.

Tony went on, "Thor and I have been trying to locate where Hydra was moving or keeping it. We had been unsuccessful until now. The scepter gave off a power surge near the eastern sea and we believe that they are trying to move it to a more secure location to keep us from detecting it further. The window is small, and the only people available for this mission are those sitting at this table."

I noted that two of our most powerful members, Wanda and Vision, were nowhere to be found. The two were often sent to monitor other situations and I figured that they were doing so now. It would be a severe setback in our ranks, but each of those seated here had their own talents that would still benefit us greatly.

What small smile Tony had managed to keep on his face fell away before his next words, and his eyes seemed to fall on me with a sort of plead held in them. "Barnes, Max, you two will be on the front lines."

I balked at him, "You're joking."

His brows pulled together with a stiff shake of his head. Bucky glared at the table in front of him with his fists clenched. "You two are our strongest offense and your teamwork is refined even if you two are at odds right now. We need that kind of manpower to get through their defenses. I need everyone else stationed around the area to wait as backup and cover our blind spots. We can't allow them to call in for reinforcements or pull any surprises on us."

I grit my teeth and sank deeper into my seat.

"Thor, I want you to cause a storm if you can. Keep their communications down and take out any arial defense they might try to use." Thor nodded, the only response he gave Tony. The brunette's attention turned to Steve next, "I need you and Natasha to take out any scouts or watchers they might have as quietly as possible so Barnes and Max can get in and locate the scepter." Another nod from the two of them. "Barton, you'll take out anyone they might miss. That's all for now, go suit up. We will go over all the details on the Quinnjet."

With that, I stood from the table and left. Rage roiled in my veins as I stalked towards the staircase, opting to take them over the confines of the elevator that the others were bound to use. The closer I got to the launch pad, the more the anger consumed me. Why would Stark put us together when he knows that something changed between us? Everyone knew that something happened, we were never even seen on the same floor now. And then that thing with Natasha...

I felt the railing of the stairs crunch under my hand as I took the last step onto the Heli-level. The rest of the team was already bustling around, finalizing their gear and loading equipment into the hangar. I B-lined for my locker, swinging it open and snagging my suit from within. I had requested for a new one, and I was not disappointed by Tony's fulfillment of it.

Burgundy fabric, trimmed with black and silver. I was sick of the dried blood that was visible on my old suit, and the white fabric had begun to turn a sickeningly yellow orange from the layers of missions. The new suit fit much like the last, fitting my curves and hugging my skin. I zipped it up to my throat and secured it there, leaning over to lace and strap on my shoes as another body sank to the remaining bench beside me.

"You have to promise me not to gut Barnes out there in the field for whatever happened between you two."

I turned my face to Tony, catching his arms folding in front of his chest. I let myself frown at him, "I wouldn't hurt anyone on the team."

Tony gave me a pointed look that said he knew that was not entirely true, "You broke his nose in a training session not that long ago."

I shook my head, finishing the knot on my shoe and leaning back up. "He deserved it, he cracked my ribs in that match."

A sigh forced itself out of him as he rubbed a hand over his face, "Just promise me, Max."

I shrugged, "Fine. I promise I won't kill Barnes. Happy?"

He just stared at me for a moment before nodding slowly, his shoulders dropping. "Are you ever going to tell me what happened between you two? You were so happy, then you came back from that mission, and it was like the coin flipped."

Instead of answering, I latched my sword to my back and strapped on my knives. When I couldn't find anything else to do besides answer him, I turned back towards him on the bench. "It isn't a big deal. He doesn't like me, and I don't like him. I will make sure the mission is successful just like I always do, and then he and I can go back to ignoring each other until you decide to throw us together again."

He flinched but didn't say anything else as I snatched my mask out of the bottom of the locker and slammed the door.

I marched over to the hanger to find most of the others strapping themselves into the seats. Thor gave me a smile, but I wasn't in the mood for talking. Or listening. I chose the farthest seat without a second thought and pressed the mask onto my face until the final snap of metal echoed in my ears.

I watched the team through the black eyes of my mask as Tony lifted the hangar and strode to the cockpit for takeoff. Thor had taken to frowning at the wall of the jet and flickering his gaze toward Bucky every once in a while. The latter sat with his hands clenched together between his knees and his head down. Natasha picked at her nails next to Steve who was leaned against the wall with his eyes closed. Clint and Thor were the only ones seated on the same side I sat on. None of us talked as the jet shook with turbulence.

I turned my attention to my hands, flexing my fingers and pinching my brows in focus as I forced my nails outwards. The act alone was hard, and a small sliver of worry opened up inside me. I pressed my elbow to my side as smoothly as I could to avoid drawing attention. The wound beneath my suit ached at the contact and I stifled a hiss.

I would have to be more careful to avoid any contact on that side or I'll be sidelined for sure. The team needed my skillset on this mission otherwise Tony wouldn't have dared to put Bucky and I in the same vicinity. So, I would grin and bear it until I could get back to the Tower.

I lifted my head to find a pair of eyes watching me from across the jet. Bright and blue and hard. He couldn't see the way I frowned or the pain I was sure swam in my eyes at the sight of him, not while I hid it beneath the skull and teeth. All he saw was what he had wanted to see.

A killer.

His eyes didn't stay on me long before they dropped back to his lap, and I eased into my seat. I figured it would be best if I rested for now and try to heal some more before our mission. Thor wouldn't let anything happen to me, so my nerves calmed as the ever-present exhaustion swept me away.

_____

Bucky-

I saw her flinch. A jolt of her shoulders and a sharp breath was all the indication I needed to realize something was wrong. She had made the movement nearly imperceptible, but I saw it.

I hadn't meant to look at her, to even acknowledge her until it was absolutely necessary, but my body still betrayed me whenever she was near. I still gravitated towards her, still couldn't keep myself from listening to every breath she took, every movement she made.

It was torture.

I sat there watching as her head slumped forward in her sleep. That was another thing. Max had apparently been sleeping more often. I had overheard Thor talking to Tony about it one morning before I had entered and the two of them had shut up like clams. They didn't ever talk about her near me. It was good, I didn't want to know any more about her. She was a monster, plain and simple.

Thor had taken to glaring at me any time I was around. He's been glued to her ever since they first met. It was frustrating, seeing her with him. Watching her laugh so easily and smile so much. I knew I shouldn't feel that way. I had no reason to be jealous, she was a killer and nothing more. He just didn't know her.

I tried to bide my time going over the mission details in my head and listen to the whir of the jet as we flew. Steve had fallen asleep next to me as well, his body arched over his knees with his arms resting heavily on his thighs. He has been busying himself with all kinds of paperwork I hadn't asked about. He and I might have made amends, but we still seemed to have vastly different opinions on things now. Like a switch was flipped and we just can't get back to the way we were before.

I lost myself in my thoughts somewhere along the ride and the turbulence of the landing brought me out of it and back into the situation at hand. The others had begun unbuckling and gathering up their weapons, checking ammo and packing extra cartridges where they could. I followed suit, catching Thor waking Max out of the corner of my eye.

Her body jolted at his touch and her clawed hand wrapped itself in a vise grip around the god's wrist. He held his arm up in surrender as she took in her surroundings and eased her hand away with a small drop of her shoulders. I couldn't catch what they said between each other as I stepped away, but the flash of worry across Thor's face had that rotten feeling in my chest returning. I strode over to the ammunition and slotted a few extra cartridges into my pants pockets and checked my guns. I shifted my shoulder, flexing my fingers to ensure there weren't any issues before we headed into the head of the fight. After I made sure everything was set, I joined Steve at the front of the jet.

He gave me a tight smile and clamped a hand on my shoulder. "Be careful out there Buck, we don't know what we'll be going into. Make sure you keep an eye on Max too. Don't let her stab you in the back while were out there."

All I could do was nod as I heard her subtle steps approach behind me. Her voice trickled out from behind her mask in a sickly-sweet tone that had a shiver spidering down my spine. "Luckily for you, the only people I plan on stabbing in the back today is Hydra. Maybe next time, Captain." She accented his title in heavy Russian that seemed to become more prominent on missions like this.

I turned my head just enough to view her over my shoulder as my friend turned to face her with a deep frown marking his features. In her new suit, red as blood, and that mask... She looked like the devil.

"Alright team, remember the plans and stick to your parts. We can't get the scepter without cooperation so we can fight later. Focus on the mission." Tony's suit folded itself over him as he spoke and clamped over his head as he finished his sentence.

The hanger opened and Max shot out into the tall grass, hunkering low and disappearing out of sight. I shoved myself out of the hanger and dove into the brush after her, doing my best to follow the trail of downed grass as I went. Surprisingly, her red suit was almost impossible to see against the tall shrubbery. Her form was simply too low to the ground for anyone to catch the obnoxious color.

I nearly toppled over her as I stumbled to a halt behind her in the brush. I peered over her shoulder to scan the area around us, carefully placing a foot or so between us. The silver teeth of her mask glinted in the afternoon sun, and she tucked her head lower to keep it from drawing attention.

Her face turned to me, and my stomach hollowed at the black eyes of her mask, flashes of the past threatening to take me far into my mind before she shoved my shoulder harshly. "Keep a level head. Rogers and the others are taking out the scouts and then we'll move in." I couldn't help but catch the way she practically spit his name. I could imagine clear as day the angry curl of her lip at the mention of my friend.

I shook my head to clear away the fog and focused on the shadowed figures of our team moving in on the guards against the fence line. The Hydra we had targeted set up a camp, obviously to move as easily as they could without drawing too many eyes. They were simple tents and the smoke from a few fires went up in dark tendrils into the sky. Quite a few soldiers roamed the area, but fortunately for us none of them seemed to be carrying more than a handgun or the few semi-automatics.

I watched as the guards on watch began to drop like flies, the distinct sound of Steve's shield flying through the air carried on the wind. It was nearly as imperceptible as Natasha's choke wire.

As soon as the last body dropped to the ground Max was moving, staying as low to the ground as she could. I followed her once more, easing into the gap the others had provided. It was a limited window to breach while the rest of the watch hadn't noticed their fallen comrades. Max eased around the tents, easily weaving her way through the narrow trails between them while I struggled to keep my shoulders from brushing against the sides.

Brown hair peaked over one of the tents in front of Max and her body stilled, rising ever so slowly as he rounded the corner and came face to face with her. He barely had time to open his mouth before her hands were gripping his head and twisting. The snap of his neck echoed in my ears as she eased his body to the ground and maneuvered it to appear as if he had just fallen asleep. "We can't let them know we've entered the camp. Keep your attacks as quiet as you can and limit the blood."

I kept my voice as low as I could. "We need to locate the scepter."

She shrugged, peering around another tent before heading deeper into the camp. "Feel free to take off and look for it on your own."

"We have to stay together." I followed after her, shooting a glance backwards to ensure we hadn't been noticed.

Max's voice was anything but kind as she replied, "We don't have to stay together, the mission is to find the scepter."

"As a team."

Her head snapped towards me, and her tone was biting and venomous, "And how well did that work out for us last time? As far as I'm concerned, I'm better off without you."

Her words stung, and I couldn't do much more than grit my teeth as she turned away and stalked onward. Thunder cracked above us, and the clouds began roiling in the sky. Thor must have sensed airborne enemies.

I didn't follow her. If she wanted to be alone, fine, she could be alone. I turned towards the opposite direction and began to make my way through the other side of the camp. I checked each tent, waiting outside and listening in on who was inside. If I didn't hear anyone, I ducked my head in and scanned the area for any signs of a Commander's tent. Something as precious to Hydra as the scepter wouldn't be kept very far from someone important and trusted.

I had made it around most of the eastern side of the encampment, and still there was no sign of a Commander or general. In fact, the whole camp was scarce, save for a few agents here and there. There didn't seem to be any distinct tent for the higher ups, which unsettled me greatly.

A hand on my shoulder had me reeling back my left arm to strike, only to land the punch against thin air and receive a foot to the ass. I stumbled a few steps before I whipped around with a curse. Max merely looked around for anyone close by before removing her mask. Worry swam on her features as she squatted against the side of one of the tents.

Her knuckles were white against the knife gripped in her hand. "Comms are down. We're in here blind."

I pressed my fingers to my ear to confirm her words and the crackle of static trickled into my ears. I cursed, "The others should be holding their positions. It shouldn't be that hard to find the scepter and get out of here. There aren't many guards-"

"That's the thing," she swiveled her blade around her finger, one of her nervous habits. "Why wouldn't you guard something with all the men you could spare?"

Her words sank like a rock in my head. "It isn't here, is it?"

Cold eyes met my own, glinting in that predatory way. "No, and we crawled right into their trap."

Tags<3

@imdoingathingmom / @cjand10 / @calwitch / @blackbirdwitch22 / @hzdhrtss

[the-mom-friend-dot-com]

Tbb hcs

• Tech having a holo pad to keep track of stuff but it just ends up being a list of stupid things everyone has done

• Hunter learning how to braid hair incase Omega grows out her hair 

• Crosshair having a secret compartment in his bunk for his toothpick stash

• Everyone knowing morse code so they can talk at night without waking the others up

• Unspoken rule that if Tech is sleeping you do not wake him unless there is an emergency 

• Crosshair saying he drinks his caf black but it probably has as much sugar as a frappuccino no one needs to know that though 

• Wrecker isn’t even allowed near the caf machine 

• Hunter and Echo either don’t have the time or effort to dress up their caf but when they do it is very specific 

• Crosshair having how everyone likes their caf memorized 

• Wrecker is a very heavy sleeper

• The effort needed to wake him isn’t worth it. Let him sleep. In fact go on and go back to sleep yourself

• Everyone having their own cereals

• They always know if someone took some of theirs

• Omega has a box of lucky charms because she likes the marshmallows

• Wrecker has some sugary cereal like coca puffs or fruity pebbles

• Tech has cheerios or wheaties

• Hunter has one of those cereals that are like oats and dried fruit

• Echo has fruit loops because they were Fives’ favorite

• Crosshair has granola bars instead of cereal

[dragonsmachine]

Granola Candy Bar Machine High Reputation Chocolate Snack Compound Candy...

[dinosaurtsukki]

haikyuu!! as strange people you came across in your campus (uni au)

we all came across a person doing strange things and still think about them to this day. here is that post but feat. haikyuu!! characters

Hinata: you were walking down a hallway and then a locker door swung open on its own and hinata climbed out, grabbed his books, and proceeded to walk down the same hallway to his class

Kageyama: there was a crowd of what appeared to be maintenance men around a vending machine. when you walked closer you realized that a guy’s hand was stuck inside. that was kageyama

Daichi: he was walking around with a ‘don’t disturb’ sign hanging around his neck. nobody disturbed him.

Sugawara: you saw him being handed a cup of piping hot cocoa in the dining hall and watched as he took a few gulps of the drink before shivering as if he had a brain freeze

Tsukishima: he was your classmate once and there was nothing generally wrong about him except that he ate Froot Loops BUY EATING EACH PIECE OF CEREAL SEPARATELY AND TAKING A SIP OF MILK LIKE A FUCKING PSYCHOPATH

Yamaguchi: he was sitting in the library crying his eyes out until an alarm went off and then he stopped crying and started reading a book

Yachi: the girl who taped off an area in the hallway with police tape before crying in that designated area

Tanaka: you saw him being dragged out of the infirmary because he wanted to ‘hug the flu patient’ so that he didn’t have to take his exam the next day

Nishinoya: you just saw him climbing down a building using the window ledges before jumping all the way down from the second floor window to land gracefully on the grass. then he walked away as if nothing happened 

Ennoshita: in your chemistry lab, he took out an egg from his pocket and proceeded to boil it in a beaker over a bunsen burner. and then he fed it to his friend

Asahi: the friend

Oikawa: he walked into class thirty minutes late with an iced coffee in his hands and when the professor told him that it wasn’t allowed, he just walked out and never came back

Hanamaki: he was sitting on a bench in the quad with a huge ass bag of cheese puffs on his lap and eating from it slowly. you went to class, came out, and saw that he was still there. eating cheese puffs. 

Matsukawa: he was playing UNO with a friend in the hallway. his friend had one card left and then he put down a fuck ton of ‘skip’ ‘reverse’ ‘draw 2′ ‘draw 4′ and ‘wildcard’ cards before winning the entire game

Iwaizumi: the friend who almost won and had everything taken away from him 

Ushijima: he would bring entire heads of broccoli and/or cauliflower to class and just rip of florets and pop them into his mouth. sometimes he’d bring a salt-shaker for seasoning

Shirabu: the guy in your biology lab class who brought a korean sheet mask instead of a face mask. he wasn’t allowed to the the experiment so he sat in the corner, with his lab coat, and the sheet mask on his face

Semi: he was the guy who was usually stoic in your music class. one time, when he thought no one was looking, he lifted his recorder to his nose and played a few notes

Tendou: he made a presentation in your class about developing an app that could tell how much your kidneys were worth for ‘desperate students’ 

Goshiki: in class you watched him dim the screen of his laptop and then use it as a mirror while he cut his bangs

Bokuto: he was eating spaghetti while sitting on a bench outside. the spaghetti was in a ziploc bag. he was using chopsticks.

Akaashi: he was your seatmate and during class, you’d notice him pull out a thick roll of bubble wrap and just,,, pop the bubbles,,, throughout the entire class

Kuroo: he was in the children’s books section of the library sitting on a beanbag chair and reading ‘The Giving Tree’ by shel silverstein. he was sobbing and muttering ‘no tree, you don’t have to let him cut you down. self-care!’ before the librarian told him to shut up

Kenma: in one of the dining halls, he opened an entire bag of potato chips and dumped it on his tray but he was sitting near a window and a gust of wind blew all of his chips away. he kind of just sat there for a while

Yaku: it was talent show night at your residence hall. he walked up to the stage carrying nothing but a ukulele and you thought he was going to sing ‘Somewhere Over the Rainbow’ or something. he introduced himself as ‘descended from gods’ and proceeded to play ‘Master of Shadows’ by Nirvana

Lev: he was wading through the school fountain with his pants rolled up and picking up the coins that people tossed in. then he took the coins to buy himself a bag of chips from the vending machine

Atsumu: he was sitting in front of you with his laptop open in your first class for the semester. you watched him google ‘jobs that don’t need a degree’ 

Osamu: he was sitting on the sidewalk with a troubled look on his face and his ear pressed to his phone. at first, you thought he was hearing some terrible news and felt sorry for him and then you heard him say: ‘what do you mean you don’t sell 20-piece chicken nuggets?’ 

Suna: he was perched on a rooftop with a brightly colored nerf gun in front of him. you watched him lift the sight to his eyes before firing a foam dart at a group of pigeons nearby. the pigeons scattered and flew away. 

Kita: the guy feeding the pigeons

Sakusa: you saw him in the bathroom washing a bar of soap with liquid soap

taglist (still open to anyone who wants in!): @montys-chaos​ @miyumtwins​ @strawberriimilkshake​ @pocubo​ @sugawara-sweetheart@akaashisbabydoll @laure-chan@therainroguefanfiction@atetiffdoesart@stephdaninja@oikaw-ugh@charliefredb@dramaqueenweeb1469@tremblinghearts@applepienation@doodleniella​

[marinamurdock]

Sasunaru Bites pt1

So I imagine Sasunaru as a millenial couple at the grocery store, and it goes a little something like this:

• naruto pushes the cart while sasuke pulls out his iphone 13 (yuo, he keeps updated) from his pocket and opens the note with the grocery shopping list

• sasuke: we need eggs

• naruto: do you think the hen suffered?

• sasuke:

• sasuke: whatever. we also need milk-

• naruto: do you think the cow suffer-

• sasuke: probably. that's why we're taking almond milk. *puts two cartons of almond milk into the cart*

• naruto frowns as he puts inside the cart two gallons of cow milk, sasuke rolls his eyes.

• they pass to the cereal hall, sasuke checks his lists and diverts his eyes to the phone

• 0.0005 sec later, naruto appears with a box of choco puffs and a box of froot loops

• sasuke: usuratonkachi... too much sugar. we're taking this instead (he says, putting two boxes of special k, making naruto pout)

• naruto: what about ramen?

• sasuke: we have ramen at home remember? you bought around 30 boxes last week?

• naruto scratching the back of his head, laughing nervously*: ah haha right, it's just they were about to expire and had 70% discount

• sasuke rolls his eyes again

• sasuke: i can't believe it... anyway, we need veggies

• naruto pukes*

• while sasuke picks the veggies (green onions, regular onion, potatoes, tomatoes and avocados, for his avocado toasts with cherry tomatoes in the morning) naruto is looking around, a woman pases by with a baby sitting on the cart.

• naruto starts making faces at the baby, who laughs

• both sasuke and the mother of the baby are at the fruit section, picking some oranges and bananas. they both look at naruto playing with the baby

• sasuke freaks out when he realizes the woman next to him is the baby's mother

• tries to lay low, embarrassed of naruto making faces.

• mother of baby: oh he's so funny

• sasuke: i don't know him, i am not with him

• sasuke leaves immediately

• they return together and pass the frozen section

• naruto is quiet

• sasuke stares at him. his heart twitches at the view as he pulls his phone back into the pocket

• enough of grocery lists for today

• he approaches naruto and pinches his cheeks softly

• naruto jumps on his feet, surprised as he turns to look at sasuke with bright red cheeks, who's looking at him with love and admiration

• sasuke: ice cream?

• naruto's eyes light up as he nods eagerly like a little kid. sasuke chuckles as he points with a nod towards the ice cream section, encouraging naruto to pick the flavors

• naruto rushes to the fridges and quickly returns with his all time favorite, chocolate fudge with chocolate chips and brownie bites and sasuke's ultimate favorite, vanilla bean.

• they go together, to the cashier machine

• naruto offers to pay this time, as usual, but as usual, sasuke never lets him

• he pays with his bar code on his phone. sasuke's not a big fan of credit cards or any kind of cards for the matter

• naruto offers a $20 bill to contribute with the total, but sasuke chuckles as he takes two of his fingers to naruto's forehead, giving it a small thud.

• sasuke: sorry, next time usuratonkachi

• naruto blushes but both laugh at the same time as they take the bags and walk back towards the car together

• naruto knowing sasuke will never let him pay

Ps. sasuke is the one who drives because naruto has never passed the driver's license test.

[emeraldwaves]

Title: What Happens at Frat Parties Chapter 2 Pairing:  Huwumi Rating: E Word Count:  2,717 Read on Ao3 Summary:  

For Hawks, getting the girl has always been easy. He’s popular, attractive and part of the frat house that throws the best parties. When Dabi’s sister shows up one night, Hawks realizes not everything comes as easy to him as he thought. And while Fuyumi thinks Hawks isn’t her type, as time goes on, she finds his advances harder to resist. Maybe there’s more to him than she realizes.

Fic under the cut!

"Let us all take note of this momentous occasion," Dabi said, waving his hand back and forth. "Hawks coming downstairs alone on a Sunday morning."

Wound meet salt.

He shouldn't have expected any less with Dabi, especially since the person he had tried to spend his night with was Dabi’s goddamn sister.

Each creak of his foot against the stairs was an annoying reminder of how utterly rejected he had been last night. That didn't happen to him. Ever. People liked him. Girls liked him, and even if they didn't they were pretty damn good at pretending. And he couldn't blame those people.

Hawks snorted, walking straight past the couch, heading to the kitchen. "Would you have preferred me to come down with your sister?"

Dabi made a choking noise, draping himself over the back of the couch. "I enjoyed seeing her stomp all over you."

"I'm sure," he grumbled, glancing at the heaps of trash gathered atop their kitchen counter. He was also sure he wanted to get out of the house before anyone tried to force him to clean. That was too much effort.

He shoved some bottles aside, fumbling around for the Keurig machine, praying it was in working condition. Last semester, someone had tried to shove three K-cups in at one time and it had not ended well.

Lifting open the machine, he sighed in relief when it seemed to be in working order. Coffee was his one shining beacon on this hellish morning.

"So," Dabi said, leaning against the door frame, placing a fresh blunt between his lips, "what did she say?"

"Who? Your sister?" Hawks asked, folding his arms while the coffee dribbled down into the cup.

"No, the other girls you hit on last night. Oh wait, there were none because you had no fuckin' soul after Fuyumi ripped yours from your chest."

"..." Hawks stared at Dabi and rolled his eyes. "I got shit to do today. I can't talk about this."

"Won't, can't, same difference," Dabi shrugged. "I know this hurts your ego, but 'Yumi would never go for someone like you."

Something itched under Hawks' skin, a tickle of a challenge. She'd already ignited something in him but now... even more so.

He leaned his elbows against the counter, swiping his tongue across his lower lip. "Never?" he asked, raising his eyebrow.

"Never," Dabi said, blowing out a long puff of smoke into the already musky air.

"Why did she come to the party last night dressed like she was going to a library?" Hawks asked.

"Probably because she was. She lives there," Dabi said flatly.

"Do you even know what a library is?" Shigaraki asked, having seemingly appeared from thin air to get something from their basically empty fridge, the remnants of the party scattered around the tall frozen appliance.

"'Course I know what a library is. I just don't need it."

It was true; he didn't need a library, but not because he did poorly in school. No, school was easy, and he didn't need to study, so he didn't and his GPA was still flawless.

"I'm sure it would do you some good to go," Dabi sighed, flicking a bit of ash into the trash can.

"Says you?" Hawks scoffed, raising an eyebrow.

"Nah. Fuyumi has got our library quota covered," Dabi said, shrugging.

"I'm pretty sure that's not how siblings work," Shigaraki muttered, putting the milk back in the fridge as he slurped at the giant bowl of cereal in his hands.

"It is when you're twins," Dabi snorted.

"Oh, no wonder! She got all the good looks! Too bad we're stuck with your ugly face!" Hawks smirked, gulping down the rest of his coffee. He had to get out of the house or else he wouldn't leave in time for certain people to get back and once they did, he would never get to leave and-

"Hello friends! I've returned from my weekend getaway with my family and-"

Iida Tensei. Leader of the house, incredibly neat... and way too into team-building activities. His reason for being a part of the frat house was far different than the rest of them. He and Mirio, another boy in their house, were far too goody-goody for all of them.

"It seems you all... had fun this weekend! Should we clean all this up together?"

"Sorry, Ten, I gotta run, duty calls!" Hawks said, slamming his cup down onto the counter as he slipped past Dabi and Shigaraki, leaving them at the mercy of tidying up.

"But Hawks!" he called out. "It goes faster when we all do it together-"

"I know, it really sucks I gotta go, but Dabi just told me about this amazing new place called the library and I just... well, I'm dying to check it out," he laughed, rubbing at his neck.

Dabi glared, about to open his mouth before Tensei cut him off.

"New? Is there a new library on campus?" Tensei asked, glancing at the others.

"New for some people," Shigaraki sighed, staring blankly at Hawks while he slowly inched away.

"Anyway, have fun with team building! Tell me all about it!" He flicked his aviator sunglasses down, pointing his fingers at them before slipping out the front door. He had no reason to head to campus today, but he was formulating one for when he got home and Tensei asked him about it.

Of course, he could say he was going to find the most fascinating woman he'd ever come across. He had a feeling that wouldn't be a very good excuse, and the last thing he needed was Dabi getting on his ass about his sister.

Still, he made his way to the library knowing exactly what he was looking for.

~~

"So let me get this straight," Nejire began, gently tapping her spoon against the countertop. "You actually went over to your brother's house on a Saturday night."

"Yes," Fuyumi said, swinging her legs back and forth, her toes gently tapping the underside of the breakfast bar.

"Okay first off, why didn't you tell me?! I was probably there!" she whined, shoving a large mouthful of cereal between her lips.

Fuyumi sighed. "I told you, I went to get the present for our mom, and that was it. I didn't want to stay and party or anything like that..."

"Have you ever been there on a Saturday night?" Nejire asked, the giggle bursting from her lips. Apparently it was too much for her friend to even think about and admittedly the scene had been a bit ridiculous.

"Of course not. I hate that kind of thing..."

And she hated seeing her brother like that. Dabi was not Touya... and therefore, she wanted nothing to do with him in that state.

"Yeah, yeah. And you turned down Hawks," she said, a snort slipping through her guffawing.

"I didn't realize this was such a big deal."

"Uhm, of course it is!" she said, pressing her hand to her chest. "It's a HUGE deal. I wish I could've seen the look on his face!" She spread her eyes wide with her fingers. "Was it like a deer in headlights?!"

"Uhm... Y'know I don't really remember. Honestly I feel a little guilty. I think he was trying to be nice at one point, and I was just so frustrated with Touya-"

"Oh, 'Yumi... don't feel guilty. Hawks prides himself on being able to get any girl he wants. It probably just bruised his ego," she said.

"Oh. Well, guilt gone," she snorted, pushing away from the table. She picked up her bowl and Nejire's, taking them to the sink. They would never get cleaned if she left them to the blue-haired girl.

"But you know," Nejire sighed. "He probably would've been amazing in bed."

Fuyumi's cheeks heated immediately. "Neji!"

"Whaaat?!" she hummed, swinging her legs back and forth. "I'm serious. Plus, it's been forever since you did anything!"

Her roommate was a bit too blunt for her own good sometimes.

"I know, that's the problem! I don't want to be another... notch in his bedpost!" Fuyumi muttered, wiping off the dishes. Twisting her lips, she turned to her roommate. "Would you have done it?"

"Mmm..." Nejire hummed, trilling her lips. "Probably! I prefer girls, but he's hot. Though I don't think Miri or Tama would've approved."

"Do you need their approval to do things?" Fuyumi asked, raising her eyebrow.

"No, but they live there and I wouldn't want to feel awkward going over there all the time," she giggled. "I'm not you, I do enjoy their parties. Actually, they throw the best ones!"

"That's the best?" Fuyumi said, wrinkling her nose.

"Yup!" Clicking her tongue, Nejire pushed herself away from the counter. "Okay... 'Yumi... I get this isn't your thing, but I do think it would be nice for you to get out more! We're only in college once-"

"I mean technically there is graduate school-"

"'Yumi please!" Nejire said, wrapping her arms around her. "Can you come to one party? Please! I'll even make it easy on you." Her voice was annoyingly sing-song and cheerful.

"Easy on me?" Fuyumi sighed, gently slipping away from her grip. Though Nejire, as always, was persistent and gripped her hand.

"Yes! They're throwing a pool party this Saturday! Midterms are over so you don't have to study."

Fuyumi wanted to argue that she always had to study, but Nejire was relentless.

"It'll all be outside so you don't have to be inside their stuffy house and you can avoid Touya and Hawks and just hang out with me and Mirio and Tamaki!" Nejire was practically begging, her voice growing higher and higher pitched.

"I'll... I'll think about it." Fuyumi sighed.

"It would be hilarious if Hawks saw how cute you look in a bathing suit and he'll be reminded of his complete rejection!" she laughed, nuzzling her cheek against Fuyumi's shoulder. Nejire often got affectionate when she was so overly excited.

Fuyumi wasn't too keen on going back to her brother's house. Seeing him nowadays was usually unpleasant to say the least. For awhile, she had tried, before Touya joined the frat, but now it was absolutely useless. She only prayed Natsuo, their younger brother, would stay far away from frats next year.

She gasped. "Maybe this time I'll get to see his face!"

"Okay, okay," Fuyumi snorted. "As fun as this daydream of yours is, you have to let me go get ready. I'm going to see my mom and then I gotta get to the library. I'm already late and we have exams all this week."

"Fuyumi!" Nejire sighed, rubbing her forehead. "I mean this in the most endearing way possible but your existence stresses me out."

Fuyumi pouted, rolling her eyes. It wasn't the first time Nejire had said something like that.

The two had been roommates since their freshman year; now juniors, they had upgraded to a small, on campus apartment. Nejire was nothing like Fuyumi, but somehow the two got along, partially because Nejire was pushy and Fuyumi couldn't deal with saying no to the lively girl.

"Well, I'll be getting out of your hair," Fuyumi said, picking up her backpack and slinging it over her shoulder. "You should do a little studying this week."

"Oh, I will, I will," Nejire said, waving her hand up and down. "You know I always get my work done."

"Always," Fuyumi giggled, knowing it would most likely be done as last minute as possible. "I'll see you tonight."

"Maybe I'll join you in the library later," Nejire hummed, rocking back and forth on her feet. "I definitely need to print at least one essay."

"See you then!" Fuyumi nodded, waving as she headed out the door, ready to put yesterday behind her. She didn't really want to go to the pool party, so she would just have to find some good excuse to get out of it.

~~

"Good morning, Mama!" Fuyumi smiled, peeking her head into the small hospital room.

"Oh! Good morning, 'Yumi!" The older woman smiled, placing the book she had open off to the side table.

Even sickly, Fuyumi always thought her mother was the most beautiful woman she'd ever seen. Her long white hair shimmered silver against the harsh lighting of the hospital room light. Her gray eyes were so soft - tired - but they always twinkled with joy when Fuyumi or any of her siblings went to visit.

"Just you today," she hummed softly.

Fuyumi didn't falter while she switched out the old flowers on her mother's dresser. "Mhm," she said. "Natsuo is panicking about his mid-terms and Shouto has extra lessons today."

"Always working too hard," she sighed, shaking her head. "And Touya?"

Fuyumi hated when she asked. She didn't like to lie for her twin, but she couldn't exactly tell her mother her eldest son preferred to get high and party instead of coming to see her.

No, that wasn't fair. There were just some things her brother wasn't great at handling. Most things actually.

Still, her mother always asked about him.

"O-oh! You know..." Fuyumi stammered.

"He's hungover?" Rei asked, a gentle smile on her face.

"Probably." Fuyumi clicked her tongue, unable to hold back the snappy retort.

Rei chuckled. "Well, I'm happy one of my children seems to be enjoying their youth." If only she realized just how intensely Touya was 'enjoying' his youth.

"Mama," Fuyumi sighed, plopping down on the edge of her bed. "I'm enjoying my time," she giggled. "I like studying," she said.

Her mother smiled, the image warming Fuyumi's heart. "I know you do sweetheart, but it's okay to do something completely for fun from time to time."

She thought about Nejire's gentle teasing and how she'd rejected Hawks. For some unknown reason, he popped into her head, his unruly blond hair and lazy smile. He was handsome, but he knew it, and he was too heavily involved with her brother and his hooligan friends.

"R-Right..."

"You're blushing a bit. Something on your mind?" Rei smiled, leaning towards her daughter. Gently, her mother stroked through her hair, the feeling of her fingers soft against her scalp.

"No," she sighed, smiling for her mother once again. "Just thinking about some of my education classes." An easy subject change. "I think you would enjoy them, Mama," she said, going further into detail about what her classes entailed.

"Midterms are this week," she said, lifting up her heavy backpack. "I'm heading to the library after this."

"'Yumi..." her mother smiled again, though her face seemed tired, as though talking took a lot out of the woman. "You're always so hardworking, and yet you still take the time to come see me."

"Of course," Fuyumi said softly, taking her mother's hand and squeezing it. "I love you the most, Mama. Even more than studying!"

"I would hope so!" Rei teased, squeezing her daughter's hand back.

She sighed, glancing at the backpack. "Do you really think I study too much?"

"Mmm," Rei hummed. "No. I think you work hard and that's very respectable. But I also know your father... puts a lot of weight on studying and your grades. I just hope you don't... feel pressured."

"I don't! I-I promise I don't!" she said, shaking her head.

Rei had always been sensitive to how her children were treated by their father.

"I suppose I just... would like for you to have fun too. But I understand if you don't want to go to large events," Rei chuckled.

"They're not really for me."

Definitely more Touya's scene. She resisted the urge to wrinkle her nose just thinking about it.

"Well... don't hold yourself back for anyone, okay?" Rei said, cupping her cheek.

"Okay, Mama," she smiled. "You don't have to worry about me."

Fuyumi could've stayed with her mother forever. In fact, if she had it her way, she most likely would have, despite knowing she needed to get to the library. However, visiting hours didn't last forever, and saying goodbye was always difficult.

Standing at the doorway, she waved one more time, always lingering for a second too long, her heart unable to move.

[dragonextruder]

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[adsahara]

Top 10 Food Items That Were Invented Accidentally

The great inventions like x-ray machine, safety glass, matches, microwave oven etc., are the result of accidental and unintentional series of activities. But do you know that there are food items that are most commonly consumed by people and are result of accidental invention. So let us learn about 10 food items that were invented accidentally.

10. Chocolate chip cookies

Chocolate chips cookies are loved, not only by children but also youngsters and adults. The chocolate chip cookie was actually accidentally invented by Ruth Graves Wakefield in 1930. The invention happened when Ruth decided to prepare a batch of Chocolate Butter Drop Do cookies, but after realising that she is out of baker’s chocolate she instead added broken pieces of Nestlé chocolate bar, and there our ever loved chocolate chip cookie was invented.

9. Potato Chips

Potato chips were invented by Chef George Crum in 1853. As the story goes, chef Crum invented potato chips accidently when a customer at Saratoga springs’ Moon Lake House was complaining that the fried potatoes were not thin enough even after slicing it thin repeatedly. Then he decided to slice the last batch of potatoes as thinly as possible, fried them and then added salt to them and sent them to customer. The customer loved them and we had our first ever potato chips invented.

8. Popsicles

Immensely popular among children this ice pop is actually invented by an 11 year old kid named Frank Epperson in 1905. One summer day Epperson left his mixed soda and water with a stick into it and then forgot the drink resulting it to remain outside in the cold night. The next morning when he got out, Epperson found his drink frozen inside the glass with wooden stick into it. He named his discovery “Epsicle” but later he changed it to “popsicle”.

7. Beer

The enormously consumed beverage “beer” is said to be discovered by Mesopotamians about 10000 years ago. The invention happened while they were trying to store grains for their bread, but because of the dampness of their storage spaces it caused their grain fermentation. some Mesopotamians were brave enough to taste the drink and “beer” was invented.

6. Ice cream cones

The ice cream cone was invented in 1904 at Louis world’s Fair by Ernest A. Hamwi. Ice-cream cone was discovered when an ice cream vendor at the fair ran out of the bowl to serve ice cream in. After seeing this vendor next to him who was selling waffles, came with the idea of spinning the waffle into cone like shape for the ice cream. The idea of serving ice cream into cone like waffle seem compelling to customer and we can see how ice cream cone has made its way to our heart.

5. Coca cola

John Stith Pemberton, an American pharmacist invented coca-cola in the year 1886 at Atlanta. During the Battle of Columbus, Pemberton became injured which led him to get addicted to morphine. To cure his addiction Pemberton researched and experimented on painkillers that would serve as drug free alternative for his addiction. Eventually after several experiments he created syrup from coca leaves and coca wines. He named the syrup as Pemberton’s French wine coca, but later on, in 1886, due to the ban of alcohol, a non alcoholic version of wine was introduced, naming it, popularly known COCA-COLA.

4. Worcestershire sauce

The accidental invention of Worcestershire sauce took place at the town of Worchester, England in 1835. Upon returning to England, Lord Marcus Sandy, the former governor of Bengal, India found himself craving for his favourite Indian sauce and appointed drug store owners John Lea and William Perrins to recreate it, but because of the strong odour of the sauce from vegetable and fish mixture they decided to store it into basement and forgot for two whole years. The aging period changed the flavour of sauce and it became instant hit with customers.

3. Cheese Puffs/curls

The story of invention of cheese puffs is very unusual and weird one. The accidental invention of cheese curls happened by an animal food manufacturer Flakall Company of Beloit, Wisconsin in 1935. The staff there fed moist corn into the grinder in order to reduce the clogging in the machine. Edward Wilson, an employee at the corporation noticed that the moist cornmeal came out in puffy ribbons, and decided to take it home and added some seasoning to make the first cheese puffs.

2. Nachos

During World War II an accidental cuisine was invented, which is diversely enjoyed globally today. Ignacio Anaya, who was a maître ď at a restaurant called the Victory Club in Piedras Negras, Mexico, near Fort Duncan got to host a group of hungry U.S soldier wives. Anaya decided to cover a plate of Totopos with grated cheese and sliced jalapeños, and presented as an appetizer. The cuisine was named “Nachos” after Anaya’s nickname nacho.

1. Kellogg’s cereal

The most commonly consumed breakfast item corn flakes is actually an accidental discovery. In 19th century John Harvey Kellogg along with his brother Will Keith Kellogg attempted to make a food item to stop masturbation, but accidentally left the wheat to dry out and flaked it once dry to produce wheat flakes. After the discovery, in 1906, Will Keith Kellogg decided to experiment by switching from wheat to corn and marketed it alone to invent ever green breakfast option corn flakes. Read the full article

[biosafety-echo-blog]

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[tumbleweedshorts]

The Return of Malaysian Flight 370

Inspiration from blog writing-prompt-s.tumblr.com :

“You work at an air traffic control tower. A plane that disappeared 12 years ago has contacted you on the radio to let you know they’ll be landing at the airport in 15 minutes.”

"Mayday, mayday, mayd-" came the message., cut off in the middle. Suddenly I was wide awake, all my training kicking in.

"Station calling mayday, this is Busselton Regional Airport. Please state your emergency." I answered immediately.

"Mayday, mayday, this is Malaysian 370"

I didn't immediately register the call sign, just wrote it on a flight strip and stayed focused on the call, already in emergency mode.

"370, this is Busselton, I read you. Please state your emergency."

"Busselton, Malaysian 370, we've got fire in the cabin and we need to land immediately. Is your runway available?"

"Roger, 370. Can you please state your aircraft type and number of souls on board?"

"Busselton, 370, we are a triple-7 with 239 souls on board."

"Roger, 370. Do you need to dump fuel?"

"Busselton, 370, that's a negative, we'd like to come in to land immediately if possible."

"Roger, 370. Please confirm your location"

"Busselton, 370, we are at three-two degrees three-niner minutes south, one-one-fiver degrees fiver-zero minutes east, descending past flight level two-zero-zero, bearing one-oh-six true at three-seven-niner knots."

"Roger, 370, maintain one-oh-six true and descend to flight level one-zero-zero. Reduce speed two-fiver-zero knots. Path is all clear of traffic, you are first in line to land on runway two-one. Please acknowledge."

"Busselton, 370. Maintain one-oh-six. Descend one-zero-zero. Reduce speed two-fiver-zero. Path clear to runway, first in line to land, runway two-one. Thank you."

"370, will you need emergency services upon landing?"

"Busselton, 370, af-" Silence for a few seconds.

"370, Busselton, I missed the end of your answer"

No answer.

"370, Busselton, please repeat"

No repeat.

"370, Busselton, come in"

They didn't.

"370, Busselton, please acknowledge"

No one acknowledged. Unsure what to do, I nevertheless called emergency services, thinking 'better safe than sorry', to make sure they'd be on the runway when the plane landed.

All the while I kept trying to contact the plane. When they reached the point where they needed to turn, I called, "370, Busselton, turn right, heading two-zero-seven, reduce speed one-eight-zero knots, you are cleared for a straight-in approach. Wind Conditions are clear, visibility unlimited, wind is one-fiver knots out of two-two-fiver degrees. Please acknowledge."

"Busselton, 370, rog-" came the brief reply. I tried to contact them again, while staring at the radar screen. Suddenly I realized how nervous and scared I was. I'd never had a crash before. I'd never even had radio difficulties with an aircraft.

As I called out repeatedly to the plane, I kept my eye on the radar. I saw it turn and head down toward the runway. Then, suddenly, meters away from the threshold, the plane vanished from the screen. By then I should be able to see it clearly out the window. Nothing. Craning my neck to look over the monitors, I tried to see it. I stood up for a better view. Nothing there. Dumbfounded, I stared back and forth between the radar and the runway. I then fumbled for the phone to call the emergency response team. They hadn't seen it either. The burning plane had completely vanished. It was like-

A jarring alarm brought me back to reality. A nightmare. It had all been a bloody nightmare! I hadn't lost a plane, I was lying in bed, at home, with nothing to worry about except getting up and going to work.

So as usual, I got up, woke my roommate Joe and hit the shower. While I was washing I thought back to my nightmare. It was still vivid in my mind, and I couldn't shake it. There was something creepy about that nightmare... I mean, aside from the nightmare part. Ridiculous. Nightmares are just in your mind. It must have just been nerves... Maybe I'm close to burning out, maybe I need a vacation.

Still, there was something nagging me at the back of my head. To convince myself of the absurdity of that impression, I played it again in my mind. The call from Malaysian... Oh. That was it. Malaysian 370. Why that particular flight number? In fact, why would the flight number stay so imprinted on my memory of the dream when I was already starting to lose some of the details? That must have been it.

As I killed the water and put the shower head back, I dismissed it again, for what I hoped would be the last time. It was just a nightmare, Malaysian 370 was just a fluke, maybe because of the fuss it caused almost 4 years ago when it vanished. Dried and dressed, I went to the kitchen for a bite to eat. Joe was there, ready to go. He was always faster than me at preparing.

"What took you so long?" he asked. I realized just then that my thinking must have taken longer than I thought.

"What? Oh. Nothing. Did we get more cereal bars?"

"Yeah, I put them in the big cupboard."

"Thanks"

I checked the time and realized we were running late. I just grabbed a couple of the bars, stuck them into my bag and signaled to Joe that we should go.

The drive to the airfield was fairly quiet. As Joe swung the car around the corner of the airfield and drove past the area where the private jets are parked I looked at them. The Cessnas, the Learjets, the gliders and all the way in the distance, a few ATR-72s sporting the livery of the only commercial airline based here.

We parked the car in the staff parking lot and got out. I told Joe, "Enjoy your shift!". He nodded back, then made his way to the tarmac to coordinate ground services. I made my way up to the control tower (basically just a large third-floor office with a bay window sitting on top of the small terminal building).

I sat down at my workstation and logged in. Steve was still there for another hour, and before he left he passed on information from the previous shift. I was going to be alone tonight, as it was a quiet time of year. Before Steve left I went downstairs to the vending machine for a Diet Coke (the vending machine in the actual office only has regular). He and I chatted for a bit, catching up on life and everything (he'd just been on three weeks' vacation), which kept me awake and interested and best of all, thinking about anything but the nightmare.

Once alone, however, it came back with a vengeance. I didn't seem to be able to just forget it. Usually my dreams and nightmares are gone within the hour. But it just kept nagging.

And then...

"Mayday, mayday, mayday, this is Malaysian 370". Oh no. It's happening. My nightmare is coming true. What the hell is up with the world? Anyway, just in case, I do have a job to do and bosses to report to, so I answer.

"Malaysian 370, this is Busselton Regional Airport. What is your emergency?"

"Busselton, 370. We've run out of fuel and have lost both engines. We're gliding down."

"Roger, 370. I only see you on primary radar. How many souls do you have aboard?"

"Busselton, 370. We have 239 souls aboard."

Oh bugger. Sounded like a larger jet. At that size, I wasn't even sure whether it could land decently on the runway here. At least they were out of fuel, that made for less weight.

"370, Busselton. Please confirm your location."

"Busselton, 370. We're at one-one-four degrees oh-six minutes east, three-three degrees, fiver-four minutes south, gliding oh-eight-fiver degrees at four-zero-zero knots from flight level two-fiver-three"

"Roger, 370. Continue on your track of oh-eight-fiver for sixty nautical miles, then turn left to two-fiver degrees to align with the runway. Conditions are clear and dry, wind is oh-one-niner at twelve knots. Cleared to land, you are first in line. Please acknowledge. Will you require emergency services?"

"Busselton, 370. Continue oh-eight-fiver for sixty miles, turn left two-fiver toward the runway, cleared to land first in line, wind one-two knots from oh-one-nine. Yes, we will require emergency services. Repeat, we will require emergency services."

"Roger, 370. Calling emergency services."

Suddenly I woke up. Apparently I'd just had another nightmare about MH370, having dozed off at my post. Panicking slightly, I checked the radio logs and the planned schedule in case I'd missed any flights. I hadn't. The perks of working night shift. I resolved to stay awake for the rest of the shift. Maybe out of shock that I had dozed off during the shift, more likely because I was freaked out at what might have happened if I'd actually missed an emergency while I was asleep.

The rest of the shift happened quietly, however. No extraneous flights, no problems, everything ran like clockwork. When Dan arrived for his shift at five, I took my usual late break to meet Joe out on the tarmac for a breath of fresh air and a smoke. Dan was a smoker, so he had to take his breaks outdoors. I'd stopped smoking a year ago, but this time I figured maybe a cigarette would help me clear my mind so I borrowed one from Dan and walked down. As I exhaled the first puff I sat down against the wall and asked Joe, "Have you ever handled an emergency out here?"

"No... why would I?"

"I don't know... Plane on fire, both engines dead, whatever"

"Naaahhh. this is Busselton, what are the odds anything like that's going to happen here?"

I took another puff and blew it out before answering.

"The size of the airport doesn't change the fact it might happen"

"True... But it might make it less likely. You remember, a few years back, when I applied for a transfer to Perth?"

"Yeah"

"It was going to be more interesting, bigger airport, more action"

"Yeah, I imagine it would be"

"I turned that down after all... Simpler, quieter here, and I already make almost as much"

"Right" I said simply, and kept smoking. He was right, of course, it was much quieter here. But emergencies can happen everywhere and anywhere. I was really troubled by the two back-to-back matching nightmares. I wondered what it could all mean (if anything - I don't believe in that kind of stuff).

After a few minutes I crushed the cigarette butt under my shoe.

"Hey, I gotta go. Meet you here at six?"

"As always!" he answered.

Before I left, I looked around at the airfield. Still the same Cessnas, Learjets and ATRs, nothing more. You couldn't fit much more or much bigger planes on this airfield anyway. Joe was right, it was simpler and quieter here.

Back in the control tower, Dan was relaxing, reading some adult magazine (he is a randy bugger), with his screens dead in front of him as usual. There would be a couple of scheduled flights to handle within the hour, I knew, then the rest of the day team would start arriving and I'd be off back home.

"All quiet up here?" I asked.

"You know it!" he answered.

I sat back down at my workstation, still bothered by the nightmares. I decided to pull out a notebook and take some notes on them to see if I could make any sense of them later on, especially if they were to happen again. No sense came just then. I left the notebook there, lying open, in case a brainwave came. It didn't.

At seven my shift was over, so I said goodbye to the team, walked down to the car and found Joe already there. As we drove out of the parking lot something caught my eye: almost dead ahead, in plain sight, was a 777 that shouldn't have been there at all. They're too big to land here.

"Hold up, Joe. What's that triple-7 doing here?"

"Yeah, that's weird."

"Think we should go check it out?"

"Why would we do that?"

"I don't know, something about it just feels weird"

"A great bloody wide-body on a small airfield like this? Course it's weird. Still no reason to butt into their business"

"Yeah but get this: we didn't have any wide-bodies all night, and I don't think you have either"

"So? Maybe it was here last night."

"It wasn't, I remember"

Now he seemed at a loss for words. I sensed he just wanted to get home to bed. But I couldn't leave this alone.

"Let's go check it out."

Reluctantly, he accepted. We drove back into the airport, this time right onto the tarmac, and parked next to the jet. We got out and walked around it. "Malaysian Airlines", it said, and had the now famous red-and-blue stylized plane/bird thing on the tail fin. Its registration was 9M-MRO. A quick search on my phone indicated this was indeed the plane that had vanished, MH370. I pinched myself to make sure this wasn't also a nightmare.

"This is it. Joe, this is the actual plane, MH370!"

"What? You don't mean... Are you bloody joking?"

"No, look!" I showed him my phone, then pointed to the plane's registration.

"We've got to report this. If it IS the jet, we could be in for a hell of a reward." I said.

"Yeah, but you were in the tower and I was on the ground when it popped up... How would we explain this?"

"I don't know, we can figure that out later. The authorities have been looking for this jet for years."

We both stood there, hesitant, unsure what to do.

I said, "We should check it out. Could you get a moving staircase here?"

"Sure. But... You're not thinking of going aboard, are you?"

"Just to make sure this isn't some kind of weird prank or something. Better not be if we report this to the authorities."

"Yeah, guess you're right. Come on."

We went to fetch one of the moving staircases and tucked it up neatly against the jet's forward port-side door.

I went upstairs then, unsure, started by knocking on the door. No answer.

I knocked again with the same result.

Then I decided to open the door. I pulled the outside latch and moved the heavy door aside.

Inside, all was silent and dark. Nobody was there. Moving through the cabin with my phone's flashlight on, I looked around. Not a soul, not a sound. On each seat was a rose and a picture of someone. I went back to the door and called out to Joe, "Hey, you've got to check this out, it's really weird." He joined me a minute later.

"Crikey" he said as he saw what was there. Together we moved back to the end of the plane, the same eerie scene greeting us at every row. We then went to the cockpit. There too, a rose and a picture lay on each seat. Then we heard something: the door slamming shut. We looked at each other, unsure what was going on.

"I'll get that open again" Joe said, and hurried out of the cockpit.

Looking at the instrument panel, I noticed they were all off. Normal, the plane wasn't flying. Then out of the corner of my eye, I caught movement. The throttle was moving up slowly. Then I felt the plane start to move.

"Joe!" I called out, not sure what was going on.

"What the hell's going on?" he answered.

"We gotta get out of here!"

"Well this door's stuck... I'll try the other side"

Meanwhile, I decided to try to pull the throttle back down. As soon as I touched it, however, I found myself in the pilot's seat, all buckled in. "What the..." I tried to release the seat belts so I could get out of the plane. They were stuck. I then tried to at least stop the plane. Pulling the throttle down and pushing on the brakes as hard as I could, the plane slowed a little, but then raised the throttle again with a vengeance.

"I can't get it to stop!" I yelled to Joe.

"I can't get this door open either!" he yelled back.

Glancing out the windshield, I noticed the plane was already lining up onto the runway.

"Then get the overwing door! I'll join you in a sec, we've got to get out, and not in front of the engines!"

"Right-o"

Just then the throttle shot up out of my hands, and I was thrust against the seat back. I hoped Joe would be OK. The plane was taking off.

"Are you all right?"

"Yeah, I'm fine, almost at the overwing door"

"Get that thing open quick, we're taking off!"

"What the hell are you taking off for?"

"I'm not doing it, the plane is!"

"What?"

"Just get that damn door open!"

"It's stuck too!"

By now it was too late anyway... Even if we'd gotten out of the plane alive, we'd have been dead meat landing from over five meters up at close to 200 knots... Then something else happened: voices popped up. I heard voices, as though from a crew talking to air traffic control. The instruments were all still off. No radio, no GPS, no altimeter, no ADI, nothing. Yet I heard voices. Joe shouted something, but his words were blanked out by the voices.

By now we were in the air, unable to open the doors, to control the plane or, in my case, even to get out of my seat. Survival instinct told me I had to try to get this plane back on the ground at all cost. Lucky I was such a big fan of flight simulators! But it really isn't the same, especially with no instruments.

I tried moving the control column, but it wouldn't budge. Panicking more and more, I tried putting more force on it, jerking it one way and the other, but it wouldn't respond.

After several minutes we were over deep ocean and still I wasn't able to control the damn jet. Then suddenly, unwanted, unbidden, came an urge to just push the control column forward. I fought it off, thinking it was just my desperation and resolve beginning to fail. But it came back, over and over again. I kept fighting it off, and trying to fight with the controls.

Then came something else: along with the urge, a voice in my head, saying "...don't...fight...destiny...must...closure...". And a force, unseen, unknown, irresistible, pushing my hands toward the control column. Forward, forward...

The last thing I consciously saw was the sea rushing up toward the plane's windshield.

***

ATSB investigator Kelly Cochrane looked at the aerial picture for the hundredth time, lost for words. In his 42-year career in air crash investigations, he'd never seen a case quite like this one.

"What the bloody hell..."

Two pieces of wreckage were obvious, floating on the surface. A tail fin with a red-and-blue stylized plane/bird, and a piece of fuselage with "9M-MRO". And just near them, floating there: hundreds of roses and pictures.

In the intervening days they'd found that the plane did match MH370, vanished for four years. It was already hard enough to explain just that. Then news came in that there were only two victims, neither from the actual plane and both, it seemed, employees in some small regional airport near Perth. And the pictures were all of victims of the original flight.

"Excuse me, Mr. Cochrane?"

His secretary Sarah was at his office door.

"Yes?"

"This just came in from the - umm, pilot - well, that victim's sister. She said it might be useful for the investigation."

"What is it?"

"She was going through his stuff, and it seems he left this notebook at his control station the night before the crash."

"And?"

"And it's mostly information from his training for the post, and details about some flights he's handled, but... well, you should see the last entry for yourself."

Cochrane took the notebook and sat down to read it. Indeed, most of it looked like boring, humdrum stuff. He skipped ahead to the last handwritten page. As he read, disbelief and confusion grew stronger in his head. What the hell was this? All this told anyone was that the guy had had two nightmares about the plane before all this happened. He made to throw it away, but then something struck him. The very same flight, that very flight that had vanished years earlier... It couldn't be... He'd always firmly believed that there was no such thing as coincidence.

He then set to work typing a letter.

When he finished, he printed the letter, signed it and took it to HR, where he dropped it right into Sebastian's in-tray. He then left the office for the final time.

Half an hour later, when Sebastian was back from his meeting, he saw the letter in the in-tray.

"Dear Sebastian," it read, "I have spent 42 years piecing together hundreds of aircraft and crashes. I have proven my worth over decades of investigations and succeeded every time in finding a full and complete explanation for all the facts of every case. And even though I do say so myself, I believe i have earned every bit of praise I have received over the years for my work."

So true, Sebastian thought. Cochrane had been a brilliant investigator for his entire career, even coming up with a brilliant case-breaking detail on his very first investigation, after all the others had failed. He read on: "But now, with this case, I cannot in good conscience provide an answer. Faced with such strange and counter-intuitive evidence, I have to either give an outlandish supernatural explanation and go against everything I believe, or admit to complete ignorance. This case has beaten me. That is why I believe this is the right time for me to retire from the service, effective immediately. I wish to leave now rather than after this case, which it seems would inevitably result in the first blemish on my record.

"As for the ongoing investigation, I think the best that can be done is to just file it as additional evidence of the previous MH370 disappearance, and leave it at that. There will be no satisfactory solution. Yours, Kelly M. Cochrane"

***

A few days later, Bunbury Airport air traffic controller John McDuff was sweating. He'd just awoken from an awful nightmare. He was in the cockpit of a 777 and a voice was telling him "...don't...fight...destiny...must...closure..." over and over again, while an irresistible force pushed his hands onto the control column and forward.

[dragonsmachine]

Factory Supply Good quality Fruit Crunch Muesli Bar Making Machine

[smolgaysnake]

ftwd; tell me you had bad dreams last night

ftwd, alicia-centric, no apocalypse

tw for depression and attempted suicide

When Alicia was ten, she declared herself too old for baths. She has vague memories of before then. She tries to hold on to the ones of her father the longest: his smile, the way he read to her before bed and let her sneak out to the living room to sleep on the couch while he watched old sitcom reruns. She still has a sense memory to the Fraiser theme song, his aftershave and the rumble of his laugh, how it felt to be scooped up gentle and carried to her princess bed, lilac sheets and stuffed bear.

But she remembers Nick being in charge of her baths, his grumbling fading to little grins when she screws up her face against the soap and how he shielded her eyes with one careful hand while pouring water from the cheap plastic cup over her hair.

‘Quit squirming,’ he says, sitting crosslegged behind her on her bed and working a comb through her wavy wet curls.

‘Like this,’ he says, tongue between his teeth and printed out instructions crumpled on the sheets next to them, and teaches her how to braid.

++

Alicia remembers, clearly, the day Nick left for school and she had to stay at the childcare center. She sat on the floor of her room and screamed and refused to eat and when the aid picked her up she went limp, that deadweight slump kids understand instinctively.

Madison has to leave work early to get her and she’s furious with Alicia all the way home. When Nick gets home she’s not allowed to play with him and is sent to bed without dinner. Madison tells her she’s not allowed dessert for a week and that Nick is doing big kid things, like learning how to read, and can’t have distractions.

Nick sneaks in after Madison’s gone to bed and wakes Alicia up to gives her two handfuls of honey nut cheerios. They eat them together under the bed, lying on their bellies and whisper giggling.

Alicia goes to daycare and sighs really long in the car and monotones her apology to the workers and accepts no swings for the next two days as consequences for her actions. During freeplay she goes to the shelf with the bright colored covers and looks for a book with words. She sits against the wall and glares at the book and just knows if she can learn how to read she can go to big kid school with Nicky.

++

In the summer they vacation with the cousins on her father’s side. It’s her mother’s concession to keeping in touch--sometimes they get christmas gifts from her paternal grandparents but it’s always something a little off: clothes that are too small or video cassettes they’re not interested in. Alicia doesn’t mind her cousins--she’s the youngest and they mostly leave her alone, but Nick adores them. Older by several years and running wild throughout their suburb and the surrounding hills. Alicia doesn’t like the way they smell like smoke but she’s bored and Nick ignores her when they’re with older kids and a few of her girl cousins take her shopping and buy her headbands and tell her she’s gorgeous. They pierce her ears and hold her hand when she cries and give her blouses and body glitter, and in the woods under the moon, wine coolers and peppermint schnapps.

She throws up the next morning and they laugh but it’s good natured, accepting. She tries a puff of their cigarette and pulls a face and likes the way she looks in the mirror, eyeshadow and curled lashes and metal glinting in her ears. She waits two weeks for Madison to comment but she never does.

++

Alicia gets straight As. She used to show her mother her report cards but stopped for some reason, she can’t remember. She leaves them on the kitchen counter with the rest of the mail and Nick finds them, pins them to the refrigerator with bright magnets and tries to get her something sweet for after dinner, her favorite candy or an ice cream bar.

In the summer Alicia signs herself up for summer courses and Madison greets the idea enthusiastically, praising her while she writes the check. Alicia doesn’t smile back. She thinks her mother is more excited about having Alicia out of the house and out of the way more than her mother is excited about her academic prowess. Nick is off to summer camp with his friends and Madison is going on a cruise with her new boyfriend.

Her cousin comes over to check on her every so often, the one that pierced her ears, and they watch romcoms and do each other’s nails and sleep in the living room. When Alicia comes home with straight As her cousin cheers and cracks a bottle of vodka to celebrate. Alicia throws up in the bushes outside her bedroom window and burns her fingertips lighting a cigarette.

++

Alicia doesn’t bother bringing home the mandatory forms for Madison to sign. She’s been forging Madison’s signature since grade school, and the sex drug safety unit is no different. She scrawls her mothers name and turns it in to her bio teacher and settles in for the easiest unit of the year. Every year they watch the same video about uteruses and periods and body hair and every year their teacher tells them to ask their parents any additional questions. When Alicia turned thirteen tampons appeared in the bathroom she and Nick share as if by magic and her mother pinned a calendar on the wall of her bedroom, without a word.

This year they do drugs and alcohol in more detail. The cart with the television and the VCR unit is rolled in, the teacher muttering about the squeaky wheel, and watch a video with a man in a cheap suit who tells them that drinking alcohol kills. Alicia frowns. She remembers summer nights, balmy dipping to chilly around a fire with marshmallows and jello shots and her cousins’ easy acceptance, the way they listened to her and let her play games with them and drink vodka in the woods under the stars. Lies, she thinks, just how she started to think when Madison says she loves her. All lies.

++

Her sophomore year she’s awarded a certificate for academic excellence. The other children’s parents come and she scans the crowd for Nick but he’s not there. She shakes the principals name and he tells her she’s doing so well, what a shame about that brother of hers, he hopes her mother is holding up well.

She goes home and no one is there. She throws the certificate away and searches Nick’s room until she finds a joint. She smokes it on the roof and ignores her phone buzzing next to her; her mother says she’s driving Nick to another facility. Her mother says it will work this time. Her mother says she wants to stay close to Nick during this time of recovery. her mother says not to expect her back for three days.

++

Alicia stops going to school her junior year. She wakes up one morning to her alarm and thinks: why? Her work is done and her bag is packed neatly by the door and she has the double block of English today, her favourite class, but instead she just rolls over and falls back asleep.

She watches twelve seasons of Greys Anatomy in a week and plays tetris until her wrist hurts. Every night the registrar calls and leaves a message on the answering machine and Alicia listens to it absently while she picks at her dinner and Madison taps away at her phone.

++

When Alicia was ten she decided she was too old for bathtubs. Madison clucked and scolded but Nick printed out pictures of Berkeley dorm rooms at the library, ten cents a printout, and pins them to the corkboard in her room. No bathtubs at Berkeley. Her cousin mailed her a pennant and Nick hefted her up on his shoulder and she tacked it to her wall and Madison scowled because they ruined the paint but she loved it. She looked at it every day while she dressed for school and every day she could hear her mother crying over her father, and then over Nick, and the days Madison didn’t get out of bed, and the days she could hear Nick throwing up in the bathroom across the hallway and the days she woke up all alone.

++

Sometimes she and Chris do homework together. She tells him he’s better at maths than her but they both know it’s a lie. It’s still nice, taking little breaks to lean over and help him with a problem or prompt him gently on a question he’s stuck on. He’s reading the same book she read last year and they argue about it on the roof, passing a cigarette back and forth and letting their voices get loud and passionate.

++

Nick comes home and looks at her over the breakfast her mother made them all get up early to eat: french toast, pancakes, bacon, eggs three different ways, sausage links and hot rolls. He’s almost squinting at her and she’s unsettled, shaken. She doesn’t miss a class for the full week he’s home, and it’s good. She does her homework in the living room and he sits next to her and eats cereal with his mouth open while he watches television. He says he’s gonna register for community college. He jokes he’ll need her to tutor him and laughs when she hits him with the throw pillow.

There’s someone there to roll their eyes with her at Madison during meals and he lays across her bed late at night and they talk about the novels she’s reading in AP English. He gestures with his hands when he talks, long fingers and slender wristed, his voice rasping thoughtful and almost sleepy. Alicia has always thought he was the smartest person she’d ever met.

She comes home and his smile is loose and his hands restless, crawling across the tablecloth. His eyes are crinkled up at the corners and he blinks too slow and she watches Madison ignore all of it and burns a little, in her chest beside her heart.

++

Alicia finds a bottle of pills under his mattress and locks the door of her bedroom. She lines them up in rows, four by four and then six by six. She touches the bump of them, licks the bitter white residue from her fingerpad and pulls a face. She puts them all back in the bottle and takes the drawer out of her desk to tape them underneath.

++

Chris buys her a notebook. It’s exactly the kind she likes, down to the thickness and the gloss and she doesn’t think anyone else in the world has ever noticed a thing about her. She bursts into tears and he almost falls over himself giving her the gift receipt. She kisses his cheek instead and he flushes bright and bashful. He doesn’t stop smiling the entire day.

++

Do you remember, Alicia writes, almost absentmindedly, do you remember when we sat on the front steps and you showed me how to peel a grapefruit and we ate it bitter and raw under the sun? I think I was happy, then.

++

Alicia goes to school and is pulled aside by a counselor. He calls her Alison by mistake and lays out her records and notes from her teachers. He says they’re scheduling a meeting with her mother and she laughs before she can swallow it back down. He offers to arrange weekly visits to his office during homeroom and says he’s sure they can come with a plan for her to graduate on time. Alicia stares at the floor and shrugs until he lets her leave.

She goes home and looks through her old papers, meticulously kept in binders and in shoeboxes under the bed. She used to want to be a doctor. She used to want to be a teacher. She used to get straight As and Nick used to play cards with her on the living room floor and always let her win.

++

When Alicia was ten she decided she was too old for baths. She was right, she thinks, as she settles in. She’s too tall now, her knees too gangly. The porcelain is cold and uncomfortable under her head. She’s wearing shorts and she watches the goosebumps prickle on her legs, the prickle of stubble where she missed a spot shaving. She lines the pills up on her knees and they’re chalky going down. Bitter on the back of her tongue but she figures that won’t last long.

++

Nick is holding her in a bridal carry and that’s not right. She remembers being carried from the car and the couch and he always held her gently against his front like a child. She tries to tell him it’s not right and when he tells her to shut up he sounds like he’s crying, not like he’s angry. He forces a finger down her throat and she’s too weak to shove him away. Her throat burns and she thinks there’s vomit on her shirt and he holds her under the spray even when she cries and begs him and says it’s too cold.

++

Madison comes once and cries a lot and says she’s sorry and that it’s so hard and Alicia is still a little out of it and the crook of her elbow hurts from where they put the IV in and she pretends to be asleep until Madison leaves.

All her meals come without utensils and there’s no mirror in the bathroom. A nurse stands outside and watches her when she has to pee. a girl on her floor pries the staples out of her chart and swallows them so a nurse comes and take the books away.

Nick doesn’t visit. Sometimes she wakes up and her hand is by her side, the palm upturned and the fingers faintly curled. The air smells like him and the chair is in a different position than it was when she fell asleep.

++

Chris comes and won’t look at her. His eyes look red rimmed and hesitant and he reads her little bits from books he brings from her bookshelves. He touches her wrist gently before he leaves and tells her to get better soon. He says he’ll try to visit again but he’s being sent back to his mom for a while.

++

Alicia’s nurse is businesslike and she looks apologetic when she says that no one has come to visit her on her eighteenth birthday. She shakes out a pair of sweats and says they had them lying around but Alicia sees the tags from the shop in the lobby. When she dresses there’s twenty bucks stuffed into the right pocket, two fives and a ten. She signs her own release forms and doesn’t take the pamphlets the receptionist offers with lists of resources.

++

Alicia takes a taxi home and no one is there. She makes herself a sandwich and giggles at the knife block, imagining the nurse’s face to see her now. She eats it on the couch and drips jelly on the cushions while watching Judge Judy.

The door slams open and she jumps. Nick is crazy eyed, hair windswept, panting like he’s run a long way. He sees her and crosses the room in a blink. He holds her for a long time and ridiculously, she feels herself start to cry.

++

Nick is mad at her. His jaw is tight and he sleeps on the floor of her room and when she gets up to use the bathroom he sits up and stares until she comes back. When she showers he sits on the toilet with his arms crossed. She wakes up once at three in the morning and he’s kneeling at her side by the bed, hunched over, his shoulders shaking.

“I’m sorry,” she finally tells him, sitting at the breakfast table and picking at rye toast. “I’m sorry.”

He doesn’t say anything for a long time. Then he slides the poached egg from his plate to hers. He disappears around lunch for the first time and Alicia is at a loss, alone-time an unfamiliar feeling. He comes back with a stack of textbooks and paper packets.

“I signed you up for summer school.” He tosses another packet. “And to dual enroll in community college.”

Alicia frowns. She opens her mouth and stops. “Okay,” she says. She takes a four hour nap and leaves the books in a pile on her desk. She rips up the summer school papers and throws them into the recycling bin.

++

Chris pokes his head into her room and says he’s drawn her a bath. He smells faintly of lavender. “I’m too old for baths,” she tells him, and he shrugs. 

He leaves the door open behind him and she knows she’s imagining the smell of oils and soft drift of steam but they prickle at her until she goes into the bathroom and slips under the water. Just on the side of too hot and sweat prickles on her hairline. She follows it up with a cold shower and drifts out of the bathroom to Chris’s room. She’s drowsy and he’s at his desk, book in his lap, staring at her. She curls up on under his blanket and after a moment she feels him gently lift her head and slide his pillow underneath.

++

Alicia takes the GED and scores nearly perfect. Chris lies and says he wants to take it too and helped her study, quizzing her out of the back of the prep book he bought second hand. She enrolls in community college and meets with a counselor and doesn’t feel one way or the other about it so she goes to her first class.

She’d forgotten how much she likes school.

++

“This is my fault,” Nick tells her. “You think I don’t know that?”

Alicia is stirring red sauce at the stovetop. She’s trying to remember if there’s canned mushrooms in the pantry. “Not everything,” she says, “is about you.”

++

Chris comes with her to the bookstore and helps her find her textbooks and finds a keychain in the bargain bin in the student union shop. He clips his car keys to it, his mother’s old car, and they drive long and windy to lay on the beach in the sun. She burns and he doesn’t and they walk in the surf up to their calves until the sun goes down and Nick starts calling both their mobiles.

++

Alicia wakes with a start and Nick is sitting on the edge of her bed. His head is in his hands, a slip of folded paper between his fingers, worn and creased. “I don’t know,” he says, and his voice cracks in the middle. “I don’t know,” he admits. She waits for a long time. 

She touches his thigh. “It’s okay,” she says, and he crumples into her slow and then all at once; they clutch at each other like children. 

“I remember,” he says quiet, when it’s gone dark dark outside and everything is soft and muted. It’s raining, distantly, water pinging on the roof. “I remember eating grapefruit on the front steps.”

“Me too,” Alicia says. She waits for him to say something else but she falls asleep first. She thinks that’s okay, though. She can ask him about it in the morning.

[dragonextruder]

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[sheilacwall]

IDK – Porno (with Pusha T, J.I.D) [Official Audio]

Stream ‘Is He Real?’ : https://IDK.lnk.to/IsHeReal

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Text: +1-301-691-2783

Check out more IDK here: Soundcloud – https://soundcloud.com/jayidk1 Twitter – https://twitter.com/idk Insta – https://www.instagram.com/idk Facebook – https://www.facebook.com/TRIBEIDK

Lyrics: Your strawberry lemonade lips make a nigga blood pressure go Drip drip drip Bad hoes is the devil Like 666 Bad hoes is the devil Like 666 When I got you on my mind Ain’t no room for a thought When you laying on my chest Ain’t no room for my heart Girl you know we wasting time like tic tic tic Girl you sucking up my time like tick tick tick

the Bible say beating my dick and killing is equal But that don’t add up Cause the amount of times That I milk my shit It’ll prolly be considered cereal Them cocoa puff titty balls Make a nigga balls fall inside of her jaws While her draws fall aw like a nightstand and an earthquake caused by the backstroke Dog style, all wild Kill the pretty kitty Leave an X over its eyes like a cause clown Shit thats a fucking bar Fuck her in a sixty-nine Thats a fucking car Rolls Royce and the roof Is the fucking stars Killing niggas every time I write Like its fucking SARS Leave em char Leave em charmander Without the tail sparked That mean that nigga dead Oh well, I have no fucking heart Back to my banana This brainfood is why she smart Yellow and her head on point It’s like a brothers Bart Simpson No OJ It ain’t so it must acquit Take my Johnny Cochran out and sit it on her pretty lips Sex addict with no intent to ever quit This what happens When you exposed to porn at the age of six

(Going on, yeah there’s something going on. You know it’s going on.)

Yooo I hit him with the charm Make him put it on my arm (like) You don’t need no job when your pussy is the bomb Backshot, backshot ATM now she gone like You don’t need no job when your pussy is the bomb I want a (x5) You don’t need no job when your pussy is the bomb I want a (x5) You don’t need no job when your pussy is the bomb

If she selling, she working no lying The price right, no flirting, I’m buying Same day, air fare I’m flying Love trappers Love rappers Love diamonds I got it, I give it Come get it Birkin bags, Bad bitches Come wit it City girls Come count up my digits Can’t break em, can’t shake em I live it i-8, I robot I never I only big foreigns I pedal Machine chaser Speed racer Daredevil I-D-K King Push It’s levels! (Yea)

Your strawberry lemonade lips make a nigga blood pressure go Drip drip drip Bad hoes is the devil Like six six six Bad hoes is the devil Like six six six When I got you on my mind Ain’t no room for a thought When you laying on my chest Ain’t no room for my heart Girl you know we wasting time like tick tick tick Girl you sucking up my time like tick tick tick

She want a lot of lips I just pulled over made a stop pit Inside of my whip When I’m driving it’s called a cock-pit Obvious if she ride with a kitty She giving knowledge like institutions disguising as schools and collecting profits I missed Gimme the shit that she likes some type of magician My magical wand mischief is clitoris infamous God given devil insidious no condoms in the condominium Idiot she do this shit for any and many men or 50 cent shit I am 50 cent. (Word to my nigga….)

(Go Maryland) source

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[oovitus]

Manufactured deliciousness: Why you can’t stop overeating (plus 3 strategies to get control).

You know the feeling: One salty crunch turns into 100, and suddenly you’re licking the cheese dust and wondering: What’s wrong with me? 

Actually, it’s normal to feel like you can’t stop overeating certain things. Today’s hyperpalatable food is creating a modern-day food crisis — one that’s leaving us feeling sick, out of control, and constantly craving more.

Here’s how it works, plus 3 ways to overcome it.

++++

It’s happened to us all.

After a frenzy of lustful grabbing and furious crunching, we find ourselves at the bottom of a jumbo bag of chips.

“How did that happen?” we ask fuzzily.

“What’s wrong with me? Why can’t I stop?”

But, before going into full-fledged self-loathing mode, consider this.

Processed foods are scientifically engineered to be irresistible and easy to gobble up in large quantities. If you can’t stop, the chips are doing their job.

(In fact, someone at Frito-Lay probably got a promotion for that recipe.)

That’s why, in this article, we’ll explain exactly how junk food is designed to make us respond with compulsive, manic, gotta-have-more snack sessions.

Even better, we’ll arm you with three useful strategies for examining your relationship with processed food and taking control of overeating.

Because, if you feel out of control around certain foods, you’re not crazy.

Even healthy eaters feel out of control around food sometimes. Even if we value nutrition and want to take care of ourselves, some foods can make us feel… kinda possessed.

Know what I mean?

You show up to a potluck with quinoa salad goals and find yourself inhaling a plate of chips, cookies, and some chocolate-peanut-butter-marshmallow thing that some devil, um friend, made.

You reach into the freezer to have one spoonful of ice cream and suddenly you’re mining the caramel swirl, then the nut clusters, then the brownie chunks, and then… your spoon scrapes the bottom.

You just want a bite of your friend’s french fry, but you find yourself elbowing her out of the way so you can steal all the fries, plus the burger too.

Even with the best intentions, the pull of certain foods is so strong that it can leave us feeling powerless.

If you’ve felt this, you’re not alone (and you’re not broken).

Certain foods are actually designed to make us overeat.

If you’re overeating, it’s not because there’s something wrong with you or your willpower.

Here’s the truth: There’s a whole industry dedicated to creating food that’s hyperpalatable — food that’s so tasty it’s nearly irresistible.

Your body and brain are responding exactly as they’re supposed to. It’s supposed to feel almost unnatural to stop eating these foods!

But we’re not talking about food like celery sticks, whole brown rice, or baked salmon filets.

(How often do you hear yourself say, “I ate sooo much steamed asparagus! I just couldn’t stop myself!” That’s right. You’ve never heard yourself say that.)

We’re talking about processed foods.

Processed foods are foods that have been modified from their original, whole-food form in order to change their flavor, texture, or shelf-life. Often, they’re altered so that they hit as many pleasure centers as possible — from our brains to our mouths to our bellies.

Processed foods are highly cravable, immediately gratifying, fun to eat, and easy to over-consume quickly (and often cheaply).

Processed foods will also look and feel different from their whole food counterparts, depending on the degree that they’re processed.

Let’s take corn as an example.

Boiled and eaten off the cob it’s pale yellow, kinda fibrous, but chewy and delicious.

Corn that’s a bit processed — ground into a meal and shaped into a flat disk — turns into a soft corn tortilla. A tortilla has a nice corny flavor and a soft, pliable texture that makes it easy to eat and digest.

But what if you ultra-process that corn? You remove all the fiber, isolate the starch, and then use that starch to make little ring-shaped chips, which are fried and dusted with sweet and salty barbecue powder. They’re freaking delicious.

That corn on the cob is yummy. But those corn-derived ring chips? They’re… well they’re gone because someone ate them all.

Let’s take an even deeper look

The food industry has a variety of processing methods and ingredient additives they use to make food extra tasty and easy to consume…. and over-consume.

Here are a few examples:

Extrusion

Grains are processed into a slurry and pass through a machine called an extruder. With the help of high heat and pressure, whole, raw grains get transformed into airy, crispy, easy-to-digest shapes like cereals, crackers, and other crunchy foods with uniform shapes.

In addition to changing texture and digestibility, the extrusion process also destroys certain nutrients and enzymes, denatures proteins, and changes the starch composition of a grain. This lowers the nutrition and increases the glycemic index of the product.

Emulsifiers

Used to improve the “mouth feel” of a product, emulsifiers smooth out and thicken texture, creating a rich, luxurious feel. Although there are natural emulsifiers, like egg yolk, the food industry often uses chemical emulsifiers like Polysorbate-80, sodium phosphate, and carboxymethylcellulose.

Emulsifiers are often found in creamy treats like ice cream products and processed dairy foods like flavored yogurts or neon orange cheese spreads.

Flavor enhancers

Flavor additives like artificial flavoring agents or monosodium glutamate (MSG) allow food manufacturers to amplify taste without adding whole-food ingredients like fruits, vegetables, or spices. This is useful because artificial flavoring agents are cheap and won’t change a product’s texture.

Coloring agents

Color strongly affects how appealing we perceive a food to be. No one wants to eat gray crackers; add a toasty golden hue and suddenly that cracker is a lot more appealing. Coloring agents, like Yellow #5 (tartrazine) and Red #40 (allura red),  are added purely for the look of food — they don’t add nutrition.

Recently, many large food corporations have been switching to natural foods dyes, like beet powder or turmeric, to color their food products after some correlations emerged linking artificial coloring agents to behavioral problems in children.

Oil hydrogenation

Natural fats eventually go rancid, changing their flavor and texture. In order to render fats more stable, hydrogen atoms are added to fats (usually vegetable oils) so they are less vulnerable to oxidation.

Food manufacturers use hydrogenated oils because it means their products can stay on the shelves for longer without changing flavor or texture. However, the consumption of hydrogenated fats, or trans fats, has been linked to increased rates of heart disease.

How processed foods trick us into eating more than we meant to.

There are four sneaky ways processed food can make you overeat. Often, we’re not even aware of how much these factors affect us.

That’s why, awareness = power.

1. Marketing convinces us that processed foods are “healthy”.

Processed foods come in packages with bright colors, cartoon characters, celebrity endorsements, and powerful words that triggers all kinds of positive associations.

Take, for example, “health halo” foods.

“Health halo” foods are processed foods that contain health buzzwords like organic, vegan, and gluten-free on their label to create an illusion, or halo, of health around them.

Companies come out with organic versions of their boxed macaroni and cheese, gluten-free versions of their glazed pastries, and vegan versions of their icing-filled cookies.

You’ll see chips “prepared with avocado oil,” sugary cereal “made with flaxseeds,” or creamy chip dip with “real spinach.”

The nutrient content of those foods isn’t particularly impressive, but the addition of nutrition buzzwords and trendy ingredients make us perceive them as healthier.

Marketers also choose words that relate more broadly to self-care.

Ever notice how many processed food slogans sound like this?

“Have a break.”

“Take some time for yourself.”

“You deserve it.”

Words like “break” and “deserve” distract us from our physical sensations and tap into our feelings — a place where we just want to be understood, supported, soothed, and perhaps just escape for a moment.

Health buzzwords and emotional appeals can make us perceive a food as “good for me”; it seems like a wise and caring choice to put them in our shopping carts, then in our mouths.

And if a food is “healthy” or “we deserve it,” we don’t feel so bad eating as much as we want.

2. Big portions make us think we’re getting a “good deal”.

People get mixed up about food and value.

We’re taught to save money and not waste food.

We’re taught to buy more for less.

Given the choice between a small juice for two dollars, and a pop with endless refills for the same price, the pop seems like better value.

What we don’t calculate into this equation is something I like to call the “health tax.”

The “health tax” is the toll you pay for eating low-nutrient, highly processed foods. If you eat them consistently over time, eventually you’ll pay the price with your health.

When companies use cheap, poor quality ingredients, they can sell bigger quantities without raising the price.

But what’s the deal?

Sure, you’ll save a buck in the short term, but you’ll pay the health tax — through poor health — in the long term.

3. Variety makes us hungrier.

Choice excites us.

Think of a self-serve frozen yogurt topping bar:

“Ooh! Sprinkles! And beer nuts! Oh, and they have those mini peanut butter cups! And granola clusters! Wait, are those crushed cookies?? And cheesecake chunks??! YES! Now on to the drizzles…”

Before you know it, there‘s a leaning tower of frozen dessert in front of you.

Or think of those “party mixes” — pretzels and corn chips and cheesy puffs and barbeque rings — all in one bag! The fun never ends because there’s a variety of flavors and textures to amuse you forever!

When we have lots of variety, we have lots of appetite.

It’s hard to overeat tons of one thing, with one flavor, like apples.

How many apples can you eat before, frankly, you get bored?

Reduce the variety and you also reduce distraction from your body’s built-in self-regulating signals. When we’re not so giddy with choice and stimuli, we’re more likely to slow down, eat mindfully, and eat less.

4. Multiple flavors at once are irresistible.

If there’s a party in your mouth, you can guarantee that at least two out of three of the following guests will be there:

Sugar

Fat

Salt

These three flavors — the sweetness of sugar, the luxurious mouthfeel of fat, and the sharp savory of salt — are favorites among those of us with mouths.

I never hear my clients say that they love eating spoonfuls of sugar or salt, or that they want to chug a bottle of oil.

However, when you combine these flavors, they become ultra delicious and hard-to-resist. This is called stimuli stacking — combining two or more flavors to create a hyperpalatable food.

For example:

The satisfying combination of fat and salt, found in chips, fries, nachos, cheesy things, etc.

The comforting combination of fat and sugar, found in baked goods, fudge, ice cream, cookies, chocolate, etc.

The irresistible combination of all three — heaven forbid you stumble on a combo of fat, salt, and sugar — a salted chocolate brownie, or caramel corn with candied nuts, or fries with ketchup!

Food manufacturers know: When it comes to encouraging people to overeat, two flavors are better than one.

In fact, when I spoke to an industry insider, a food scientist at a prominent processed food manufacturer, she revealed the specific “stimuli stacking” formula that the food industry uses to create hyperpalatable food.

They call it “The Big 5.”

Foods that fulfill “The Big 5” are:

Calorie dense, usually high in sugar and/or fat.

Intensely flavored — the food must deliver strong flavor hits.

Immediately delicious, with a love-at-first taste experience.

Easy to eat — no effortful chewing needed!

“Melted” down easily — the food almost dissolves in your mouth, thus easy to eat quickly and overconsume.

When these five factors exist in one food, you get a product that’s practically irresistible.

In fact, foods developed by this company have to hit the big 5, or they’re not allowed to go to market.

When processed food manufacturers evaluate a prospective food product, the “irresistibility” (the extent to which a person can’t stop eating a food) is more important even than taste!

Just think about the ease of eating whole foods versus processed foods:

Whole foods require about 25 chews per mouthful, which means that you have to slow down. When you slow down, your satiety signals keep pace with your eating and have a chance to tell you when you’ve had enough. Which is probably why you’ve never overeaten Brussel sprouts (also because, farting).

Processed food manufacturers, on the other hand, aim for food products to be broken down in 10 chews or less per mouthful. That means the intense, flavorful, crazy-delicious experience is over quickly, and you’re left wanting more — ASAP.

Restaurants use these “ease of eating” tactics, too.

A major national chain uses this sci-fi-esque trick:

To make their signature chicken dish, each chicken breast is injected with a highly flavored sauce through hundreds of tiny needles. This results in a jacked-up chicken breast with intense flavor hits, but also tenderizes the chicken so it requires less chewing.

In other words, there’s a reason that restaurant chicken often goes down easier and just tastes better than the simple grilled chicken breast you make in your kitchen. Unless you have hundreds of tiny sauce-needles (weird), that chicken is hard to recreate at home.

This is why I rarely talk about willpower when my clients come to me struggling with overeating. If you’re relying on willpower to resist these foods, you’re fighting an uphill battle.

The solution isn’t more willpower. The solution is educating yourself about these foods, examining your own relationship with food, and employing strategies that put you in control.

Let’s take an even deeper look

Our love of certain flavors has very primitive roots.

So does our desire to load up on calories.

Once upon a time, food was not so abundant. Not only was food challenging to obtain — through effortful scavenging and hunting — but it was also not reliably safe.

That leaf over there? Yeah, that could be poison.

Those berries? They might give you the runs or make your throat close up.

Therefore, our ancient ancestors evolved some survival instincts along the way.

For example, sweet foods tend not to be poisonous. Therefore, we stored a preference for sweet, starchy foods in our brains to keep us safe.

Babies and children are particularly attracted to sweet foods, probably because their immature immune systems are less likely to recover from eating a poisonous plant, and their immature brains can’t tell the difference between dangerous bitter green (like hemlock) and safe bitter green (like kale).

Therefore, kids’ attraction to sweet (read: safe) foods is a built-in mechanism to prevent death by poisoning.

Fat is also a preferred nutrient, as it’s high-calorie and would be a jackpot for our often-threatened-by-starvation ancestors.

While most foods our ancestors ate would have been fibrous and low-calorie (roots, greens, lean meats), fat would have been a highly prized treat.

Imagine, as a primitive hunter-gatherer, stumbling on a macadamia nut tree. The yield from that tree might provide enough calories to feed your tribe for days!

As a result, we stored another preference in our brains: fatty, calorie-dense foods = yum / stock up!

Today, of course, we don’t have to run and dig and hike for nine hours to get our food. Instead, we can just roll up to the drive-thru window and order a combination of flavors we’re primed to love — maybe in the form of a milkshake and a cheeseburger — and enjoy it while sitting in our car.

Evolution’s gifts now work against us.

So, now you see why processed foods are so hard to control yourself around.

But what can actually you do about it?

Up next, some practical strategies to put you (or your clients) in the driver’s seat.

3 strategies to find your way back to a peaceful relationship with food.

It’s one thing to know in theory why certain foods are so easy to over-consume, but it’s even more valuable to discover for yourself how food processing, certain ingredient combinations, marketing, and even easy accessibility affect you and your food choices.

So, it’s time to get a little nerdy, try some experiments, and learn some strategies that will help you improve your relationship with food, get healthier, and just feel more sane.

1. Get curious about the foods you eat.

We’ve established that processed foods are designed to be easy to eat.

For a food to be “easy to eat”, it has to be:

broken down easily (less chewing), and

low volume (doesn’t take up much physical space).

So:

Less chewing + Low volume = More eating

Chewing takes time. The more we have to chew something, the longer it takes us to eat, giving our fullness signals a chance to catch up.

That feeling of “fullness” matters a lot too.

When you eat, your stomach expands. It’s partly through that sensation of pressure that your body knows you’ve had enough. Processed foods deliver a lot of calories without taking up much space, meaning you can eat a lot before you realize you’ve overdone it.

Experiment #1: Observe as you chew.

Yup, that’s right. I want you to count your chews.

Note: Don’t do this forever. I’m not trying to turn you into the weirdo who no one wants to sit next to at the lunch table.  Just try it as an experiment to get some data about how you eat different foods.

First, eat a whole food — a vegetable, fruit, whole grain, lean protein, whatever — and count how many chews you take per mouthful. How long does it take to eat an entire portion of that food? How satiated do you feel afterward? Do you want to eat more?

Then, next time you eat something processed, count how many chews you take per mouthful. How long does it take to eat that serving of pasta, chips, or cookies? How satiated do you feel afterward? Do you want to eat more?

Make some comparisons and notice the differences. Contrast how long eating each of these foods takes you, how satiated you feel after eating each of them, and how much you want to keep eating.

How will you use that information to make food choices moving forward?

2. Notice the messages you’re getting about food.

Food manufacturers use creative marketing strategies to imply processed foods are healthy. And even if you know they’re not, they have other ways of getting you to buy them.

Here’s an example:

Ever notice that the produce section is the first area you pass through in grocery stores?

Grocery stores have found that if they put the produce section first, you’re more likely to purchase processed foods. This is probably because if you’ve already got your cart loaded with spinach, broccoli, and apples, perhaps you’ll feel better about picking up some ice cream, cookies, and crackers, before heading to the checkout line.

Let that sink in: The supermarkets we all shop in several times a month are designed to make you feel better about buying foods that could negatively impact your health goals.

The good news? Simply being aware of this trick can help you bypass it.

Experiment #2: Evaluate your pantry.

In this experiment, you’ll examine the foods you have in your home and the messages you’ve been given about them.

Note: Keep in mind that this is a mindful awareness activity. You’re not doing this to judge yourself or feel shame about the food choices you’ve made.

Look at your pantry with curious (and more informed) eyes.

Step 1: Look for “health halo” foods. Do you have any? If so, why did you choose them? Was it the language used to describe it? Was it the packaging? A trendy “superfood” ingredient? Is it organic, gluten-free, sugar-free, Paleo, or something else?

Step 2: Read the nutritional information. Once you’ve identified the “health halo” foods, take a closer look. Is your “healthy” organic dark chocolate peanut butter cup all that nutritionally different from that mass-market peanut butter cup? Chances are, it’s just different packaging.

Step 3: Count how many varieties of junk foods you have. If you love ice cream — how many flavors do you have? If you peek into your cupboards, are there cookies, popcorn, candy, or chips? Without judgment, count the total junk food variety currently in your home. Generally, the more options you have, the easier it is to overeat.

The takeaway?

You’ll be more aware of the particular types of marketing you’re susceptible to, which you can use to make more informed food choices.

You’ll also have a better idea of which treat foods you prefer, and by reducing the variety of them in your home, you’ll cut down on opportunities to overeat.

3. Look for patterns.

We often use food for reasons other than physical nourishment.

For example, if we feel sad, we might reach for a cookie to comfort ourselves. Temporarily, we feel better.

The next time we feel sad, we remember the temporary relief that cookie brought us. So we repeat the ritual. If we continue to repeat this cycle, we may find our arm reaching for the cookie jar every time we feel blue. We’re not even thinking about it at this point; it’s just habit.

Habits are powerful, for better or for worse. They can work for us or against us.

Luckily, we have control over this.

All it takes is a little time and an understanding of how habits get formed.

All animals learn habits in the following way:

This leads us to our next experiment…

Experiment #3: Put the science of habits to work.

If you want to break the habit of overeating, you can use this trigger, behavior, and reward loop to your advantage. Here’s how.

Step 1: identify your triggers.

A trigger can be a:

Feeling. We might eat more when we’re stressed, lonely, or bored. Food fills the void.

Time of day. We always have a cookie at 11am, or a soda at 3pm. It’s just part of our routine.

Social setting. Hey, everyone else is having beer and chicken wings, so might as well join the happy hour!

Place. For some reason, a dark movie theater or our parents’ kitchen might make us want to munch.

Thought pattern. Thinking “I deserve this” or “Life is too hard to chew kale” might steer us toward the drive-thru window.

When you find yourself eating when you’re not physically hungry, increase your awareness of your triggers by asking yourself:

What am I feeling?

What time is it?

Who am I with?

Where am I?

What thoughts am I having?

Keep a journal and look for patterns.

And remember: Overeating is generally problematic when it’s chronic — those pants are feeling pretty tight after most meals — or when episodes of overeating are particularly intense, like during a binge. So don’t get too worried with isolated episodes of overeating. To differentiate overeating from binge eating, keep in mind that binge eating feels disassociated, out of control, hard to stop, and usually comes with feelings of shame and guilt.

If, in observing your eating patterns, you discover that you may be dealing with compulsive bingeing behavior, then recruiting a doctor, therapist, or other qualified practitioner to help you navigate your feelings around food is likely the best course of action.

Step 2: Find a new behavior in response to your trigger(s).

Once you’ve identified your triggers, try associating new behaviors with them. These should support your health goals and feel good. If the new behaviors aren’t rewarding, they won’t be repeated, so they won’t be learned as habits.

In order to find the “right” new behavior, it’s helpful to know that when we eat, we’re trying to meet a “need.”

So when you brainstorm new behaviors, find something that meets that need — be it time in nature, some human connection, a physical release, or just a break from your thoughts.

For example, I had a client whose trigger was talking to her ex-husband. She felt angry when she interacted with him, and some furious crunching on chips temporarily made her feel better.

She eventually replaced the crunching with a punching bag session or by stomping up and down the stairs. Both activities were effective at relieving tension, but unlike the chips, they supported her goals.

Step 3: Practice.

Every time a trigger pops up that compels you to eat, replace eating with a healthy feel-good behavior.

Repeat this loop until the new behavior becomes a habit that’s just as automatic as reaching for the jar of peanut butter used to be.

Let’s take an even deeper look

Not all “feel-good” habits are created equal, in terms of their physiological effect on the stress response.

According to the American Psychological Association, the most effective stress relievers are:

exercising / playing sports,

reading,

listening to music,

praying / attending a religious service,

spending time with friends / family,

getting a massage,

walking outside,

meditation,

yoga, and

engaging in a creative hobby.

The least effective stress relievers are: gambling, shopping, smoking, eating, drinking, playing video games, surfing the internet, and watching TV / movies for more than two hours.

Although we may use the second list as “stress-relievers” — because they feel so good in the short term — they don’t actually reduce stress effectively.

This is because these habits rely on dopamine to give us a “hit” of pleasure. Dopamine feels rewarding immediately, but because it’s an excitatory neurotransmitter, it actually stimulates adrenaline and initiates the stress response.

In contrast, the first list of habits boost neurotransmitters like serotonin, GABA, and oxytocin, which calm down the stress response and induce a feeling of wellbeing.

Although these activities aren’t initially as “exciting” as the second list, they’re ultimately more rewarding and more effective at relieving stress long-term.

It’s not just about the food

As a dietician, I know how important nutrition is. So it might surprise you to hear me say the following:

It’s not all about the food.

Structure your diet around colorful, nutrient-dense whole foods, but also remember that a healthy life is not about calorie math or obsessing over everything you put in your mouth.

A healthy life is about giving time and attention to our whole selves.

Eating happens in context.

Pay attention to your mindset, your relationships, your work, and your environment.

When we’re well-nourished in other areas of our life, we’re less likely to use food as a cure-all when we struggle.

So if there’s one more piece of nutrition advice I have, it’s this:

Be good to yourself.

Not just at the table, but in all areas of life.

What to do next

1. Be kind, curious, and honest.

When we fall short of our ideals, we think that beating ourselves up is the fastest way to improvement. But it’s not.

Criticism and crash dieting may work in the short term, but can damage our mental and physical health in the long term.

Because overeating is already a painful experience, as you consider how these behaviors show up in your life and how you might address them, please be:

Kind: Be friendly and self-compassionate; work with yourself instead of against yourself.

Curious: Explore your habits with openness and interest. Be like a scientist looking at data rather than a criminal investigator looking to blame and punish.

Honest: Look at your reality. How are you behaving day-to-day around food? The more accurate you are at perceiving yourself, the better you can support yourself to change.

With this attitude of support and non-judgment, you’re more likely to move forward.

2. Use the “traffic light” system.

Precision Nutrition has a great tool for creating awareness around food that I use all the time with my clients. It’s called the “traffic light” system.

You see, we all have red light foods, yellow light foods, and green light foods.

Red means stop.

Red foods are a “no-go.” Either because they don’t help you achieve your goals, you have trouble eating them in reasonable amounts, or they plain old make you feel gross.

Often, red light foods are processed foods like chips, candy, ice cream, and pastries. Red foods can also be foods that you’re allergic / intolerant to.

Yellow means proceed with caution.

Yellow light foods are sometimes OK, sometimes not. Maybe you can eat a little bit without feeling ill, or you can eat them sanely at a restaurant with others but not at home alone, or you can have them as an occasional treat.

Yellow light foods might include things like bread, crackers, pasta, flavored yogurt, granola bars, or seasoned nuts. They’re not the worst choices, but they’re not the most nutritious either.

Green means go.

Green foods are a “go.” You like eating them because they’re nutritious and make your body and mind feel good. You can eat them normally, slowly, and in reasonable amounts.

Green foods are usually whole foods like fruits and vegetables, lean animal proteins, beans and legumes, raw nuts and seeds, and whole grains.

Create your own red, yellow, and green light food lists.

Everyone’s list will be different! You might leave ice cream in the freezer untouched for months, whereas another person might need a restraining order from that rocky road caramel swirl.

Once you have your list, stock your kitchen with as many green light foods as possible. Choose the yellow foods you allow in your house wisely. And red foods are to be limited or eliminated entirely.

At the very least, consider reducing the variety of red light or treat foods.

Take some pressure off your willpower and surround yourself with foods that support your goals.

3. Put quality above quantity.

It’s tempting to buy that jumbo bag of chips because it’s such a good deal.

But remember: Real value isn’t about price or quantity so much as it is about quality.

Quality foods are nutrient-dense and minimally-processed. They are foods that you like, and make sense for your schedule and budget.  

Quality foods may take a little more preparation and be a little more expensive up-front, but in the long run, they’re the real deal, and have a lower “health tax” to pay later in life.

4. Focus on whole foods.

Whole foods will make it easier to regulate food intake and will also improve nutrition.

We can almost feel “high” when we eat processed foods. Whole foods, on the other hand, are more subtle in flavor and require a bit more effort to chew and digest. Instead of feeling high, whole foods just make us feel nourished and content.

Whole foods are generally more perishable than processed foods, so this will require some more planning and preparation. So schedule some extra time in the kitchen — even ten minutes a day counts!

In ten minutes, you can cut up some veggies, boil some eggs, cook some oatmeal, or marinate some chicken breasts to make the following day go smoother.

While this might sound like more work, it’s rewarding. A closer relationship with food often means more respect and care for it too.

5. Find feel-good habits that support your goals.

Make a list of activities that you feel good doing. You might find that you like certain activities better than others depending on your feelings, the time of day, or your environment.

When you feel triggered to eat when you’re not physically hungry, choose an activity from your list.

This could be some gentle physical activity, fresh air, social interaction, playing a game, or a self-care ritual like painting your nails or getting a scalp massage.

The point is simply to disrupt the cycle of trigger > eat > reward, and replace eating with an activity that supports your goals.

6. Slow down.

If nothing else works, and the idea of taking away treat foods totally freaks you out, just do this:

Slow down.

Allow yourself to eat whatever you want, just eat slowly and mindfully.

Slowing down allows us to savor our food, making us satisfied with less. It also lets physical sensations of fullness to catch up, so we know when we’ve had enough.

Bingeing can feel stressful and out of control — by slowing down, we help ourselves calm down and take back some of the control.

7. If you feel like you’re in over your head, ask for help.

Sometimes we need support.

If overeating is especially frequent or extreme, or if you have health problems related to overeating that you don’t know how to manage, seek the help of a coach, nutritionist, dietician, or counselor who specializes in disordered eating behaviors.

There’s no shame in receiving support. The best coaches and practitioners often have their own support team too.

Want help becoming the healthiest, fittest, strongest version of you?

Most people know that regular movement, eating well, sleep, and stress management are important for looking and feeling better. Yet they need help applying that knowledge in the context of their busy, sometimes stressful lives.

That’s why we work closely with Precision Nutrition Coaching clients to help them lose fat, get stronger, and improve their health… no matter what challenges they’re dealing with.

It’s also why we work with health, fitness and wellness professionals (through our Level 1 and Level 2 Certification programs) to teach them how to coach their own clients through the same challenges.

Interested in Precision Nutrition Coaching? Join the presale list; you’ll save up to 54% and secure a spot 24 hours early.

We’ll be opening up spots in our next Precision Nutrition Coaching on Wednesday, July 18th, 2018.

If you’re interested in coaching and want to find out more, I’d encourage you to join our presale list below. Being on the list gives you two special advantages.

You’ll pay less than everyone else. At Precision Nutrition we like to reward the most interested and motivated people because they always make the best clients. Join the presale list and you’ll save up to 54% off the general public price, which is the lowest price we’ve ever offered.

You’re more likely to get a spot. To give clients the personal care and attention they deserve, we only open up the program twice a year. Last time we opened registration, we sold out within minutes. By joining the presale list you’ll get the opportunity to register 24 hours before everyone else, increasing your chances of getting in.

If you’re ready to change your body, and your life, with help from the world’s best coaches, this is your chance.

[Note: If your health and fitness are already sorted out, but you’re interested in helping others, check out our Precision Nutrition Level 1 Certification program].

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References

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Avena, N.M, Gold, M.S. (2011). Variety and hyperpalatability: are they promoting addictive overeating? The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, 94(2), 367-368. doi: 10.3945/ajcn.111.020164.

Drewnowski, A., Shrager, E., Lipsky, C., Stellar, E., Greenwood, M.R. (1989). Sugar and fat: Sensory and hedonic evaluation of liquid and solid foods. Physiology & Behavior, 45 (1), 177-183. doi: 10.1016/0031-9384(89)90182-0.

Kessler, David A. Your food is fooling you: How your brain is hijacked by sugar, fat, and salt. Roaring Book Press, 2012.

Mozaffarian D, Katan MB, Ascherio A, Stampfer MJ, Willett WC (2006). Trans Fatty Acids and Cardiovascular Disease. New England Journal of Medicine. 354 (15): 1601–1613. doi:10.1056/NEJMra054035.

Provencher, V., Polivy, J., Herman, C.P. (2009). Perceived healthiness of food. If it’s healthy, you can eat more! Appetite, 52(2), 340-344. doi: 10.1016/j.appet.2008.11.005.

Rolls, B.J., Drewnowski, A., Ledikwe, J.H. (2005). Changing the energy density of the diet as a strategy for weight management. Journal of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics, 105(5S), 98-103. doi: 10.1016/j.jada.2005.02.033.

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[wallythayer]

Revolutionary Act 31: Go Easy on the Sugar and Flour

Many people make the big, important decision to eat healthier only to find themselves confronted with another big, important decision:  “Where on earth should I start?”

Overwhelmed by complex and contradictory nutritional counsel, they are looking for some streamlined way to upgrade their eating without descending into analysis paralysis or totally disrupting their lives.

If that sounds like you, I have two related pieces of counsel, and which one you choose depends mostly on how much of a change you are ready for.

My first piece of advice is this: Eat mostly whole foods most of the time. But I realize that can feel daunting to many, particularly at first. So my second piece of advice (really just a baby-step version of the first) is this: Avoid processed sugars and flours.

I put sugars and flours together in a single category because I am convinced they do more damage to more people in more ways than most of the other problematic ingredients combined.

Moreover, once you eliminate these pro-inflammatory marauders, you also eliminate, by extension, a vast fleet of processed foods that contain other nasty co-conspirators (like artificial flavors, sweeteners, and colors; trans fats; industrial vegetable oils; chemical preservatives; and crazy doses of salt) that almost always come along for the ride.

Now, I suspect that the advice to cut back on sugar is not new to you. Over the past several years, we’ve been hearing a lot about how negatively excess dietary sugars can affect our health.

They do this by unbalancing blood sugar, destabilizing hormones (not just insulin but also sex hormones and growth hormones), suppressing metabolism, increasing visceral fat, contributing to oxidative stress, damaging cells and DNA, and messing with our microbiomes.

They also drive cravings and disordered eating patterns that contribute to weight problems, and they wreak all sorts of other health havoc.

The net effect of this is a dramatically increased risk of inflammatory conditions like metabolic syndrome, type 2 diabetes, heart disease, some cancers, and that much-feared diagnosis, Alzheimer’s disease.

In fact, Alzheimer’s is now known in some medical circles as “type 3 diabetes.” Why? Because, as the authors of a seminal article in the Journal of Diabetes Science and Technology conclude, “the term ‘type 3 diabetes’ accurately reflects the fact that [Alzheimer’s disease] represents a form of diabetes that selectively involves the brain.”

OK, so we now know that excessive sugar intake is pretty deadly. And it’s great that more people are becoming more keenly aware of this fact.

But here’s something far fewer people understand: Most flours act like sugars (and, in fact, rapidly turn into sugars) once inside the body.

I know this might sound crazy. After all, for decades, we’ve been conditioned to think of grains as a supremely healthy choice.

We’ve been encouraged to reach for packaged foods emblazoned with labels proclaiming their “whole-grain goodness!” We’ve heard our doctors recommend whole-grain cereals for breakfast, whole-grain sandwiches for lunch, and whole-grain pastas for dinner.

But when whole grains get pulverized into the fine-particle dust of flours and starches, they’re not really whole anymore. Their surface area becomes much greater, and their resistance to digestion becomes much lower. As a result, they’re rapidly assimilated by the digestive system, transformed into glucose (i.e., sugar), and shuttled directly into the blood stream.

From there, just like any other sugar, they trigger the release of insulin. Meaning that when consumed in excess, they can contribute to insulin resistance and type 2 (and “type 3”) diabetes.

Seen from the body’s perspective, flours look like sugar, act like sugar, and do most of the same kinds of damage that sugar does. Period.

Given that, having sugar-free jam on your bagel doesn’t really make a lot of sense. Eating a breakfast cereal with only 10 grams of added sugar (while still better than eating one with 30 grams) isn’t necessarily the nutritional victory it might seem to be. And eating a bag of snacks (like pretzels, or corn puffs, or pita chips) that have no added sugar but do have plentiful flours or starches is the dietary equivalent of taking one step forward and two steps back.

So here are some ways to start minimizing your intake of sugar- and flour-laden foods.

1. Expect to see them everywhere.

Foods containing significant amounts of sugars and flours are the most prevalent foods in our society. You’ll find them dominating most grocery-store shelves, buffet lines, school lunch trays, restaurant menus, vending machines, and quite likely (until you do some serious clearing),  many of your own kitchen shelves.

Breads, buns, rolls, bagels, breakfast cereals, pancakes, waffles, pastas, pizzas, crackers, snack chips, pitas, pretzels, tortillas, couscous, pastries, candies, ice cream, ketchup, barbeque sauce, canned soups, frozen entrées, soft drinks, fried foods, breaded coatings, salad dressings, craisins, croutons — the list of foods containing significant amounts of sugars, flours, and starches reads like a who’s who of America’s favorite foods and beverages.

2. Start reading ingredient labels.

You’ll see that many “healthy” foods contain shocking amounts of added sugars and flours, and are often the first ingredients.

Breakfast cereals (even whole-some-looking ones) typically contain one or more types of flour or starch, followed by one or more forms of sugar. Some oft-recommended breakfast options, like instant oatmeal and bran muffins, have glycemic loads so intense that they spike insulin faster than white bread.

Gluten-free goods, in particular, tend to contain a lot of starches, which are really just hyperprocessed forms of flour (i.e., sugar).

Read the label on your average protein or energy bar (even the paleo kind) and you’ll probably find concentrated sugars like cane syrup, agave syrup, rice syrup, coconut sugar, beet sugar, honey, fructose, or date paste among the top-three ingredients.

Many virtuous-looking juices and smoothies lead with super-sweet apple, grape, or pineapple juice — a stealth delivery system for high-density sugars that make you go “mmm!” and promptly glug down the two or three servings that the smallish bottle supposedly contains.

3. Rethink the role of vegetables.

If you’re eating fewer sugars and flours (the substrate of the standard American diet), you’re going to have to replace them with something. For this purpose, may I commend unto you the most excellent members of the nonstarchy vegetable kingdom?

There’s a growing trend toward replacing bland breads, pastas, rice, couscous, and crust-like things with beds of sautéed greens, riced cauliflower, grated slaws, or the spiralized vegetables of your choice, and for good reason: They are yummy and satisfying, and all those pretty colors and textures are quite beautiful to behold.

That’s important, because the ultimate goal here isn’t just to reduce your intake of flours and sugars. It’s to help you embrace a healthy, satisfying way of eating that will serve you — body and mind — for a lifetime.

Get the full story at https://experiencelife.com/article/revolutionary-act-31-go-easy-on-the-sugar-and-flour/