#so i have to start paying back my loans pretty much right away

[srjlvr]

[ LET’S GET MARRIED ! ] — lhs <3

PAIRING. lee heeseung!student X femreader!student !

SYN. the uni is giving away free dorms! under one condition, in order to save your desperate broke ass student’s life, you’d have to get married. and who’d be the lucky person to marry you if not your childhood friend? no feelings involved of course!…..right?

GENRE. he fell first but she fell harder, basically being in denial for feelings at first, childhood friends to a married couple, fluff fluff fluff !

WARNINGS. mentions of getting married(obv), rest of enha and lesserafim’s yunjin & chaewon are in it too, mentions on having kids(no, there will be no kids here its nothing serious!!), mentions of food, being broke because of uni student life. (pls do lmk if i missed something!) || NOT PROOFREAD AND VERY POORLY WRITTEN!!

WORD-COUNT. 5.1k+ (damn!)

NOTE. this is me being extremely sorry for not continuing my heeseung smau by releasing a heeseung oneshot yay!! i actually got the inspiration from HAPPINESS (one of my fav kdramas!) please leave some feedbacks!! i really wanna know what you thought about it<3

when you were younger, you’ve made a wishing list to you in the future, as soon as you turn an adult.

three important wishes were ;

first, never go broke while being a uni student.

second, never get married before the age of 25.

third, never ever fall in love with your best friend since childhood, aka lee heeseung.

first one is already being a huge failure. younger you would be definitely disappointed in uni student you, not that you care that much, but being a broke student sucks.

“my parents are literally about to kick me out, i get that, i’m a 22 years old uni student who’s still living up their asses, they probably want some peaceful and quiet life” you smacked your head over the lunch table, both of your friends looking at you concerned.

“maybe it’s time for you to pay for the dor-“

“never! yunjin, tell her how broke i am”

“she has like 1 dollar in her bank account, she’s still taking loans from her parents” yunjin nodded and you rolled your eyes.

“you didn’t have to go that far”

“oh i did”

“oh i know! what if you just start working?” chaewon raised her voice a bit.

“i have no time!”

“excuses excuses blah blah blah” she mocked you.

“look at heeseung for example, he works in a part time job at the convenience store right next to uni” yunjin pointed out.

you searched through the lunch hall and found the one person you’ve been looking for, lee heeseung.

you’ve been stuck to him ever since childhood, with your mothers being the biggest best friends you’ve ever seen, it was pretty hard to not see him every day in your young days.

both of your mothers even got pregnant at the same time, and gave birth around the same time, you’re two days younger than him.

your photo album is full with pictures of you and him, and so are the hanged photos on your house wall.

your mother and his mother were your biggest shippers, forcing you both to hug each other and even wear matching clothes.

your elementary school memories are filled with heeseung next to you and the whole class shipping you two.

highschool days weren’t better either, guys who wanted to try a move on you were always so scared of heeseung, they were so sure you and him are dating, with the amount of glares they got from him it was really hard to think otherwise.

your highschool crushes rejected you, always giving the excuse of not wanting to be in a relationship, hiding the fact that heeseung warned them that if they’ll say yes he’ll make sure they never see a daylight again.

he was joking, really. he’s not the violent type, and he couldn’t really explain why was he feeling so jealous whenever he saw you confessing to a guy who isn’t him.

heeseung got used to watching you from afar and protecting you, and you got used to search him everywhere you go even in crowded places and having his company ever since childhood.

“hee!” you called and waved at him, he waved at you back with a smile on his face.

“i swear if i didn’t know both of you were childhood friends i would’ve think you’re a married couple or something” chaewon rolled her eyes and you scoffed.

heeseung continued his way to his usual table with his friends.

“thinking about ways to confess your love to her?” jake smirked and heeseung shook away his thoughts.

“hm? who?” he asked.

“it’s obvious who! don’t play dumb come on!” sunghoon playfully pushed the older one.

“we’re talking about Y/N! everyone in uni are talking about you, even those who know nothing about the two of you” jay remarked.

“there’s nothing between us, we’re just friends” heeseung shrugged.

“and i’m queen elizabeth” sunoo tsked.

heeseung rolled his eyes and began to eat, “you know, even if i did have a crush on her, why would she even accept my confession?”

“ohhhh~” his friends teased.

“it’s kind of obvious she likes you, we’ve watched her ever since we became friends with you, and the way she looks at you is just different” jungwon shrugged and ni-ki nodded.

“she’s always searching you in a crowded room, as if you’re her guardian angel and she only needs you in her life in order for it to be perfect” ni-ki then stole a few bites of heeseung’s meal.

“hey! not cool” heeseung scoffed and ni-ki giggled.

“it’s not bad to have a crush on your childhood friend, you know?” jake smiled, “sometimes all you need is a miracle” jay added.

“hey, let’s go on a work search for yo-“

“no no no yunjin not you too!!” you sobbed, “i have no time to work and i need to search for the cheapest dorm, a one i can actually afford as soon as possible”

“why don’t you just go and ask heeseung for help” chaewon shrugged.

“it’s not that easy, i don’t want him to worry about it too much, he works hard for his money too” you pout and they nodded.

“by the way! how’s the money for the uni dorms is going?” jake asked heeseung who was busy fighting with ni-ki over his food.

“i’m just a few shifts away from getting enough money, i’ll ask y/n to become my roommate as soon as— what?” he noticed his friends looking at him.

“y/n and you? being roommates?” sunoo teased.

“hey, me and y/n spent all our childhood together, my house is her house and her house is mine, it has been like that for a while” heeseung sighed and they all nodded hesitatly.

“still, you said y/n’s parents told you about her not being able to pay for the uni dorms, are you really willing to pay it all?” jungwon asked.

heeseung shrugged and took a bite from his food again, “it’s either that or she’ll get kicked out by her parents”

“you really are her guardian angel” ni-ki whispered.

“good morning! you have afternoon classes today right?” your mother woke you up with a smile smeared all over her face.

“mhhm” you hummed, still trying to adjust the bright sunlight that hit your face.

“i need you to bring some medicine for ms lee! she’s been sick and i bought her some things” your mother helped you to get up and shoved you a bag, “here”

“can you please just let me get—“

“you can get ready at theirs! quickly quickly go!” she pushed you outside of your house. damn, she really does hope you’d get out as soon as possible.

she was right though, heeseung’s house is your house, and your house is his. you have a few clothes and even a toothbrush at his house and he has the same at yours, getting ready there was never a problem to you.

a walk to their house is even less than 5 minutes so you weren’t worried about someone from your neighborhood getting a jumpscare and thinking you’re some kind of a zombie.

you took out the keys and opened the door, heeseung was sitting in the kitchen and eating his breakfast.

“don’t ask, been a rough morning, where’s mom by the way?” you asked him and he pointed at her room. you got used to call his mom your mom too.

you saw her sleeping so you left the bag and the medicine next to her, leaving a note saying good morning and instructions of how to take the medicine, as if she doesn’t know all of that.

“you have afternoon classes too?” you asked heeseung while getting ready. he was in his room, lying on his bed while playing some games on his phone.

“not really, i don’t have any class today” he chuckled.

“since when don’t you have any classes today?”

“ever since i decided that im too tired to go to uni”

you rolled your eyes and threw one of the pillows at him, “don’t be stupid! get up and get ready to go!”

he giggled and shook his head, “i’m joking, i took evening classes for today”

you pressed your lips together and nodded, you don’t know why but hearing him giggling always made your heart skip a beat, but you don’t have any feelings for him, like, at all. right?

afternoon classes started and before you knew it, it was already lunch time.

“y/n! you won’t believe it!!” chaewon shout.

“what is it?” you shout at her back even though you were sitting right in front of her.

“i found you a solution! you can get a free dorm!” she shout back.

“what!” you shout.

“can you stop shouting! for god’s sake you’re literally a 1 cm away from each other” yunjin, who was covering her ears yelled.

you and chaewon shared an eye contact and froze. yunjin is so scary when she’s angry.

“continue please” she coughed and let chaewon continue what she had to say.

“it might seem crazy what i’m about to say,” chaewon sighed, “the uni is giving away free dorms—“

“no way omg omg omg please tell me i’m dreaming this is not happening right now right this is not real righ—“

“under one condition!” she cut you off and took her phone out of her pocket to read the terms.

“in order to get a free dorm, you have to have at least one option applied ;

one, you’re younger than 18. two, you’ve been scoring A+ on ALL of your exams and three, you’re between the ages 18-25 and got married, or engaged” she finished reading and turned off her phone.

“but chaewon, i’m not younger than eighteen” you complained and rest your head on your arm who was lying on the table.

“nor scoring A+ on ALL of your exams” yunjin added.

“thanks yunjin, i needed that”

“always here to help”

“then you know what’s left” chaewon smirked and you sat up, looking at her with innocent eyes.

“no” you let out.

“oh yes”

“i have no one to marry to” you argued.

“yes you do!” yunjin replied.

“i do not!”

chaewon and yunjin raised a brow and crossed their arms, “you don’t?”

as heeseung entered the uni entrance, you ran towards his direction and stopped in front of him.

“y/n why are you still here—“

“let’s get married” you said it out loud in front of everyone who was around.

your surroundings suddenly became quiet and everyone was staring at you two, starting to whisper and waiting for heeseung’s answer.

instead of answering he grabbed your wrist and dragged you out of the entrance into a place in the garden next to the uni.

the walk there was making you so nervous and anxious, what if you were a bit too much? asking your childhood friend to marry you just to get a free dorm? are you that desperate?

when he finally stopped, he let go of your wrist and cupped your cheeks, looking straight into your eyes.

“what did you say?” he asked, his eyes looking for any sign or answer from you.

“i said, let’s get married”

heeseung could’ve swore his heart skipped a beat because he for real felt like he died at that spot.

“let me explain!” you said before he could respond.

“the uni are giving out free dorms to anyone who’s between the ages of 18-25 and is married or engaged” you sighed.

heeseung let go of his hold and sighed, looking down and closing his eyes.

you really didn’t mean that genuinely, did you? something in him really hoped you did.

“hee?” you asked, biting your lower lips, suddenly feeling more anxious than before

“sure, let’s get married” he chuckled.

you broke your second main wish on your list.

heeseung was just a few shifts away from getting enough money to get the both of you a place to live in, he could have told you that too, but he chose not to.

only crazy people would agree to this idea, you were so desperate that you actually just asked him to marry you, and he guessed he was one of those crazy people, because he had no idea why he said yes.

he had other way, without marrying you, but something about the idea of marrying you made him feel excited.

“i knew it i knew it! only crazy people would agr— wait what” you blinked a few times after you realized his answer.

“i said sure, let’s get married” he smiled softly and you were about to faint.

“no feelings are involved….right?” you hesitantly asked him, hoping he wouldn’t agree with you.

instead, he nodded slowly and hesitantly, “no feelings involved”

you regretted that sentence so bad because the day after, when he kneeled on one knee and held a ring out for you in front of everyone and proposed to you, your couldn’t lie to yourself anymore, you actually broke your third wish on your list a few years ago, you were in love with lee heeseung for years.

“y/l/n y/n, i have loved you ever since i can remember, i watched you grow up and grew up with you as well, i got used to being with you 24/7, i can’t see the rest of my life without you in it, will you make me the happiest man alive and agree to marry me?”

even though it was an act(according to you), it felt so real to the point where you cried and sobbed so badly, while putting on the ring he bought for you less than 24 hours ago.

it wasnt planned. the proposal wasn’t planned at all.

the plan was that you and heeseung will go to the uni secretariat and request an application for the free dorm since both of you are engaged now.

heeseung had no reason to put on this whole show and show everyone that you’re now engaged. you have no idea why he did it, and instead of getting angry at him, you fell in love with him even more.

it felt wrong, it felt not right.

but you didn’t care, you always knew your feelings for heeseung were somewhere deep inside your heart. you tried to push them away all the time, because there was no way your childhood friend, the popular boy in your highschool, the kid who grew up with you, had feelings for you.

you tried to deny your feelings but now you realized thrre was no use anymore, so you let yourself love him as much as you can.

it wasn’t the desperation that lead you to ask him to marry you, because then you’d ask literally any other guy, it was your pure love to him, to the guy who was always there for you when you needed him.

“heeseung! explain what was that!” his six other friends gathered in a circle, surrounding him and not letting him go.

“what was wha—“

“you and y/n? married?” jungwon shout.

“have you gone crazy?” jake added.

“and she said yes! something is not right” jay joined.

“yesterday you told us you have no feelings for her!” sunoo remarked.

“you didn’t even believe us when we told you she’s obviously in love with you” sunghoon tsked.

“something isn’t sitting right to me” ni-ki gasped.

“explain now!” they all said at the same time.

“calm down!” heeseung coughed, “i’ll explain to you everything later”

by later he meant after classes, at his house, together with you and your friends yunjin and chaewon.

“yunjin, chaewon” heeseung nodded at your friends.

“lee heeseung” they glared at him.

“come on! both of you knew about it even before” you pleaded.

“doesn’t change the fact that he’ll be stealing you from us now” they rolled their eyes.

“i’m still so confused” ni-ki tried to quicken everyone and get to the point.

“me and y/n are getting married—“

“yeah no shit sherlock” sunghoon cute him off and heeseung glared at him.

“anyway, y/n would you like the explain why?” he turned to you and smiled.

“the uni is giving away free dorms to married couples between 18-25 so—“

“you decided to get married to get a free dorm” jay finished your sentence.

“have you gone mad? heeseung worked his ass to get enough money to get the dorms for the bo— mhhhhmmm!!!” sunoo roamed but jake covered his mouth before he could continue.

“sunoo!!” jake coughed and turned to you with a smile, “don’t mind him he’s been stressed from work and uni lately”

the rest of you giggled awkwardly and tried to ease the atmosphere.

after you yunjin and chaewon left, the boys stayed with heeseung, looking at him with concern.

“what?” heeseung looked at them back with his bambi eyes.

“i don’t know hee, it feels like….she’s kind of using you” sunghoon spoke, jay slapped his arm and he whined.

“he’s right though, marrying you only to get a dorm is quite crazy” jungwon nodded.

“he’s even crazier for actually agreeing to all of this” ni-ki said and jake shushed him.

“ni-ki is right, i am crazy, i have no idea why i said yes but she wasn’t forcing anything on me” heeseung shrugged, “besides, i’ve liked her for so many years so—“

“ah ha!! we knew it!” they all said at the same time and heeseung sighed. what have he got himself into?

after everyone left, heeseung texted you, asking you to meet him in your usual spot.

you got ready and for the first time, you took a while to do so.

you stared at yourself in the mirror a few times and even checked different outfits. this has never happened to you ever before, especially not when you knew that you’re going to see heeseung.

heeseung saw you at your worst, why are you dressing up for him now then?

“i must be crazy, crazy crazy!” you shook away your thoughts and got out to meet your soon-to-be-husband.

“hee!” you saw his back facing you and as soon as he turned around you froze.

did he dress up for you too? why does he look so breathtaking suddenly? his bambi eyes match the rest of his beautiful features on his face so much, you’ve seen this man grow up, you know every detail about his face and you couldn’t explain why it was so sudden that you got caught by surprise because of his beauties.

shaking away your thoughts, you walked closer to him and smiled.

“hey hubby” you grinned.

“hubby?” he asked.

“a new nickname for my soon-to-be-husband” you chuckled and he nodded.

“i actually thought about something,” he turned to you, “our parents will figure it out sooner or later, should we tell them the truth or—“

“no, let them believe we’re getting married without any reason other than being in love”

you have no idea why you just said that. but you hid your face as soon as you realized what just came out of your mouth.

heeseung felt too flattered and suddenly didn’t know what to say. you keep on making him speechless.

“ahem,” he cleared his throat, “you do know that they’ll probably rush out things and even take the wedding plan to their own hands“

i don’t care, i’d like to marry you and spend the rest of my life with you as soon as i can. is what you wanted to say, but you couldn’t bring yourself to do so.

“y/n?” he asked. he noticed you were too deep in thoughts and waited for you to come back to sense.

“i’m aware” you nodded, “i’ve also got a text from the uni, we’ll be getting our dorm in the next week, so we should start preparing”

heeseung nodded and looked at you. you were suddenly feeling so nervous and shy to share an eye contact with him, so you broke it as he just kept staring at you and taking in your beauty.

“hey y/n” he said, “hm?”

“i don’t mind marrying you and spending the rest of my life being married to you”

you looked over him and he had the genuinest smile you’ve ever seen.

it felt like the world had froze, and the snow that was falling suddenly stopped, it felt like it was just the two of you in this whole world.

“YOU’RE GETTING WHAT?” your mother yelled.

you and heeseung planned a dinner with both of your parents, to announce the big news.

things became quite awkward between the two of you, ever since your last encounter with him you could barely face him.

his sudden confession freaked you out and the only thing that came out of your mouth was “oh, okay” in the most dry way ever.

you wanted to tell him you feel the same, you wanted to tell him that you’ve been in love with him ever since forever. but one moment that caught you off guard ruined your chance.

you were stupid, stupid and idiot. heeseung probably thinks you hate his guts now.

heeseung in the meantime felt like he was breaking apart slowly. oh, okay?? that’s all you had to answer?

he felt dumb, he felt hopeless. the confession was completely out of the blue and unplanned, your beauty hypnotized him and he was so mesmerized by you that the words just came out of his mouth naturally.

what if you hate his guts now? what if he made you uncomfortable? what if you’ll regret it the last minute because you weren’t feeling the same about him?

all of those questions were eating him alive, and you didn’t help either. each time he came up to you, you were suddenly in rush and told him you have to go, it was breaking him inside slowly.

the dinner was one chance to finally talk with you again.

“married, mom. we’re getting married” you repeat what you already said a few seconds ago.

“when? where? how?” heeseung’s mother asked.

heeseung looked at you and smiled warmly, “it just happened, we’ve been together ever since childhood, it already felt like being in a relationship for so long, so we decided to marry each other” he chuckled and held your hand tightly, “to belong to each other until the day we die”

your parents looked at the both of you. you were sharing eye contact for so long, with heeseung smiling at you, looking deep into your eyes, and with you looking at him with nothing but pure love in your eyes that was making everyone in the room feel so jealous of you two.

“now kiss!” your mother said.

you and heeseung broke the eye contact and blinked a few times.

“what?” you asked.

“kiss then! i want to picture it and keep it in my photo gallery forever!” his mother added.

you were about to speak up until heeseung held your cheek to turn you to face him and it was only a matter of seconds until you felt his lips on yours.

it was your first kiss ever, your first time kissing someone, and it was his as well, but he lead you on so good that it made it look less awkward.

you were his first kiss. you, his childhood friend, stole his first kiss.

“we knew that it’ll happen one day!!” your mothers cheered, “we even have a whole wedding plan ready!!”

you and heeseung broke the kiss and shared an eye contact again.

you didn’t need to hear him say to know how much love he holds for you, and how he cherishes you so much.

and your eyes told him everything, they held the answers to all of the questions that bothered him. you love him as much as he loves you.

“i can’t believe you’re getting married, my little angels” your parents cried altogether which made heeseung let go of his hold on you and grab some tissues to wipe their tears.

“i love that ring by the way! heeseung you did a great job” your mother gave him thumbs up and he chuckled.

if only she knew that it was a ring he bought you in less than 24 hours and even rushed your friends to come with him and help him pick it only because he wanted his whole life to properly propose you.

it was a moving day already and your parents helped you pack every last thing, they even cried through the way, how could their princess leave them so fast?

“you can visit our house anytime!” you tried to comfort them.

“we’ll update you before that, we don’t want to catch you while doing the thing you know” your mother winked and you rolled your eyes, “mom!”

“i see you’re all packed and ready” heeseung came in to check on you.

“she is! take her away already!” your mother complained.

“not before you take this with you!” she went away for a few seconds and came back with a huge wrapped photo frame.

“don’t open it yet!! only when you get into your new house and get everything in place!!” she excitedly hugged the both of you and you nodded.

moving in was quite rough, you had a lot of boxes to unpack and organized, and you and heeseung never felt more awkward after the first kiss you shared.

you’ve barely spoke with each other and your friends were starting to get concerned.

“he told me he doesn’t mind marrying me and spending the rest of his life with me” you pout.

yunjin and chaewon shout and giggled, “girl! he’s more than in love with you!! he’s lovesick!!” they both said.

“what did you answer then?” yunjin asked.

“i told him okay” you smacked your head on the table.

“no way” chaewon gasped.

“yes way” you whined.

“you’re stupid!!” they both smacked you.

“then!!” you shout, “we had our first kiss on dinner in front of our parents” you whispered that part.

“what did you say? couldn’t hear you” chaewon said.

“oh she said that they shared their first kiss on dinner with their— YOU HAD YOUR FIRST KISS WITH HEESEUNG??” yunjin’s eyes widened.

“what happened after that?” chaewon asked curiously.

“we just finished dinner, and now we barely even talk” you sighed, “each time i see him i’m just blushing and running away, i can’t face him!”

“you have to!! you’re moving in soon!!” yunjin argued and chaewon nodded.

“it’ll be the death of me” you sobbed and they chuckled.

you were right at first, but slowly and surely heeseung made a joke and both of you got back to normal in no time, as if nothing happened between you two.

you even helped him organizing his closet and his room, and he did the same.

after a long day you and heeseung finally laid down on your now shared sofa.

“it’s been a rough day” you sighed.

“should we order something?” he suggested and you nodded immediately. you ended up ordering your favorite food.

“let’s open up the picture!!” you said and grabbed the picture your mom gave you earlier today.

you and heeseung both unwrapped it together and revealed an old picture of you and heeseung hugging each other with a huge smile on your faces.

“look at us then and look at us now” he giggled.

both of you hanged the picture right above your sofa and kept staring at it for a while.

“hey hee,” you spoke, “yeah?”

“i wouldn’t mind marrying you and spending the rest of my days with you too” you turned to him, “until the day i die”

“is that your way of telling me you love me too?” heeseung froze for a second. you caught him off guard for the countless time already.

although he understood very clearly your feelings after you shared your first kiss, hearing your words made his heart beat fast.

it was a confirmation for him that all of his feelings for you were actually mutual all this time.

instead of answering his questions you grabbed his shirt and kissed him.

he put his hands around your waist and pushed you closer to him, holding you tightly as if he’s too scared to let you go.

breaking off the kiss was hard, but the lack of oxygen was kicking in, you pressed your foreheads together, still with your eyes closed.

“does that answer your question?” you giggled and you felt him smiling.

“i don’t think so, i need a bit more of it to feel certain” he teased and you tsked.

“i don’t need to be in a relationship with you to feel certain about my feelings and my willingness to marry you, i want to spend my life with you, i love you” you said and pecked his lips.

“i love you too, y/n” he pecked your lips again and it suddenly got into a fight between you two about who pecks the other more, until it ended up in a long, deep kiss.

“so let me get this straight. you and heeseung had been in denial for many many years and manipulated yourself into thinking that you don’t like each other at all at all, then when y/n’s desperate and broke ass heard of a chance to get a free dorm by getting married, she went up to you, heeseung, and asked her to marry you, you agreed to the proposal because at one point you stopped lying to yourself and realized you’re actually lovesick, and the rest is history” ni-ki finally breathed out after almost rapping this whole story.

“by history i mean y/n waking up from her denial and realizing her feelings to you” he added.

“yes, exactly” heeseung nodded and you chuckled.

you were sitting together with your friends on one table, yunjin and chaewon who were already aware of the story added a few notes here and there as ni-ki summarized your whole story.

“this is a story to tell your children” jay smiled and the rest nodded.

“we’re not planning to get pregnant anytime soon, we didn’t even have a wedding yet” you sighed.

“you never know y/n, you never know!” sunoo slowly nodded.

“why did you say that as if you went through something familiar” jungwon teased.

“you never know y/n, you never know!” sunghoon mocked sunoo.

“that was a good one!” jake laughed with him.

“children, literal children who found themselves in uni somehow” you sighed.

“at this point we won’t even need to have any children when we have them” heeseung agreed with you.

“it doesn’t matter, as long as i’m with you” you smiled and pecked his lips.

“get a room you two will you!”

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[am-i-interrupting]

do you mind if i ask for a bimbo gn!reader who thinks they have an unrequited crush on vox all the while being oblivious of vox's own attempt at flirting, please?

Daft Dolls

All that training with Velvette about how not to just pace but run in high heels really did pay off. Not only was it a valuable tool to have in Hell of all places, it was also just pretty damn useful to know in general.

You weren’t running from loan sharks. No, you were running towards a specific hotel. You weren’t in trouble. Far from it. You were excited. You could not wait to see the look on his face.

The doors were slammed open as you barged in. You looked across the lobby of the hotel.

Vaguely you registered other people (a man dressed in red who just appeared out of thin air) but your eyes zoned in on the pink clad spider at the bar.

“The fuck you doing here, toots?”

“I got you out of work!”

Your voices overlapped. Angel Dust looked at you with a raised brow. “What?”

“I got you out of work,” you repeated as you walked towards him, the door closing behind you. “Well, not work but work work. You know, Valentino work. I know it’s not what you wanted but being on set with me is better than being on set with Valentino, right? At least, that’s what I was thinking ‘cause when I went to talk to him about it he was mad. Like mad mad. He threw bottle of rosé at me.”

“Are you okay?” Angel asked.

You batted his hands away from you. “I’m fine. It’s no big deal. He has shit aim anyway. He missed but with the help of Vox I was able to get you off of Val’s set and onto mine!”

Angel Dust just stared at you, absolutely silent.

As he processed what you said, a blonde woman came up beside you. “Um, hi, I’m Charlie. You’re one of Angel’s friends, I guess? It’s so nice to meet you.”

You took her outstretched hand (it was really soft) and shook it. “Nice to meet you too! Angel’s told me about you. I’m—“

“Vox helped you?” Angel asked, coming out of his stupor. “Like TV head Vox? Overlord Vox? That Vox? He helped you get me out of work?”

“Yeah,” you said shaking your head. “He was already up there with Val. I kind of just barged in. I wasn’t thinking. That was probably a stupid thing to do but you were on the news and then you were messaging me all freaked out about what Val was gonna do because you were on the news so I just kind of went up there to talk about it and anyway. Yeah, why?”

He downed the glass that was on the bar beside him. “You’re so oblivious sometimes,” he said.

“What?!”

He pointed a finger at you. “You call me at least once every two weeks and moan and groan about how—“

You clasped your hands over his mouth. “Can we not ta— Ew! Angel!” You yanked your hands back, now covered in his saliva. “Gross!”

He smirked at you and leaned in close, “Just making sure you’re prepared for that hand job he’s gonna get.”

You pushed his shoulder and he pushed you back. This led to you both lightly hitting each other with no real intent to harm one another.

That was until a different woman’s voice sounded through the room, “What the fuck is going on?”

The both of you stopped and turned towards her. Grey skin, white hair, orange eyes, she was gorgeous. You couldn’t help but say as much.

She looked completely thrown off by your blatant statement meanwhile Angel threw his head back with a laugh and Charlie looked over at her with a huge smile.

“Vaggie,” Charlie said in a sing-song voice.

“No,” the woman (Vaggie) immediately responded with. “Absolutely not.”

She turned around and started walking away. “Sorry,” Charlie said before moving to follow her. “But they’d be perfect for the Hotel!”

“No, we’re not having two Angel Dusts,” Vaggie said.

“But, Vaggie,” Charlie’s voice then grew too distant to hear.

Angel waited a moment but then he turned to you again. “You really got me out of work?” he asked, voice so close to sounding fragile.

“Course I did,” you told him. You grabbed his hand. “Your my friend, Angie.” You let go. “I need to go back though. I’m on my lunch break and it’s probably almost over. I just got so excited, I had to come tell you in person.”

Angel pulled you in for a hug and squeezed you with all six arms. “You’re the best, toots.”

“I know, I know,” you said. “Anyway, I gotta go. See ya!”

You blew Angle kissed as you walked backwards to the door. You spun around, prepared to open it when you saw the red clad man from before holding the door open for you.

“Oh, thanks.”

“Of course, my dear,” he said, a radio filter on his voice. “Please, allow me to walk you back. I’d love to thank our mutual friend in person for helping our other mutual friend.”

“You know Vox?”

“Yes, indeed I do, very well, in fact. I’m Alastor. Pleasure to meet you, my dear, quite a pleasure,” he said.

You gave him your name in turn.

The two of you walked together in silence. You did notice as the two of you walked, many people sprinted away which was odd, especially for you.

You were normally approached by people when you were out. They didn’t run away.

See, several years ago youd made a deal with Velvette. You were one of her models and she’d provide you with protection from Hell’s many dangers along with the occasional free clothes as a bonus. Time passed and you and Velvette actually ended up getting along fairly well. She’d put you in her streams, in her posts, she’d hang out with you outside of work. That’s when one day she heard you singing when she invited herself over. A couple days later, you were basically told you were going to make an album. The rest was history.

So, people running from instead of approaching you was different, weird, even strange.

You looked over at your company but he simply wore a smile. You could hear him humming actually, something upbeat and jazzy. You supposed if he wasn’t deterred you shouldn’t be either. Maybe it was just one of those off days in Hell, especially since it was so soon after the extermination.

Eventually you got to the three Vs’ tower. What you didn’t expect was for Vox to immediately teleport to the entryway.

His posture was straight which was normal but it seemed tense. If that wasn’t enough to tip you off the fact that he was still sparking was and his eye strobing definitely was. You followed his gaze to Alastor and found yourself suddenly very cautious of the man.

While Alastor didn’t seem that bad on the surface you’d known Vox longer. You trusted Vox. You more than trusted Vox actually but the point was you took a very lengthy step away from Alastor and toward’s Vox even if he was sparking.

“What marvelous company this one makes,” Alastor said, gesturing to you. “Wouldn’t you say, old friend?”

Vox took a step in front of you. “Get the FUCK out of my territory!” he said.

Alastor’s smile turned into something devious, something knowing, and something very unnerving. He gave a bow and then vanished into the shadows.

Vox placed a hand on your back and guided you inside. “Do not ever go around him again, understand?”

“Yes, sir,” you said. Not once in your half a decade in Hell had you ever seen Vox like this.

He sighed. His sparking calmed down and his eyes stopped strobing. “Sorry, just, um, I— he’s— it’s complicated. Just don’t associate with him.”

“Sorry, I was just going to that hotel Angie’s staying at. He insisted on walking me back, that’s all,” you explained.

“It’s— Wait, what? What hotel?”

“The Happy Hotel that Charlie Morningstar started. There was an ad for it on 666 today before Angel’s fight.”

Vox stopped. “Alastor’s back and he’s staying at a hotel run by Lucifer’s daughter?”

Prior to all of the things that happened two days after the extermination, Vox had already said (as what you assumed was a way to placate Valentino) that he would be personally in charge of directing your music video but it seemed like since Alastor he wasn’t letting you out of his sight. That was silly though.

He did come into your apartment in the tower though and just sat on your couch. That was normal though. Vox did that when he was stressed. He said your apartment was less noisy than staying with the other Vs. Whatever the case, you made him dinner last night.

Now it was the next day and Velvette was dolling you up as she was prone to do. She blended out your lipstick with her finger. Then she put a thick layer of lip gloss on top.

“Pout for me. Perfect. You look pretty, innocent, and fuckable,” she said.

She pulled you out of your chair and to the nearest full length mirror. She was right, as always. She’d given you a very soft blue makeup look for the most part with sharp eyeliner and bold pink and black lips. She had dressed you in a pastel pink cropped sweater, a matching miniskirt with a high pastel blue g-string, and tall white boots. She’d outdone herself but she always did.

She ushered you out of the dressing room after you both got done gawking at yourself and to the set. There you found Angel in a very similar get up but with the pinks and blues reversed.

“You ready to blow this shoot?” Angel asked,

“Wrong kind of shoot for a blow,” you told him.

He rolled his eyes with a smile. One hand of his went around your shoulders. The other went around the waist.

You both went to set and chatted while you waited for Vox to arrive.

It was only a few minutes before he was walking through the doors, a tray of three cups in his hands. He set it down on a nearby table. Velvette went to grab one but he cut her off, taking it instead. You caught sight of her offended expression before it morphed into a done but knowing look. One hand on her hip while the other plucked a different cup off the tray,

Vox turned, now two cup in hand. He caught sight of you and raised an eyebrow. Velvette doubled over laughing. You couldn’t help but wander why. It was too loud to hear what they were saying but it didn’t look like either of them had moved their lips.

Maybe one of Vox’s soundboard noises went off. That was known to happen occasionally but you couldn’t think of why.

You didn’t really get the chance to think of any reasons though as seconds later Vox was in front of you. He extended the hand holding the cup he’d taken from Velvette.

“You look nice,” he said.

“Thanks, Velvette’s work,” you explained, taking the cup from him. You hummed to yourself when you were met with your favorite drink.

“I’m sure that’s not all true,” he said.

You were too busy to notice how his eyes lingered on your face but Angel did. Throughout the next few weeks Angel noticed a lot.

He’d never really seen you and Vox interact before. He would just hear stories from you afterwards and holy fuck. You had to be dense to think this man wasn’t absolutely obsessed with you.

Vox brought you your favorite drink every single day. He complimented you every single day. He would correct and critique everyone else in a very detached way at best and frustrated way more often than not. But with you, he was calm, gentle almost. He took your ideas and incorporated them. He would go out of his way to physically correct your poses or guide you through specific motions. Once you mentioned off handedly that your feet were hurting and there was an early lunch break where he didn’t even eat, he massaged your feet for you.

When Angel brought this up, however, he was brushed off.

“He brought Velvette a drink too.” Yeah, one she complained tasted like piss.

“He does that all the time. It doesn’t mean anything.” Angel had never heard Vox compliment anyone in his nearly seventy years in Hell.

“He just knows me better, that’s all.” Not once had Angel ever seen Vox being even half as kind to Velvette or Valentino.

“I’m sure he does that with other people’s ideas.” Angel remembered being told multiple iterations of the same story with different people, all because they did something as small as suggest different shoes for someone to walk in because it was too loud.

“It’s probably just easier to do that than explain. He knows I’m used to being puppeted around by Vel.” He spent five minutes explaining to Angel what to do instead of just moving his four arms into position.

“Do you want me to give you a foot massage, Angie? All you have to do is ask.” Well, yes, but that wasn’t the point!

Angel watched as Vox laughed at something you said. “Fucking dumbass,” he muttered to himself as he grabbed a yogurt off the snack bar.

“I know, right?” Velvette said, scaring the shit out of him in the process. “You think this is bad? Ugh, imagine being surrounded by it all the time and Voxy’s just as bad and there’s no escaping him. I have to put up with his bitch ass whining all the time. It’s exhausting.”

Angel relaxed enough to lean against the wall. “Kind of makes you want to press them together like dolls and make them kiss, don’t it?” he asked.

“Yeah. . . Wait a minute! That’s it!” Velvette slapped Angel’s shoulder.

She whipped out her phone and started typing frantically. Her legs started kicking from where they dangled over the edge of the snack bar.

Angel peeled open the yogurt and tried to lean to have a look at what she was typing. She was too fast though and shut off her phone with a satisfied smirk.

Her eyes were glued to the pair of you. You pulled out your phone and saw a message from her. You looked over at her with furrowed brows. She just smiled at you manically. You shook your head but gave her a thumbs up.

When lunch break was supposed to be over, Velvette clapped her hands together loud enough it echoed through the room. “Listen up, sluts!” she said, taking control over the room.

You watched as she and Vox had a back and forth which ended with Vox confused on the set couch in a new outfit Velvette poofed on him. It wasn’t anything too far out of his usual style but it was a change. It was simple black slacks and a white button up shirt but the sleeves were rolled past his forearms and several of the buttons were undone. He looked. . . You were staring that’s for sure.

The music came on and you began lip singing. You put your hands on either side of his head. You threw your leg on the other side of his lap and straddled him. You moved your body up and down, not grinding on him due to not sitting on him but it was a close thing. Your face was right in front of his. You tried to hold eye contact with him but for some reason his eyes kept darting down.

“Fuck it,” he said under his breath.

Then an arm was wrapped around your hips forcing you down and a hand was in your hair guiding your head closer to his. Your lips met his and static filled your entire body. His tongue was caressing your mouth, making you feel like you had a mouth full of pop rocks.

You moaned when he flipped you so your back was pressed against the couch. He rolled his hips against yours and you could feel him through his pants.

“Fuck the music video,” he said against your lips. “How would you feel about filming a porno instead?”

“Mmm, kinky,” Angel said.

“I am so sending this to ‘Tino,” Velvette said.

[aheathen-conceivably]

Now that we know a little more, clearly Gio is pretty ticked off with the situation - considering the feelings that he has about his and Jo’s relationship already, combined with the guilt and likely irritation of her finding out about his lying, now also combined with her demanding part ownership of the ranch - he doesn’t have a lot of leg to stand on. He has to just, deal with it, because it IS all their lives’ on the line, and nothing he’s tried to do has worked. I voted for Zelda to be most pissed, but I think she and Antoine are really just sad for now, so Gio might run away with the title after all 😭

Oh HELLO my friend! I love that we’re still playing the game of “Who Will Snap First!” (Game show pending). You’re hella right about one thing, as things shift and move, everybody’s numbers start to kind of adjust don’t they? Cause ahem, yeah, Gio is ~not pleased~ at the moment, and like you said, he doesn’t even feel like he has the “right” to be angry (which is its own sort of compounding factor, isn’t it?).

Is it time for a Gio deep dive? Welp. Gather one gather round my darlings because you know I can never resist….

Ted Talk with a Heathen! (Obviously under the cut because I’m a madlad)

First and foremost let me say that for whatever else Jo may do or how she demanded it, she is damn right not to pay off a loan without some legal backing in return. Now does she know this? For sure. But does she also know that she did it to get under Gio’s skin in a way that nothing else could? Absolutely. I’ve talked about it a little here, but Gio’s entire mindset is wrapped up in this farmhouse. It is his American dream. We also need to remember that he did what he said he never would in order to get the money to buy it, which is involve himself in his family bootlegging back in the 1920s. He even admitted to Antoine that after their one deal he tried to get out, but “once they get their teeth into you, once they know where you are, they don’t let you stop.” So Gio saved up this money by going against his own moral code and then ran from it to a place he thought he could establish himself as a “legitimate” American.

And I know yall like to rag on him about “making bad choices,” and while that’s partially true, Gio is just horribly, horribly unlucky. Buying land in the American West was incredibly fortuitous at one point in history, and it’s these stories that prompted Gio to do this at all. He’s an example of how not only can we buy into propaganda with our money and our dreams, but how they intersect with historical circumstances in ways far beyond our control or predictions.

Now to add to this, Gio knows what Jo has just done. She’s essentially taken part of what’s incredibly personal and precious to him as “payment” for what he did to her: which was trying to control her into fitting neatly into his dream when she had told him no multiple times before. In doing so he took away what was most precious to her: control and autonomy over her own life. It’s why he’s not really fighting her, and that deep seated Catholic guilt is simply telling him that this is retribution. But you can only write off someone else’s actions as righteous for so long, can’t you? And to make matters worse, let’s not forget….

Gio is not stupid. He knows something is going on between Jo and Val. How much of him thinks it’s just flirtation? How much of it is genuine or is just Jo once again trying to “get back at him”? But he’s staying quiet about it for a reason, most likely the same reason he’s willing to roll over and let Jo take 1/4th ownership of his dream. He’s motivated by guilt and ideas of righteous payback, yes, but he’s also taking a gamble that Jo is working through his betrayal in a way that he has to let her get through, and he’s attempting to let go of control to show her that he won’t do it again.

Essentially, he’s overcompensating for his actions and using his own compliance as a sort of “play” in their game to keep the other person where they want them. Is this potentially more motivated by love and less problematic than him directly lying to her to get her to stay? Y’all can make the call on that, but now at the very least, he’s the one suffering for it rather than her.

Now with all that going on, how far is this man willing to bend? How intuitive is Jo to when she’s pushed him too far and how much of her even gives a damn? Welp. There’s your questions on today’s episode of 1930s: Arc Two! Who Will Snap First? with more info coming at you tomorrow! 🫡

[yutafrita]

AN ANGEL, MY ANGEL, AND ME- PT. 1

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Fallen Angel!Sungchan x Reader (she/her) Teaser // Preview // 1 // 2 // 3

[Feat.] Soyeon from (G)i-dle, Shotaro from Riize, and BoA

Chp. Word Count 5.7k Synopsis Finding out your best friend is a guardian angel is pretty mind numbing. It only gets worse when you find out a Fallen Angel has been hiding in your apartment for two years. You think your life can’t get any weirder, until you start lying about being married to keep your new job. Genre Low Fantasy, Romantic Comedy, Ridiculously Fluffy, some angst, fake dating Chapter Warnings Swearing, Food/ Eating, cops/ fictional police force, Catholic Religious imagery, HR interview violation

CHAPTER ONE- THE BLACK CAT CONSPIRACY

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You uncomfortably picked at your cuticles, anxious by the lack of activity in your email. It had only been a week since you started applying for jobs, and yet already you had begun feeling discouraged. The candle you lit in your room a few hours ago filled your lungs with eucalypts, and you still had not been able to calm down. You knew the candle couldn’t exactly work miracles, but still! Your cat sat on your lap, and you quietly dusted off the cuticles that blemished his black fur.

“Sorry, Eerie,” you muttered. You scratched his ear delicately, and he leaned against your hand to show his forgiveness.

“Hey! I’m gonna order a pizza, do you want to split it?” your roommate walked in through your open door, plopping herself on your bed with her eyes on her phone. Your cat turned its head as if to glare at her before placing himself back down.

“Sure,” you responded dryly, still tugging at the loose cuticle. Soyeon looked up from her phone to see your bright computer screen.

“Not this again,” she grumbled. She stood up from your bed and kicked your chair away. Your cat leapt out from your lap and scampered to the corner of your room, hissing at your roommate.

“Hey! You scared Eerie!” you sat up to move her away but she was quick to close all of your computer tabs.

“You need to chill the fuck out. We still have a month left before graduation,” Soyeon reminded before snatching your hand to hold in front of your face, “you are out of cuticles,” she then tossed your hand down and turned her gaze to the cat that hissed at her, “and that cat is always scared.”

You sighed in defeat, “my brain knows objectively that you’re right, but can’t help it. I have to start paying back these student loans soon..”

“I’m ordering the pizza, and we’re watching something.”

You and Soyeon sat on the couch eating your pizza as Ouran High School Host Club played on your living room screen. Eerie sat next to you on the couch, cuddled up against your side as he seemingly watched the screen.

“How many times have we seen this show?” Soyeon asked. The pizza had long been finished, and the empty box sat in front of you on the coffee table, covering the extensive bridal and wedding magazines you had been taking notes on.

“I lost count after the seventh rewatch,” you shrugged, “I think Eerie’s seen it like four times at this point.”

“That cat is fucking weird,” she muttered this sentiment for the one millionth time since you brought the cat home.

“He’s just a little eccentric,” you defended. You scratched the cat behind the ears, and you felt him lean closely into your hand.

“He’s like… I swear he’s like a person,” Soyeon hissed.

“If he was, then he would have to pay his own pet rent.”

_____

“Remember your final exam will be cumulative,” your professor reminded your class the following morning. You rubbed your temples, hoping the motion would stifle the headache you were nursing to no avail. 

You were stuffing your backpack as the rest of the lecture hall emptied. You had another lecture in about two hours, so you weren’t in much of a rush all things considered. Running up through your mental to-do list, you figured you’d get some extra studying done before lecture, and afterwards you’d grab some more kitty litter. Leaving the hall, your pace was followed by someone you had only seen in class and never spoke to outside of that.

“Hey, do you get anything the professor has been going on about?” 

“Oh… yeah it’s a bit complicated.”

“My name’s Shotaro,” he smiled brightly despite his seeming distress. “I noticed you’re the only one the prof doesn’t call on, and I figure it’s because they know you know your stuff.”

He did have a point. In your undergrad years, you were a pretty intense student and always visited all of your professors' office hours. While you weren’t as obsessive as a graduate student, you still submitted all of your coursework on time with excellent grades.

“I’m y/n,” you nodded. There was an awkward pause before Shotaro asked the question you were dreading- if he could pick your brain before the next lecture.

Sitting next to him in the library, you sat for about an hour, the young man scooched a little closer to you than you would have liked.

“So, these two would be contrasting then, yeah?” he asked, pointing between two choices.

“Yep!” you nodded before glancing back at the time. “Ah, I’ve gotta go.”

You turned towards your backpack that sat between the two of you before glancing back up. In an attempt to help, Shotaro had shut your notebook and held it in his hand, extending it towards you. Maybe he was a bit strange, but he didn’t seem harmful, at least.

You returned home later that day, exhausted, the kitty litter bag heavy on your arm as you entered. 

You shut the door behind you, Eerie immediately wrapping himself around your ankles. You smiled, crouching down to pet the cat behind his ears. He seemed unbothered, continuing to rub his scent between your now outstretched hand and ankles.

“I didn’t see any animals today, buddy,” you chuckled. Eerie scrunched up his face as if to respond to you. You stood up, and made your way to your room with Eerie following closely behind you. You began the process of taking your laptop out so you could start up on more job applications when something slipped out of your backpack onto the floor of your room.

“Huh?” you frowned, bending down to pick it up only to hear Eerie hiss and scramble out of your room. “What the fuck?” you shook your head, picking up the small black string bag that you had no recollection of ever owning. Carefully undoing the string, you dropped its contents into your hand- a small, smooth, green and silver gemstone. You heard the front door open, but instead of greeting Soyeon you stayed in your room, holding the gemstone high above your head and towards the light to try and see if you could figure out what it was.

“Hey, why is that stupid cat cowering behind the couch?” Soyeon asked.

“I have no idea, this rock fell out of my bag and he-,” you looked over at Soyeon and froze. Your eyes widened, and your grip on the rock tightened in fear as you tried to make sense of the image of your best friend of several years before you.

“Hey, is everything okay?” she took a step towards you, and you hesitantly took a step back. Her white wings were protruding from her back and were massive- how could you have never seen something like this? No- was this even real?

You squeezed your eyes tightly shut before opening them. Nothing changed besides the worry on Soyeon’s face.

“Soyeon, what the fuck is that on your back?” you cried. You watched the wings expand slightly as if you had ruffled them with your words.

She glanced back, ignoring the wings before looking back at you. 

“What are you talking about?”

“Dude, you have fucking wings!” you yelled, waving the stone in your hand as if to gesture to the giant wings she had. Her eyes widened before she stepped forward as if to speak to you in a more hushed tone. You panicked, and rushed past her and out of your room and into the living room, hoping to put some distance between the two of you.

“How long have you had those things!? What the fuck is going on? Oh god I’m losing it,” you shut your eyes again, massaging your temples with an aggressive pressure as you tried to sift through your memories. You met Soyeon over ten years ago, and while she was more outgoing than you, and was always there for you, she had never had wings or seemed abnormal in any way. You had met her family for heaven’s sake! 

You opened your eyes again, now with your back to your couch as you sood your ground. Soyeon entered the space slowly, hands extended to show that she was no danger to you.

“I’m not going to hurt you,” her voice was soft, her head hanging low.

“I know that! I know you won’t hurt me, Soyeon! But what the fuck is going on?” you were a little insulted that she thought you were scared of her. You weren’t! You  were more shocked than anything else!

“Can… can I see that rock?” she squinted, and extended an open palm. Nervously, you took a small step forward. You heard Eerie hiss angrily behind the couch, so once you placed the gemstone in your roommates hand, you moved to dig the cat out from his hiding spot, the area between the wall and the couch.

“Seraphinite…” Soyeon muttered as you looked over the back of the couch. Eerie was shaking, his brown eyes staring up in fear as you went to reach out towards him before Soyeon sprung out next to you, grabbing the cat by his scruff and yanking him out of his crevice.

“Soyeon!” you shouted, going to take the cat out of her grasp before you watched in horror as she solved the gemstone between the cat's bared teeth. 

That was when, the cat you adopted over two years ago, transformed from a black cat into a man that was a foot taller than Soyeon and with dark, black wings.

“I knew it! I knew you weren’t a normal fucking cat!” Soyeon cheered, yanking the stone out of the mouth of the man that suddenly stood in your living room.

“I… I’m gonna be sick,” you muttered, leaning on the couch for support. 

“See? Now you spooked her,” the man spoke. You heard a thud before a set of small arms wrapped around you to help you sit down on the couch. Your stomach turned as you looked before the two beings now standing before you- Soyeon’s bright white wings absorbing most of the light in the room, and the being formerly known as Eerie the cat’s wings were pure black.

“Fuck off! I should have the troops called on your ass so I can collect the bounty,” she hissed. 

“Who the fuck are you?” you asked, trying to rack your brain for anytime Eerie seemed to, y’know, not be a cat.

“Well,” he sat down on the floor in front of you, as if he had been waiting to be asked, “I have a lot of names-.”

“Asshole,” Soyeon cut him off, earning a glare before he continued.

“But, you can call me Sungchan. I’m a fallen angel.”

“An-angel,” you repeated this word to test it out, still reeling. He nodded, reaching back to scratch a spot on his wings.

“He’s had a bounty on his head for three years… I never imagined you would have accidentally adopted a fallen angel disguising himself as a shelter cat.”

“She didn’t exactly adopt me from a shelter,” Sungchan spoke, and your eyes widened.

“Shut up! Don’t change the subject!” you jumped in. You had sort of found the black cat wandering on your college campus, and the cat had taken to following you around so much- and you were so lonely at the time. You told Soyeon you adopted Eerie from the shelter, but it was more like you adopted him directly off the streets. “Soyeon, are you an angel too?”

She nodded, “yes- but I’m not a fallen angel, I’m actually a guardian.”

“Oh, so original. Posing as a normal best friend,” Sungchan teased, earning a punch in the arm from Soyeon. 

You blinked, “you're my guardian angel?”

“Duh,” she chuckled.

You were reeling, placing a hand on your forehead as you tried to understand the goddamn nightmare occuring before your eyes.

“Oh my god, you’ve seen me change! And- and get out of the shower!” you shouted, leaping up from the couch. 

“Hey! Hey! I always looked away!” he defended, raising his hands in defense. 

“Why would you pretend to be my cat for so long? You ate cat food and pissed in a litter box,” you argued, now just irritated by the amount you’ve spent on cat litter for seemingly no reason.

“Listen, I don’t know why, but being around you has prevented people from catching me! Plus, I got free room and board,” he shrugged.

“Soyeon, you can’t sense other angels?” you asked, waving your hands wildly. For her being your guardian angel, you couldn’t fathom her not knowing about the fallen angel living as a cat with you this whole time.

“I normally can, I also can typically sense charms… I don’t know why I couldn’t sense him,” she seemed upset before adding, “I’m sorry I let you down.”

“Typical guardian,” Sungchan scoffed. You sent him a glare before softening your gaze to Soyeon.

“You didn’t let me down… maybe that charm was just stronger than usual.”

“It’s not, but like I said, being around you has made it so I don’t get noticed,” Sungchan jumped in. “You’re a bit of a freak for a human.”

“I am not a freak. I’m a grad student in a large amount of debt with apparently two angels for roommates.”

“That is pretty abnormal, though,” Soyeon frowned, “I’m gonna need to do some research.”

“At the library of Alexandria, right?” Sungchan stood up, and maneuvered to the kitchen as if he owned the space. “It was always too packed for my taste.”

“We’re kicking him out, right?” Soyeon asked the obvious question as Sungchan rifled through your pantry and took out your chips.

“Oh my god I thought Soyeon was the one eating all of my chips,” you groaned. While, on the one hand, it would make sense to kick the mooch to the curb, you couldn’t help but feel a little bad for the guy. “Who are you running from?”

“The troops are the cops for angels basically. I may have… tried to sell some ancient artifacts to humans,” Sungchan scratched the back of his neck before adding, “but I wouldn’t steal from you! I swear!” He continued munching on your chips then with a smile on his face.

“Yeah, I’m highly considering it,” you looked back at your roommate with a frown. The former cat jumped, leaving the chips in the kitchen before rushing back in front of you.

“Please let me stay! I can transform back into a cat and we can pretend like nothing ever happened!”

You and Soyeon both scoffed, crossing your arms.

“Please! I’ll… I’ll do the dishes! Neither of you two like doing those.”

“Hey, we’re both busy,” you defended.

“Plus, I don’t even need a new bed or anything! I can stay where I always sleep!”

“Which is on my bed, you perv!” You snapped, throwing the couch pillow at his head.

He caught it easily before continuing, “then I’ll sleep on the floor. Please! I’ve taken care of all the rodents and bugs that keep trying to come into this apartment!”

“I can’t knowingly harbor a fugitive,” Soyeon insisted, running her fingers through her hair. 

Sungchan looked at you with big, pleading eyes, his hands folded together in a prayer pose. You shut your eyes tightly, frustrated beyond belief. These past two years though, having a cat around really has made things less painful. Those late study nights where he would sit on your lap, the multiple failed first dates where he tried to never leave you alone. 

You already had to deal with the change of realizing Soyeon was not organically your best friend, you weren’t sure if you could handle job hunting on top of not having a third being around.

“Oh my god you’re gonna keep him.”

“What- does being my guardian angel mean you can read my mind?”

“No dumb ass it means I can read your face like a book,” she stood up and shoved a finger against Sungchan’s chest, “if you hurt her, I will call the troops on you so fast-.”

“Why would I want to hurt the only reason I’m not currently locked up?” he countered, furrowing his brows.

Soyeon loudly groaned before turning back to face you, “I… I’m sure you have a lot of other questions.”

“How come I can… see you both now?”

Soyeon extended her hand and placed the rock on your lap. “Seraphinite. It’s a rock that’s used to identify Angels… how did you even get this?”

“I bet it was that dude you were with earlier,” Sungchan muttered, his face downturned. 

“Dude… oh my god is that why you were trying to scent my legs when I got home?”

Soyeon slapped her forehead, muttering her frustrations before taking a deep breath. “Now, you’re going to see… all of the angels that co-exist on this plane of existence… unless…”

“Unless?”

“I… could wipe this from your brain,” she offered. You were frozen for a moment before you stood up, your eyes never wavering from Soyeon’s.

“You’ve done that before?”

“No! Oh my god, no never!” she stood up, grabbing your shoulders, “I swear, I never have. I just-.”

“I’m going to bed,” you broke from her grip, your feet padding on the floor quietly as Sungchan began laughing loudly at Soyeon.

You didn’t sleep much. Between the realization that Angels were real, that your best friend was not really the person you thought she was, and the fact that your cat was actually also an angel, you weren’t wired to sleep well if at all.

In the morning, you were greeted by a snoring Sungchan on the couch, and a note from Soyeon on the dining room counter.

“Giving you space. Love you bestie, and I am always there for you. Getting info, will be back asap,” you read aloud as your coffee heated up. You sighed, leaving the note on your counter as you continued mixing your coffee before starting your day.

“What are you doing today?” Sungchan’s voice made you jump, nearly dropping your mug.

“Ah! Fuck, I’m used to your bell so you don’t sneak up on me,” you defended, placing a hand on your chest to calm yourself down. “I’m going to class.”

“Take me with you!”

“Are you crazy?” you responded, taking a sip of your coffee in hopes that you’d regain some energy to deal with this.

“Please? The only time I’ve left this apartment is whenever you would take me to the vet! I promise I won’t draw any attention! Plus… your actual guardian angel isn’t here!” “I don’t need a guardian angel,” you spat.

“Fine, your best friend isn’t here. I’ll be the person you can talk to after class during lunch!” his eyes were wide and his wings were tucked closely to his body, as if he was trying to keep his energy and nerves bottled up. You didn’t understand the logistics, but it seemed that staying at your apartment was just as safe as being out and about with you. He was likely desperate to move around somehow.

“Fine… but I have a job interview after class, so I’m gonna have to bring you back here before that.”

He nodded excitedly, the restrictions seeming to have no weight on him at all. So, now you sat in the back of the full lecture hall with Sungchan, who wore a smile the whole time despite not knowing a single thing the professor said. You, however, were glaring at the several apparent guardian angels in the class. 

You learned that most Angels were blocked from human observation due to a charm that settled onto the world. Whenever anything atypical occurred (like, an angel knocking something over with their wings), the charm would make it so it appeared it was something normal. So, to the humans, the Angels appeared like any other average person. Sungchan explained that despite him being hunted down by several Angels, that being near you strengthened the charm enough that other Angels saw him as a normal human if they didn’t look too hard.

Convenient for him. Weird for you.

You were surprised to see that Shotaro was not one of the guardian angels in your class. Considering he was the only person physically close enough to you to drop the seraphinite in your bag, you expected him to also have those large, white, Angel wings. Instead, he seemed perfectly normal.

Lecture ended, and you sat still as everyone piled out of the class, all except for Shotaro who stared back at you two expectantly.

“So, you can see him now,” he had a bright grin, and you frowned.

“What the hell are you?” You asked, standing tall from your seat.

“Same thing as you,” was his reply before bounding out of the classroom.

“God dammit,” you muttered. You didn’t have time to chase after the weirdo- you needed to go back to your place to drop off Sungchan and change for your interview.

On your walk back, you decided to air some more of your questions.

“So, how come fallen angels are also just allowed to wander around?” you had noticed that while there were definitely a few more guardian angels around, there was still a substantial amount of fallen angels with their darkened wings wandering around without a second thought.

“Fallen Angels are all former Guardian Angels. They could at some point be forgiven and become Guardians again, but the only difference is that they don’t have a task directly from the man upstairs. Troops are technically Fallen Angels too, since they aren’t directly God’s task force, but rather are led by Saint George.”

“So, do most guardians assume Fallen Angels they see are Troops?”

“Yeah. Most Fallen Angels that choose to wander the surface are Troops, anyways,” he nodded. You were approaching your apartment complex now, mulling over this new found information.

“What kind of charm lets you turn into a cat, anyways?”

“What? You can believe in angels but not in witches and warlocks?”

You forced a groan, “of course.”

“Thanks again for taking me with you!” Sungchan chirped once you returned to your apartment. “And y’know… thanks for letting me stay with you.”

You stopped your path to your bedroom to glance back to Sungchan who was now perched on your couch.

“Don’t mention it.”

-----

You shifted uncomfortably in your seat. The slacks you wore had a wrinkle that you missed when ironing, and there was a small chip on your nails. You cleared your throat awkwardly, looking over your clean resume to hand to the interviewer. Your rings sat on your right hand, glistening in the overly bright office lights. The secretary was tapping away at his keyboard, and had hardly paid you any mind when you checked in fifteen minutes early for your interview. 

The secretary’s office line rang and he swiftly picked it up. You straightened your back when he glanced your way before he hung up the phone.

“Director Kwon will see you now,” he gestured to the large oak door behind him before returning to his work.

“Thanks,” your voice was soft as you passed his desk before entering the Editor-in-Chief of the largest bridal magazines office. The office walls were a soft pastel pink, all lined with different covers the magazine had printed during its one hundred years in existence. The fresh peonies scent was attributed to the several vases of the flowers in different colors and arrangements all organized throughout the space. Director Kwon’s desk, though, was a mess. It was filled with papers, magazines, and framed photos of what looked like her family.

“Welcome! Please, sit,” Director Kwon gestured to the emerald chairs directly in front of her glass desk. She turned her swivel chair to face you, and smiled. 

“Thank you for taking the time to meet with me,” you returned the smile, doing your best to keep calm before you stretched your hand, handing over your resume.

The interview went surprisingly well. Director Kwon was energetic, humorous, and was incredibly responsive to your answers and questions. Everything was perfect- until…

“Now, I know HR says I can’t ask this anymore,” her voice lowered, and you felt like you were being let in on a secret, “but, you don’t have the best wedding source from people who aren’t at least engaged,” she rolled her eyes before looking back. “So, honey, are you married?”

You panicked. You really wanted this job. Plus, they always say to fake it ‘til you make it, right? Without missing a beat you seamlessly moved a ring from your right hand onto your left ring finger.

“Is it obvious?” you giggled, lifting your hand to show Director Kwon the ring. She slapped the desk excitedly, writing down a note on your resume. You could pretend to be married- easy enough.

“What’s their name? Pretty gal like you needs to be with someone just as beautiful- I bet the wedding was gorgeous.”

Their name? You panicked. Fuck. You were backed into a corner of HR violations already- you couldn’t not reply. 

“S-Sungchan. My husband’s name is Sungchan,” you forced your smile, and in the silence you could not stop talking, “we met on a blind date two years ago and just decided on a whim to get married a few months back!”

The train ride back home after the interview was full of shame and regret. Why did you even respond? Director Kwon should not have ask you that, but fuck, you really wanted this job. Your feelings only festered when you got back home and smelled something burning in the kitchen. You threw your bag down, walking in to see Sungchan spraying the fire extinguisher at the inflamed pan on the stovetop. You stood in shock as he ran through the living room to open the windows to the night sky in an attempt to help the smoke dissipate after the flame died, then proceeded to rush in front you to explain everything.

“I left the tortillas on the stovetop just for a second… I was going to make you dinner… I’m so sorry!” he seemed like he was crying, and he was wailing in sorrow about his slight error. 

You sighed, “it’s okay, Sungchan.”

He wrapped you in a giant hug, his wings enveloping you too in the process. How was someone so soft and excitable a fallen Angel? Especially one that was on the run from people that wanted him locked up.

The following week was when you got the call that you got the job. You were so excited, and Sungchan seemed to be in incredibly high spirits for you. Sure, in the office you would have to pretend that a Fallen Angel/ your Former Cat/ your Current Roommate was your husband, but a little lie can't hurt, right?

______

You were finishing your breakfast as you texted Soyeon. Your messages weren’t going through as normal, and you were unsure at this point if she was even getting them. Defeated, you set your phone down and stared aimlessly ahead at the kitchen before a thud called your attention.

“Damn,” Sungchan muttered, now on the floor. He didn’t fit well on the couch, something you had been noticing as of late. He was tall already, and his large wings weren’t helping. While he could transform into a cat, you had learned that it wasn’t the most comfortable thing in the world. Begrudgingly, you got up from the counter and slightly nudged the angel with your foot.

“Go sleep on my bed. I’m about to leave for work,” you offered. It wasn’t like Sungchan had never slept on your bed before. In fact, when he was just Eerie to you, he usually slept either on the foot of your bed or under the sheets with you.

“Are you sure?” his voice was groggy, and he sat up with his eyes still shut.

“Of course,” you affirmed before checking the time on your phone. “I’ve gotta go, I’ll see you later. Are you gonna come with me to do groceries?”

“Of course,” he nodded before standing up and hobbling into your bedroom. 

Sungchan and you had formed a healthy routine. In the mornings, when you were still in school, you would quietly step out for class having already grabbed the lunch the man had put together for you. When you got back, you would either fully engage in questions with Sungchan, or run errands with him. He enjoyed sitting quietly in the same room as you, but since he hadn’t been able to speak to anyone for quite a while, he was elated to have your ear when you gave him the time.

Your job, however, was more convoluted than you had initially planned. As it turned out, your boss had disseminated the information that you were married to everyone- and the concept of marriage was the only thing your coworkers would speak about beyond actual job duties.

“Do you and Sungchan want to renew your vows?”

“Does Sungchan snore? My wife snores.”

“Do you and Sungchan want kids? Or lots of pets?”

Fuck! Doing your job would be a cinch if not for the constant lies and avoiding you had to do to get by. 

Sure- Sungchan was otherworldly attractive, but he was also an angel. Sungchan was also very sweet- but he was also likely terrified of being kicked to the curb and fed to the troops. 

You groaned to yourself, burying your face in your hands as you took the short train ride back home.You had been in this spiral since Soyeon left and since you started this job. You could really use your best friend- even if she was only your friend because she was your guardian angel.

“Do you think the character someone plays as in super smash brothers indicates what kind of person they are?” Sungchan asked as you both made your way through the grocery store isles together. He had taken to playing on your nintendo switch as well as leafing through your old psychology textbooks in his downtime and it was really showing.

“Um… I guess it depends on the smash game,” you mulled over, grabbing the bag of chips off the shelf. Sungchan was wrapped in an obnoxiously large coat despite the gross summer heat. It helps keep his wings more tightly pressed to his body and less likely to accidentally bump into something.

“They’re not all the same?” he was leaning against the cart, his head tilting as if this information never occurred to him.

“Yeah. Meta Knight was almost banned from competitive play for Super Smash Bros Brawl because he was way too overpowered.”

“... interesting,” he muttered, his gaze focused now on the ground beneath him as if he was mapping out a plan of action. You chuckled to yourself, moving ahead with the cart as Sungchan began asking you several questions about the differences in the smash franchise.

“... honey?” this voice made you freeze, although Sungchan continued speaking until he saw the fear in your eyes.

“Gr-Grandma,” you tried to keep your voice still, but your stutter gave you away.

“Honey, you look lovely,” she stated as if she did not just see you last week at your Mother’s place. Much to your dismay, she made eye contact with Sungchan and smiled sweetly, “and who is this… very tall young man?”

“Oh, it is you!” This new voice nearly brought you to your knees. No way. This had to be a sick joke- you were sure of it. There was no way this was both your grandma’s and boss’s grocery store of choice. This had to be an act of God themselves you felt- how else could this even happen?

“Boa, what are you doing here?” your grandmother spoke to your boss as if… as if they knew each other. 

“Are you okay?” Sungchan’s whisper unfroze you, and you met his gaze in terror, sending a look of puzzlement across his own face.

“D-Director Kwon,” you spat out, forcing a smile, “how do you know my grandmother?”

Director Kwon looked between you and your grandmother, and then chuckled to herself. “You two do look alike! Although, I don’t know why, but I thought you changed your last name.”

“Why would she do that? And how do you know my very sweet neighbor?” your grandma asked.

Neighbor. Fuck. Your Director was neighbors with your grandmother- good ones at that, it seemed. You were going to be sick at this revelation.

“I’m Sungchan!” his voice cutting through the wild tension made you nearly faint on the spot.

“Because of her husband here, of course!” Director Kwon stated. She said it. She said it. She said it to your grandma and now it was gonna get back to your Mom unless you denied and potentially risked your work. God- the labor violations kept adding up and there was nothing you could do about it.

“My sweet granddaughter isn’t married,” your grandma was raising her eyebrow at you, waiting for an answer. Director Kwon crossed her arms, staring at you for a response of any kind.

“Ah… did she not mention that there was no ceremony?” Sungchan scratched the back of his neck, feigning sheepishness. 

“Sweetheart… you weren’t even planning on telling your family?” your grandma interjected, and you immediately wanted to throw up.

“I’m so sorry ma’am, I wanted to be able to sing it from the rooftops, but we didn’t think it would be wise to announce such a thing so close to her cousin’s engagement. We wouldn’t want to steal the spotlight from her since she’s been trying to get married for sooo long,” Sungchan spoke so smoothly, that for a second even you believed it. You would talk on the phone pretty often with your mother, and oftentimes you did so with Eerie nearby- so of course he heard you gossiping about your cousin and her absolute hunt to be married.

“Y-yeah. You know how they can be,” you joked, hoping your grandma would buy it. 

“Oh my… I can’t wait until you do have your ceremony, I’ll get you in contact with my wedding planner,” Director Kwon interjected, leafing through her handbag before handing you a business card. “I’ll get going- I’ll see you Friday for the Barbeque!” she waved at your grandma before disappearing down the aisle.

“I hope you plan to tell your mother soon,” your grandma sighed before reaching forward and dusting off Sungchan’s shoulders, “I can’t wait to have you over young man. Welcome to the family.”

Continue? —> WHY DID I GET (fake) MARRIED?

Tag list!

@nini0620 @enhazen @cherriruto @deonuism @90s-belladonna @lesserahyuck

[ivory-lamps]

[SSR] Nagi - The Taste of Happiness (Part 1 / 2)

SSR Card: downpour light Proofreader: Shay

Momiji / Kaede: (I’m glad the afternoon meeting is at the Flower Laundry that’s nearby. It should be pretty easy to get this little coffee stain removed.)

(I have to help out Yachiyo-kun tomorrow. He lowered his head to the ground and apologised so many times I think he made a hole in it…)

*Momiji / Kaede walk into Flower Laundry*

Momiji / Kaede: Hey, Nagi-ku–

*Nagi is stuck on the ceiling, legs dangling*

Nagi: Welcome.

Momiji / Kaede: What the–!?

Hey, you’re definitely not fine, right!? What happened!?

Nagi: I’m just working.

I was thinking about taking a break since a customer brought some snacks as thanks, but out of nowhere, a hamster… I think it was Machiko from the nearby kindergarten. Probably.

I saw Machiko running towards me so I wanted to avoid her, but then I noticed the trampoline Akuta and the others had left here in the corner of my eye…

So I fell onto it to save myself, but the moment that happened, I ended up flying through the air as if someone had hit a home run.

Momiji / Kaede: O–Okay, I get the picture. I’ll help you out so hold on!

Nagi: …Phew. Thanks. You’re my lifesaver, Manager.

Sonia: You’re also the ceiling’s lifesaver. Thanks for fixing it!

Momiji / Kaede: No worries. Thanks for removing the coffee stain, too.

Nagi: Glad to be of help.

But I don’t think I can continue helping out at the office. Sorry, Manager.

I’m falling behind on deliveries. I need to reschedule right away…

Momiji / Kaede: Do you want some help…? I came in the company car.

My work’s all done for the day, so I’m sure it’ll be fine if I send Kafka a message.

Nagi: Are you sure?

Oh, but there’s a bomb cyclone happening today. There might be some trouble heading my way.

Momiji / Kaede: Ahaha, it’s totally fine! Besides, I could use the experience as troubleshooting practice, so it’ll be perfect.

Nagi: …Thank you. Then I’ll take you up on that offer.

I guess I’ll get you to help me with the deliveries first…

A scary-looking person: Hey, you! You better hurry up and pay me that debt you owe!

Nagi: My apologies. I’ll pay back the interest first. How much do I owe?

Momiji / Kaede: Wait, wait! Put your wallet away!

*Some time passes*

Momiji / Kaede: (...We finished the deliveries, but it’s amazing how much of a trouble magnet Nagi is.)

(I can’t believe a loan shark got the wrong address and started storming in…)

ㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤ📍 Flashback

Momiji / Kaede: I’m done loading it up. Where should I deliver them to?

Nagi: First, the shopping mall.

There are a few new stores opening, so they’re deliveries for those places. We’ll split up once we get there.

Construction worker: Sorry, we’re currently in the middle of construction work. Please take another road.

Momiji / Kaede: But I could pass through just fine earlier!

Momiji / Kaede: (Construction started out of the blue and we had to take a detour…)

(Then kids, who were passing by, challenged us to a cornering battle, and some tossed pizza dough flew at us. There was so much stuff happening we barely had any time to catch our breath.)

(This is going to be tough if stuff like this happens every time there’s a bomb cyclone…)

Nagi: …………

…Manager, we’ll go stock up on flowers next.

The app said the atmospheric pressure will be stabilised in the afternoon. There shouldn’t be any more trouble coming our way, so mobility will be important. Let’s head out on my motorcycle.

Here, your helmet. Put it on tight.

Sonia: Nagi-san, Manager-san, be careful on your way out.

I’ve packed the usual stuff for you! Take it with you, okay?

Nagi: Thanks, Sonia. …See you later.

ㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤ Index ≡ ㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤNext →

[gabessquishytum]

I was just tidying up my google docs when I came across an old AU I thought up for Dreamling, it was partially inspired by your Sugar Daddy Dream fic (one of my absolute favorites, still praying every day for a dark sequel). It's supposed to be dubcon/noncon cause I love the idea of Dream taking advantage of a vulnerable Hob, vulnerable and innocent. Basically Dark Dream XD It is a bit cringy, but I’m hoping the horny will override that feeling lol.

The premise is your run of the mill cliché, Hob is the owner the New Inn, and it’s fallen on pretty hard times. He has an increasingly high loan to pay back by the end of the month, otherwise the bank is gonna come and repossess everything (this is how loans work right?) And due to the stress and anxiety, Hob decides to go and drink his sorrows away, at least for the night. He’s absolutely sloshed by the end of his bender, and proceeds to cry about woes and troubles to anyone and everyone in the bar, just stumbling from one table to another and talking to people. It is then he accidentally falls onto the lap of one Morpheus “Dream” Endless, infamous filthy rich mob boss known for his cruelty and cold demeanor.

Dream was just there at the bar talking business with an associate when out of nowhere this chestnut-haired man falls onto his lap, and just starts babbling away about his problems. Dream is so taken aback, he forgets for a moment that he’s supposed to be offended and should be ordering his men to beat up this random guy for even daring to come close, but this teary man’s eyes are so big and doe-eyed, looking so lost…. Dream ends up waving away his associate in favor of listening to Hob. And Hob is so adorable, trying to wipe away his tears and all the while hiccupping through his 15th rendition of his sob story, it also helps his heaving breaths are pushing his sizable chest to the forefront of Dream’s gaze. It’s pretty much love at first sight. By the end, Dream is so smitten with this man that he decides right then and there that Hob is going to be his, his precious pet who he’s going to spoil rotten with gifts and pleasure.

Dream takes Hob home for the night, holding back the urge to take his baby girl right then and there, he wants Hob to remember their first time. Before he leaves, he makes sure to note down everything there is to know about Hob, full name, birthday, bank details etc.

Hob, many hours later, wakes up with the world’s worst hangover and also to a few dozen messages from the bank and his staff, informing him his debts have been paid, and that apparently, the New Inn is getting renovated, already paid for, workers have already begun. He is so confused, he has no idea what the hell is going on, then he notices a new message coming in from an unknown number. It’s a request for him to go to an address at a specific time, it tells him not to be late, and that everything will be explained in due time. Welp. That’s not ominous at all, but Hob is mature enough to admit he’s brave (dumb) enough to actually follow through with the instructions. Hopefully, he won’t be losing any essential body parts….. (He’ll be losing his virginity and innocence instead huehuehueheuheuheu)

I actually have an excerpt, I hope you guys enjoy hahaha

“I need- nee- hiccup!- help. I just don’t know what to do.” Hob was desperately clutching onto the front of Dream’s shirt now, looking at him with teary eyes and trembling lips, and he looked absolutely… delicious. “What should I do, shtranger? Please tell me what to doo.”

Looking at the man straddling his lap, begging him so sweetly for his help, Dream licked his lips at the thought of what he could do to this man.

Dream gently framed his new precious toy’s face with both hands, carefully thumbing away the tears running down in rivulets. Kissing him tenderly on the forehead, Dream whispered, “Don’t you worry kitten, daddy will take good care of you.” 

Hob was still incredibly tipsy from his binge, evidenced by his bleary eyes and slurred speech, so it took awhile for him to process Dream’s words but when he did, he looked up at Dream with such hope and innocence in his rich brown doe eyes, “You- you will?” 

"Oh yes, baby girl. You won't have to worry about anything but me ever again."

-Love Yan Anon <3

Ajshdhdhfdj I'm OBSESSED. This hits some of my absolute favourite kinks!!! Intox!! Daddy kink!! Power play!!! No pressure on you my beloved, but I would sooo love to read more of this. I need to see Hob pushing his lovely plump boytits into Dream’s face, pouting about difficult everything is... I REALLY need more of Dream calling Hob baby girl because Holy Shit that's perfect.

And innocent Hob being manipulated and turned into a perfect slut by Dream’s powerful, forceful personality... Hob is so vulnerable and doesn't have anyone to protect him, so he'd better be a good girl and do as Dream tells him... After all, Dream owns him now, and if he puts even a toe out of line, there will be consequences...

[lunalemony]

What is COSAH?

Okay so I got 2 asks regarding COSAH which made me realize I’ve never posted anything about it to this account which is nuts to me. Then again I don’t really share my OCs too much (oops). So I’m sharing a few comics pages I made last year (mind you they’re pretty old and I was in crunch mode for school so they’re a little ugly.)

COSAH is abbreviated for The Circus of Stars and Hearts! The comics revolve around Clara Campbell and Octavius Starblazer. Clara is a 25 year old clown school dropout, who has been working kids parties to help pay off her student loans and earn enough to go back to college for something else. She has a strained relationship with her overbearing parents who shamed her for even wanting to be a clown. Although she wants to pursue a different career path, Clara has a deep love for clownery and circusry, and takes the ‘clowns code of ethics’ very seriously. Octavius is a 27 year old ringleader who started his own circus after running away from his family (who also ran a circus). Octavius was broke and had to squat in an abandoned grocery store, which he eventually makes into his Circus. The Circus of Stars and Hearts is Octavius’ chance to prove himself to everyone that he has good ideas and that he doesn’t need his family’s help to succeed. His cousin Stella joins the circus as an aerial performer, and the squatter who was living in the grocery store before Octavius, Benny, joins as a clown/stage hand.

That’s all I’m going to reveal about it because I’m rewriting a lot of it right now (even though I haven’t touched my comic pages since this summer) I made this comic as a project for school last year, but I really like the characters and world I managed to create out of it. Sadly I haven’t had a ton of time or motivation to work on it with school starting. During school I’m making a ton of comics for assignments and it burns me out pretty fast. I have a class next semester where I may be able to explore these characters more and I hope that I am able to!

Sorry for the lore dump. Here is the comic below!

[carlottawllms]

HIYAAAA,missed youuu🩷

YOU KNOW HOW MUCH I WANTED THAT FIC🤭🤭🤭

And then there’s the very rare ones, where the break-up is mutual, amicable and both stay friends. The right-person-wrong-time kind of relationship. The one, where losing the other person for good hurts too much so the friendship is kept alive. WHY AM I ALREADY EMOTIONAL?😭

As the daughter of Mason’s very first manager at Chelsea, you’d met him very early on and since you’d loved to spend the time after school watching your dad teach kids how to play football, the two of you’d spent a lot of time together. You’d been attached by the hip, a duo that never showed up without the other and throughout the years, something deeper had developed. OHHHH BESTIES ALWAYS AND FOREVER

At the age of 16 you’d eventually got together and spent the next two years loving each other, but with his loan spells coming up, him – reluctantly – spending more and more time away from you and you starting to think of university, you realised that neither of you were in the right place to keep your relationship alive, so you’d ended it. Mutually. Amicably. OH LOVES, RIGHT DECISION HONESTLY 🩷

So, you’d stayed friends. Best friends. I ALREADY LOVE THEM

And just like Mason, you’d chosen the perfect career path for yourself as well. You’d become a primary school teacher in London, and you absolutely loved it. The only thing you found a little annoying was the fact that contrary to a regular 9 to 5 job you couldn’t just take a day off whenever you felt like it. Hence why supporting Mason in person had become a little too difficult for your liking.  OHHH I LOVE A PRIMARY SCHOOL TEACHER Y/N😭😭😭

“y/n darling, long time no speak. How’ve you been?” THE FACT THAT SHE IS IN CONTACT WITH HIS FAMILY TOO...

Just like your friendship with Mason, your relationship to his parents had never changed. You didn’t talk as much to Debbie and Tony as you used to, but whenever they were in London they made sure to pay you a visit. CUTIES

“Debbie, I was wondering if I could join you for Mase’s first home game?” YESSS

“Yeah.”, you smiled. “I know how nervous Mase is and after missing out on so many games last season, I really wanted to be there for him again and I’ve bribed a colleague of mine so I can skip Monday and Tuesday, but I wanted to check with you first. With Megan there I know it can be a bit…tense.” MEGAN IS THE GIRLFRIEND, ISN'T SHE? OMG I THINK MY DAUGHTER IS JOT GOING TO BE NAMED MEGAN

Megan was Mason’s girlfriend of about 9 months now and although you hadn’t met her often so far, you could tell she didn’t like you. At all. I DON'T LIKE HER

“Actually, you don’t have to worry about that. Megan won’t be there anyway.” The defeated sound of Debbie’s voice didn’t go unnoticed, and you furrowed your brows. She won’t? WHAT????😒 THAT'S GOOD FOR US...BUT HORRIBLE

“She’ll be on some sort of holidays by then, y/n.”, Debbie mumbled, and you could easily make out how hurt she sounded. “Apparently, it’s the only time her and her girls can all leave together or something and she said she could probably watch the game on her phone and call him afterwards.” NO WAY....

“What the fuck.”, you whispered. Apparently, Debbie had you on speaker as you could hear Tony scoff in the background. “Yeah, that’s one way to put it, y/n.” He said something else, but you couldn’t quite make out what. HI TONYYYY

“I don’t know much, but I think he was pretty disappointed. He sounded deflated, a little like when he told us that Chelsea wasn’t planning on keeping him.” OMG BABY BOY

You dropped your forehead into your hand, your heart hurting for Mase. He was the sweetest soul you knew, always thoughtful and caring, putting people he loved first. He was just incredibly gentle and loving, never holding back from showing what people meant to him and you hated that the one time he needed someone, that person he’d turned to rejected him. OMG I WANT TO HUG HIM🫂🫂🫂

“You being there would mean the world to him, y/n.”, Tony said suddenly, pulling you from your deep thoughts. “He doesn’t expect you to be there and he said he won’t ask you to come because he doesn’t want to put you in the situation where you feel bad for saying no, you now? He knows you can’t just take a day off in your job and he’s saved you a ticket for the next home game that’s on the weekend.” TONY IS OUR CUPID AND WE LOVE HIM FOR THATTT

“Don’t worry about that, y/n. I’ll take care of that. We will be up there the whole week already. Just let me know when you want to arrive and I’ll sort everything for you, yeah?” HE IS OUR SHIP CAPTAIN 🚢 ♥️

Tony waited for you with a big smile on his face and the moment you reached him, he pulled you into a hug. “It’s so good to see you, y/n. You okay?” HI BIG TONYYYY

“Found this one on platform 3. Looked a bit lonely and figured we’d be good company.”, Tony joked, causing Lewis and Jaz to chuckle, but your attention was solely on Mason who turned his head, glanced at you and looked back down at the menu, only to whip his head around again when realisation hit him. THEY ARE TOGETHER FINALLY 🫂

Mason’s jaw dropped in a mixture of shock and surprise. “Wait, what?” The innocently confused expression on his face made him look like a little cutie-pie and you couldn’t help but chuckle. OH CUTE BOY

“I can’t believe this.”, he laughed. “This is some sort of dream or something. Are you really staying for the game?” YESSSSS SHE ISSS

Later that night, you were all gathered at Mason’s. You’d thought Tony had organised a hotel room for you, but it’d turned out that he’d simply – how he’d put it – booked one of Mason’s guestrooms for you. AHHAHAHAHAHHA LOVE YOU TONY

Matt black cabinets with a lightly bevelled wooden worktop and matching cooking island. On the windowsill behind the sink, he had placed three small herb pots and the small, colour-matching storage jars rounded off the overall picture. You loved it – very much. I WANT THAT KITCHEN THANK YOU

“It’s okay, you can stay.”, he mumbled to you before concentration back on his phone call. “It’s y/n. She-“ Mason rolled his eyes and sighed as she’d obviously interrupted him. THE MOOD SWITCH WHEN HE TALKED TO HER🥹

“Don’t you dare go down that road now, Megan.”, he hissed, hands balling to fists by his side. “Unlike you, she dropped everything, went through the faff of getting a couple of days off to surprise me because she knows how important this game is. She fucking cares about me, whilst you didn’t even think about saying no to a fucking holiday to be there for me this one time.” OHHHH I'M CRYING 😭😭😭😭

Mason was a person who deserved the absolute world. He had a soul made of gold, a genuinely kind heart and a bubbly, sparkling personality. He was caring and loving, empathic, supportive and someone to laugh and cry with. HE DESERVES THE WHOLE UNIVERSE

“You know what? I’m tired of this shit, I’m tired of you and I really don’t want to discuss this anymore. It’s fucking pathetic and I refuse to let you ruin this for me. Go and have fun with your friends, I couldn’t give less of a shit right now.” YES MOUNT, GOOD JOBBBB

Mason ran his hand through his hair and over his face before walking over to where you were leaning against the countertop, fingers nibbling on the label of the bottle you’d fetched yourself. He grabbed the bottle and placed it to the side before pulling you tightly against his chest, head falling into the crook of your neck and he sighed deeply the moment you wrapped your arms around his waist, squeezing him just as tightly. OMG THAT HUG😭😭😭

Mason hadn’t felt either for ages so when you kissed the side of his head softly, nose nuzzling against his cheek, he realised how much he’d truly missed you. Missed holding you and feeling you and your undying support. OHHH HE MISSED THE LOVE OF HIS LIFE😭

“Thank you, y/n. For dropping everything and coming here because I can imagine how much of a faff it must’ve been and I hope you know how much I appreciate that.”, he whispered. “Thank you for being by my side the whole time and holding my hand. For our weekly, if not daily facetime calls and the way you never gave up on me, no matter how annoying and whiny I’ve been. You mean so much to me and seeing you here has made it all so much easier already.”  OH LOVE YOU DESERVE THAT AMD MORE

Instead of saying something, Mason just leaned in and pressed his lips to your forehead in a fond kiss, lips lingering a little longer than considered normal, but he didn’t care. BYEEEE😭🫠🫠🫠

It made him realise that you were the person he wanted to have in his life. That you were his person. Had always been and would always be. YAYYYY😌🤭🤭🤭

So far, she hadn’t called. Nor had she sent a message. And even if you hoped you were wrong, you couldn’t help but feel that she hadn’t even bothered to watch the game.

It made you feel sick to your stomach, knowing that she cared so little about him and his feelings. That she couldn’t even be bothered to at least check the result and send him a little pick-me-up. SHE IS HORRIBLE....

“It’s okay.”, he mumbled, burying his nose in your hair. “You’re here, that’s more than I could’ve ever asked for.” I GASPED

Did he just imply that you being here was more important to him than his own girlfriend? Surely, you’d just misinterpreted that? YES HE DID 😌

From what you’d understood, Megan hadn’t messaged him about the game at all, only calling him on Tuesday morning to check if he was to pick her up from the airport, and whilst you’d expected him to agree, he’d said he had plans already and she should get herself an uber. I'M PROUD MOUNT

Little did you know that Mason felt all of that – with you. OHHH😭

For a week, nothing really changed. You were back at work, facing several questions of the kids in your class about why you’d missed two days of school – you had to promise them to try and get Mason to come to class one day for them to stop pestering you – and as before your visit in Manchester, your daily chats and several facetime calls with Mason weren’t skipped either. I LOVE THAT HER STUDENTS KNOWS

“We’ve broken up.”, he blurted out before you could even greet him properly. “Megan and I, we’re over.” FINALLY

“You’re not.”, he laughed quietly. “You never liked her.” TRUE

“I realised that she was more of a burden than someone who fought my corner and although I’d sort of felt it before, you going through the hassle of getting a couple of days off and coming up to Manchester for me really was the final nail in the coffin. It was a bit of this if-she-wanted-she-would-moment, you know? Like whilst she couldn’t do that easy thing of saying no to a holiday, you somehow managed to get a couple of days off during the regular school year.” HE LOVES THAT WOMAN😌

A couple of weeks passed after that conversation and soon enough, you found yourself back in Manchester. It was the weekend game Mason had saved you a ticket for, but whilst initially you’d planned on just staying for the game to avoid any weird tensions with Megan, now that she was out of the picture, you’d decided to arrive on Friday and stay til Sunday. OH YESSSS

“It was very nice of you to come for that first game, you know?” Luke nudged your shoulder with his. “He’d been pretty down before for some reason and proper nervous, but then all of sudden for that last training before the game he’d turned up with like the biggest smile ever on his face. The guys were teasing him for getting some or whatever, but he simply shook his head and when I asked him, he told me that you were here and would stay for the game.” LUKEEEE🤭🤭

“y/n, I don’t know if you don’t want to admit it or if you’re actually dumb, but you two? You’re not just best friends.” OMG LUKEEEE

“Those feelings will never go away, y/n. You didn't break up because the feelings were missing, but because it just wasn't the right time for the two of you. It’s only natural that you’re not over each other and if you ask me, you should really give yourselves a second chance. Not many have what you have, you know?” TRUEEEEE

“No, he didn’t. Well, at least not really. Look, I’m not in the place to tell you much about this, but y/n, don’t push him away. He worships the ground you’re walking on and would give his life to make sure you’re okay. Trust your own feelings and maybe take a little risk. Sometimes it’s worth it, you know?” Luke sent you a wink and patted your back in a reassuring manner, whilst his words were slowly sinking in. OMG LUKE WHAT DO YOU WANT ME TO GIFT YOU???

“Oi, Mase, don’t you want to introduce us to your girlfriend?”, Rasmus, one of the teammates Mason seemed to be closest to, interrupted him as he jogged over with a bright grin on his face. GIGGLING

OMG HE DIDN'T CORRECT THE GIRLFRIEND THINGGG

“Højlund, hands off! I told you I want a shot with her.” Diogo, someone you’d met after Mason’s first game, came over and jokingly pushed Rasmus out of the way before hugging you as well. “It’s good to see you again. How have you been?” OHHH THERE IS OUR BOY, THE ANNOYING MASON BOYYY

You made a bit of small talk with Diogo, not realising how Mason grew more irritated by the second as his teammate kept laughing at things you said and touching your arm, but when Mason cleared his throat for the second time, you turned to look at him. HE IS JEALOUSSSSS

He glanced at how you were typing away on your phone and whilst he knew it could be anyone, the pathetic fear of it being his teammate ate him alive. He noticed the way you smiled at the text you’d received and the longer he stared at you, the more he felt the anger bubbling up inside of him. MOUNT BABY CONTAIN YOURSELF

“So, you’re saying you came here for me but instead of talking to me you decide to message my teammate?” Mason cringed internally. He’d not intended for it to sound that accusatory and when you raised your eyes, a hint of hurt in them, guilt spread through him. HE DIDN'T CONTAIN HIMSELF

“Why would Diogo messaging me be a bad thing, Mase?”, you asked, hoping for him to give you the answer you so desperately wanted to hear. The answer that could pave the way back to the relationship you were missing so much, but again your best friend decided to stay quiet. MOUNT ANSWER NOW

“Because I asked him not to!”, Mason growled. “He asked about you once you’d left last time and I told him you are off limits and not his to try something with. And now you’re back and all he does is being all over you and flirting with you whilst I’m right fucking next to him.” OHHHH🤭🤭🤭

“Are we jealous, Masey?” You raised an eyebrow, trying to downplay how his words and their meaning had affected you, but your thundering heart made it difficult to sound all cool and kept-together. “Yes.” OMG🤭

“Do you really think I want to see you with one of my teammates or friends? Fuck me, y/n, I don’t want to see you with anyone who isn’t me and it’s making me fucking mad.”, he exploded as he ran his hand down his neck in despair. “You’re my best friend, the very best person in the world and instead of being happy with having you like that, I can’t help but still be fucking in love with you.” I'M REALLY CRYING

“Whenever I was with a woman, all I could think of was you and yes I know how fucked up that sounds!”, he hissed, completely ignoring your attempt at speaking. “And then came Megan…in the beginning it was okay, but then after a month or so I started comparing her to you and no matter how hard I tried to convince myself that it could work, with each day I discovered more things I missed about you. After all those years, after trying to get over you several times, I still keep thinking about you in a way I shouldn’t and I hate myself for it, y/n.” CARLOTTA YOU'RE KILLING ME

When he raised his head and his glassy eyes locked on yours, you gulped heavily. It wasn’t difficult to spot the fear of losing you and the desperation years of pent-up emotions had brought to the surface. I CAN'TTTT

“There’s no need to be jealous. I’ve always been yours and will always be because just like you I’m still so madly in love with you it makes me go insane and I couldn’t get over you even if I tried.”, you explained as fresh tears made it past the last line of defence. “I miss you so much and I know I still have you, but I miss being with you all the time, holding your hand and being in your arms, falling asleep with you and waking up with you and-“ I GASPED

“Kissing you.”, he interrupted you quietly, gently catching the tears with his thumb. “I miss everything about you, y/n. Every little thing, but most of all, I miss kissing you. Just being able to kiss you and feel that love is what I miss every single day.” KISS HERRR

With his free hand softly cupping your cheek, he tilted your head back a little and when his thumb rubbed right beneath your eye, he leaned in and brushed his lips against yours in the softest of kisses you’d ever received. FINALLYYYYY

Mason pulled back rather quickly, searching in your eyes for discomfort or hesitation, but when he didn’t find any of it, he leaned back in and kissed you again. Properly this time.

His lips moved against yours as if you’d never been apart for years and the feeling of finally being home had you melting further into his body.🫠🫠🫠🫠

“I love you, y/n. I’m in love with you and I promise I won’t let you go again.”, Mason murmured quietly before pecking your lips again. “We’ll make this work because I need you as much as you need me. Best friends isn’t what we’re meant to be. Okay?” OKAYYYY

CARLOTTA

WELL

1. MEGAN IS OUT OF MY NAMES LIST

2. I LOVED HOW THEY REMAINED FRIENDS AFTER THE BREAK-UP

3. ALL HIS FAMILY BEING CLEARLY IN LOVE WITH HER?😭

4. WHEN HE TOLD HER THAT HE HROKE UP WITH THE OTHER...AND HE WAS HAPPY CAUSE HE WAS FREE TO LOVE HER NOW

5.LUKE🤭♥️

6. HIS JEALOUSY AND HIM ADMITTING ITTTT🫠

7. THE CONFESSIONS AND KISSES🤭🫠🥹

WOW, I FELT A ROLLERCOASTER OF EMOTIONS, HATE FOR MEGAN, LOVE, ANGRYNESS, EVERYTHING

THAT WAZ AMAZING AND DEFINITELY WORTH THE WAITTT

OMG I KNEWWW THTA WAS GOING TO BE INCREDIBLE, DEFINITELY ON MY TOP FAVOURITE FICS OF YOURS 🩷

THABK YOU FOR WRITING AND SHARING THAT, I HOPE YOU KNOW HOW MUCH I APPRECIATE YOU AND YOUR WRITING

AND HOW MUCH I APPRECIATE YOU FOR MAKING MY DAY EVERY TIME YOU POST🩷

LOVE YOUUUU🩷🩷

Your feedback is always so so insane but for this one I was waiting impatiently bc I knew how excited you were for it 😭🩷

Sorry for making you wait this long 🥺

But I’m really glad you enjoyed it and went through all the emotions I tried to put in this 🥹🩷🩷

(Sorry for ruining that name for you 😂😂)

[restforthe-burdenedsoul]

I talked to the school today and it sounds like it wouldn’t be an issue to take a break and rejoin a new cohort in January 2024 (so that I’m still doing a summer internship).

I said I did not want to rush into a decision. She said as long as I tell her on Monday, it will still be considered week 3 of my classes. I would be refunded 75% of the classes. She told me how much that would be on my loans and while that’s a substantial chunk of change, in the grand scheme of student loans, it doesn’t make that much of a difference.

I’d need to start paying the loans back right away or try to defer them. I think it would depend on how much I’d need to pay back. I’d rather start paying on them now than defer.

She’s checking into if it would affect my advanced standing since I was accepted under an agreement with my old school when their program shut down.

I’m still pretty conflicted. I KNOW I am capable of finishing this year. I don’t struggle with the material. I’m struggling with my mental health. That was a big barrier in under grad too.

I feel like I was getting on the right track for a bit and then things just exploded again.

I feel like I have more motivation this time around to really make changes in my mental health tho. And maybe in a year, I’ll have a better grasp on that and I won’t fall apart as quickly when faced with challenges.

I don’t know. This is a hard decision for so many reasons.

[dreamingsushi]

See You in my 19th Life - Episode 7

For now, there are still two episodes that I can watch and I will have to wait a little bit for the next ones to come out after that. I’m displeased with a few things so far, but it’s always like this when you watch the live version of something you read. Most of the time, you are bound to be at least a little disappointed.

I thought I missed a part of last episode when this one started, it got me so confused. Doyun wakes up with a bad hangover and seems to remember things about Chowon. But that definitely wasn’t shown during last episode and it was the right next one because the beginning was the same as the previous one’s ending, with Ji-eum hugging Seoha. But then we are granted a flashback of Chowon going to pick up a very drunk Doyun. A Doyun that even kisses her. Well, that’s what is implied. He himself doesn’t remember.

Chowon pays a visit to Ji-eum and they end up eating and drinking with Aegyeong. Mingi (who’s an archeological professor it seems) seems uneasy about it. And Ji-eum is definitely uneasy about him. I don’t know about this. It’s... weird. Anyways. They have a good time.

Doyun is doing some meal prep. And he left veggies on the cutting board. You can’t leave anything behind, put everything in the tupperware! This is food waste. It kind of triggers me. Then he receives a call from Chowon.

Seoha has to attend a family dinner but he doesn’t seem to blend in very well. He excuses himself, even though his father is unhappy with him. On his way out, he receives a call from the loan shark, expecting a hefty payment for info he’ll provide him about the accident which was organized by someone close to MI group. Then he throws himself in the pool, like he’s trying to commit suicide. I don’t like that part of the drama either. It doesn’t make any sense to me. Seoha is a complicated and tormented character, but he was endearing. In this live action... he’s not. He’s pitiful. I didn’t see that character the way they picture him so far and it bothers me so much. He calls Doyun, but he’s already at Ji-eum’s place to pick up a very drunk Chowon, so Ji-eum ends going to pick him up. When he sees her, he leans in to kiss her. Well lip bump her. Then she kisses him properly and takes him home. She cooks a beef stew for him, she already did as Juwon.

Chowon is pretty drunk on the way home and she leans in to kiss Doyun but actually falls on his shoulder. And they didn’t kiss. He did the same. She twists her ankle on her way back home but she won’t let him help her, probably because she’s ashamed. No one wants to look like a fool in front of the one they like.

Jieum asks Seoha out for a second time. He tells her he likes her but needs time first. He’ll confess to her for the third time. When they’re about to kiss again, Ji-eum’s brother gives a call to Seoha. She rushes over to her brother’s place and tells him to stay away from her. And Seoha. She’s mad that he told him about the murder attempt.

Seoha reveals to Doyun that he suspects that the hit and run wasn’t just that. It seems to bring some tension between them.

Ji-eum finally confronts Mingki. He reveals to her that he also can remember his past lives. He tells her that she needs to reconnect to people from her first life to understand why she can remember all of her past lives. She can use the shaman bells to help her remember, since her memories of her first life are blurry. She’s very shaken from seeing those memories.

Doyun gets yelled at by Seoha’s father because Seoha is investigating the accident.

Doyun admits to Chowon that he likes her, but he still won’t date her. Then he tells Ji-eum that if she doesn’t tell Seoha anytime soon about her secret, she should never tell him.

And then... WTF? Hanna is actually Seoha’s mom? Just a hug? No explanations? I really don’t like this. It’s as bad as a love triangle. That is not part of the original story either. And it shouldn’t be added. What a mess.

Seoha rushes out when he receives a text from the loan sharks and Ji-eum follows him. Then they head out to a meeting point. When it’s time to go, Seoha asks her to stat behind, he’ll find her no matter what. As he leaves, she has a vision of her past life, so she ends up following him. but... WHY IS SEOHA IN HER PAST LIFE? Why did they change her first life’s background? Seoha was never part of it. That is ruining everything for me. I don’t like this. Bad change to the original story. Seriously...

[jodilin65]

SUNDAY, JUNE 30, 2013 Before we take off for Home Depot, Target and the pet store for more bedding for the rats, I’m sitting here wondering if tonight will be the last night we ever sleep in this little old trailer. I hope so! They’ve now decided it’s to be 111° in Citrus Heights on Monday. That’d call for one hot move, but it's worth it to move into what will be our home for the next 15 years at the very least. We’re hoping to get the keys by early afternoon tomorrow. Absolute worst-case scenario (since they have the paperwork marked till the 3rd at the latest) is that we move after work on Wednesday. We don’t want to move on Thursday cuz that’s when the parade is going on.

For now, there’s not much else to do other than tie up loose ends and keep on waiting. Just remember that if you’re a friend that I regularly keep in touch with, it could be a few days before I have a chance to get back to you or pick up email and things like that. We should be online pretty much right away, but we expect to be busy settling in and getting to know the place. So just be patient! I won’t forget about you.

Later…

Went out to look at things at Home Depot and get ideas for shades for the bedroom and other things like locks/knobs, ceiling fans for the bedroom, flooring, carpet, etc.

Then we went to the pet store for bedding, but it wasn’t open so we got some from Target, which was our next stop. We got a couple of days of groceries and some more storage bins in 3 different sizes to pack the final odds and ends in. Love the clear ones so we can see what’s in each one without having to not only open them up but also dig through them to see what’s toward the bottom.

Brought in some packing peanuts we had in the shed to pack things like my delicate all-porcelain ballerinas, and next, I’ll clean the smaller cage in the tub, then hose down the big cage. We felt it’d be easier to move them to the smaller cage, even though these humongous rats probably won’t like being stuck in it for a few days. I’ll let them run around loose for exercise like I usually do anyway.

SATURDAY, JUNE 29, 2013 I’m amazed at how many questions I’m still getting on Ask. A few questions, particularly the one about wondering what’s the point of living, and whether or not to confront a friend who wrote that they’re lazy and whiny, seems Aly-ish, but I’m not going to ask her. I figure if it was her and if she wanted to identify herself, she would have.

Anyway, sure enough, we’ve had some delays and now we won’t be getting the fucking keys to our new house till next week. We’re waiting on documents that have been overnighted and need signing, and Brenda has some disclosure forms for us to sign. We don’t know what, though, since we already signed those (no one died there).

Is this where things start going wrong? I asked myself yesterday. Then when we finally do get in does God set the stage for enough things to break to drain our savings, then have him laid off so we can struggle really badly and maybe even lose the place? Well, we’ve got a 1-year warranty for even things as small as a drippy pipe/faucet, and seeing that business is always booming where he works and they just asked him to start a new job there that pays more, I think we’ll be ok. Can’t guarantee that I’ll get as much sleep and peace there as I’d like, but we’ll soon find out.

Our monthly expenses should come to around $1200 a month excluding gas and food. Once the place is paid off, it should be closer to around $900. We now owe 19 grand on the loan. How fast we pay that off will depend on OT, what money I make online, and what I can win.

Escrow has been signed and closed and Brenda took the sellers to do their signing, too. Everything must be precisely worded and in order. Many people refer to these types of homes as trailers or mobile homes and that’s technically incorrect. The correct terms are manufactured homes or modular homes, which are built like on-site homes and don’t have taillights and whatnot on them like the trailer we’re in now does. It’s been taken off its wheels and its steel frame sits on concrete blocks, but this is still a definite trailer. It would blow away in a heartbeat once the first monsoon storm hit the area if it were on our old land in Maricopa, as opposed to the 42,000-pound manufactured home we had on it.

I think they were also confused at first cuz they asked if our new home had already been set up and strapped down (those 3’ screws I already explained). Well, our home isn’t strapped, it’s grounded, but trust me when I say that on the windiest day of all, she ain’t going anywhere.

When it’s super windy here you can feel this place shudder. Arizona would toss this old heap of shit around like it was a toy.

The good thing is that the escrow people will pay for any days after the first that we’re not in our new home. We were also able to cancel the U-Haul without being charged and decided we’ll just spontaneously grab one on Monday, Tuesday at the latest. It sucks that we couldn’t start bringing shit over there (particularly bulky and breakable stuff) over the weekend, but going out of here in one big sweep isn’t that big of a deal. It’s just harder to move from a small place. We’re practically climbing over shit here. There’s no rain in the forecast, so we might move some stuff out onto the porch that’s sealed up in plastic containers.

So it’s just an annoying waiting game we have to play as we’ll be pretty much grounded all weekend, unable to do much but maybe go through the shed and sort through some more things out there and try to organize shit overall as best we can with what little space we have to do it in. I really want to just get the hell over there so we can have fun setting up and enjoying being back on cable for the first time since 2007! Then I can move on to new worries and wonder if I’ll be able to sleep well there and if there’ll be more daytime distractions than I’d like for when I’m up and about. Now would be the perfect time to dive into their pool, but no, we gotta be stuck here over the weekend. I’m dying to dive into their fitness room too, and take advantage of most of their amenities.

It’s to be 105° up here on Monday and 110° where we’re moving to. I hope Nane isn’t back from Spain yet seeing that it’s 55° and raining today in Munich, LOL.

FRIDAY, JUNE 28, 2013 Today’s Tom’s 56th birthday and hopefully it will be celebrated by getting the keys to our new house. If worse comes to absolute worse, we get the keys on Monday and we move out in one clean sweep instead of making half a dozen or so runs over the weekend before renting the truck for the big stuff on Monday as planned.

Damn! Just damn! I never thought this day would come. For years I told myself it would never happen because that’s what I truly believed. But I was wrong. Very wrong.

Anyway, I’m glad I took Tom’s advice and slept a little later. I needed it. I was all wound up from the excitement and had trouble falling asleep. Besides, what good would getting up really early do us when nothing’s open then and we can’t do anything anyway? Tom woke up early cuz he too, is super excited.

Even if we get the keys today, we probably won’t be sleeping at the new place till tomorrow night at the earliest.

Right now we’re changing addresses on some of our online accounts, but I won’t change my town on Facebook till we actually get to it.

THURSDAY, JUNE 27, 2013 Tom’s looking at a new job at work that will call for less OT and more money, but that’s all I can say about that right now. Other than that the hours will be more stable and it involves working more on computers than overseeing warehouse activities.

The only thing I’m a bit concerned with right now is that Kathy hasn’t notified us yet to say they received the final loan document they’re waiting on, and this could pose a potential delay in getting in the house and cause us (as well as others) all kinds of headaches. Let’s hope things continue to run on time!

I’m both nervous and excited to get the move done and over with. I just hope that living there won’t be too much like an apartment complex without the apartments. In the apartments I had back east they pretty much mowed in the summer and shoveled in the winter and that was it. But in the Arizona apartments, there was always, always something going on and a lot more activity. It was a climate thing, of course, but this is a nice climate, too. I just hope there isn’t too much activity going on there, though I think most of it will still be confined to the pool and clubhouse. I sure hope so anyway! They may come around every now and then with a street sweeper, but there are no sidewalks to blow or heavy landscaping to do. Still, I just want to get it over with and see what it’s really going to be like there.

Someone asked if there was any particular event that caused me not to believe in prayer, but nope. It was an accumulation of unanswered prayers that made me a non-believer. Not being granted a singing career (I still can’t believe I ever wanted to do that) was one thing, but what was really depressing and a scary eye-opener was when I was denied a child. It was then that I came to believe that it didn’t matter if what I asked for was off the wall or “normal.” It just had to be me asking for it and it was automatically forbidden.

I’d heard it said that if we prayed for what was fair, right, reasonable and correct, we would receive our request. Was a child not “correct?” Well, perhaps it wouldn’t have been the more I came to value my life and my freedom. After having to deal with other people’s screaming kids for so long I came to realize the value of peace. I also admit I got a bit selfish, not wanting to give up my life to something that would take from us more than it could ever give. You puke your guts out when you get pregnant, you gain a million pounds, you go through a world of pain having it, you get depressed afterward, and then you are swamped with nothing but constant noise and expenses with barely 5 minutes for yourself. Did I really want that? No, I didn’t. But that wasn’t the point. The point was that I had prayed for something that was supposed to be natural and that was when a cold hard reality began to sink in; that either nothing was listening to me, or it simply didn’t give a shit about me.

“Eh, it just wasn’t meant to be,” someone told me.

“But then why pray? If things are either meant to be or not meant to be, why pray?”

But I was stubborn and not ready to give up just yet on the idea of getting God to like/accept me and to give me what I wanted too, even though just the mother He had me born to was enough to tell me otherwise. I prayed for a child. He gave me a miscarriage. I prayed for help with my weight. I now struggle with 30 extra pounds. I prayed that the move from Oregon to Cali would go smoothly. He led us to the streets. I prayed that Tom not be one of the 10% to become unemployed back in 2008. He gave him years of unemployment. And so I quit talking to myself and let fate/destiny play itself out the way it was meant to be anyway. This doesn’t mean I won’t put effort into achieving the things I want in life, it just means that I know I’m on my own. If I’m going to get any of these things it will be because of me only, and if anyone does help me, they’ll walk on two legs just like I do. No, I’m not going to leave my weight to fate. I’m still going to try to diet and exercise and hope my body responds to it. If not then only a doctor can help me. Not any God.

Not one single blessing in my life, from Tom to our new home or from my writing/language abilities to our income has been prayed for. Every good thing I got in life was simply meant to be and I never had to ask for it. They may’ve taken work to achieve, but the point is that I’ve learned that praying doesn’t necessarily equal good things coming my way any more than it means being able to ward off or change bad things that happen. If I’m meant to have something, I’ll get it, and I won’t get what I’m not meant to have either. I know this and I know no prayers are necessary either, but as always, to each their own.

Later…

The Supreme Court ruling that DOMA is unconstitutional yesterday was a great thing. But when will gays be able to marry in every state???

Believe it or not, I’ve got about 90% of this place packed up now, including the mouse that fell prey to the sticky board under the sink. Yeah, he’s been bagged and sent to the outside trash bin. He was so cute, but oh the smell and the turds!

At first I thought the brown paper lunch bags he never used that he got a while back were a waste, but I find them great for mugs, glasses and other breakables.

Had a little scare this morning with the cooler. It was dripping off the roof and I’m thinking, Oh fucking no! Can’t shit just wait 3 more days to break? But Tom climbed up and checked it and said it overflowed a bit but wasn’t leaking. We’ve got triple-digit temps coming up, so it better fucking work!

Guess I’ll go pack and proofread some more and hope there are no delays. We really need them to call with the final numbers so we can make the damn down payment, sign the escrow papers that are set to close tomorrow, and go home!

WEDNESDAY, JUNE 26, 2013 The people in our house are gone now and I’m getting more emotional (in a good way) as the days begin to melt down into just hours. I think, OMG, this is almost it! Unless a meteorite strikes us dead, a U-Haul is really going to take our perfectly live bodies out of here and not some coroner in a couple of body bags as what came so, so terrifyingly close to being the case.

It must’ve been a sad day for Gene and Audrey, the people we bought the house from. I feel a twinge of sadness for them knowing they’re going into an assisted living apartment just to begin the end of their lives while I’m thinking, OMG, our new home is now sitting there empty just waiting for us and a couple of cute rats!

What I saw in here earlier made me think of going petless once these rats go so we can use the bug plug that emits a high-frequency pitch at the new place. It was the biggest spider I’ve ever seen in the 6 years we’ve been in Cali! I went into the bathroom, parked my ass on the toilet, then sort of glanced upwards. And then I saw it. My vision is so shitty I can’t distinguish small objects, but this thing was SO big that I instantly knew what it was. I shot up from that toilet so fucking fast. I hated to have to run underneath the thing to escape it, and of course you can imagine that trying to pull up your panties while running isn’t an easy thing. I woke poor Tom up to kill it that’s how huge and scary the damn thing was. Its guts are mashed all over the ceiling. If it weren’t for the fact that we’ll be out of here in a few days I’d scrub it off.

That nocturnal nightmare was compliments of the two days of rain we’ve had. We had more rainfall in the last two days than in nearly a year! It was amazing and so hard to believe it was late June and not late fall. We haven’t needed the cooler for two days, and it was also hard to believe that in just a few days we’d be in for triple digits. It’ll be 85° today, then 95°, then over 100°. Today, if I remember, I’ll shoot some of the ugliest exterior pics so we can all laugh at how we had to live for so long, though for the longest time, it wasn’t funny at all.

Tom scheduled the cable to be turned on on Friday. No more shitty slow DSL!!! Woo-hoo!!! And yes, we really are going home!!!

If there is a God up there that picks and chooses what happens to us and if things really do happen for a “reason” and He gets it in mind to beat someone over the head with money, I’ll be damned if it’ll be us. We can’t guarantee we’ll never get cancer or anything like that, but we’re going to always do everything we can to see to it that we never end up back in the poorhouse. But even though he makes a lot of money and the dream premonitions have backed off almost completely, a “bad” money dream would still scare the shit out of me. Once you’ve had just half of the dream premonitions I’ve had you can never ever return to assuming a nightmare was just a nightmare. Psychics go dormant at times. We don’t go away.

The only thing that could delay us is that the loan lady is waiting on one final document. She expects it today, though, and I hope she gets it! We don’t want to have to pay the Jes pest for OT spent here AND the park.

Ok, gotta get packing some more shit. Damn, it’s tough with so little space, but fun! Totally worth it. I think I’ll bag up some of the clothes we don’t wear as much and toss them in some cheap trash bags we got for cans and bottles.

TUESDAY, JUNE 25, 2013 Beat the alarm by 3 minutes and learned that Mark’s surgery went well. They didn’t find anything they believed to be cancerous. But he’s still got his heart, a much bigger issue, to contend with.

Got another super busy day ahead, so I’ve got to make this quick. Amazingly, it rained all day yesterday. It was great. It shut the Jes pest up and made sleeping better. It’s going to rain throughout the morning too, the pest’s prime time. Like I said, though, I’m mostly on days now, so he can’t wake me up. He shouldn’t even be able to annoy me much when I am awake since he certainly won’t be re-roofing or bulldozing anytime soon while the ground is still wet. I’m so glad I’ll never have to hear that insanely loud dozer again!

Tom checks online every day to see if they’ve disconnected their cable so we can get it set up in our name, but nope, not yet. So someone’s still there. That’s no real surprise since they said they would be out by the 28th.

MONDAY, JUNE 24, 2013 I first want to say that yesterday’s rant about the reverse discrimination running rampant in this country that no one seems to care about, and my lack of trust in God and belief in prayer wasn’t meant to sway anyone’s opinion one way or the other. You’re all welcome to have a mind of your own. Remember, I’m selfish. :) Meaning that I write for myself first and foremost. You readers are just an afterthought, so to speak. I’m going to say what I’ve got to say regardless of whether it’s the “norm” or things others can relate to or not simply because that’s part of what keeping a journal is all about. It’s about documenting one’s life, thoughts, feelings, opinions and beliefs, not about trying to change others. If someone happens to be influenced by anything I’ve written, however, then so be it. I can’t control the world or help what people are going to think or do. I kind of see journaling as I do walking down the street in my favorite shirt. Some will like it. Some won’t. Some won’t even notice. But I like it and that’s all that matters with no offense or persuasion intended.

Having fun making people wait on me on Ask. Nothing from Kathy today, but I got a few questions that might be from Kim. They asked if I had a lot of online friends, if I like getting email, and if I know anyone named Carol. Well, she has a sister Carol, and the other two questions seem like questions she’d ask. Just when I thought she’d forgotten about me.

We went to Walgreens yesterday to take advantage of our AARP discount. You get $10 just for signing up, so the sculpted dog I got was basically free. Getting older has its advantages, though I’m 3 years shy of my own AARP membership. It’s a very realistic-looking sculpt, which I like as opposed to cartoonish-looking things. It’s an Irish Setter holding a ‘welcome’ sign in its mouth.

“Only they’re not welcome,” Tom joked.

LOL, he’s got a point there as funny as it may sound. I’m no social butterfly. I’ll still be seeing a lot more people than I have been when I’m out and about; just not at home. I can’t wait to go swimming!!! It may be a week or two before we finally have the time to do that, but this is a great time of year to be moving. I’d hate to move in December and know I had to wait 5 months or so before I could swim.

The house isn’t as big as we thought it was, according to the appraisers and inspectors. It’s 56’ long by 24’ wide, which comes to 1344 square feet, not that that’s not more than enough room for us. The master bedroom alone is 12x20.

Tom said Jesse was blasting music on Saturday that couldn’t be heard in here. Every time he went outside, though, he could tell he was listening to a Bruce Springsteen concert. He could hear him talking in between songs. His kid is probably there now. Someone’s been there keeping the mutts quiet for the last half a year or so. I’m surprised we never heard his music before. Tom said he thinks he kept it down in the past so as not to annoy us. Well, that’s nice cuz his vehicles, power tools and mutts were certainly more than enough.

We’ve been having amazingly cool weather for June. Although I prefer it hot, it’s better for sleeping. It was nice to be able to shut the bedroom door and window and not have to wear my eye mask when I crashed yesterday afternoon. They say we’re on for rain and sun today and just rain tomorrow, but I’ll believe it when I see it. It’d be awesome if it would rain really hard if only for an hour because then the Jes pest won’t be as likely to do anything down here before we leave, particularly bulldozing and re-roofing. Oh, the work that guy’s gonna have to do in here with all the damn drippy faucets alone! I’m sure he’ll want to balance the doors, too. He may not care that the bathroom door flops open, but he’ll definitely care that I’ve had to make a hook on the wall to keep the bedroom door from flopping shut. Oh, to soon be able to place a door halfway open and see it stay there! The next place is going to have 7 interior doors. I’m not counting bedroom closets cuz those are sliders.

Later…

Tom woke up early because his mind was racing a mile a minute. We’re both excited but also nervous about the move. I’m nervous about what it’ll be like when we get there, and he’s nervous about just getting there. As he said, everything’s running smoothly and that’s the problem, which is exactly what I was thinking. Things just don’t normally go as planned for us yet as far as we know there are no delays to be expected, no one’s out to get us and to ruin our plans, and we’re still on for moving this weekend. After having things go so shitty for us for so long, and after seeing every single one of our plans, simple or complex, fall to pieces, we tend to get a little suspicious when things go well for us. Really, why is life being so good to us all of a sudden? From a logical standpoint, we deserve good things and it’s simply our compensation for the hell we went through year after year, but something up there has a way of seeing it the other way around and I worry that we’re going to pay tenfold for this good fortune we’ve been having.

For now, life is being so good to us that it’s even raining out there as I write this, LOL. That’ll keep the Jes pest at bay. I’m mostly back on days now, though, so it’s unlikely there’ll ever be a risk of him waking me up again. I’ll be setting alarms so my schedule doesn’t jump more than an hour a day. So today it’s into bed at 1pm to read for an hour, then back up at 11pm.

Although we’re not in an area where natural disasters are likely to strike, if something happened that was out of our control like that, that’d be one thing. But if any person, group, agency or whatever even thinks of turning our dreams into a living nightmare like it has in the past I will totally destroy anyone responsible. TOTALLY.

That being said I can move on to say that I’ve organized and packed a few more things. Tom can get tons of boxes at work so that’s not an issue. The issue is where to put them. We don’t have much room to pile boxes in here but some can go out on the porch if they have to. I had my emotional moments along the way thinking, wow! It’s really happening. We’re going home. Yes, we are!

The PTSD still eats at me at times, so it will be nice to finally be in a place that doesn’t have such terrifying and stressful memories attached to it, and that hopefully never will either.

Mark should be out of surgery by now and hopefully, he’ll soon learn that he’s cancer-free!

SATURDAY, JUNE 22, 2013 Kathy’s brother asked again why I’m such a “cray beeyatch,” but I think I’ll ignore his childish shit this time around.

Enjoying our last full weekend under the shadow of the Jes pest, though we’re carrying on with our usual errands. Changed the bed here for the last time and will sleep here just 7 more times!

Heard a mouse chewing like hell somewhere under the bathroom. The next people better hope they’re not afraid of mice cuz there sure are a lot of them here in these woods.

When I realized that focusing too much on my German (thanks to Nane, LOL) was hurting my Spanish and Italian and I was starting to forget some things, I went back to Lang-8 where I can do some quick entries in both languages and have any errors corrected by native speakers. Or at least what should be native speakers anyway. I don’t post what I usually post in English in my regular journals, and my entries there are usually short and sweet. The main idea is to just write a few minutes a day in these languages.

“How many answered prayers would it take for you to believe in prayer?” someone asked me. Well, if half of them were answered I’d say it was a coincidence. If 80% of them were answered then I’d seriously start to wonder if there really was something up there listening to me, but as long as I’m at 5% or less and not seeing us all get everything we want in life (or most of us anyway), then I still say it’s about fate and not what we want/don’t want. But whether or not it’s happenstance or something deciding what we get/don’t get is still a mystery to me.

What the hell’s wrong with the Mac’s mail program? It won’t let me send mail. It asks for my PW but keeps rejecting it even though I know I typed it in correctly. Oh well. Guess I’ll have to send it directly from Outlook till Tom gets up and can investigate.

Why is it that whites are being fired like crazy for racial slurring, yet whenever blacks mouth off about whites no one gives a shit? Just wondering why the double standards and when the hell they’re ever going to end. This trend has been going on since the 90s and it’s getting really old. I was saddened and sickened to read in someone else’s journal that someone on the Food Network channel was fired for using the N-word 25 YEARS AGO while they were being robbed at gunpoint. I don’t know who she was and I don’t watch TV, but that didn’t make hearing about it any less appalling. Yet if a black person gets on national TV and whines about how terrible we white people are and calls us names, it’s perfectly ok.

“We have it all,” they so often complain. We do? Tell that to us when we too, can have a White History Month, white TV station, white pageants, white this, white that WITHOUT being called racists. And also when we can have a black, Hispanic or Asian person charged with any hate crimes against us, and we aren’t getting passed over in the workplace so often for non-whites.

Seriously, instead of being the second angriest group of people who think the right way to solve problems is through public screaming matches or violence, have you ever asked yourselves if maybe it’s about YOU and not your color? Contrary to popular belief, most people really do base their opinions on behavior and not color. So when you treat people like shit and you unfairly play the race card cuz it’s the “in” thing to do today and you know you’ll be believed, what do you expect? For us to pat you on the back and say, “Good job, buddy, good job?”

FRIDAY, JUNE 21, 2013 Other than backing up old journals on MyOpera and a little on Tumblr as well, I really don’t have much to update at the moment. We’re just waiting to move and I’m rolling my schedule back onto days. Amazingly, the Jes pest didn’t come down all week, but next week wouldn’t surprise me. Who knows, though? Maybe he’s waiting till we leave. The better he’s doing financially these days, the more he can take time prepping the place in between renters.

Even though it’s a hassle to work out here since I have to clear so many things away from the treadmill to have room to unfold it, I really gotta walk at least 20 minutes tonight so I don’t start having joint pain. Just one more week of this lack of space shit!

Tammy and Mark continue to have it rough physically. I guess her situation has been the same, but Mark, who not only has to have polyps surgery on Monday morning to make sure no cancer is present, was also rushed in to see his cardiologist. He apparently has a couple of clogged arteries and to quote Tammy's words, “If that one goes, he’s instantly dead. There’s no heart attack, no warning, no nothing.”

So things have certainly been scary, hectic and frustrating for them.

THURSDAY, JUNE 20, 2013 Not surprisingly, Kathy’s shit has started back up again after a few days of silence. I guess she’s my official replacement for Kim unless Kim’s doing a great job of making any of the anonymous questions I get seem like they’re not from her. Her brother – or at least supposedly her brother – asked: why you gotz to be hatin on my sis beeyatch?

I know I shouldn’t feed the trolls and should probably have ignored the “question,” but instead I deleted it and re-asked myself the same question only I changed it to: why you gotz to be hatin on my sis beeyatch?

LOL, I replied with: I’m married, buddy. I look, I flirt, but I definitely don’t date.

This will really fuck with their heads. Hopefully, they’ll think they made a typo. Hahaha

Later…

Nothing from Kathy and her cronies today. Alison said she almost never talks to her but that’s ok because she’s tried to reach out to her before just to be ignored. Well, as I’ve learned, Kathy is a very spoiled, selfish person, so if there’s nothing for her to gain by being closer to Aly, then she won’t bother. I’m kind of hoping she and her family will be too busy to pester people once the kid is born. Why dump someone, though, if you don’t want anything to do with them? I still can’t believe she of all people would dump someone, and then harass them! I’d seen her harass Molly, but that was different, or so I thought. That was her picking on a stalker, not someone she dumped for not being a God-lover.

Aly’s still struggling with skin issues, anemia, insomnia and depression. Others tell her to just “smile” and think “happy thoughts.” God, the day it’s that easy, no one will ever be depressed again! Really, that’s like telling a gay person to just not be attracted to the same sex.

Andy has a form of asthma and has to use inhalers. This sucks, but it’s better than having cancer. Tom has exercise-induced asthma. Strenuous activity can cause him to have a tough time breathing.

Someone on Ask told me that the older I get, the more selfish I get. Gosh, I hope so! I would hope I’ve matured, grown and smartened up enough not to be so damn naïve, trusting and forgiving as I once was. As I told them, I would still help a friend in need, of course, but would be more selective about who I did what for. Sometimes our generosity is taken advantage of and this causes us to be less generous, thus giving the impression we’re stingy. Being too trusting, forgiving and generous can really get us in trouble if we’re not careful. I’ll still help the old lady cross the street, but I won’t give money to the guy on the street and take his word for it that he’ll get the food he needs with it. For all I know that “food” is really drugs, alcohol or cigarettes.

I think most of us become more selfish with age as we lose our sensitivity and care less about what others think of us, how we look, etc.

I get the impression this is someone who’s been reading quite a bit of my journal but won’t identify themselves because it’s someone who knows they’re not supposed to be contacting me. Either that or they’re afraid of me for some reason. Ah, but I don’t bite, so hopefully they’ll step out of the shadows and introduce themselves sometime.

As the move approaches, we begin the last of the last. Last sheet change, last period, last this, last that. I’m so excited and nervous, but fortunately, I’m much more excited.

Can’t wait to be more active and go back to dieting even if it means having to deal with constant hunger again. I once prayed for any God that may be up there and that may hear me to please help me help myself by giving me more strength not to cave into the hunger or take shortcuts with working out, but was ignored, of course. So I stopped talking and started doing, knowing I was on my own, as always. Still not sure, though, if there once was a God who abandoned us and that’s why prayer is just wishful thinking for most of us and why so many people have such shitty lives, or if there is one and it’s just playing favorites. I know some people think it’s the devil that does evil and not God, but if God’s supposed to be the most powerful thing, then why doesn’t He overthrow the devil? Hmm… I gotta go with there being a God that created the universe and the things in it, but that doesn’t have any influence over our day-to-day lives.

BUT… the timing of the job was way too coincidental. I have a feeling that if anything up there did lead us on the road to death, it wasn’t the same thing that saved us for why would you push someone so far into the dark just to yank them out of it at the end? What happened to us was literally like falling from the sky with no parachute just to have a giant hand reach out and catch us as we were about to hit the ground. Things were THAT close to over for us. I don’t know what saved us in the end. I only know it wasn’t God. I don’t know how I know it, though. Just a gut feeling, I guess.

Ok, I should quit analyzing and guessing things none of us can ever know for sure anyway, and go hit the shower.

WEDNESDAY, JUNE 19, 2013 Just 10 days left! Kathy emailed Tom the insurance forms to print, sign, scan and email back so they can go ahead with the loan stuff.

I’ve been organizing things both on and offline. Every now and then I like to clean out my email accounts and delete everything I’ve received and sent. You just never know if someone may hack in and get the password you may’ve requested or whatever. So I decided it was time to clean house.

Went through some more stuff in the dark, creepy closet, which I won’t miss at all no matter how spacious it may be for a little old trailer, but there’s only so much I can pack right now because most of what’s not yet packed are things we’ll need or don’t have boxes for. The hard part is where to put all the boxes we pack. We’re hoping to bring some big, bulky items over to the house before we get the truck.

The dream I had of Teddy Bear was weird. She was still in her late 30s, as I believed her to be when I last knew her. Only instead of just getting transferred to Madison for flirting with the ladies at Estrella, she was married with a 12-year-old daughter in the dream, rumor had it. The person telling me about it (I don’t know who) said Teddy Bear was from a very conservative, hateful family that pushed her until she succumbed to the pressure and married her high school sweetheart. Or, more appropriately, the boy she pretended to love and be all into, the person also told me.

“So by day she’s following her heart and chasing the ladies, and at night she’s this old-fashioned person going home to this husband and child she never wanted?” I asked incredulously.

The person nodded just as I was coming awake. In real life, there’s no way she’d have ever let anyone pressure her into marriage, kids or both. By then married people having kids was no longer the norm anyway, and then even marriage itself got less common. Too busy trying to keep gays from marrying, I guess, to worry about their own marriages. She also doesn’t strike me as the type to marry another woman, not that Arizona would ever allow it being the bigoted state it is towards people like gays, Jews and whites. Everything down there is basically black this, Mexican that.

Not where Tom works, though, so he’s learning. His place is one of those few places left that still underpays its minorities. Pam, his coworker who also lives in an adult community, says that’s just so horrible and so unfair. LOL, so typical of a white person to say, but I can’t say I don’t agree. I always thought nothing but one’s qualifications should be considered when it comes to employment and that everyone should be paid equally and fairly despite color, race, gender, nationality or sexual preference. But sadly, minorities tend to be favored in most places, gays are still getting fired, and women still aren’t getting the pay men get.

Later…

I guess I’m going to be ghostwriting for Tammy after the move. She’s been wanting to start a journal for a while now but has been too sick to do so. Even when she’s not sick, her meds make her shaky so it’s hard for her to type. Hopefully, by the end of the year, the doctors will have her in much better health than she is now. She’ll still probably have to take medication for the rest of her life, though, even if she doesn’t need the transplant done.

Anyway, I thought of how she paid Sarah to help her around the house and said, “Hey, wanna hire me to ghostwrite your life story?” Well, she is interested in my offer, but we won’t discuss it till we get settled at the new place, though the pay is up to her.

I only ghostwrote one other story and that was Mary’s story, none of which I ever got any credit for. People don’t always realize that not everyone can afford to work for free, and even when they can, they still shouldn’t have to. Nonetheless, I saw it as helping out a friend, or what I thought was a friend. One I also thought trusted me. Sometimes being friends with someone who can’t take us at face value can be as difficult as trying to be friends with those who are crazy. You spend more time trying to reason, assure and explain yourself than you do actually enjoying having them in your life. They’re not worth it no matter how much you may like them otherwise.

Anyway, I am going to be sooo busy after the move, but I look forward to keeping wonderfully busy and active. I just want people to know this if I’m not around as much and not take it personally. Don’t know how much time I’ll have for social sites and blogging, but will still make a point of doing at least one quick entry a day. Work, sweepstakes, writing, language studies, pools, gyms, shopping, decorating… I am sooo excited and it’s going to be sooo much fun! And very time-consuming. Still gotta cook, clean and do laundry, even though I’m not much of a cook. I wonder if there’ll be enough hours in a day to do all I want to do! Can’t wait to do things online I couldn’t do here either at all or very easily – stream movies, download high-res pics, explore new music to add to my music library…

We decided to just start with a new desk and a couch because we don’t want the savings to drop too much. This place is beautiful and affordable, but ONLY if you make good money. Yeah, that’s the only thing I don’t like about this place, besides the bad memories I’ll always have of our toughest and scariest moments in Auburn, it’s NOT unemployment safe. On the bright side, this is easily the most secure job he’s ever had what with all the OT. You don’t usually throw so much OT at people just to go laying them off soon afterward.

It’s going to be so much more fun than the last house we bought. After all was set up and done there, that was it. It was over and I didn’t have much else to do or look forward to. There were no pools or clubhouses I could go to, the Internet wasn’t what it is today, and so there wasn’t much to do other than clean and write. Well, that is until a knock on the door at 8:30 on the morning of January 6, 2000 came and put an end to my boredom. That sure as hell won’t be happening at this place! Not unless it’s in my cards to end up filthy rich after all.

All the little things like changing town names on Facebook (that won’t happen till we get over there) are made more special by the fact that I wasn’t supposed to live to be able to do them. Like drink the emergency water. LOL, yeah, that’s another thing we’ll do in about a week or so is finish off the little jug of water for when the Jes pest would have one of his famous well or pressure tank problems. You see things differently after you’ve stared death in the eye. Things are funnier. Stupid things that you wouldn’t ordinarily laugh about or give a second thought to. Like drinking down that “emergency” water. hahaha

This should be the last night we’ll have to close windows and the cooler vent while we’re still here. Last night got chilly as hell in here. The propane tank hit 12% last weekend, so the next people in here are definitely not going to take many showers at our expense, LOL.

TUESDAY, JUNE 18, 2013 No calls or emails today, so I guess everything is on track as scheduled. No bad dreams either.

Been having dreams of Teddy Bear, the one woman I came to really truly love (though I have had feelings for a few others) after getting married. She really taught me a lot. For one, she reminded me that some people are full of shit no matter what they say, and yes, no matter how in love and committed you are to one person, people can still be attracted to and even have feelings for others along the way. We really are only human.

I wonder what her life is like today. Is she still a detention officer? Or did all that flirting finally catch up to her and get her fired? I wonder about Palma and Pérez, too.

Jesse let me sleep so far this week. I’ve had the sound machines cranked up and I’ve also added an earplug to my good ear for good measure. If he’s been down here I haven’t heard him. I don’t think he has been, though, as there’s no evidence of weeding, trimming, bulldozing or anything.

MONDAY, JUNE 17, 2013 The Jes pest is almost just a memory and I’m wondering why the heavy period. So much for menopausal dreamin’.

I’m also wondering why I’m still Stephane’s only friend on Facebook. If it weren’t for a fellow VH sister confirming that she’s another “sister,” I’d be beyond suspicious. But why join FB just to friend only me, someone she never met? She was at VH from 1984-1986 and I was there from 1982-1984.

Poor Nane was sick, but will soon be off to enjoy a vacation in Spain!

I hope Alison’s doctor’s appointment went well today. The poor girl’s skin is all broken out and she’s lucky to get just 2 hours of sleep a night. Damn! I can’t even live on just 6, so I don’t know how she does just 2. Her last round of blood tests came back as “unusual,” so I worry about her. She herself says she doesn’t know how much more she can take. She’s been as cursed medically as we were financially.

At this point, I’m just hoping to hell there are no last-minute delays. Things have been running smoothly and on schedule so far which is pretty damn amazing for us, so that’s why I worry someone’s gonna throw a kink in our plans at some point. I hope not, though! It’s just that no one’s asked us for money yet and we can’t get in the house till we make the down payment. The loan lady said everything’s fine, so I guess we should just trust her and assume she knows what she’s doing.

Why has life been so good to us lately anyway? I wonder. I know we deserve this compensation after the hell we went through for so long, but still, I’m not used to things going this well for this long and I tend to get a little suspicious when they do. I suppose I should just shut up and enjoy it! If the shit’s gonna hit the fan again at some point, and if there really is a God that’s pissed off at what we’re doing and is going to “punish” us with breakage or health issues, there’s nothing we can do about it now.

I laugh to myself when I read back on some of my old journal entries. Damn, was I naïve! Back when I didn’t always talk right, sometimes by choice when I’d alter words, I then saw it as cute, creative and funny. But like most people when they get older, what I once saw as cute now seems immature. Sometimes it still brings humor to me (if not convenience) to either abbreviate or alter words amongst friends and whatnot, but if I were reading a journal like mine from the 80s and 90s I wouldn’t take them very seriously or consider them very bright. I guess that the more serious I became about writing, the less I wanted to sound like I was in my teens or 20s, unless it’s a character in one of my books that’s that age or something.

The growing illiteracy rate and poor spelling, grammar and punctuation are still alarming. Especially when people are looking for love or jobs where the last thing you want to come off as is some dumb-ass, uneducated person from the slums. As a writer, though, you tend to not only hate it when you make a typo, but you notice the errors of others more and are more annoyed by such things, especially when the writing is so bad you can’t even understand them or you have to read whatever it is they wrote a few times just to get what they’re trying to say.

SUNDAY, JUNE 16, 2013 OMG, this is so fucking funny! I walked into the room Tom was in and said, “Wow, someone on Ask asked about my unfinished Bunny Nose story. I’m surprised anyone remembers that. I told them that I plan, as time permits, to finish that and other unfinished stories I’ve put off once we get moved, or something like that.”

Then I pointed to his eye that’s been watery for some reason and said, “You still have a crying eye.”

“Yeah,” he said, “That could be Bunny Nose’s sequel; Crying Eye.

LMAO!

I may eventually share stories, or at least parts of stories, in my blogs. Can’t share anything that’s already been published, though, and if I post anything that I later end up getting published, I’ll have to take those posts down.

SATURDAY, JUNE 15, 2013 Tom and I are having a relaxing anniversary. The only real work I’m doing is laundry, though I don’t mind. I hope I will be able to say on our 20th anniversary how wonderful our first year in our new home has been, and not that the people there have pestered us or that we’ve had all kinds of problems with the house or anything like that.

I don’t like that Mary was in my blog if only for 20 seconds. What for? I don’t want to be friends with her again, so why can’t those who either dump me or that I dump just let go? Just ignore me and move on, goddamnit! But it’s like no one’s willing to forgive you when you try to apologize and resume your friendship with them, yet they sure won’t leave you alone for long if you’re the one that decides to walk away.

I accused her of having trust issues and being paranoid, but again, Jenny had a point in saying I was “almost” paranoid. How do I know she isn’t coming in to see if there’s something she can sue me for? Until she loses her rich “BF” she could use extra money, no doubt. I still worry that within a few months after the move God will send someone or something to fuck it up for us. If not to the devastating degree that the freeloaders did, then to at least be a highly annoying long-term issue that we’ll be less than thrilled to have to be dealing with when all we want to do is live our lives in peace and enjoy our new home. Well, we WILL fight back this time. Sure hope we won’t have to, though.

Got a couple of messages from Tammy. Because she spoke for 12 minutes and is putting off her health issues till the fall (due to Mark’s issues), I’m hopeful she won’t need the transplant and that her condition won’t get any worse. It’s still not the greatest, though. She’s not physically up to traveling. But she really wants to see us and says they could help with tickets. I think we could swing it ourselves and then she could just house and feed us. But if we really do go there, it’s way in the future. We need to move and get settled first, plus we have a trip to Hawaii coming up this winter.

Also, if we did go there it would only be for a few days. I’d hate to go there and not see Andy, so I guess we could rent a car and have him either drop down and meet us in CT, or we could shoot up over the MA border before we were due to go to the airport or something like that and see him if only for an hour or two.

She said, “I know you don’t like big dogs, but Peppy’s a real baby.” LOL, baby or not, 86 pounds is more than half my body weight! But does SHE realize how big these rats are? They’re like guinea pigs only skinnier, cuter, smarter, and with pointy noses and 8” tails that are about a half-inch thick at the base. Romeo loves to chase the dusting wand when I wave it around, and Sugar’s a real sweetie. Very playful, but gentle, unlike Romeo who can get to really nipping at times. Sugar literally stands straight up when I open the roof of the cage and gives me hugs and kisses.

Tammy’s been redecorating and installing new carpet and flooring so things have been hectic for her. The girls and Mark help her with what she doesn’t have the lungs to do.

Been having fun getting ideas online for new stuff of our own.

I love knowing we’ll soon be getting right what they fucked up on in Maricopa. Besides, our choices were so limited there. It was either white linoleum for the floor or “wooden” linoleum. I chose the white but of course it was marred with streaks of red where they made vent cut-outs and the lazies never cared to fix it. The pink Champaign carpet ended up being denim blue. Better than neutral colors, but still not what I wanted. I was thinking I may go with crème colored furniture with a medium shade of pink carpet, but that’s subject to change.

I love how I’ll get to pick out 3 different designs for floors. One for the kitchen, one for the master bath, and one for the second bath and laundry area. I like the bamboo wallpaper in the master bath and don’t want to redo that, so I’ll probably get something that will go with that. I don’t remember the wallpaper in the other bath, and the kitchen was boring.

I am sooo excited about our new home and all the fun games and activities I look forward to when I’m not writing or doing other work. I had said that I’d always feel some degree of resentment that we had to live so shabbily for so long, and while that’s true, a small part of it ended up being by choice so that we could really live it up in the end. We could’ve moved years ago. We just didn’t want to rent another dump or buy an old dump in a dumpy park with no pool. But because we lived cramped in here for so long we can now enjoy a luxury home in a luxury park with tons of amenities. I am NOT going to let any person, group or God ruin things for us there either. Oh no, not this time around! If anyone makes trouble for us we WILL fight back and we WILL win. Sure hope we won’t have to bother, though. Can’t imagine we would, but that’s just my paranoid side coming out after meeting with disasters of different kinds in two other states.

I laughed when Tom reminded me that we gotta “act” like old people at the pool. No diving, handstands or horseplay. It’ll still be fun, even if all I can do is float and swim.

I am having the PMS from hell with the water bloating. It’s really ridiculous that a 47-year-old has to have a uterus. Why does God hate women so damn much? Better yet, why did He create us if He knew he hated us? Just to have someone to pick on?

FRIDAY, JUNE 14, 2013 Less than 6 more hours till our 19th wedding anniversary! Not bad for one who once could barely keep a relationship for more than 5 minutes. If I wasn’t busy getting dumped I was busy realizing fast what a mistake I’d made in which case I was doing the dumping.

No one could ever compare to Tom no matter what they said, did, earned or looked like!

The real mystery is who the hell really is fucking with me on MD. I still say Kathy was behind some of it, but in regards to my saying how much I liked the motto “Freedom of speech is wonderful, right up there with the freedom not to listen,” I also said that any decent lawyer would’ve told that sick fuck of a twist next to us in Phoenix, “You had the right not to read your mail. No one forced you at gunpoint!”

Then someone with a bogus email came in with: then stop crying that people are responding to your emails idiot!! hah

What emails??? Kim would use words like “idiot” and “moron,” but we haven’t exchanged emails in like forever. Kathy and I never responded to emails. That leaves one very chilling possibility. Yeah, the black bitch in Phoenix. She’s the only one who “responded” by running to the pigs if the pig was even real at all. The only people I exchange emails with are friends and family. Regardless, their statement still makes no sense in response to what I wrote.

Aly just emailed me saying she wondered if Jenny could be behind the messages, cuz a mutual friend of hers and Kathy’s said Kathy was on vacation. Yeah, that’s what someone said on Ask. But someone connected to Kathy was harassing me.

I’ve got comments disabled for all blogs. That way if anyone there gets curious enough to look us up and they find my blog, they can’t say, “Hi, it’s so and so from the park. Welcome to LV!” I’d not only want to wring their necks for that, but I’d be like, jeez, why don’t you just spill our address and socials, too!

Didn’t hear from the Jes pest today, though I didn’t get up till noon. He was ATVing to the electrical box when we returned from yesterday’s signing. Brenda had wanted to be there but she had her own signing to attend to. Brenda’s been asking weird questions and we suspect she may have it in for Joy and want to catch her doing something wrong so she can complain on her. When the park changed management they fired everybody cuz they wanted to hire their own staff. So that’s why Brenda isn’t too fond of Joy.

I’m enjoying the beginning of the end of our time here in this little shitbox. Just changed the sheets and should only have to struggle to make this bed, with barely any space to one side and the foot, one more time!

I just hope nothing critical breaks in our last two weeks here and that that damn pest lets me sleep next week! I need to make one more schedule flip before we get out of here. I’m sure he’ll douse the tanks with bleach at least one more time, though. I hope he’s doing ok financially. The more desperate he is, the quicker he’ll want to start prepping the outside so he can get this place listed faster. On the other hand, it shouldn’t take him more than a day to bulldoze and trim some trees, so long as he doesn’t plan to paint or do anything too extravagant.

Except for the seclusion, I’m not going to miss this place one bit. I took some indoor pics of the ugliest parts of this trailer – behind the toilet, the mismatched bathroom colors, the hallway ceiling/grille, and I just shot the ugly kitchen door, too.

There’s always this faint smell of propane every time I get near the stove like there’s a leak or something. I’m not going to miss that either!

Tom said his coworkers were all jealous of us when he told them all about the place, LOL. Good and bad news for him there. He may continue getting the entire weekend off, but the weekday OT isn’t going to end anytime soon, but at nearly a grand a week it’s hard to complain. He only worked a half-day today due to their systems being down for maintenance but was paid for a full day’s work.

I can’t wait to explore the funhouse, as I’ve dubbed the clubhouse, more thoroughly. I’m surprised how deserted it was. You had half a dozen people at the pool yet not a single soul in sight at the funhouse. I suppose I should be more correct in my journal and call it the clubhouse cuz no one’s going to have a clue as to what the hell I’m talking about otherwise! Oh, there was a billiards room too, but I don’t think I’ll care for that.

The appraisal and inspection were done and everything’s looking good. They found a few minor things. The shower drain in the second bath is loose and the dryer vents underneath the house so there’s some lint down there, not that we care. Some small cuts in the kitchen floor (I remember those, though we’re going to replace the flooring anyway cuz it’s dull), and a few nicks in the outside trim. There’s a small dent in one of the carport supports too, which we may wall off into a garage so Tom could work on the car inside of it if he needed to. They don’t allow that there otherwise.

They’re installing a carbon monoxide monitor, and that was pretty much it. The report was emailed to Tom with very specific photos and descriptions. The patio table and chairs are still there, along with some wind chimes. I also liked that I didn’t see two new vehicles or something like that in next door’s driveway which was visible in one of the pics.

I may bitch about the high space rent, and I may worry about things going wrong and setting the stage for us to return to financial disaster (with a little help from whatever’s above that wasn’t very kind to us for so time), but it’s actually one of the cheapest there because the last people were there for so long. Most of the lots are over $800, as with most of the luxury parks in the area. I would have been thrilled and stunned to know we were going to a 1975, 1000-square-foot elevated home in a typical senior park, but a 1983, 1550-square-foot ground-level home in a luxury park is just mind-boggling! I just never would’ve believed it after living so shabbily for so long.

There are 3 trash bins. One’s for regular trash, which gets picked up weekly. Then there’s one for recyclables and one for green waste. They get alternated each week but picked up on the same day as your regular trash.

At first I wondered how the hell to care for all the trees and plants and what needed to be watered when, but it turns out there’s a drip system in place that’s on a timer located underneath the house. We just have to trim whatever needs trimming.

They had water problems due to some people landscaping in areas they shouldn’t have and damaging some pipes. We may get a couple of 5-gallon gravity-fed water tanks for the toilets just in case, but we don’t know for sure yet. Joy said it’s only occasionally that they have to turn the water off and usually only for a couple of hours.

We may eventually switch to LED lighting because it’s even cheaper than fluorescent. It’s costly at first but will pay for itself in a year, according to Tom’s research.

I love the opaque curtains throughout the place that lets light in but keeps eyes out. I used to be more into blinds, but I’ve gotten sick of them cuz they’re a bitch to dust. These I can just toss in the washer every now and then. The only room I want dark is the bedroom, but it will be in such a way that will be easier to let light in whenever I want to. Here I have rods holding blackout material flush against the window. I can take it out in seconds, but it looks ridiculous without curtains and having to flip the bottom of the material over the outer rod. There I intend to get room-darkening shades with blackout drapes like they use in hotels.

I was bummed to learn the bedrooms have no overhead lights. I hate lamps that operate on wall switches that you plug into special plugs! I used to hate entering a room at night, flipping on the switch, then turning the lamp off using the lamp’s switch, then going to flip the wall switch on the next night just to find it was already on but the lamp was off.

I’ll have to get a really good lamp in the master bedroom and probably more than one. That’s a HUGE room! I won’t use it as much, though, since I now read with the Kindle, but I still want to have something for when I’m going through drawers and closets at night.

I read the resident directory and it turns out that Gene and Audrey S are in our house now, and Robert and Virginia S are next door. Tom thinks they’re older than us, saying that there aren’t many younger Virginias. I would’ve really preferred not to have any male neighbors, though. They’re the ones more likely to be out in their garages hammering, sawing, etc.

The only other name I remember is Marion because that’s – what the fuck is our current “male neighbor” (the Jes pest) up there gunning at 8:30 at night? – Nane’s first name.

THURSDAY, JUNE 13, 2013 Other than for Tammy, Andy and Nane, I will have to be sure to edit out any info that could identify the specific park we’re in, even though the back gate is always locked and the front one is locked at night. If you go to the side of the guardhouse that isn’t gated in front, the tire spikes will be sure to get you. :) I love that security feature! If you drive up to the gate from the inside, it will automatically open, but you need either a code or a transmitter to get in. Might have to have any food deliveries done before 8pm cuz they ask that you don’t give the code to anyone. So… unless you climb the wall, make sure you have about $450 set aside for new tires cuz you’re getting tire-spiked if you don’t live there! I’m sure some of the residents give the code out to some of their family and friends, though. We’ll have to either pick Tammy and Mark up from the airport or have them come in the daytime if they rent a car. If they arrive after dark it’s still no biggie cuz one of us could walk to the gate with the transmitter if we had to.

Got up at 10:30, listened to the Jes pest cruise around on the ATV (probably to pick up our trash at the fork), then Tom and I headed for the park shortly after he got home at 12:30 for what turned out to be a very long and tedious meeting. But Joy was nothing like Stacy, nor did she look like I pictured her to look like. She wasn’t snippy and she wasn’t the frail, old, gray-haired woman with short hair I expected to see. She was around my age and was tall and heavy. She had long straight black hair to her waist and looked to be American Indian.

We had to sign so many damn forms it reminded me of when I first met with Scot back in 2001.

The diagram of trees and bushes on our lot was initialed with B’s, T’s and C’s. I joked about them meaning bitch, tit and cunt, but we really knew the B’s and T’s were bushes and trees. But we didn’t know what the C’s meant till we asked her and she told us cypress trees. So that’s what those tall skinny, boring trees are called that you see all over Tuscany, huh? She asked that we keep them at 6’ and clear of the ground to deter rats, possums and skunks from wanting to nest inside them. I almost lost it when she mentioned rats and put a hand over my mouth to keep from laughing, knowing what rats were going to be nesting inside our place, but skunks? I thought we were getting away from those things there. We wonder where the turkeys sleep at night but didn’t think to ask her.

I was hoping she’d volunteer some info on the neighbors but didn’t want to seem nosy by asking. I’m curious, but at the same time, I really don’t want to know they exist.

She asked about pets, and while we are allowed to have small indoor pets like birds, fish and rodents, we decided it’d be best to just say we were petless, figuring what they didn’t know wouldn’t hurt them. Allowed or not, most people there wouldn’t be thrilled at the thought of any of their residents having a couple of monster-sized rats. “Things like fish are fine, just no big snakes or lizards,” she said.

I faked a shiver, pretending to be afraid of reptiles and rodents alike, LOL. Giving someone the gift of ignorance really can be bliss for them, though we have no desire to get any reptiles. The rats wouldn’t like that, I’m sure.

There are some things she said I liked and some I didn’t. I’ll start with the things I didn’t like and save the good things for last. My biggest concern is being pestered with various activities and being inconvenienced more than I’d like, but I doubt it could be any worse than it has been here, and there it will at least be worth it and we’ll be in a place that’s ours. They have water issues where they have to turn the water off to the park for a couple of hours on occasion. I guess that due to the park being old they’ve had to make some repairs.

It may have already been done but if not I’ll have to deal with someone going underneath the house and installing a water meter in the crawl space, then placing a box outside the place. I won’t have to go to the door, though, or let anyone in. As Tom reminded me, we won’t be renting anymore. They don’t do inspections and we’re not obligated to let anyone inside if we don’t want to.

What really sucked to hear about is the July 4th parade they have. They’ll be marching through the park that day and I really hope I’m on days that day! I should be. I also hope they don’t have many events that spill outside the clubhouse and into the entire park like that. Joy said they go “all-out” and even get kids and grandkids into the July 4th parade. Ugh. :( I wasn’t at all thrilled to hear this. Isn’t loud music and kids what we want to avoid and the whole reason for going to a retirement community?

Another thing I didn’t like is that they deliver a newsletter to the door on the first of every month, though Tom says they probably wouldn’t knock, and if they did we could ask them not to.

Lastly, and what I’d say is my biggest concern, is the space rent. It’s high even though it’s one of the lowest in the park, and will increase every year. We signed a 5-year lease instead of a 1-year lease since that’d keep it from increasing as much. Tom said that after doing the math we shouldn’t even hit a thousand a month for over a decade. Still, $747, plus trash, water, sewer, cable and electricity means we really gotta keep our savings up and hope he never gets laid off until and if he ever changes jobs. He might too, cuz he thinks he can get an even better-paying job without all the OT and with even better benefits. Well, like I said, I just hope nothing up there decides to “punish” us for finally getting ahead and getting the things we deserve in life after so many years of struggling and having to do without things, cuz we couldn’t afford this place on less than $10 an hour. Then again, we survived this place at $825. It’s just that there were no mortgage payments or utility bills to pay other than propane and our cheap, shitty DSL. If the space rent isn’t paid by 5pm on the 5th, you get a $25 late fee and another one if it’s not paid by the 15th. We’re looking at a minimum of 3K when he retires and he knows money better than I do. So if he says we can handle it, then I’m not too worried. The mortgage should be paid off in a couple of years.

There’s a $50 fee for those who stay with you for 30 days (thought it was a few days). After that, they have to apply to live there or vacate.

This entry’s getting so long and I’m never going to get everything written that I want to write about if I keep goofing off, so I’ll just wrap this one up and continue on later with the park’s pros, and there are many!

Later…

Ok, back to the pros and cons of the park. Well, I don’t want to mention too many in public, but I will say that Tom and I were laughing over the thought of people who know we live there thinking we were snobs cuz it’s a luxury park. Like people from my hometown of Longmeadow, MA were considered snobs whether they were or they weren’t. LOL, it’s definitely the Paradise Valley, AZ of parks. Well, maybe runner-up, but close enough.

The meeting with Joy took an hour. I was telling her how excited I was to enjoy so many things I had to do without for so long.

“Oh yeah,” she said with a knowing smile, “you never really miss something until you’ve had to do without it. Do I ever know that.”

Do you know what it’s like to believe you’re going to die? I thought. This event in our lives is made more special by the fact that this dream was never supposed to become a reality. We were supposed to die instead. But then a miracle saved us and we could eventually think of all the things that were well overdue for us. Well, on June 28th we’re coming to collect!

Talk about being forever burdened with shitty memories, though. I had described the mutt barking out of the window next to the last place we saw as a real “punch in the stomach.” But that day Tom confirmed one of my latest dreams (or nightmares to be more precise) had become a reality, it was beyond physical. It was a death sentence that was worse than having a million knives twisting and turning in your gut. Those things we read in books about our hearts jumping into our throats or sinking to the pit of our stomachs – well, I sure learned that day that these are very real feelings indeed, and I will have to live with the horrible memory of the stress, fear, depression and anger I suffered thanks to a bunch of greedy bankers, a corrupt government, and a God that didn’t give a damn.

So while I’ll always appreciate our blessings, the PTSD will always be a little cloud hanging overhead and I will always remember the utter horror of trying to imagine us sealing ourselves in the bedroom, lighting charcoal and dying in each other’s arms while not at all being able to imagine dying of starvation on the streets. We just had no idea at the time that Tammy would’ve helped us, even if it meant we’d have had to abandon everything and fly to her place, and well… tears are starting to trickle down my cheeks. Sorry. Then again, no, I’m not sorry. Like Jenny said, I do my best. :)

But not all memories of my 5 years in this dumpy little trailer nestled in the woods with the pesky landlord are negative. Look at all I’ve learned. Look at the wonderful people I’ve met… Nane, Aly, Mitch, Adonis… and the people I’ve reunited with… Tammy, Andy, Eileen, Rosa and so many more.

My language count has doubled and I’ve published books and shared my journal (some of it anyway) for all the world to see. Yeah, I’ve picked up a few trolls along the way, but many people have left very positive, interesting, encouraging and enlightening feedback.

I still can’t keep a schedule and I never conquered my driving phobia and have seen my share of death, one of which greatly saddened me (my foster mother’s), but I never had to go through any of it alone. I always had the love of my husband by my side, the husband who would’ve refused to let me die alone, even though he probably could survive the streets, unlike me, for at least a while.

I’ll never forget the day I sat in this chair I’m sitting in right now, after we were miraculously saved, realizing that that would probably have been the day when Jesse would have discovered our bodies.

I got a bit off-topic and rambled again, LOL, so I’ll finish (hopefully) in my next entry.

Later…

Ok, now I’ll finish up with today’s meeting once and for all. You can learn a lot in an hour and end up with so much to write about, though many details will not be made public despite how secure the park is.

While we were signing the lease and making it real, Tom wasn’t sure what DOB to put on the escrow papers on the 28th when he goes to sign them since he won’t be 55 anymore at that time, haha. Either way, signing those papers will REALLY be what makes it official.

“You guys just barely made it, age-wise. Seems like you had a plan,” Joy said.

Oh, we had a plan, all right. We started talking about adult communities back in Phoenix. What with the chaos the welfare bums and a few others in the neighborhood put us through, I wished to hell we could be in one. But we were only 27 and 35 when we met.

I also laughed when I took note of how dusty Joy’s office was. She could use Andy to clean for her. Hell, I’m so sick of cleaning that I’d have him come clean our house every 10 days or so if I could when both our schedules permitted it, give him $50 - $75 bucks or so, and let him eat or drink anything he wanted while he was tending to all 1550 square feet of the place. But cleaning the place will be well worth it and it’s good physical activity.

I’m so glad we gave this park a chance! I was so tempted to just blow it off. I really didn’t think we’d get in no matter how much money we made. I remember how excited Tom was about it when he first saw it and told me about it, and I was like, “A luxury park? Are you kidding?” He was like, why not at least try? “It’s a freaking luxury park,” I insisted. “Since when do we get to go first class? Really, all spacious modern doublewides and tons of extra goodies? Us? No freaking way! Your average house there sells for $65,000.”

Another con was the resident directory listing everyone’s name, address and phone number, but she said that was strictly optional and that we don’t have to be listed. Good, because I’d rather not give our number out to just anyone, and as Joy said, there’s no guarantee the info would stay in the park.

There were a surprising number of singles in the directory and a Marion on our street, LOL. Several German names, too. I can’t remember them now, but I smiled at some funny ones Andy and I would’ve loved to have called back in our days of mischief. Gene and Audrey S are the ones in our house now and my best guess is that Robert and Virginia S will be our neighbors. They need to hire me to edit their newsletter, though, if they think they can tell us not to take our smoke detectors for “granite.”

Another pro is that the lease can be broken with a 60-day notice and intent to sell. So we’re not locked in or anything like that which is great even though I think I’ll love it there. I sure hope so! I still worry about vehicle noise waking me up when I’m on nights, but we’ll see.

The park has way more amenities than I realized. I knew there was a clubhouse and that they had various groups that got together – computer groups, choir, and things like that. But when we were given a tour of the clubhouse (I’d hate to live directly across from it and deal with all that traffic), we were like, wow! There’s a big main room, which can be rented for special events. This is where bingo is held every Thursday night, which I was delighted to hear they have. They had bingo nights where my parents once lived and I hoped this place would, too. “Of course they would,” Tom said, “Old people love bingo.” LOL, I sure felt like we were young and even good-looking compared to most of the golden oldies we saw. Anyway, they had a big bingo board where they light up the numbers. You play for cash prizes, but I don’t know how much it costs to play.

There’s so much to do there! Their fitness room was state-of-the-art! Treadmills, elliptical machines, bikes, and even a modern Bowflex gym (we had one in Maricopa). I’m definitely getting this weight off no matter what and I intend to drop a good 6-8 dress sizes even if it takes me a year to do it. To each their own with their weight and bodies, but unless it turns out that I do have some medical problem or have to take any medication that causes weight gain, I have no excuse and no one to blame but myself for my own lack of physical activity and overeating. No, I don’t eat like a pig, but it doesn’t take much to put on extra pounds at this height and age. I’m not looking forward to the constant hunger, but the diet part is just as important, if not more than the exercise part, particularly for women. We gain and retain fat more easily than men. I still have a lot of muscle which is part natural for me, part working out for many years on a mostly consistent basis that had an accumulative effect, but I just may go all out and get really ripped!

They also have water aerobics, which may be fun, too. At first I thought of selling our treadmill, but I can’t go there to work out at 3am if I wanted to, so their gym will be just to add variety to my workout when I’m up and about when they’re open. This way I don’t have to just use a treadmill. I can choose to ride the bike one day and then use the elliptical the next day if I want to, and then there’s swimming when weather permits. The pool is solar-heated. Joy took us to see the pool where about 6 women and men over 65 were having a blast. I love how visiting kids are only allowed there in the mornings. This way we can go there in the afternoon when it’s warmer and know we can swim without some brat screaming in our ears.

Other fun goodies at the clubhouse are Bridge and card games. These things don’t interest me, but they have a book and video library and puzzles you can borrow. I only read ebooks, but now that we’ll actually have a table big enough for puzzles, we can borrow some of theirs or get our own and then donate them when we’re done. The pool, fitness room and bingo will be my main things. I’m not interested in the bocce court or the potlucks or anything like that. You have to bring a dish that serves 8-10 too, and I’m no cook. I laughed when I remembered Andy and I bringing empty plates to the apartment complex we lived at in Arizona 20 years ago for some slop they were serving. We thought “bring a dish” meant to bring an empty dish to pile the shit on, not bring your own slop to share with others while you ate their slop. LMAO!

WEDNESDAY, JUNE 12, 2013 Kathy’s backed off. At least for now. I just reallowed for anonymous questions on Ask, so we’ll see if she returns.

Someone asked if I analyze people and all that. I not only think it’s human nature to do so, but yes, I analyze both the dead and the living. My dad looked the other way and let mom abuse us, yet there’s no doubt in mind that he wouldn’t have hesitated to shoot someone trying to kill me even if it meant he had to go to prison for it like if he were unable to prove it was done in order to save my life.

We were talking about what knobs/locks we want to get since the first thing we’ll do is change the locks on the new place. We’re hoping to change both house doors and the workshop with the same lock so we only need one key. Although it’s kind of cool, we decided it wasn’t worth the money to get the fingerprint-scanning lock. We considered a numeric keypad, but I don’t want to have to deal with hard-to-remember numbers, since using our birthdates or something easy to remember wouldn’t be wise. So then it came down to knobs or handles and I decided handles would be cool for a change. They’re certainly easier to operate. My first color choice is gold, then silver, then black.

It’s just so fun picking out these things! Also, the little things we’re going to need to pick out too, like an additional bathmat and a mat for by the back door where we’d be coming and going from mostly. One we can leave down all the time. Here we had to throw down a towel to step in on during rainy days, but we couldn’t leave it there because there was no way to avoid walking over it to get to and from the kitchen, which would get my socks wet during the colder months when I’d be wearing them. If there is a God, I swear I’ll never let it allow circumstances to have us live like this ever again no matter how much it may hate us!

Oh, to have a full-size washer and dryer! I can’t wait to turn what’s normally 3 or 4 loads here in this little portable washer into just 1 load there, and I can’t wait to be able to wash comforters! I’ve always preferred clothes dried in a dryer too, instead of air-dried. Air-dried is too stiff even with fabric softener. Gonna spoil myself at least once with those sheets you toss into the wash that has detergent, then becomes a softener sheet in the dryer. Oh, yes I am! rubs hands in anticipation

We were told they would be out by the 28th, Tom’s birthday, so the plan is to go there that day and measure windows for room darkening shades and blackout drapes for the bedroom. Also, to study the doors to determine what type of locks would be best. We also want to see what furniture, if any, they may leave behind.

On the 29th, we’ll bring some bulky stuff over like the computers, so I may be offline that night and doing a lot of reading and listening to music instead. We’ll also bring the rats that day, too. On the 30th will be the big move where we get the truck and get everything out of here. It will no doubt be quite an emotional day for me, too.

I need to make one more flip with my schedule before we leave, though, and that damn Jes pest better not be a pest and make things harder for me! With this type of sleep disorder, you sleep an hour or two later each day. I can stall it for a week or two, but after that, it gets harder and harder as I get less and less sleep, never able to catch up by going to sleep earlier the night before as most people can. That’s ok, though. 17 more days and I’ll never have to worry Jesse’s going to come to the door again! Sure hope vehicle noise doesn’t replace that at the new place! Can’t imagine there being much in the way of home renovation noise since most of the homes around ours are in pretty good shape. Next door looks like it may be even nicer than our place and ours is pretty damn nice. Really thought we were going to end up in a dumpy early 70s place, so the 80s is like, wow!

I can’t believe this exists in 2013 and it’s LEGAL (A news article about the Salvation Army saying they help people, just not gays)! If the Salvation Army were anti-black BOTH blacks and whites would be torching every SA in sight and the SA would be hit with all kinds of discrimination lawsuits. How did this world and its laws get to be so fucked up?!?!

TUESDAY, JUNE 11, 2013 It’s after 9:00 now and I’ve got 3 hours of music queued up so I don’t have to sit and listen to the Jes pest hammer, beat, bang, bash and run whatever machinery he’s been running up there for the rest of the morning. At least it’s still mild compared to the NHA and Phoenix. How can this guy claim he’s disabled, though, and get disability checks?

Even though my cousin Philip told me he and I didn’t have any issues, he must’ve eventually decided otherwise cuz he deleted me on Facebook. Probably Ruth and Polly influenced, but that’s ok. We have a right to keep or dump whomever we want.

Speaking of dumping… Fat Kat, Cart Fart, Crazy Carties, or whatever the hell else those that have also been targeted by this nutty bunch want to call them, I’m done with that chapter of my life and have deleted some stuff pertaining to them. If they want to go on raging over people’s beliefs, that’s their problem and not mine, and I’m not about to let anyone make it mine either. That being said I can move on to whether or not I really want to remain public.

Every day I’m torn between staying public and going friends-only, and every day I say I’ll sleep on it. Only I never wake up any surer as to what I want to do than I was the night before, and when I do it isn’t long before I change my mind. I asked Tom if he’d let Molly’s “informant” influence his decision and he said no, that wouldn’t even factor into it. Well, public or not, I’ll probably at least cut out some of my blogs. I have too many. I enjoy the different features the different sites have to offer, but it makes editing more of a pain when you manage multiple blogs. I dropped Tumblr and I guess LJ will be next at some point. Maybe I’ll make that a voice blog.

I had strange dreams last night about waking up in our Maricopa house, then a dream of Andy’s mother inviting me to the beach in Arizona of all places, hahaha. I kept trying to tell her there were no beaches there, but she just didn’t get it.

He was also laughing at how I blame God for the economy. Why, though? If things happen for a reason, good or bad, isn’t He supposed to be the driving force behind these things? Ok, “responsible” may be a better word than “blame” in some cases. The guy who raises a bat to kill someone is responsible for his own actions, but who do you think allowed it to happen? If there is a God that’s still influencing the people and events on earth, it’s definitely not a good God for the most part, but yeah, if one exists I think it helped set the stage for the economy to collapse and chose who would be affected by it and how. Well, believing you’re going to die whether it’s quickly at your own hand or slowly on the streets isn’t funny at all, and I know I never could or would forgive God (along with other reasons). Again, though, that’s if one still exists. Maybe the events in our lives truly are happenstance, unplanned and totally without anything but humans, machines and Mother Nature guiding them. We’ll probably never know for sure in this life.

What did the crisis bring me in the end? Another case of PTSD and a valuable lesson learned about saving money. Then again, we’d already learned that lesson beforehand; it’s just that we didn’t have the money to save in the first place. Tom did the worst-case-scenario math and found that even if they laid him off the day we moved in and he couldn’t get unemployment, we’d be ok for 4 months. But of course he’d get unemployment, and older and white or not, it shouldn’t take 2 years for him to find another job.

Later…

Guess I’ll stay public a while longer. As I know, putting a wall around me may keep the jerks out, but it also keeps the good people out as well. It’s both fun and interesting to see who comes around, even if I’m less than flattered by some of my visitors.

Still not sure why I’m being dumped so much these days by people who either want to dump and ignore me or dump and harass me, but if it’s about me being me, then I’d rather keep on being me and keep on losing people than be someone else and hang onto people. Sure, I could say I love God, God is good, He loves us equally, He answers our prayers, blah, blah, blah. I could also say I’m a real social butterfly who sees tons of friends in person and that I have my own car and a full-time job outside of the house, but that would be lying to both myself and to others. Would that really be fair?

At least I’m half of what marriage means today. Like most modern marrieds we didn’t have kids, but we do share money, objects and household tasks without fussing and fighting over where things came from, who does what, or who was the one to actually bring in the money. All that matters to us is that we get the things we need in life. Yeah, he makes most of our money, but it’s still mine, too. He never washes his own clothes. I do the laundry. And no I don’t think we should do our laundry separately just because it’s 2013 and we’re supposed to be oh so independent. Why there’s so much separatism in today’s marriages is beyond me. Why get married in the first place if it’s such a sin and means you’re suddenly not independent enough if you need to “bum a ride” from your spouse? Just for the tax break?

My beliefs are far from unique, so I’m learning. Those who are either atheists or who believe God is not good are growing in numbers by the day. Can’t blame them due to all the chaos in the world. But unlike some people, I accept that we all have our own beliefs and opinions, and as long as no one tries to force theirs on me it doesn’t matter what they think and believe.

The weather has been weird. Where it had been hot as hell a few days ago, the cooler never came on yesterday until after 5pm. It was chilly in here this morning too, not being in a real house. Oh, yeah, that reminds me. Some folks have asked about manufactured homes and how they’re built. Saying that they’re all flimsy as hell is just as much of a myth as it is saying men are stronger than women and women can’t build as much muscle as they can, etc. Women have more fat which they gain easier than men and can’t lose as easily as men, thus giving the impression that they’re weaker when in fact they’re not really any more or less weaker/stronger. It really depends on the individual and how fit they are, but we ladies definitely have more fat. As for the manufactured homes, they used to be built flimsy, but the newer models are built like regular houses and in some ways can be tougher than on-site homes that are elevated. This is because they’re “strapped down.” They have steel rods running along their undersides in which strips of metal are wrapped around and attached to 3’ long screws that go down into the ground.

We’re thinking of getting one of those NuWave inductive cookers when we move. Love how the element it cooks on doesn’t get hot. Only the pots and pans get hot. It also boils water in just 90 seconds.

We both agree that during the first month, we’re going to basically spend it setting up and goofing off online catching up on what we couldn’t enjoy here. I want to find a commercial-less radio station with unlimited song-skipping, though I’ll probably have to pay for it. I want to catch up on movies and other videos and enjoy uploading and downloading high-resolution desktop wallpaper pics in no time at all. I can’t wait!

But then it’s back to work and back to the days of winning enough cash and prizes to equate to a part-time job in just 3-4 hours a day every day except maybe 1-2 on Sundays. Not as many sweeps come out on Sundays.

I will also get back on with my language studies and take one more shot at losing weight. Even though I’m more of a homebody than the outdoors type, I can’t wait to be out swimming, walking, riding my bike, etc.

MONDAY, JUNE 10, 2013 Aly just emailed me and said she had her own way of tracing IPs and called in a favor. Well, the sender of the message about being paranoid traces to Yuba, CA where Molly’s on-and-off friend, Jenny, lives. She said she can’t be 100% sure it’s her but thinks it probably is. She gave me her FB link so I could block her. Aly said it makes sense cuz she’s not only more of an attention whore than Molly, but she once buddied up to her just to get info for Molly. So it doesn’t surprise her that she’d be a long-time reader of my blog. Harmless or not, I’m not sure I like this ongoing obsession that will NEVER die and the idea of her knowing what’s up with me whether she’s online or not. Maybe it really is time to close the doors to the public and just blog for friends or on sites like OD where no one knows me, or so I believe.

I originally thought it was Molly’s mother, although I said it was she herself who contacted me in my public blog. That oughta shock the shit out of her to read! Even if it had been her mother like I first thought, she would still tell her darling daughter how her “friend” is doing and that she’s moving soon, though I purposely stated the wrong town in public.

When I learned who it was a chill came over me. I guess it’s because my life shouldn’t be the business of some crazy, obsessed, stalking troll who will NEVER change, that’s why. I never met this person. I’m not friends with this person. I never will be friends with this person either. I have no interest in her life and she should have no interest in mine. Why do so many people focus on those that hate them? Do they really have such a lack of self-respect?

I didn’t want to go private at first because I didn’t want to lock out those following me with good intentions and genuine interest, but I’d rather deprive the Mollys, Kims and Kathys of the world the right to know what’s going on with me, even if there’s no info they could use and abuse against me than worry about followers. I’m no longer open to making any more friends anyway after having too many people turn crazy on me. I will leave public blogs public for a little while longer so people can have a chance to know what’s going on, but then I will be sharing only with friends. No, friending me under a bogus name on MO or FB won’t work. I don’t accept friend invites anymore. Ask account #1 will probably be deactivated at some point too, but for now it's set to only allow questions from members.

I realize I could stay public and just ignore any messages that come in, but I think I’d rather “cheat” these nuts out of my life and let them stew in agony over wondering what’s going on with me.

Later…

I know some would say I was letting the trolls control me by turning blogs private or friends only, but actually, I feel more like it’s me controlling them at this point. If the obsessed stalkers aren’t reading themselves, they’re ordering little informants to do so for them as I’ve learned, and well, I’d like to deprive them of their reading pleasure at least for a while. So I’m sorry Jenny won’t be able to give me her “official” diagnosis of the day and then run and tell Molly that I just took a shower and came out stinking of bleach, thanks to that damn cock up the hill that’s obsessed with the shit.

19 more days of this unfuckingbelievably noisy landlord of mine! I swear if it isn’t his mutts, it’s HIM! Also, I don’t care what Tom says, this is NOT normal. It’s not normal to hear your ONE neighbor HUNDREDS of feet away nearly every single day. I know we’ll just have to deal with them at the new place, but they can’t be hammering, sawing and coming and going all day in such loud vehicles, or leaving large dogs outdoors round the clock.

I just hope to hell nothing else breaks in the next 19 days! Everything that’s critical has already broken and been fixed, though, so if anything it just makes it easier for the next people in here. Unless the brand-new pump on the cooler blows out or the fairly new water tank springs a leak, there’s not much else that could break that’s important to us. So what if the heater broke right now? No one will know it till November.

The car’s AC is leaking again, though. Yeah, that sky bastard really, really has something against us having an air-conditioned car, doesn’t He? That’s ok, within a year or so we’ll be getting a new car and this one will be just a backup. That is unless Kathy’s beloved sky daddy throws any kinks in our plans.

Andy’s due to return from Florida today. I’m glad I didn’t hear from him while he was gone cuz that’d probably mean he was bored out of his mind. To me, a vacation shouldn’t be about doing the same things (other than eating and breathing) that you do all the time anyway, although having internet access is still good for checking accounts and looking up directions and other info like that.

SUNDAY, JUNE 9, 2013 Why is letting go so damn hard for so many people? When Kathy dropped me like a hot potato for not being a God worshiper and for daring to tell her that none of my prayers were answered way back when I assumed that meant she was done with me and didn’t want anything to do with me. Period. Instead, she’s taken Molly and Kim’s place (with the help of others) to harass me on various sites and I don’t understand why. Why can’t she just let me go if she hated me enough to drop me in the first place? Even if she came out and apologized for being so narrow-minded, intolerant and unable to accept me as I am, I would probably accept the apology, but wouldn’t want to resume our friendship because I would feel I couldn’t trust her or confide in her. Obviously, she must truly feel sorry and have some regrets for throwing me away like that or else she wouldn’t be holding on like she is, even if it’s through others. Why else would she be unable to let go if it wasn’t for missing me and for regretting that she tossed me away like that?

Well, I’m sure that if she doesn’t read this, someone she knows will. So hopefully they’ll tell her that I’m sorry she’s sorry, but no hard feelings at this point, ok? Let’s just move on like two mature, civilized adults instead of hanging on to what once was and will never be again. You may have a lot of time on your hands, Kathy, but you’ve got your life and I’ve got mine and I really thought you were better than that. Playing a few pranks on someone who did shit to you like others have is one thing, but I never did anything to you other than tell you what you didn’t believe or want to hear. No one can or will agree on everything and you should be smart enough to know that. I’m surprised at you, Kathy, really, I am. I thought you were above and beyond these childish tactics. After all, you’re the one who dumped me. Well, why’d you dump me if you knew you couldn’t let go? And why follow my blog and other sites if you were so sure you didn’t want to continue on as friends?

As I used to tell Kim and Molly before Molly got kicked offline and I got Kim in trouble, let’s just ignore each other and go our separate ways, ok? We have nothing to offer each other. You hanging onto me and contacting me through your friends is not only pointless, but it only makes me think you’re sorry and want to be friends again. Why don’t we just strike a truce instead? You don’t contact me and I won’t contact you, ok? Really, I wish you and yours the best in life but I really don’t want to hear from you again and I don’t want to have to call your local PD either. Again, I really thought you were better than that and wouldn’t waste time on people you supposedly dislike. There are plenty of other people to focus on in a positive way. So I’m asking you to please just ignore me, ok? If you really are having a kid that should be what you should be focusing your time and attention on, not those you’re no longer friends with. So… goodbye and good luck!

Yesterday was a whopping 106°! The Jes pest was hammering at 8:30 yesterday morning and I just heard some now at 9:30. I’m guessing he’s going to drive me batshit crazy next week with the weeding and other prepping projects he may have in mind to do along with his own. I really hope the next people aren’t home much or at least don’t mind that this cock is always, always outside.

Still not sure if I’ll continue blogging publicly and which blogs I’ll use if I do, but I’m not going to decide that till the move.

The connection we’ll have will be 30 times faster than what we have now!

It’s hard to believe that in just 20 days we’re going to walk on out of here. Alive and well. Yes, the two people who were pushed to the brink of death and seemingly destined to go out in body bags will walk out of here alive and in one piece. Damn, life is amazing at times!

It was this day 21 years ago that I left New England, never ever to return again. I was skinny and I could see without glasses, but I didn’t have the love and the wisdom I do now. No matter how much any God has hated me or will continue to hate me, I will always be loved by Tom and others as well. Unless He kills them all, that’s one thing He can never take away from me like He took away my right to a decent childhood and so much more both as a child and as an adult.

I was remembering how my second foster mother starved me down to just 85 pounds. That alone is enough to let a person know they are hated from above, but thanks to my foster sister (she knows who she is) I was able to escape that place with my life as well cuz she was a lot bigger and tougher than I was. LOL, still is, too. But I escaped the same as I will this place after God let the economy damn near kill Tom and I both. Funny cuz His “killer economy” is also what dropped these 50K houses down to 28K, making it much easier for us to follow the yellow brick road home.

I’m standing there now on the very edge of that road, a place I never dared dream I would ever stand at any time again in my life. I’m not going to walk down this road as soon as we sign the papers and receive the keys. I’m going to run like hell down it as if the ghost of my evil mother is chasing me!

Later…

“If God hates you why would the police care about you?” Kathy asked me on Ask.

If God loves her why would the police NOT care about her? How does she know that if she doesn’t stop her relentless harassment done anonymously or through bogus email addies the cops won’t care enough about HER and putting a stop to it? Yeah, she should think about that, shouldn’t she?

I didn’t read her “feedback” on MD but saw the bogus addy in the email alert I got. I won’t be picking up any more feedback there no matter who it says it’s from, so if this angry and possibly still pregnant bitch doesn’t have anything better to do than waste time spewing all this hate that I still can’t fathom for the life of me (because I disagree on God?), then let her waste her time and let her set a wonderful example for the rugrat. It’s her time, isn’t it? I almost hope the miscarriage rumors aren’t true, cuz then she wouldn’t have much time to harass people online so much, would she, if she’s bogged down with a kid? Meanwhile, she’s welcome to start her own blog saying every mean, nasty, untrue and imagined thing she wants about me, but I’m not going to read her vicious delusions and childish gibberish that come in here anymore.

I had no idea Kathy was such an angry person. Where did all this hate, anger and immaturity come from? And WHY? Because I don’t agree with her on God? What’s she gonna do if she does have kids and they turn out atheist or something? Is she gonna dump them and then harass them every chance she gets?

Well, I’m not running! I’m not going to make any of my blogs private unless I decide to, and if I do, it will have nothing to do with Kathy.

I asked her nicely to please let me go. After all, she’s the one that dumped me. This is the first stalker I’ve ever had who’s not only supposedly sane despite how angry she is, but who dumped me first. So if she dumped me then why is she still hanging on? If I’m that horrible of a person, why bother? Isn’t the normal thing to do when you don’t like someone to just ignore them?

Or maybe I’m missing the point. Maybe this isn’t hate for my own hate for God. Maybe she had a thing for me all along and I just never knew it. This type of behavior is also typical of a “scorned lover” or a crush. I’ve done enough studying on bullies and whatnot. Maybe she’s had or came to have a crush on me, can’t handle it cuz she’s so conservative, and it’s freaking her out and into lashing out at me. Unfamiliar feelings can really make a person uncomfortable and do strange things. Who can ever know for sure what goes through these nutjob’s minds? All I do know for sure is that the “stable, kind, sweet, caring, sensitive, accepting, tolerant, open-minded” Kathy doesn’t exist. Sure thought she did for a while, though, but thinking back on how we played with Molly; that was far from her first time based on what she told me. “I never tell Aly when I fuck with Molly,” she had told me, obviously not wanting her to know. But now that she’s so coldly dumped me and then started harassing me (for whatever reason) I don’t feel obligated to keep her dirty little secrets. The point is, she’s obviously been into cyberbullying on and off for some time now cuz she and Molly go WAY back.

Presently, I wonder if she’s having a breakdown of some kind that’s causing her to behave this way. If she really did miscarry then maybe it’s making her feel better to lash out at anyone and everyone, and what better person to take it out on than the person who dared to confide in her and admit she’s no fan of God’s and has no respect, faith or love for the bastard whatsoever. Can’t like God as long as He puts angry trolls like Kathy on this earth.

Well, she may not be done with me, but I’M done with HER. I’m not going to give this sicko the negative attention it craves anymore than I would with other trolls! Sometimes we just gotta end what others won’t. I’m not going to delete past mentions of her here. After all, this is a diary, journal, blog - whatever you want to call it. But I think I might wipe her out of my Ask Q&A’s.

Later…

I told Aly what was going on and she asked about it, too. I asked if there was any Kathy info she could give me that she thought might be helpful in getting this bitch off my ass. I told her I was going to try ignoring her shit for now. Ask is back to non-anonymous and I’m not going to update MD with current stuff for a while. What’s scary is that she’s following my old stuff. Past, backdated entries, I mean. That’s not easy to do unless you specifically look for certain dates or catch it on the stream. You can have MD notify you when diaries are updated (if you’re a registered member), but it doesn’t link you to the entries themselves. Oh, wait a minute! She’s subbied to the RSS feed.

It’s way cooler today than it was yesterday. Yesterday we had the cooler on high for hours, but today it’s on low and is cycling on and off. Tomorrow’s supposed to be even cooler, making a nearly 30-degree drop in two days.

Later…

Got some interesting feedback for a change from… Mrs. M? They used a bogus addy and didn’t sign their name. Well, of course, right? rolls eyes Why are so many people afraid or at least reluctant to face me? I don’t bite. Really, I don’t. Whoever it was said: Paranoid schizophrenic. Not totally. But enough. No harm meant. Just an observation after reading for a long time. Knew the house was yours. Enjoy. But you will find reasons to complain. No half-full glass for you. But you, do you, really well. You are so lonely I could cry. Be well, and prosper. These are the good ole’ days. Peace. ~B~

LOL. Hey, just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean people aren’t out to get you, as the old saying goes. But yeah, I’ve got a degree of paranoia in me. Always have. When you’re afraid to go home after school for fear of your mother smacking the shit out of you, it has a way of instilling paranoia in you. Not saying this to try to make anyone feel sorry for me, but just making a point.

And yeah, I’m a complainer. Why? Well, I guess the “experts” may be inclined to say that it’s probably because I was forced to stifle my emotions as a child and therefore I feel compelled to let it all out, so to speak, as an adult. And you know what? I’m not going to stop, and I make no apologies for the way I am. As long as I don’t break any laws, then I can be the biggest complainer, bitch and paranoid schizo on earth. :) Without any guilt or shame.

What I don’t get is the “You are so lonely I could cry” line. She said she’s been reading for a long time, so shouldn’t she know I’m married? But married and lonely? I suppose some wives could feel that way if they’re neglected enough, but I’m far from neglected and lonely. :)

Well, thanks for the complisults, and you’re right, I do me well and I’m proud of it, too. :)

Again I wonder if it could be Mrs. M, but she supposedly hates my guts so why would she want to follow my blog? Then again, that’s what I wondered with a few others who have expressed their profound hatred for me as well. I seem to attract just as many readers and followers who don’t like me as I do who do like me. I always did say, you either love me or you hate me. There’s rarely an in-between and people don’t usually just like me. That’s the way it usually is with me. I guess I’m an addiction of sorts.

Do I hate Mrs. M? Nah. I don’t like how it took her forever to get a certain someone offline and into the help they need, but better later than never. She may be well educated, but she’s kinda scary and so I would prefer to stay away from her and like it when she does the same. I appreciate the well wishes (if they’re sincere), but now it’s onward and through the fog… to fill my half-empty water glass. No, no, no! I meant my half-full water glass! I really did. I swear!

SATURDAY, JUNE 8, 2013 Just 3 more weeks to go! It’s going to be 104° today but only 79° on Monday. The only sucky thing about having it be cooler during the week is that it helps pave the way for the Jes pest to be outdoors making a racket, but by then he’ll only have 19 days left to possibly get on my nerves.

I can’t wait to set up the new place and take tons of pics! But it won’t be 100% set up the way we want it to be the day we move in, of course. It may be a year or two before we recarpet and refloor the kitchen and baths. We’ll be picking out some new furniture right away, but the styles and colors will depend on what carpet I’ll eventually want to lay down. Then again, we also have to wait and see what furniture they leave us, LOL.

I’m looking forward to so many little things. Not just big things like having a fast, reliable connection after half a decade, but little things like rearranging our file box, getting an additional bathmat for the second bath, using our brand new towels, and being able to wash dishes in the dishwasher.

I’m glad we won’t need a shower curtain there. I hate shower curtains as opposed to doors. I’m also so glad we’ll have a full-size washer and dryer hooked up and ready for us to use. Damn, I miss that! Haven’t had that since 2004! June 12th will mark 9 years since we last owned a place. That was the day we left Maricopa and turned our 1999, 2100-square-foot home over to an investor and left. I’ll never forget the day I so tearfully stepped out of that house and into the RV filled with mixed emotions. We were glad to go, but I knew I’d miss some aspects of it. Had I known our plans to build a dome house on Bly Mountain in Oregon were to completely go to hell, I think I’d have totally cracked up that day as we slowly wound our way out of the desert and on up to timber country.

FRIDAY, JUNE 7, 2013 What would I do without Aly? She not only helps make up for the assholes of this world, but she makes for a wonderful informant as well. Not only did she tip me off on Mary’s account not being deactivated, but she thinks the whacky feedback I got on MD yesterday could be from Kathy’s brother. His rapper name is Young Toro and his thing is to write “creatively” and metaphorically like he did and make sure his gibberish rhymes.

If it weren’t for the person going on and on about Kathy on Ask, I just may suspect Dorene, since the writing is too intelligent to come from Kim. Dorene’s the type to harass those she has issues with because she used to proudly boast and brag on her wall when we were friends all about how she’d stalk and badger her exes and friends she either dumped or dumped her.

Would Kathy harass people? I KNOW she would because she and I are both guilty of harassing Molly, I’m sorry to say. So yeah, she would harass people or use others to do her dirty work for her. I left a few anonymous insults on Molly’s blog way back when with her (sorry!), but then felt bad about it because I knew I was stooping to Molly’s level. Well, I didn’t want to become what she and Kim were, so I pulled back and simply watched Kathy tease and insult her from the sidelines.

Toro asked why I was answering questions about her on Ask if I’m over her. Well, why is SHE having her family come at me if SHE’S over ME? She threw me away in a heartbeat simply for having different opinions and experiences after I stupidly trusted her enough to confide in her about how I prayed for so many things just to be ignored. I think Kathy is a spoiled little princess who has had everything granted to her and therefore she lacks empathy for those less fortunate. But why dump someone if you can’t let go of them?

Someday her precious God will take her down a peg or two and she will learn the true meaning of heartache and loss and what it’s like to not be able to obtain something in life. The bastard above will say, “No! Just fucking no, puta! You can’t have every single fucking thing you want in life. I don’t care how right, fair and correct it may be, this time you’re going to learn to do without!”

Then what will she think of her God? The same God that sits back and allows innocent kids to be killed and all kinds of other bad things to happen?

Other than the fact that Kathy had a beautiful smile and that she and Adam will probably make good parents (don’t know how they’ll afford it but I’m sure they’ll have plenty of friends and family ready to hand over anything they may need) I don’t care what happens to Kathy from here on out. Walking down the street and seeing someone kick her brood right outa her supersized gut wouldn’t faze me any more than seeing someone water their yard would.

Mark my words, though. I’m NOT a forgiving person, I will NEVER be Kathy’s friend again, and I AM over her. As long as she and her people don’t make trouble for me, there will be no reason to ever mention her ever again. The only one who can choose to let go or hang on from here on out is HER.

Later…

Andy’s going to Florida till the 10th. I hope he has a fun time! He asked why Tom wasn’t scheduling the Internet to be turned on upon our arrival in our new home, and so I asked Tom about that. He is going to schedule it, but first he needs to know exactly when the people there will be gone. We’ll buy the new modem and router on Amazon, then have the office make the switch, then we’ll hook things up when we get over there. We could lease their modems, but then it’d cost more.

We’re also getting insurance. We had a choice of getting a plan for $200 that gives you any money back that you’ve already spent on the house if it ever burned down, then there’s a $450 plan that replaces the house with anything up to a value of $84,000. We decided to go for the second plan.

Gotta go sign the park lease next Thursday. sighs There’s always something to pay even if your place is all paid for – space rent, HMO fees, co-op fees, property tax, etc. It’s all the same, just with different names and amounts.

Sometimes I think I should start following the news a little more closely and especially the celebs so I can know who the hell Andy’s talking about when he mentions them. It’s just that the news has always bored or depressed me, and I haven’t been a celebrity worshiper in eons. The older I got the more I came to see them as just people. They may be famous and sometimes they make a lot of money, but they’re just people. So unless you’ve got brains, maturity and something really interesting to say, I’m bound to see most famous people the same as the nobodies.

He asked if Paris Jackson’s suicide attempt prompted me to share my thoughts on the matter the other day, but nope. Not only did I not know who the hell she was till I googled her, but much of my writing is spontaneous. Whatever comes to mind that I feel like writing about, I will write about. Some of it is inspired by people and invents, of course, like what’s going on in my life and those I’m close to, but sometimes it’s totally random and just because I love to write.

I have no idea why, but Jesse (could’ve been the kid) buzzed by on the ATV yesterday afternoon. groans Projects, projects, projects. They’re bound to start any day now. Maybe not until next week, though, since it’s to be in the triple digits. Right now it’s driving me crazy gunning the shit out of the fucking motorcycle. I cranked up the music, but am going to have to think of other alternatives to deal with the one I gotta deal with diagonally from us in the park since loud music isn’t allowed there.

Later…

It’s a super hot day at 103°. It’s not usually this hot until late July/early August. Tom got home earlier than usual and is going over the paperwork for the home insurance thing.

We’re at 17% on propane, another thing I won’t have to worry about anymore. I was worried there’d be too much left in the tank when we left and that we’d basically end up paying for the next people to shower, cook, and possibly heat themselves too, depending on the time of year. I also worried the Jes pest would be overpaid if we were to leave significantly earlier than we thought we would.

Tom told me he read that Richard Ramirez died of liver failure. Well, that’s good cuz San Quentin obviously had no plans to do the right thing and execute the crazy fuck. The families of the victims must be cheering. I don’t blame them.

Was on a posting frenzy the last two days, but now I think I’ll go continue on with the book I’m reading, The Answer to Your Question.

THURSDAY, JUNE 6, 2013 I was observing a discussion on suicide and found that there really are a few people, who like me, agree that it isn’t always so cut and dry. Sure, we’d like to think that suicide is never an option under any circumstances and that things can and will always get better. But can they always? Or are there perhaps some situations where things can’t possibly improve? Situations that are so miserable that suicide is an alternative that is a blessing as opposed to continued suffering? I used to be a very black-and-white person and insisted that things had to be one way or the other and that was that. Period. There was no room for any argument in my mind. There are still some issues in which I feel that way. A woman should always have a full bag of rights to her body. There’s nothing to doubt, reason, bargain or argue about there.

But there really are some cases in which death is better than life. Naturally, it’s a matter of opinion, but I’m talking about the terminally ill who suffer in pain every day with no hope of a cure. Until you’re faced with possible life or death situations, you don’t rethink certain things you were so sure of before. Such things as we had to face like the possibility of dying a slow miserable death on the streets, or a quick one in the comfort of our own bed if no one was going to give him a job. I know that if I were suddenly faced with life in prison (whether I was guilty or not of whatever landed me there) I’d prefer death because that would simply be no life for me.

Again, I realize it’s a matter of opinion, but maybe we shouldn’t be so quick to judge those who do take their lives. Agreeing that it’s too bad that it came to that is ok. But do we really have a right to judge WHY they took their lives and whether or not it was right or wrong? Can we really say life would’ve gotten better for them?

Experiencing certain things and hearing about other people’s situations can really open your mind and make you realize that not everything in life is so black and white. There really are some gray areas and some exceptions to the rule.

WEDNESDAY, JUNE 5, 2013 Alison knows and understands how I feel about Kathy and how some people get it all. She admits that she’s had secret wishes that a few people would lose their kids, but not Kathy. Still, she says that Kathy is obnoxious going on and on all about “little blueberry” and she wishes she wouldn’t post so much about it. Not everyone’s into little kids, as she says, and she doesn’t like it being crammed down her throat. That’s how I felt too, and I had to block her from my newsfeed before she dumped me. It was too much like having religious hogwash thrown in my face day after day. So she kinda picked a good time to dump me. Still, if there is a God up there playing favorites as it seems to be the case with Kathy, I wish it would say “NO!” to her for once and let her finally learn at 30-something years old what it’s like to not be able to get every single thing you want in life. So while I don’t doubt she’d make a good mom, I still wish God would say, “No! Just fucking no!” Then kick the bun outa her oven, never to allow any more to enter it ever again. But once you get to the third or fourth month, it’s unlikely you’ll have a miscarriage.

Alison wonders how they’ll live since Adam’s a teacher and teachers don’t make much money. Also, Kathy’s a sub and she’s off for the summer. Oh, I’m sure they have plenty of friends and family who will be quick to hand over anything they’ll need.

The palpitations are back. They’re most noticeable at the end of the day. Ironically they started up the day we learned we were accepted into the park, but it’s harmless. Just annoying at times. It’s probably due to being excited and nervous. Although I’m sure Tom’s right in saying I’ll be able to sleep just fine there, I gotta see it to actually lose my nervousness. I’m not used to having so many people close by, and if I happen to be woken up regularly when I’m on nights due to this, this or that, I’m kinda fucked. Lack of sleep is something I don’t function well on. But I should be fine on days.

Tammy left a message yesterday. She’s dealing with Mark’s health issues now, and then in the fall, she’ll be going to a hospital about her lungs. I asked her if it was really wise to wait that long, but that could be a good thing. I mean, wouldn’t it go to show she’s not that critical after all? I hope not! Maybe they won’t need to do a transplant. Maybe they can stop her from losing any more lung capacity, but what do I know?

I smiled when she said she and Mark would be “hurt” if they couldn’t be the first to send a housewarming gift. I told them that while that was sweet of them, they didn’t have to send anything since we’ll still have a lot of money in savings. We just don’t want to spend much money at first in case of an emergency. We’ll furnish the place a little at a time, though we will get a living room set right away. Not everything needs replacing. The bed is just fine. We’ve got a decent enough kitchen table. Only problem is it’ll look like doll furniture in the dining room there, LOL, so our little 2-seater will be replaced with a 4-seater. Some things we don’t want to replace or buy right away with or without money because we want to live in the place for a while and get a feel for how we want things and where we want them.

Tom said not to get my hopes up, but Brenda asked if we needed any beds, tools, etc. Tom told her that we didn’t want to spend more money till we’d been there a few months, but that we would love whatever they felt like leaving. A bed for the second bedroom would be nice, and even though most of the furniture wouldn’t be my first choice style-wise, we could use it. Anything we didn’t like or couldn’t use could be picked up by the Goodwill later on. Their kids and grandkids are helping them move out, so there’s no need to worry about them not having enough help. Again, I feel mixed emotions for them. I’m grateful for whatever they leave us, I’m sad for them because they probably don’t really want to leave, but I also see them as intruders at this point. Get out of our house!

Since Tammy insisted, I gave her a few ideas like wind chimes. I’m going to have a lot more room for those there! I may want to get bigger ones so I can hear them through the thicker walls and dual-paned windows.

Later…

Nane’s going to Spain and I’m happy for her! Although it may not be her first choice I can see where all that would matter would be getting some sun after being rained on for so long. It’s the first trip she’s going on that I feel a touch of envy. :) I wouldn’t mind tagging along and I could be her interpreter too, haha. I guess she’ll be gone when the move takes place, but that’s a good time for her to take off cuz I won’t be online much at that time anyway, which reminds me of something I want to point out. During the tail end of June and beginning of July, if you have trouble reaching me it’s not that I’m ignoring you. I’m just preoccupied with moving and setting up the new place, is all, plus there’ll be more outdoor activities for me to enjoy there as well. Don’t know how soon we’ll be back online, but we’ll have the hot spot for checking email. Blogs and such will wait till we get our regular connection, though, cuz uploading and downloading take up too much bandwidth. I’ll still prepare entries in Word and will have them ready for publication as soon as they can be published.

24 days and counting! I am both excited and nervous. :) A part of me will always resent how shabbily we’ve lived for so long, especially since it was so undeserving. Had we been drunks, druggies, lazies and people who just didn’t give a rat’s ass, including ours, then we’d have gotten what we deserved – someone else’s trashy trailer. It was a wonderful escape after 8 months of motel life in a seedy section of Sac but for half a decade?! Well, we’ll never let any economy, circumstances, fate or evil God make bums of us again, that’s for sure! My God, it pisses me off to think of how long we’ve had to live this way and go without the simplest of things in life, things most people take for granted. As I always said, it isn’t those who work hard getting good things they deserve in life I have a problem with, it’s those working hard who DON’T get good things they too, deserve that pisses me off.

Someone asked on Ask if I thanked God we’re moving. rolls eyes Actually I thank my husband’s hard work, good-paying job, and my inheritance. To quote what I told them, why would I thank an invisible entity that has nothing to do with us moving? The house was built by PEOPLE. The park it’s in was established by PEOPLE. So… God has nothing to do with this, folks. If anything God’s fought to stop this day from happening and a part of me worries about little “punishments” to come for getting our way, even though we know it should be the other way around and the house should be the compensation for having to struggle for so damn long. But I’m not going to let anything or anyone take this place away from us. We lost two places and that’s it!

Tom read the park rules and said the only thing in it that might rub me the wrong way is that they ask that you don’t go to the pool alone. Well, not everyone there is old and feeble, but since so many of them are, I understand this request. The only thing that rubs me the wrong way is the allowing of motorcycles. That just seems all wrong and totally defeats the purpose of why people want to live there. At least we won’t have to worry about loud music. I realized why it bugs me so much and that’s because it’s not “music.” All I hear is the thump of the drums or the base and so it’s noise, not music. And annoying too, like someone’s pounding or hammering somewhere.

I haven’t seen it yet, but Tom’s got a diagram of all the plants on the property so we know what’s ours. I figure the low cement wall is the property marker, but at least there is only 1 of 4 sides to have to figure out whose stuff is whose.

The Jes pest, who Tom called yesterday to inform him of the official dates, was hammering this morning, probably on his deck. I’m sure the barrage of prepping projects is going to start anytime now too, though it’s going to be super hot this week.

Later…

I answered the question of the day on Ask #1 which asks who’s the funniest person you know with: Anyone who dares kick Kathy in the gut and shows the spoiled princess she can’t get every single fucking thing she wants in life.

“Are you serious?” someone later asked. How would they know that gut was carrying her precious “little blueberry” unless it was Kim or Kathy herself?

Also, someone over there took the liberty of sending me a long list of mental illnesses, their names and their descriptions, but of course it was sent from a bogus email address. scratches head thoughtfully And they sent this because…?

Later…

Not much to do right now so I thought I’d voice my opinion on Nancy Grace. If you’re like most people you mostly see the media as legal gossip mongers acting like “popular” high school bullies who seem to be able to say anything they want and get away with it. So what if it’s the word of those they’ve never taken the time to verify, or if it may be completely fabricated altogether?

I don’t know everything about the Jodi Arias case but I know enough. It’s kind of hard to help when it’s all over the place. However, I’m a little disturbed by Nancy’s obsession with Jodi. Telling the facts as a reporter is one thing. Going on and on with repetitious, relentless, and never-ending verbal bashing, no matter how true it may be and how much the person may deserve it, can’t possibly be very productive or healthy. It’s too high schoolish. You know, like the popular student who jumps online every chance she gets to bash her fellow students who are anything but popular?

We all know Jodi Arias is a cold-blooded killer, and I’m sorry she probably won’t get the death penalty, but enough is enough already! Aren’t there other people, places and subjects to discuss? Nancy’s already stated the facts and she’s already voiced her hatred and opinion of Jodi, but then she goes and interviews Jodi’s cellmates to see what they think of her. Who cares what they think of her! Yet it’s like Nancy just can’t move on. She is in one video or article after another saying the same vicious things. Again, I don’t doubt that they’re true, and I’m certainly no fan of Jodi’s, but my God! Does it actually make Nancy feel better to bash people over and over again? Is her own life that boring and does she perhaps feel that insecure and inadequate about her own self that she feels the constant need to do this sort of thing? I just wonder these things when I see the media cut into people over and over with seemingly no end in sight.

I feel bad for the families, though, and not just the victim’s family. Jodi’s parents have to be ashamed, embarrassed and downright heartbroken over her conviction. So to have to have the constant reminders of the media vultures must be one helluva nightmare for those poor people.

TUESDAY, JUNE 4, 2013 “Hey, Short Shit,” my dead father called out to me in my dreams last night. Not something he usually called me in real life. Shorty, Shrimp or Midget was more like it. Nonetheless, I got into an argument with my deceased dad over deadbeat aunts and uncles. He was going on and on about how his aunts and uncles never seemed to care about him or wanted to be an aunt or an uncle to him in any way.

“Dad,” I said, “you don’t need to tell me all about aunts and uncles that don’t give a damn about their nieces or nephews. I know.”

He looked at me in a disapproving way and said he’d see about us “getting together.”

“It’s too late, Dad. If they wanted to know me they would have by now. No hard feelings at this point, and I really do wish them the best, but I don’t want to know them anymore than they want to know me. There are better things in life than deadbeat family and toxic friends.”

In the next dream, both parents were alive and well. Only I was thinking about how my mother killed her parents. She did no such thing when she was alive, of course, and they actually died of old age-related issues. Still, in the dream she had killed them, though I don’t know why. Everyone else believed it was due to natural causes that they died, but my dream self was thinking how oh-so typical it was of Dad to protect her by not saying anything. I thought about going to the authorities but didn’t think it’d do me much good, and was never much of a nark anyway.

Facebook is really pissing me off with all its glitches. Sent messages don’t get sent, wall posts remain invisible, comments go unseen, and so on and so forth. I almost can’t wait for the day they start charging users cuz I’m outa there as soon as they do.

So why is Philip ignoring me? He’s viewed some journal entries posted to my group, but he still isn’t sending messages or posting to my walls or anything. Cat got his tongue, or is FB just seeing to it that messages and posts go unseen?

Later…

Wow, we’re gonna hit 104° this Saturday. It’s definitely getting hotter and drier each year here. Wonder if it’s going to become like Arizona.

Although I heard a slew of loud vehicles up the hill yesterday, the Jes pest never came down here. That’s ok. In about 25 days we’re out of here! Although I don’t think I can do it I’m gonna try my hardest to stay on days until after the move. I really hope those who say that time has no meaning in the afterlife are right! Especially after living in a world where time is everything while you’re one of about every 10,000 whose body disagrees.

Anyway, we plan to give notice saying we should be out by the 5th, though we actually hope to be out on Tom’s birthday on the 28th. He put in for that Friday, plus the following Monday off, so that gives us 4 days to get moved. Tom hates driving big trucks, so this way we rent a smaller one and if we can’t fit everything in it in one sweep, we have time to make a few extra runs. Because we’re not taking the shed, we got a truck that’s 10’ long.

We decided not to bother with spraying and having the carpet cleaned beforehand so Tom doesn’t have to take any more time off from work. We’ll bomb when we get there if need be, throw the rats in the workshop, then do some shopping or eating or whatever during the time we need to be out of the house. Also, we can rent a carpet cleaner for $30 if we want. This way he’ll still have plenty of days off for Hawaii. Just think, a house and Hawaii all in the same year!!!

I wonder how many neighbors will come out to greet us out of nosy curiosity when we move in? Hopefully not too many! Being polite and exchanging hellos when we see each other here and there is one thing, but we’re going there to live, not to make friends and potential trouble too close to home. But if it were a hot-looking woman…

MONDAY, JUNE 3, 2013 When I awoke I said to myself, please don’t let it be the other way around where yesterday’s letter was just a dream while in reality we’re still waiting, hoping and dreaming of getting into the park/house!

But what happened yesterday really did happen and in 30-38 days we’re going home!!! squeals with delight Tom came home from picking up the mail with a smile on his face.

“Anything good?” I asked.

“Well, if you consider them accepting us into the park, then yes.”

Instead of my face flooding with tears of joy or shouting with delight, my whole body went rigid with shock and then started vibrating like an old lonely lady’s vibrator in the middle of a cold dark night. “Omigod, Omigod, Omigod!!!” was all I could mutter.

We weren’t expecting a letter so soon. We were expecting a phone call next week instead. Tom’s first thought was that they rejected us, figuring that they couldn’t have approved us that fast and must’ve stumbled upon something really bad right away, though we couldn’t imagine what.

Logic told me we’d get the place since we do meet their requirements as strict as they are, but only until he read the letter of acceptance to me could I finally move on from hoping we’ll get the house to hoping we’ll be as happy as we think we will be there. Remember, Maricopa turned out to be a disaster, and of course Oregon fell apart, too. I know I shouldn’t live in the past, but that, plus the poverty we went through, has given me a lifelong case of PTSD. No matter how much money we have – and we estimate we’ll still have at least 4K in savings after the move – I’m still going to worry about that. I’ll never forget a letter of a very different kind he read to me on September 16th of 2011 that literally made my heart jump into my throat and then sink to the pit of my stomach in a physical way that no bad news had ever done before.

I still can’t believe that we, the people who seemed so, so destined to go out of here in body bags, will be going home to a NICE home in a FANCY park!!! You don’t have to be rich to live at LV, but you do have to have some money. Just surviving to see this day happen is truly incredible! We searched and searched our minds less than two years ago for ways to survive. But everything we came up with looked utterly impossible. When no one will give you a job and your government won’t take care of you, what’s left? I couldn’t have cut it on the streets in my 20s, so I’d say we’re definitely way too old for that sort of thing in our 40s and 50s, and so, so glad it didn’t come to that after coming so frighteningly close!

Tom and I both agree that the day the phone rang with a job in the nick of time was definitely the biggest coincidence of our lives. Most things don’t need a reason to happen. They just happen. Period. I know most people want to believe there’s a reason because it’s easier to be able to explain things, but I think most things happen just because. But that day surely made us wonder if perhaps the spirits of our deceased loved ones bailed us out in the end – since if any God existed it had already shown us we were nothing in its eyes and couldn’t care less if we lived or died – as they’re the only ones who would have cared enough to save our asses. Not just that but because of the job itself. It wasn’t just enough to get by on, it was more than enough to change our lives forever and keep my sister from being able to say she lost both parents AND both siblings.

Assholes or not it will be weird not being able to call my parents to tell them all about the new house, and I wonder if they can “see” it from wherever they are if they somehow still exist. I’ll never forgive them for the hell they inflicted upon me as a child, but I can definitely say that other than the time they sent me to Arizona in ‘92, then pulled us off the streets of Sacramento in ‘07, that they have certainly been more helpful to me dead than alive. I hope they can see where we are right now and are ashamed and disgusted with themselves for letting us live like this for so long when there was so much more they could’ve done to help us. Oh, I can’t wait to shoot the before and after pics!

So much more to write, but this entry’s getting kinda long, so I’ll save it for later!

Later…

After being nipped in the ass by a playful rat while trying to work my abs, I’m now going to do some writing before I eat and tackle some housework. And deal with what I’m sure will be a very annoying landlord now that it knows we’re leaving. LOL, but soon he’ll be just a memory!

Brandy really let a few loud ones rip last night at around 3am. Maybe it woke Jesse from nightmares of his future tenants chasing him through these woods with an ax, haha.

So many thoughts and emotions run through my mind at this time. I’m excited, nervous and happy. I look forward to so many things in our new home, both big and small. I just hope we don’t find out that next door has a motorcycle that was out at the times we were there, or that they don’t plan to get one the day we move in. I know it may be hard for anyone without my type of sleep issues to understand why I worry about being able to sleep well there when I’m on nights, especially being the insanely light sleeper that I am, but that’s ok. I figure I don’t owe any explanations anyway, right? But since I don’t have the blessing of being able to sleep at night every night, and I’m not like Tom who could sleep through a marching band, it’s definitely something I worry about. Not too much, but I do worry a little. At least there shouldn’t be that many distractions while I’m awake, though I still expect to hear more than I do here since there are more people.

I’m SO glad we got outbid on the last house! I almost suggested we not bother with this park because I didn’t think we stood a chance as nice as it is.

The “nice man and the young lady” taking over the house kind of feels bad for the old couple in it now (whose status has been officially upgraded to intruder in my mind) because they probably hate to go. It’s sad to think that they’re giving up the home they were probably in for many years just to go to an assisted living apartment to begin the end of their lives.

Well, I’m not going to smoke up their house, that’s for sure. So I’m burning what’s left of my incense like crazy. Anyone want some honeysuckle?

Just a little over a month left with this slow, unreliable connection! And oh what fun I’ll have swimming, riding my bike around the park, learning new languages, and just having some SPACE! To be in a spacious home that isn’t as old or older than I am is going to be pure heaven. It’s worth a few annoyances and distractions so long as I can sleep.

Later…

Mary checked my email again when she got up yesterday morning, but there hasn’t been anything from Maliheh. She’s had absolutely nothing to say to me about my final message to her and that pretty much tells me something about her right there. That I was right on with my suspicions. She was never a friend.

Today is Becky’s 26th birthday, and yesterday morning I got to hear Sarah on the radio promoting her charity event. She was a guest on a local radio station to help raise money for St. Jude’s Hospital. She sounded a bit gruff but confident. She kind of reminded me of my friend Paula.

There’s been flooding in parts of Germany, but fortunately, Nane’s not in any danger. I knew they were cold and rainy for June, but I had no idea about the flooding. I read some news articles (in German, of course) she shared on the crisis. So I got to learn about what’s going on in parts of Europe and practice my German reading.

Created a group on Facebook to share journals with my closest FB friends, but didn’t add Andy or Adonis cuz they prefer to read my posts elsewhere. Not sure I like it yet. I like how I can see who checks out what, though. It’s a secret group. Groups have 3 levels. Open, closed and secret, and mine’s secret, which means only members can see it and leave comments. If you’re a Facebook friend of mine and you haven’t received an invite to the group but would like to be a member, let me know and I will add you.

Just to clarify things for those who have been curious, the park is set up very much like co-op living. But instead of the monthly payment being called co-op, fee or whatever, it’s called space rent. It covers more than just the space your home is on, though. It helps pay for the cost of keeping the pools, Jacuzzis, clubhouses, roads, gates, security, lake, trees and other amenities going. So it’s very similar to co-op living.

One thing I’m going to love is how much more stable the temperature inside the house will be. No more cold nights and warm days. Metal rooftops run alongside both long sides of the house, which will definitely help keep it cooler, and there’s a big awning in front. Only the back doesn’t have anything but that’s because there are no windows back there. All that’s back there are the bedroom closets and hot water tank. I hate having to sleep with a mask over my eyes cuz it’s so damn bright in here when I sleep during the daytime. This is because here we have a swamp cooler rather than an AC and so I have to keep the back window cracked, which gets hit by the afternoon sun.

The tentative plan is for him to work till he’s 70 and put our pension money in our 401K until then. That way, between what he gets and my pension and whatever else, we’ll be looking at retiring with about 3K a month. That’s almost what he makes now! Plus, if we do decide to stay at LV forever, our space rent is locked in. So only other things could go up in cost between now and 14 years from now. As Tom said, it’s scary to think he’ll be 70 in 14 years! His dad would’ve been 101 last month if he were still alive.

I knew it. I just fucking knew it. I hear the Jes pest buzzing around on its ATV right now. Let me guess… it’s gonna be down here any second, right?

SATURDAY, JUNE 1, 2013 Is this the month? Is this the month we go home or at least find out when we are? I really hope this is it! I feel like we’ve been waiting for years. There’s so much we’ve wanted to do for so long that either couldn’t be done until we moved or that we chose to put off until then. I just want to get on with it already!

In screening and publishing old journal excerpts, I realize I could really be stupid, immature and naïve at times when I was younger. I suppose a lot of us look back on our younger selves when we get older and laugh. But some of it isn’t very funny. I spent too much time considering others and not enough considering myself. There’s a good way to be selfish, like being true to yourself, and there’s a bad way to be selfish, like sitting on your ass and doing nothing at all to help a friend in need that you know damn well you can afford to help.

I spent too much time trying to make like I was ok with things I wasn’t at all ok with, and due to trying to just put a smile on my face and simply shrug and roll with the punches, I lost out on some things. These things may never have been mine to have to begin with had they not been meant to be, but I could really kick myself for either trying to please others and not standing up for myself as often as I should have. I was just too damn nice and too damn forgiving and part of that is why I got so taken advantage of at times. People just don’t appreciate kindness. Instead, they see it as an opportunity to pounce like vultures to get what they want, be it in the name of greed, jealousy or just plain hate.

I ranted, raved and bitched quite a bit throughout the years, often about the same thing, but I did it as a therapeutic means. Where some listen to music and others like to drink, I bitch in print. I may feel silly, stupid and even a touch embarrassed for some of the things I’ve written, but one thing I will never feel is guilt. Right or wrong, selfish or not, my feelings, beliefs, opinions, tastes, goals and thoughts are one thing I’ll never feel guilty for. Our minds are the only place we have total freedom. There are no laws or rules in our minds, no matter how wrong and even sick some may consider some of our thoughts to be. In my mind, I’m free to imagine anything I want with absolutely no consequences to face, and I never have to share what’s in that imagination if I don’t want to. I’m free to do anything I want there. I’m free to love. I’m free to hate. Even free to kill.

Later…

I saw that Mary finally picked up the email I sent her, but I still don’t want anything to do with her and I appreciate the fact that she, Molly, Kim and Kathy have been leaving me alone. I STILL can’t believe Kathy dumped me for disagreeing with her on God! I know this may be the cruelest thing to say, and as I told Aly, she may want to slap me for it, but I hope she loses that baby. I honestly do! I am so, so sick of seeing some people get it all (LITERALLY) while people like Aly and I struggle our asses off just to get nowhere. It’s like all Kathy has to do is just want something and it’s hers. There may be a bit of a delay, but in the end, if God does play favorites, she sure is His spoiled little princess, isn’t she? Well, I think it’s high time she was taken down a peg or two. The only thing she seems to have going against her is her weight, but not even that much seems to bother her. Really, I would love to see her precious God kick that bun right out of her oven and not allow anymore to enter it unless He keeps on kicking. And no, I don’t care if she knows how I feel. I’m kind of surprised she hasn’t harassed me in some way. Do you know that she loved to harass Molly on and off, I asked Aly, and that she begged me not to tell her? Well, after what she did to me I sure as hell don’t feel obligated to keep her little secrets.

I was reading back on how a prayer counselor was telling me back when I wanted a kid that God promotes that kind of thing and that all I have to do is ask, and He’ll grant anything that’s fair, correct and reasonable. OMG, what bull fucking shit! What wasn’t “fair, correct or reasonable” about two people asking to have a child?!”

Anyway, Aly’s doing just horribly. She didn’t get the job she wanted, her hours may be cut where she currently works, her skin is broken out, she can’t sleep, she’s depressed, overwhelmed and feeling hopeless, and lastly, she gets laughed at by some kid selling tickets at a movie theater and called a retard for stuttering. At least she reported the fucker.

On top of all that, her Facebook account was hacked by what she suspects may be friends of Molly’s due to the types of messages she’s been getting. They even messaged a friend of hers who just gave birth, asking if they could be the baby’s godmother. I’m surprised I haven’t gotten any messages, though I went and blocked that account. This way, they not only can’t post to my wall, but they don’t even see my name unless they check her messages. As usual, Facebook isn’t doing shit about it.

Tom said the Jes pest took the news as he expected he would. His tone was neutral and he was just like, “Yeah, ok, uh-huh, oh.” He probably wasn’t surprised due to the mail we received here from the mortgage company. If he’s upset by us leaving in any way, he’s not showing it. I would think he’d be at least somewhat bummed out over knowing he’ll have the hassle of prepping this place, listing it, and hunting for new renters, even if he’ll make his sister do most of the work. She has to since he doesn’t have a computer and I highly doubt he has a digital camera either. Also, I can’t picture him cleaning his own place let alone this one, so he’ll sic most of the task on Maryann just like he did before. Wonder if they’ll start off bullshitting the new tenants about “the neighbor,” like they started to with us till they realized we wouldn’t pester the Jes pest and that it’d be the other way around instead.

We blew the pilot out of the heater which better be for the last time. If we’re here come November when we need heat again, then yes, there really is something up there trying to screw us.

I did have another dream I hope is a good sign that the park will accept us. We were at the pool where there were a few other people wanting to know why I looked so young and if I was old enough to live there, LOL. We won’t know for sure until next week if they’re even going to accept us or not.

No, I haven’t prayed that we get in because I still think that if we could simply ask for whatever, then we’d all have what we want. I think the concept of prayer is nothing more than wishful thinking. Same with telling ourselves God doesn’t give us more than we can handle. Then why do some people die of illnesses and injuries? Sure seems like it was more than they could handle! I understand, though, that people need to tell themselves these kinds of things for encouragement, even if they may be kidding themselves.

Tom’s been doing the loan paperwork over the weekend, and I’m doing laundry and housework. The weather’s been hot and dry, as I like it to be. Ich liebe Sommer!

[thepowerisyouth]

This started as a simple rant about gift cards but is probably turning into my master post on the lost story of the corporate gift card valuation crisis.

Starts as the simple rant but gets more technical in economics and accounting as it goes on- so fair warning.

-----

Gift cards are often thought of as a boring, low effort gift, although more polite than cash. Plenty of good reasons why they are a bad gift from a thoughtfulness standpoint, but I'm going to focus on the financial value.

Adult humans that live under capitalism are generally, learnedly able to understand the time value of money, even if they cant physically execute the calculations on paper. If you dont believe me, just trust me-- its how all of economics works. We are generally able to value things very well according to our own subconscious estimations.

This is not to say people who receive a gift card are just focused on the dollar figure, however I think the financial frustration lies with the fact that, inherently a $25 gift card is worth less than $25 cash. Probably a lot less

-------

As a present, gift cards remind me, actually, of the stereotype of a grandparent buying their descendents, "war bonds", but somehow gift cards are even worse.

Sorry this is going to be a long explanation of why gift cards suck--

A war bond, which is now simply called a US Treasury bill or bond, is a 'redeemable certificate', which allows the current owner to be sure that the dollar amount (face value) shown on the certificate will be granted, plus interest accumulated from the point of issue until the present date, and the note is redeemable early in most common cases, and is redeemable at most banks or financial institutions around the world. Well... they might not now but they are supposed to

Section 1. Bond overviews

These Treasury bonds are just debt that the US government, i.e. the taxpayers, have to pay back to whoever purchased this bond.

Economics is intended to be confusing to understand, an example of this being how they love to make it hard to understand that every time you hear about bonds and interest rates they are talking about gambling with our public taxpayer debt. Calling it "buying bonds" makes it seem more normal investy stuff

Anyway-- so this is debt right? Well like all debt, it requires a good credit score, and collateral. The official term is "backed by the full faith and credit of the United States Government"

In summary of this section using numbers:

If you get a treasury bond that says $100 & 5% annual interest, the Treasury department guarentees you can receive $100 amount in the future (maturity date), as well as $5 per year for your troubles, unless the US government is toast at any point.

If the holder sells the bond prematurely on the 'secondary market'--which is the clever term for the stock market for bonds-- they might get more or less than the "face value" depending on current interest rates, if those current rates differ from the interest rate set on the bond at hand.

---

Section 2: Basic Bond Valuation

So using previous example, the face value of $100, and that only comes back from the treasury department on maturity day (up to 30 years away now for long term bonds)

So in the meantime, people "trade" (gamble most of the time) those bonds on the market. Cause why the fuck not?

---

Most of the time, in a non inflationary environment, bonds with expiration dates of less than 5 years do not change price much at all in this 'secondary market'.

Why? Well--

In an inflationary environment (only recent examples are 1970s & 2020s) most bonds are decreasing in value, with the lowest interest rate bonds decreasing the most. Every other period has bond prices generally flat (so you still get the 5% interest) or trending up

The economic mechanics behind what lowers bond prices in high interest rate environments is pretty simple-- if I have a 30 year loan the government owes me, with 5% annual interest, and the guy who bought the same 30 year bond back in 2017 only got 2% interest, then I have an inherently more valuable loan or bond.

Going to start circling back to gift cards-- A 0% bond is only worth more than a negative interest bond.

(looking at you japan they were briefly paying banks 0.5% interest to borrow money from the government. As in a -0.5% interest loan)

Okay gift cards time

$25 Gift card = corporate bond of face value $25, with 0% interest, and is only redeemable in person at the companies restaurant with immediate purchase of their product

A gift card is identical then to the boring "war bond" gift, except that:

1) it can only be redeemed at their limited locations in person, and only with immediate purchase of their product or service

2) this certificate does not accrue any interest, which means that from a value standpoint its guarenteed to lose value over time unless interest rates are below 0% like japan had

------

Again, most people are very capable of understanding that the value of a 0% corporate bond which cannot be easily sold is worth less than the face value-- much less. Just most people probably dont have the experience in finance to put to words why exactly that situation is so frustrating from a financial standpoint

What a stupid gift, cash is way better.

Especially in an inflationary environment like the 2020s. my god the valuation loss of all the gift cards recently is incalculablely enormous

It would be a very snarky, not nice response to being gifted a gift card if the receiver replies back that the technical market value of this $25 gift card is actually $14.75 due to the current globally high interest rate environment in addition to the company having a BBB Moody's credit rating rather than a perfect AAA

I'm very, very tempted to do a sample valuation of a random hypothetical gift card to reinforce this point, but valuations arent quick and I already know it would take me half the day just researching the numbers to put together for it

----

I had no idea I was going to have this much to say but we're on edit #4 to this post Im gonna keep going:

The inflation of the 2020s has led to the largest (by dollar value and probably other metrics) corporate bond valuation crash of the.. ever

But corporate bonds are mostly held by the upper middle class & higher, as well as other corporations. So of course we hear them crying about their loss of wealth. Easiest example can be found by looking for the annual returns on an ETF which trades only corporate bonds. They got fucked in 2021 and arent back yet

What I'm getting at is that most poor people do not own individual bonds-- its just not really something that makes sense as a poor person.

Back to poor people's wealth--

Someone who has a retirement funds might invest in corporate bonds through that fund. But dont get me started on how complicated those funds investment strategies are to mitigate the risk (but yes they arent good at risk mitigation lose value a lot from dumb preventable mistakes).

And also looking at 5 yr price charts for many retirement funds, the ones with more corporate bond holdings have done way worse than their peers in the retirement fund game who put more money in stocks over that period

Poor people do, however, give each other gift cards... a lot. Weve kind of been told for a long time that its a more appropriate gift than cash. I wonder whod want us to think that. Maybe the corporations who are getting away with selling hard-to-redeem junk bonds as "gift cards"?

Likewise with all corporate bonds lately, the total balance of gift cards issued & held by the general public is larger than it has ever been in prior decades like the 1970s. There was issues with gift cards then, just the total amount was much, much less

Except probably not anymore-- only the face value being reported on their financial statements is that high, as accounting standards do not require companies to regularly value their gift card balances at market value. They are allowed to report it at face value, until it is removed from their balance sheet and resolved as pure income. Not 100% sure the GAAP guidance for it, but I know they dont HAVE to specifically mark down gift cards as they dont have expiration dates. I know that if a company did need to mark down that debt balance for whatever reason, the only way to lower that balance is by calling it "other income".

So poor people have felt a multi-billion dollar loss of wealth from gift card values, which is obviously not ever going to be studied or talked about cause who the fuck cares about poor people

And when that loss does get "realized" from an accountant standpoint-- it would be considered income for the fucking corporations.

Actually reminds me of Starbucks class action about the gift card balance. Lot to dig into there but thats more because of their extra predatory practices around redeeming it

[quill-of-thoth]

In the game, thankfully! (He was twelve. Or thirteen - middle school, anyway.) So the problem with this specific cousin is that on my mom's side we had mostly girls for a full generation. Mom's oldest brother? Four kids. Three girls, and the youngest was the only boy in the entire grandkid lineup until my brother came along at what we thought was the tail end of the generation until my youngest aunt got married and produced the two Gen Z first cousins. The grandkids are spread out, however, because my uncles were born at the start of the baby boom and my mom and her sister are a full decade plus younger than them. And my uncle headed west at like 18 to work on the railroad and got married right away, so mom was an aunt by the time she was a teen. This means that being the exact middle of the grandkid pack and the only boy who was up to actually do anything for most of his childhood made my cousin a little shit. Competitive too, because his sisters are all significantly older than him. He got pretty invested in beating the rest of us at games, out of the sheer novelty that it was possible. Anyway, this being around 2000, my brother was far too young to have any kind of chance at winning monopoly, or even playing well, so Ben got the idea to run loans. If I recall right, we used the board of an antique game called Payday to track them - essentially, we had X number of turns to pay back the loan or we owed another 10% of it. And needing $300 to land on a square pretty much guaranteed that you would not have $300 in the next four or five turns. So pretty soon you owed $300, $330, $360... but you were still playing the game instead of trying and failing to change the channel on my grandparent's ancient tube-based TV. He wasn't sneaky about the embezzlement either. He'd just slip himself one of whatever change he was making when someone had to break a large bill. He only got away with it because for a few thanksgivings he was the only one who wanted to do math.

Fuck zodiac signs, what piece you picking?

[casspurrjoybell-27]

Claimed by the Beast - Chapter 13b

*Warning Adult Content*

Possession - Part 2

After they head back to Knox's bedroom and shower, separately, they get dressed in fresh clothes, grab a bite to eat in the kitchen and then Knox finally takes Everett outside to show him his favorite spot by the river.

They walk and talk about everything and nothing, time passing by quickly as they get lost in one another.

Something that's been happening frequently.

"Wow. It's crazy beautiful out here during this time of the evening," Everett remarks. "I bet it's terrifying at night, though. All these big freaking trees everywhere. Hell no. I'm glad I never tried to run away because my dumbass would've immediately gotten lost out here."

Knox chuckles, glancing out at the river coming into view.

"I know this place like the back of my hand. I'd have found you and dragged you back to where you belong."

"And where might that be?" Everett asks, teasingly.

"Wherever I'm at, obviously," Knox smirks.

"Come on. We aren't that far away now."

The clubhouse sits at the front of the fifty-acre property owned by Gavin.

Massive trees cover most of it, including the perimeter and near the south end is where the river passes through.

The path that Everett and Knox walk hasn't always been around but Knox has since kept maintenance up on the area to prevent it from being taken over by weeds and other debris.

Contrary to what Everett believes, Knox finds that it's most peaceful out here at night.

"This is it."

Knox leads them into a small, secluded section where the grass fades into dirt and rocks.

A perfect spot to settle into if one enjoyed fishing.

"This is where I come to clear my head when the demons start to get too loud," he speaks quietly, so low that Everett almost misses it. "It ain't much but it's mine. Brings me peace, if only temporarily."

"I love it. I think it's absolutely gorgeous."

Everett sits next to Knox on the ground, his eyes scanning and memorizing the area.

Across the river are more trees, presumably the ending of somebody else's property.

"The sound of the river and all the insects chirping around us..."

Everett closes his eyes for a few seconds, soaking up the sun's warmth.

"God, I bet I could take a killer nap out here."

Knox laughs.

"I have once or twice before. Wouldn't recommend it unless you bring along a can of bug spray."

"Yikes. I can imagine how bad the mosquitoes get all the way out here. No fucking thanks," Everett says, opening his eyes.

He glances at Knox's profile, secretly admiring him.

All sharp features until you get to his stormy grey eyes.

Right now, they're the softest they've ever looked.

"Do you ever wish that all this could be yours? The clubhouse, the property..."

"No," Knox says without even thinking about it. "Can I afford to purchase something like this for myself? Yes. Do I want to have it all right now? No. There's still too much work left to be done."

"What do you mean by that?" Everett asks.

"When you join a MC, you're in that shit for life. At least I am," Knox says. "Something drastic will have to happen to me before I willingly step down from my position and leave the club and my brothers behind. I'm not ready to settle down. It ain't my time yet."

Everett nods in understanding.

"You said you could afford all this, which is honestly blowing my mind because you definitely don't look or act..."

"Like I have money?" Knox questions, smirking.

Everett nods again, blushing.

"Yeah, well, you should know by now that I'm not exactly the flashy type. I don't wear my wealth to prove that I have it. I think that shit is corny. I don't give a damn about what people think of me. If I did, I'd never get any sleep at night."

"I feel that," Everett says.

"Let me know when a job opens up around here because I have student loans to pay off and your Pres seems to give out pretty generous salaries," he jokes.

"You have options. Strip club, motel or funeral home?" Knox asks.

"We dabble in a little bit of everything, but there's always an opening at the strip club. We don't discriminate when it comes to hiring dancers."

Everett gasps, confused.

"You're serious?"

"Hell no. I'm just fucking with you." Knox laughs, shaking his head.

"I mean, yes, we do own a strip club, motel and a funeral home because they're extremely profitable businesses but someone like you wouldn't last a day at either of our establishments. No offense."

"None taken," Everett mutters. "I remember you told me once that MCs primarily make money through illegal means. Is that what you guys use the businesses for? A cover for whatever illegal activity you've got going on?"

Knox meets Everett's gaze, briefly flashing a smile filled with sadness and something else the latter can't quite decipher.

"I talk too much around you."

"So what? I like you better when you're talking versus being all broody and mute," Everett replies.

He scoots closer to Knox and grabs his hand like it's something they do all the time, carefully interlocking their fingers together.

Anything to get rid of that wounded look in Knox's eyes.

"Don't worry. All your little incriminating club secrets are perfectly safe with me."

Knox laughs again.

"I know they are."

As they watch the river, silence falls upon them but it isn't loud or awkward.

Quite the opposite.

And that's precisely why Everett ignores the alarm bells ringing in the distance, trying to warn him that what he's doing right now isn't right.

Getting closer to Knox on a deeper level, having easy conversations with him, kissing and touching him when what he should be doing is doubling the distance between them and closing off his heart completely.

Fuck.

The bastard's already done it, hasn't he?

Knox has somehow managed to climb over the walls that have kept Everett's heart intact.

He's practically moved in and made himself at home.

One he'll eventually have to be evicted from because none of what they have going on right now will ever become a permanent thing.

The Fallen Angels' war with The Jackals will end one day.

Everett will have to go back to his mundane way of living, return to school, get his degree and then step into the next chapter of his life.

One where Knox doesn't exist.

"I'm curious," Knox says moments later. "What does your future look like? Where do you see yourself in the next five years?"

Somewhere, anywhere, with you…

"I don't know," Everett mumbles instead, resting his head on Knox's shoulder.

"What about you?"

"I guess you better start living each one to the fullest, then."

Everett produces a half smile, squeezing Knox's hand.

"I'll help you."

Until it's time for me to go.

"I'd like that."

Knox squeezes his hand back, the rational part of him knowing he can't take any of this to heart.

"You've got yourself a deal, kitten."

[fae-nightray]

Sirens Song

Aranel sat at the bar waiting, bedazzled pink clutch in her hands. She wore a flared white dress with lace trimming, the hem line brushing softly just below her knees. Tikling gold bracelets on her wrists and a simple pink lace choker. Her shoes, while a soft pink leather to match everything else, were killing her feet and she could feel a blister starting to form on her heel. As she waited, Aranel looked towards the stage where the piano was being played. Every Thursday, without fail, he was up there. Silver hair slicked back just so, sleeves pulled up to his elbows and gloved hands gliding smoothly over the piano keys. She loved to watch him play, it was one of the only pleasures she could take out of these evenings.

As time wore on, she looked at the clock on the wall. It was getting late, much later than she’d like to be out. Aranel was so focused on that clock, she failed to notice the music stop. As she went to look back over, she was surprised to see the man standing in front of her. “O-oh, hello.” She breathed, cheeks beginning to blush pink.

“Hello there.” The man smiled softly, eyes crinkling gently at the edges, Aranel noting a faint scar going over his left eye. “Couldn’t help but notice your date hasn’t shown up yet.”

“My date?” She breathed, brushing a soft, platinum blonde lock of hair behind her ear.

“Yeah, that nasty ginger haired fellow you always leave with.” He was leaning on the counter now, looking hard at her. “That is who you’re expecting, right?”

“Well yes, but he’s not exactly my date.” Aranel mumbled, her cheeks now flushing in shame.

“If he’s not your date, then who is he? Cause you sure are dressed nice every time I see you.”

“That’s because I’m an escort.” She whispered softly, eyes downcast. “He’s my handler.”

The man gave a low whistle before gently lifting the girl's chin. “Now what did a pretty thing like you do, to wind up in a shady business like that?”

“How does anyone end up in any shady situation, money. I borrowed money because the insurance wouldn’t pay for my son's surgery. They said because he wasn't immediately dying, it was voluntary.”

“Let me guess, the people you borrowed from suddenly said you had to pay it all, or not at all; but they’ll be gracious and even find a job for you to do.”

“Exactly that, almost word for word.” Aranel looked at him in slight shock and awe.

“Let me tell you something darlin’, it is always better to be in debt to the bank, than to loan sharks.” He pulled out a cigarette, lighting it up and taking a huff. “Sure, the bank may take the house or the car, but loan sharks? They’ll take your dignity and pride, chew it up and then spit it right back into your face. You know you should be back home with your son, watching movies, tucking him into bed.”

Tears started to brim in Aranels eyes, the girl quickly trying to blink them away so as to not ruin her makeup. “I would love nothing more than to do that, but I have no choice.”

“There is always a choice, so I’m going to give you one right now. Stay in debt to the loan sharks who will continue to sell your body and soul, or marry me.”

“Marry you? I don’t even know you.” Aranel could feel herself growing lightheaded, looking towards the door in worry that the man would appear.

The man put out his cigarette on the bar counter before gently taking Aranel’s hand into his own, bringing it up to his lips to lightly kiss. “River, River Siren.”

His piercing gray eyes met her own icy blue. Aranel felt her breath catch in her throat at the name. Everybody in town knew his name. “But you’re-”

“So you do know me.” He chuckled. “Darlin’, I can promise you a life of safety and ease. I would never let any harm come to you or your son.” He slid an arm around the girl’s waist, pulling her close. “No sex, you can be your own person and if in a few years, after the steam with the loan sharks has blown over, if you wanted an annulment, I’d give it to you.”

Aranel chewed the inside of her lip. It sounded wonderful, too wonderful to be true. “But if there’s no sex, what do you even get out of it? What’s the catch?”

“No catch.” River replied “I just can’t stand to see a pretty young lady sad every night.”

She stood there in his arms a moment longer, mind racing as she thought it over. Finally she put a hand on his shoulder, lifting up on her toes to whisper her reply softly into his ear.

[staygoldsquatchling02]

advice

so, this is going to be a long post and pretty venty, if you have advice its appreciated but i just need to get this of my chest. To make a long story short really quick before I get into it, i think I'm close to cutting off my best friend of two years. If you want to know more keep reading.

In July of 2021 my parents and I decided to move away from our family in Oregon to live with my mom's best friend at the time in Nevada. For the most part it was because we needed a change of scenery and have always gravitated towards the desert having spent a few years in Arizona. The only people we knew at the time here were my mom's best friend, his 24-year-old son, and his mom. we moved in with them so we could get settled and then start looking for a place.

Living with them was hell, my mom's ex best friend was a drunk who treated everyone like trap and didn't have a job, his mom had like twenty cats and the house smelled like cat piss. The drunk spent all his money on booze instead of paying rent including money my family had given him for rent. I had even taken out a payday loan so we wouldn't get kicked out right before Christmas 2021. He was also a narcist and tried to assault my mother multiple times when my father was at work. It sucked to live with them, but I'll come back to it later.

back to friend problem. From the time we got to Nevada, I was looking for work, I finally got a job at the beginning of Augst, and I started working quickly glad to be away from the drunk. Shortly after starting work I met a new employee who was the first person i have met here my age. I introduced myself and started a friendship. We would talk all the time at work, and she was the first person at the job to know I was trans and accept me. (I was out before I just was scared to come out at new job because I didn't know how people would react)

For a while she was just a work friend and then I invited her to go see the Jujutsu Kaisen movie because I had seen it once loved it and thought she would like it. She loved it and started to really get into anime. We also started to hang out outside of work. Going to movies and the mall, just being normal 19-year-olds.

Fast forward to June of 2022, and the drunk I mentioned before had gotten evicted from the house we were staying in. I had to leave work an hour into my shift to help get my important things out of the house right away. My parents, the drunk and I spent the whole day trying to find a hotel to stay in with five dogs, and two cats. When we finally found one, I had to take out another payday loan to pay for it. After two days in the hotel, we had to condense from two rooms to just one. We had to surrender two of our dogs because they didn't get along with the drunks two dogs and that hurt a lot. But me not liking the drunk at all asked my friend if I could stay with her for a bit while we got back on our feet.

She agreed and so I moved into her spare bedroom. Now i wasn't staying there and just leaching off of her I was helping as much as I could. I was buying gas and sending her money every payday to help pay for things. I even door dashed food most nights because with our work schedule it was hard to make food at home. But she wasn't the only one I was helping, I had my own car payment and phone bill to pay so I was paying every month, and I was also giving my parents money for gas and food, because my dad had lost his job and was struggling picking up work.

When I was living with her, she had made multiple comments about how i shouldn't be supporting my parents and how they just needed to suck it up and find jobs. Mind you my mom had just broken her back, not bad enough to paralyze her but still broke her back, she also has preexisting medical conditions that make so she can't work and was in the middle of filling for social security disability. and my dad was helping her and was trying to find work.

there were other things she did that pissed me off, like if she had decided to order food for dinner, she expected me to pay her for my part even though i never made her pay me for buying her food. she would get upset with me if i forgot to close a door in the apartment, not the front door just any door, like to a bedroom or the bathroom.

eventually the things at the hotel with the drunk got really bad. My dad had accepted a job from one of his friends to drive them to Mexico and unfortunately my mom couldn't go because she lost her social security card and so she wouldn't have been able to cross back to the u.s so she stayed at the hotel with the drunk. On the second day my dad was gone I got a call from my mom at like 10pm saying that the drunk had tried to sa her and she was now spending the night sitting outside. she had called my dad and unfortunately, he was in Mexico and couldn't leave till his friends got paid and so he had to spend the night worrying for her. My uncle back in Oregon sent my mom the money for a hotel room so she was safe for the night but that was the final straw for them. When my dad got back the next day having driven straight through not stopping except for gas and food, my parents decided that they were going to drive to Oklahoma because my dad's family has land out there. They asked if I wanted to go but at the time, I just wanted to stay in Nevada where i had a job and was safe being me, knowing that my family in Oklahoma was not friendly towards the lgbtq.

My parents left like two days later and i had a mental break down. It hurt a lot for my parents to be so far away from me. I was raised as family is number one and by not going with them in my head i was abandoning them and vice versa. I was alone, none of my family was even in the same state as me, sure i had my roommate and coworkers to talk to but you have a different connection to family.

About a week after my parents left for Oklahoma, they called to tell me that Oklahoma wasn't going to work because there was no house on the land it was just a field, and they would have to get a mobile home to live there. With the realization it wasn't going to work the decided to go back to Oregon and live with my mom's mom and brother. They asked if I wanted them to come back through Nevada and pick me up on the way there but again, I thought I was better staying with my friend. I told them no and they went back to Oregon without me. This all happened around the middle of August, and I thought i was making the right choices.

When the end of September, the separation anxiety from my parents was becoming too much to deal with and I was struggling in every sense of the word. My job had gone to shit, my managers where fired and they had been like an extra pair of parents to me, one of my coworkers who I also as like a parent or weird uncle was treating me like trash, and money stress was coming up more often with the friend I was staying with because I was still helping my parents with money. So when my parents called again asking if I wanted to go back to Oregon I actually thought about it.

I had told them i had to think about it and talk to my friend about it because I didn't want to just leave her hanging like that, we had been talking about maybe getting a cheaper apartment together. When i told my friend about it she told that i was going to do what i thought was best, but she thought it was dumb. she told me I was only thinking about it because it's my family. She was right in the fact i was thinking about making my family happy, but I was also trying to make a choice that would make her happy.

Eventually I decided it was best for me to go home. I would have my family, and I would be able to see some of my friends from high school as opposed to only having the one friend. the only thing is I had told my parents not to come get me until the end of October. I did this because back in august I purchased tickets to see Panic at the disco with my friend, because they were one of our favorite bands and it would be a once in a lifetime thing. I didn't want to cancel that; it was her first concert and I wanted to experience it with her. I had them wait until the week after the concert to come get me. In the month between my choice and me going home, me and my friend did so much together. We went to rein fair, we went to a Japanese steak house, hell we even went to the only 18+ strip club in Nevada just to say we went. we had fun but we still had tension because i was leaving.

When i left she made me promise to call all the time and text all the time which I did. I tried to make it so at least once a week we spent the whole day on discord playing video games or watching anime. I tried to make it like nothing changed even if we were 800 miles apart. I didn't even realize at the time that I was making all the first moves, i was the one sending the first text I was the one asking if she wanted to do something. looking back at this situation now I'm realizing it wasn't a healthy time but more on that later.

Around a week before Christmas, i had gone out with my friends from high school and had a great time, we had lunch and i bought them each a present for having been good friends through a lot of shit i dealt with in high school. I thought we had a great time, only to find out when i got home they had blocked me on everything. my closest friends from the last six years had cut me off like i meant nothing to them. looking for support and comfort i told my only other friend, the one in Nevada. she acted like she cared that i was broken from it, but she also made comments about how if i had just stayed with her it wouldn't have hurt as bad when they blocked me, that i wouldn't have cared if i was still in Nevada. I agreed with her, but looking back now she was gaslighting me.

Fast forward to the end of January and my grandmother's health is dropping and the apartment we are all staying in is trying to find any reason to kick us out. We talked as a family and decided that it would be best for my grandmother to move to Nevada where there is a better healthcare network, and it would also benefit my mom's health. I was excited to tell, my friend i was coming back and how we could do all the things we talked about doing before, like going to pride, and going to movies again. But when I did finally call and tell her I didn't receive quite the response I was hoping for. here's a brief summary of how it went from her. "Cool I'm glad you're coming back but, what's your plan, are you getting place before you get here, are you looking for work, are you going to live with your family or are you going to live with me. if you live with me know that you can't change your mind in a month." And just a constant stream of questions. I understand that it was valid to ask but then she followed up saying it was dumb to have moved back to Oregon if i was just going to go back in a few months. She was discrediting every response i gave with "well what if your family messes up again, i can't have you move back in with me if you guys do get kicked out." it was like she is expecting my family to fail.

It only got worse when I finally got back. We got a house here in Nevada in March and packed all our stuff and came down. After about a week of being back I had fallen back to old routines of going to hang out with her all the time. I was spending every weekend at her place because I was stressed out at home. My grandma had gotten into town and was immediately taken to the hospital and even now five months later she has spent more time in the hospital than time at home, but that's beside the point. Everyone in my family was stressed the first two months because it was taking a bit of time for me to find work. Spending all my time with my friend had resulted in us coming up with the plan of getting an apartment together because my mental health was crashing living with my family.

We decided that we wanted to find a place by the end of July because that was when my friends current lease would be up. I had found a part time job at the beginning of June and was naive enough to think that it would be enough. so throughout the month of June we looked at places, I thought it was going to work out. I was wrong. As it got closer to July, I realized I wasn't going to have any money to put towards a place, the housing market is shit and a part time job was not enough to even think about getting a place. I had also started taking my adhd medication again that i had been off of for about six months. With my mental state evening out I figured out that moving out was impulsive and not the right choice at the time. Even though I figured it out I was to scared to tell my friend this.

Until one day after we had gone to look at an apartment and she came over to my house to have dinner and talk more about our plans. We spent a few hours in my room, and the whole time I couldn't help but listen to what she was saying and think damn I can't move in with this person. She wasn't talking about us getting a place she was telling me I needed to cut my family off. She told me multiple time in an hour that I needed to get a new phone plan with just me on it and stop paying for my parents phones, mind you i wasn't forced to pay for their phones I offered to get a phone plan with them because it was the easiest thing to do and they were helping me pay for it. She was also telling me that i have to force them to teach me how to drive so she won't be the only one able to drive when we get a place. (I never learned to drive because i had priorities like school and helping raise my niece and nephew.) she then started talking shit about how we use or garage for storage and not for parking our cars, and how my parents need to stop smoking so that then maybe we would have more money for food. Like i will be the first to say yes, my parents need to stop smoking, and yes it would take some stress off of getting money for food but that's not her place.

After she realized I was getting irritated with the conversation she left, and we didn't speak for a week. When we did finally speak again, she called me crying because she didn't want to lose our friendship. I believed her. I thought it was just a call to iron out our feelings. I told her how I felt that I wasn't ready to move out because of my financial situation and my mental health. I told her that i didn't want to move in with her and put her through what she went through with her last roommate. (She had moved out with a friend and two months later the friend just up and left leaving her to deal with the apartment alone.) It sounded like she understood and was grateful for me telling the truth and backing out before we got too deep. or at least i thought she was for a while.

We started talking more and watching anime again. hell, we even joined a discord server about one of our animes and have made some awesome friends online. We talk nearly every day again and I thought things were great until two weeks ago.

One of her friends that she had introduced me to that i get along with invited the both of us to go swimming and of course i agreed, i love swimming and it would be nice to get out of the house. So, we went. While at the pool I had gotten out to go to the bathroom and left them to talk. When i got back to the pool they were talking about my friend's life. they were talking about how my friend is struggling with paying her rent and how she wishes she could find a cheaper place.

The friend we were at the pool with said that her and her fiancé were thinking of moving out of her mom's house because it to crowded and offered to plan to get a place with her. But my friend said no because she has ptsd from roommates bailing on her in the past. I knew she was talking about me but her friend thought she was talking about her first roommate, because we never directly said we were roommates because it was never official. My friend then said it's that and the fact that (op) did the same thing, they left for Oregon and they recently canceled our plans to get a place together. I understand that she may feel like i wronged her in some way but to phrase it that way hurt. she can feel upset but i thought we had moved past it.

Later that same day she told me that i don't talk to her when i have problems, which is true to an extant, i used to talk to her when i had problems with stuff she did but recently I've stopped because if i bring something up she does wrong she throws back at me saying it's my fault in some way. for example we watch anime through discord because it's easier than figuring out how to get to her house with her car broke down and me not driving. As of recently something has been going wrong where audio from her end is patchy and it gets hard to hear her. I've checked everything on my end, I have uninstalled and reinstalled discord, i have checked my headset but everything is fine when I'm not talking to her, audio is fine nothing cuts out. I have told her all of this, but of course she says she has done the same thing and therefore it has to be something on my end, it's my fault that it sounds like she is talking to me from a different room than where her mic and computer are because her headset is full charged and working fine corroding to her computer.

It feels like everything i do is wrong. I even feel that way about my taste in anime at this point. You see I like a very specific type of anime, the ones where the main character is an underdog who either can't do what everyone else can or just hasn't been introduced to the lore of the world yet, who eventually find their place and become strong, but not in a boom you are now the best of the best way but in a here's how to become the best, you have to work for it kinda way. for example, My hero academia, and Jujutsu Kaisen. these are my two favorites; my friend will watch them with me but has to point out every time that all my shows have very similar plots. She has taken it upon herself to have me watch animes that don't fit this profile, for example we just started watching banana fish and don't get me wrong i like to try new things and I'm enjoying it but what i don't like is in the first nine episodes she has made multiple comments about how it's nice to watch something without an underdog main character who has the same energy as a puppy. I understand having separate opinions is normal but constantly point out how she doesn't like the exact same stuff as me is bit much.

I've just been rethinking everything. I realized that i have stopped doing a lot of things i used to because of her. I stopped watching anime on my own, if i want to watch something i always text her and see if she wants to watch it. I stopped talking to one of my other ex-coworkers that i got along with because she doesn't really like her. I've also begun to realize that this is a lot of the same stuff my mom was going through with her Ex best friend. he constantly made her feel bad about things she liked, made her feel bad because she uses weed as pain relief (it's legal here), he hated on her family all the time. I can't help but feel like it's happening to me. She judges what i watch, she judges the fact that i vape (again i know not healthy but my bod my choice), she judges my family (even the ones she has never met) and if i did any of this in return i would be the bad guy. If i told her that i don't like how her dad talks to her, or how i don't like that she pushes me to my breaking point at the gym(not just past my limits but i have nearly passed out at the gym because she thinks that at 300 pounds and never having been to the gym before I can keep up with her 150 pound gym rat self.) she would tell me that I'm being mean and that i hurt her feelings.

My parents have told me multiple time i need to tell her that i feel this way and need to cut contact or at least limit it by a lot, but i don't know how. I don't expect anyone to actually read all of this as it took me almost two hours to right but I just needed to get it off my chest. if she sees it then she will know who she is and probably have a problem but im tired of bottling things up. If you do end up reading this and have advice, please share but for now I'm going to hope I can find a therapist soon to help me with coping mechanisms and get past this.