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renaerys · 3 years ago

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Prompt 50. But Berserk & Boomer😔👉👈💕

50. “I thought you left.”

We’re calling this one Unfortunately, She Impressed Him. This is a pair of characters I love with all my heart in any flavor of relationship and can’t wait to write more of in my ongoing multi-chapter fic Trinity House over on AO3.

This fic is part of a prompt challenge that is now closed to new requests, but you can read all the completed submissions here. Reminder that the challenge is to make everything SFW, so we’re getting creative here.

xxx

Boomer was halfway across the deserted lobby of Faust Keating Rogers, LLP when he realized he’d forgotten his keys at his desk. He groaned aloud because it was 8 p.m. and no one was around to hear him because they had all gone home to their families hours ago like normal people. Boomer didn’t have two to three kids and a house in the suburbs, though, and neither did his boss. The three hour lull reserved for dinner, baths, and bedtimes before the evening work-from-home grind offered him no alternative but to power through. He fully planned to grab take out on his way home and enjoy an episode of whatever was on HBOMax before getting back to the tedious work of reviewing the draft prospectus statement his boss had sent him to proof by tomorrow morning.

Except, his keys were forty floors up and he now had to risk running into her again when he’d managed to slip away so neatly. He’d even removed his tie on the elevator ride down, and now he rubbed his exposed neck, flushed with anxiety over what might happen if she saw him and asked him to stick around to finish the work here.

“Nice going, dumbass,” he lamented as he stepped onto the elevator and hit the button for the fortieth floor.

It wasn’t that Boomer disliked his job. In fact, he didn’t mind it at all. It was better than slinging drinks or waiting tables. He had health insurance, a steady paycheck, and a resumé that could proudly display the name of one of the most elite accounting firms in the country. He could pivot his career if he wanted to, as Brick would say. Boomer wasn’t thinking about his next job right now, though. Right now, he was thinking about this one and how his boss was a hard-ass and a workaholic even if she was brilliant, and how there was a one hundred percent chance she would detect him coming back to his desk (which was annoyingly set up right in front of her office so that he could answer her calls, manage her meetings, and deal with whoever passed close enough to her event horizon to get suckered into the latest heinous audit in need of staffing).

There were his traitorous keys sitting on the desk next to the framed picture of his brothers. He glared at them, as if they were a forgotten household item that had developed a supernatural grudge like in those old Japanese folktales he liked to read online. He half expected them to jingle and alert his boss to his presence, just to spite him.

They didn’t, and he slipped them into his pocket as quietly as could be. He released the breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding and took a beat. It was quiet. Most of the offices were dark, save for a few poor souls in the large conference room stuck on the ongoing year-end audit for one of the firm’s most important clients: Unicorn, Inc. His boss’s office was also lit up behind her closed door, but she hadn’t called out to him like she would during the day when he got back from his lunch break hoping for a few minutes to catch up on emails in peace before she dumped more work on him.

This, of course, was odd. The small legion of assistants who had come before Boomer were notorious for their short-term employment working this specific desk. The work was demanding and so was the boss, but there was something else that set her apart from other senior associates in the International Tax Services division, something that seemed to intimidate away any support the higher ups sent her way. Denise a couple desks down had warned Boomer not to bring too many personal effects to the office; chances were he wasn’t going to last long. Boomer had smiled thinly and thanked Denise for her advice, and brought the picture of his brothers in the next morning because he had his pride and Brick told him it was healthy to indulge that once in a while. Brick would certainly know.

So here he was, uncertain. Anxiety over having to sit here for another two hours finishing work and having tepid Doordash delivered pulled him toward the elevator and escape, while that annoying, rare pride demanded he check on his boss and make sure she knew he was here to support her, lest she get the idea that he needed to be fired.

The longer he stood there, indecisive, the greater his curiosity grew. What was she doing in there? It was quiet, even when he strained his Super hearing. He could hear Dean Matheson pouring whiskey a few offices down (that guy had a drinking problem and everyone knew they only kept him around because he had the Unicorn, Inc. account), Adebayo Hansou on a conference call with Dubai that was escalating to profanity, Shelly Kim with her head down and typing away at an Excel spreadsheet like a pro. Their assistants were long gone for the night, but here was Boomer, loitering and indecisive and what is she doing in there not yelling at me when she definitely knows I’m here?

He couldn’t take it anymore. He knocked on the closed door—rap, rap, rap—and called out softly, “Berserk?”

A beat, then: “Come in.”

Finding his boss in upward facing dog while still in her pencil skirt was not a sight Boomer was prepared for. Berserk had her eyes closed as she stretched at a near ninety degree angle and listened to music on her Airpods. Boomer had never seen her with her heels off and her mane of red hair thrown together in a messy bun; it was so casual that it was almost obscene.

“You’re staring.”

Fuck, he was staring and now she was looking right at him down her nose, even though she was the one on the floor. He stood up straighter, unable to help himself when she took that tone that reminded him so much of Brick’s when he was about to criticize, but he didn’t avert his gaze. “Sorry.”

She breathed in deeply through her nose and hoisted herself up into downward dog position. “Why are you here?”

Forgot my keys seemed like a really lame excuse that she’d probably laugh at him for, but he also was not in the habit of making shit up on the spot if he hoped to make people believe him. “I forgot my keys.” He took them from his pocket to show her, as if she might not know what keys are, as a concept.

“Smart locks.” Berserk exhaled and slowly walked her hands back on the yoga mat until she reached her feet and began to swing slowly left and right.

Huh? he almost said like an idiot, until he caught himself. “Don’t think my landlord would approve of me installing that.” Also, those things were like $200 a pop, which was not worth the occasional inconvenience and shame of forgetting his keys and then catching his boss doing yoga in her office after hours.

Berserk made some noncommittal sound like whatever, peasant and slowly uncurled upward one vertebra at a time. Boomer realized he was back to staring again, literally lingering in her door watching her and trying to equate this subdued, casual version of Berserk with the terse, no-nonsense businesswoman he was used to dealing with on a daily basis.

When she finally achieved her full height, she popped her neck. The hair that was too short for her bun fell in around her narrow face in a stylish, athleisure sort of way. The top buttons on her blouse were undone. She wore a small, golden necklace he’d never noticed before because he wasn’t in the habit of checking out his boss. “I thought you left.”

The accusatory nature of her words were totally at odds with her flat tone, only the barest hint of curiosity dangling there at the end, like she expected him to respond.

Oh, she expected him to respond.

Boomer took another step into her office because he was full of poor judgment today. “I forgot my keys.”

At which point he showed her his keys again and also had a mild stroke, because what the fuck are you doing, mate?

Berserk smiled. “Yeah, I got that part.”

Was she laughing at him? He had never heard her laugh before, unless it was at Dean Matheson, that comb-over in denial who, in addition to being a high functioning alcoholic, also had a reputation for throwing associates under the bus when a client wasn’t happy.

Boomer smiled back, because that was what he did when people smiled at him, and ‘people’ now included Berserk, apparently.

“Well, since you’re here,” she said as she padded around to her desk.

Crap, there was the work he was afraid of soliciting from her by remaining in the building. He debated an excuse to give her: picking up dry cleaning? Plausible, but transparent. Meeting up with his brothers? No, she’d probably make him stay all night for the chance to ruin Brick’s plans.

“Thai or Mexican?”

Boomer stared dumbly. He was becoming quite good at that (10,000 hours and you can become an expert at anything, they say). “Huh?”

The yoga must have put Berserk in an exceedingly gracious mood, because she actually repeated her question without getting that look on her face like she was picturing him getting trampled by stampeding monsters. “Thai or Mexican? I don’t have a preference.”

Oh.

Boomer’s stomach picked that time to snarl at him—8 p.m. and still no dinner, the fiend.

Berserk snorted in laughter and fanned herself with her phone. “Jesus. Mexican it is.”

Which was how Boomer found himself on the small sofa tucked in the corner of Berserk’s office, shoes off and belt loosened, with enough tacos, tamales, and rice and beans to feed a small family. He even had a beer from the mini fridge Berserk kept under her desk.

She hadn’t stayed late to work. Well, she had, but only because she didn’t have a reason to go home.

“I just hate getting home to a dark apartment sometimes,” she said in between bites of food. She had her legs tucked up under her on the sofa close enough to brush Boomer’s thigh if he reached to grab the salsa.

“I thought you lived with your sister?”

“Brute got her own place a few months ago. The arrangement was only temporary while she was in between jobs.”

It was weird knowing so little about a person whose whole family had been in Boomer’s inner orbit since childhood. As far as he knew, Berserk wasn’t close to any of her cousins, not even Blossom. Boomer himself had never been more eager to leave a room than when Brat walked into it. Only Butch, Brute, and Buttercup had ever found common ground among each other once the sworn rivalries and blood feuds of their youth gave way to teenage rebellion against their respective overlord fathers and then the slog of adulthood that was inescapable even for a bunch of Supers flying high on Chemical X.

The fact that Boomer had gotten this job surprised him more than anyone. After drifting from restaurant jobs to office temp placements over the last six years, he’d never thought he would dust off his economics degree and land a temp-to-permanent position that seemed way above his qualifications. And he never thought it would be working for a woman he’d most definitely electrocuted in battle at least a dozen times before puberty.

“What?”

Boomer blinked. He’d been staring again, Jesus Christ. “Sorry, I was just thinking… I didn't know that. I’ve been working here for five months and I don’t actually know much about you at all.”

“Hm.”

Her magenta eyes were wine-dark against the murky sky beyond the window forty stories up. Boomer did avert his gaze this time to reach for the salsa, but he didn’t use it.

“I don’t even know why you invited me to stay for dinner in the office if we’re not going to do any work.”

“Why did you stay?”

“For the free food.”

Berserk grinned—the third time she had smiled at him tonight (or ever). He needed to stop counting; he’d be disappointed when it stopped happening tomorrow.

“Don’t get used to it. Much as I appreciate the company now and again, there’s no need for both of us to be stuck here while Matheson’s breathing down the associates’ necks. Can’t have him poaching you out from under me.”

“Well, I don’t work for him; I work for you.”

“It’s sweet how you don’t understand office politics.” She ate a lone slice of avocado with a fork. “He landed Unicorn back when they were early stage, and back when he was still putting in the work to earn his reputation. But since they IPO’d three years ago and make up twenty percent of our revenue now, he’s just another big name coasting by on associate work. You know he regularly schedules client calls and just doesn’t bother to show up? He forgets half the time, and the other half he’s busy playing golf or buying a yacht or whatever the fuck rich, white Boomers do.”

“Well, as a Boomer myself, I can say I’ve spent exactly zero hours buying yachts.”

She chuckled. Fourth time. “Oh, really.”

“Never even thought of yachts. As far as I’m concerned, they’re not even real.”

“Thanks for your expert opinion.”

“Any time.” Boomer turned his body to face her and draped his arm over the back of the sofa. With only the soft light from the floor lamp in the corner, he imagined himself adrift in the darkness, the sky scraper lights nearby stars. It was a lonely thought, one made romantic in the knowledge that she was here too, and he wasn’t actually alone.

“Matheson almost did poach you, you know.”

“What do you mean?” Boomer couldn’t recall exchanging more than a few words with the man.

“When we were filling support positions. Someone recognized you from the news a few years back, when the Cyclops Monster attacked the marina district and you and your brothers took it out. Matheson got it in his head that you’d be able to work at Super speed and help lower his billables.”

“Wow. Maybe you should’ve let him. What do you think the net savings would be in yacht units of measurement?”

Berserk rolled her eyes, but she was smiling again. “I claimed you before he could get the paperwork in.”

Boomer hyper-focused on that word: claimed. He also pointedly ignored it entirely, much in the same way he ignored the new count of five smiles tonight. “Showed him your bending powers, did you?”

Berserk’s Corona bottle turned frosty under her hand in a totally unnecessary, big dick energy display of said powers, and she took another sip. “No. Sharon from HR likes me. And I promised her I wouldn’t fire you after three months like your predecessors.”

Flattered was not how Boomer would describe the feeling of being claimed by Berserk and eluding Matheson’s vampiric clutches. But he was a bit tickled all the same. This was the woman Butch had once described as essentially Brick, if he were constipated all the time.

And then he realized what she was doing. “Hey, you’re sharing things about yourself.”

She clinked her bottle to his, and Boomer shivered at the frosty chill she transferred on contact. “Aw, you figured it out all by yourself.”

“Ha ha.”

She didn’t quite smile, but she did look kind of serene then, content even, as she lay back against the arm of the sofa and yawned. Her gold necklace—just a simple disk with an engraving Boomer could not make out—reflected the lamp light when she moved. It rested just beneath her collarbone, which had suddenly become the single-most interesting part of Berserk, and oh no, was he interested—

“You’re staring again.”

Son of a bitch.

“Sorry,” he said automatically. “I didn’t mean to.”

Hard no. He was not allowed to be any percent attracted to Berserk. First, she was his boss, and there was a cliché here that, while subverted on the gender role spectrum, was still very risky for both of them. Second, she was Berserk, a fellow Super, cousin to his best friend Bubbles and a shrewd, stiletto bitch in Brick’s estimation, which sounded bad. Not that she was bad, or even evil, unless you counted helping rich corporations accurately report their taxes while taking advantage of the many egregious loopholes in the Internal Revenue Code. Which, okay, point taken, but he also worked here and anyway, people should not be deemed good or evil so much as their choices ought to be—

“Are you thinking about fucking me?”

You shrewd, stiletto bitch!

She was smiling again, and Boomer pathetically logged that as the sixth time, although he wasn’t sure he should count it given the overt malice behind it.

Unfortunately, Boomer was, as had been previously established, very bad at making shit up on the fly. So he miserably said, “Yeah.”

“Hm.”

She sipped her beer slowly, and of course he watched. If it was out in the open, as fleeting a bout of insanity as it may have been, at least he could wallow in it without worrying about appearances.

It was the yoga. That fucking upward facing dog, Jesus Christ.

It was more than that too. Over the last few months, he had worked closely with her, watched her navigate the cutthroat halls full of piranhas like Matheson and other account managers, getting herself work on the best clients while managing her juniors with efficiency and professionalism. She was excellent and sharp, and she demanded excellency and sharpness in kind. After years of going it alone or temping for bosses who didn’t care enough even to learn his name, much less provide him with guidance and mentorship, it was an unspeakable relief to work under someone who knew how to rally the troops. Someone who knew how to lead, how to motivate, and how to reward loyalty with loyalty in return. It didn’t hurt that she looked amazing in her daily stilettos, either.

Unfortunately, she impressed him.

“I have some work to get done tonight.” Berserk stood up and smoothed her skirt.

Boomer scrambled to his feet. “Of course! Um.” He began closing food containers and repackaging them in the bags they’d come in, because he was panicking. “I’ll get rid of the trash. Do you want the leftovers in the fridge?”

“You take them. Otherwise my office will smell like a burrito for a week.”

“Okay.” Numbly, Boomer finished packing everything up, while Berserk made her way back to her desk and logged into her computer to check her emails.

Boomer lingered at the door. “I’ll have the prospectus back to you later tonight.”

“Thanks.”

Wow, way to go, stud.

He turned to leave, but her voice stopped him.

“Boomer?”

“Yeah?”

“Friday is good.”

He stared back at her in expert mode. “Huh?”

Berserk poked her head around the side of her large, external monitor. She was smiling again. Lucky number seven. “For fucking.”

“Okay,” Boomer said.

Okay?!

She pulled back behind her monitor. “I was going to get a cat, but you’ll do much better.”

Because she didn’t like going home to a dark, empty apartment alone. With no one to fuck.

“That was a joke.”

“Yeah, I got that,” he croaked.

Friday is for fucking, he thought, which was delightful alliteration and also completely insane and one hundred percent something he was getting more on board with by the nanosecond.

“See you tomorrow,” she said.

Boomer clutched the leftover Mexican food in his fist. “Okay. Goodnight.”

It took him the time to fly home and put the food away in his small fridge to realize that he had a sort-of date with Berserk lined up for two days from now.

He Y-posed at the window and whooped, “Hell yes!!”

Loud pounding in the floor followed by old Mrs. Cruikshank’s muffled Keep it down! couldn’t bring down his mood.

Boomer leaped onto his threadbare, living room sofa with his work laptop and took to the prospectus with alacrity. He’d send over superior work product and make Berserk’s job just that much easier tomorrow morning.

xxx

If you enjoy my writing, check out more of my fics on AO3, link in my profile. I’m currently updating Trinity House (which has a lot more Berserk and Boomer content, btw!) and The Alchemy of Us. Thanks for reading!

#powerpuff girls #powerpuff girls fanfic #bersoomer #ppg berserk #ppg boomer #september fic prompts #so this turned into a 3k one shot because i love these characters and i couldn't help myself #tfw considering a part 2

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shirtlesssammy · 4 years ago

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4x17: It's a Terrible Life

How have we not recapped this yet? Man, this one holds a special place in Boris’s heart -- even if it’s a Cas-less episode. (Natasha: I LITERALLY said the same thing.)

Then:

This is just gratuitous

Now:

Okay, by this point we know the premise of this episode. I’m just going to list all the Well Respected Man things Dean Smith does.

He wakes up at 6:00am to an iPod.

He steams his rice milk.

He wears suspenders and cufflinks.

He drives a Prius.

He turns off the hard rock for NPR.

Dean Smith is the Director of Sales and Marketing at Sandover Bridge and Iron.

He types memos in Word.

He uses a headset to talk on the phone.

He plays office mini-golf while schmoozing on said headset.

He watches Project Runway (Ok, Dean Winchester totally watches that too, lbr.)

HE EATS SALAD.

He says the word ‘vis-a-vis’.

His boss Mr. Adler is very impressed with him. Good stuff!

He works late.

He is thinking of doing the Master Cleanse.

He leaves at 5:30 (or really a couple minutes before, rebel!)

On the elevator ride out of the building, another passenger asks if he knows Dean. Dean, focused on his Blackberry, does not recognize the dude. The other dude won’t let it go and Dean tells him to “save it for the health club” before leaving.

Sam Wesson works in the Tech Support section of Sandover. He mainly tells people to turn it off and back on again. Works every time! Sam and another buddy, Ian, head for coffee. They ask Paul, another worker, if he wants to join them. He’s busy working! Okay, okay, wait one moment. Paul got caught surfing porn on company computers and he still has a job!? WOW.

Ian grabs some office pencils in the break room. (And we get a nice little intro shot from within the microwave….very nice easter egg for us second (and beyond) viewers.) He then asks Sam about the dreams he’s been having. Sam tells Ian that he dreamed that he saved a grim reaper named Tessa from demons. Ian finds that HILARIOUS.

At his clown car sized cubicle later, Sam drifts off, only to have vivid visions of murder and monsters --and Dean’s in them. He bolts awake, and looks around disconcerted.

Sam takes a walk and ends up in the same elevator as Dean again. They eye each other warily. Sam asks Dean what he thinks of ghosts. TOTALLY NORMAL ELEVATOR TALK. Dean hasn’t really given them much thought. Vampires either. Sam decides now is a good time to corner a perfect stranger and tell him about his CRAZY dreams. That’s what a journal is for, Sam! Dean dismisses this crazy man and exits the elevator.

Sam starts researching (AW BABY) the monsters he’s been dreaming about. Ian interrupts him and tells him that he got an email telling him to report to HR. He’s not too worried as he heads off to his fate. Sam then hears Paul freaking out because he just lost a whole day’s work.

Paul stays way past closing time trying to find his lost files to no avail. His breath puffs. They must turn the temp down after hours at Sandover. He heads to the breakroom, sticks a plastic fork in the door of the microwave and sticks his head in the microwave, and hits cook. GOOD STUFF.

The next day, as Paul’s body gets carted away, the entire office looks on, including Sam Wesson and Dean Smith. Dean thinks there’s something weird going on. He looks up Paul’s personnel file (um, like whoa, how did he get access to that?) and learns that he was set to retire in two weeks. Curious.

Sam is curious as well, but Ian is too busy working to engage. Dean calls Ian up to his office. Dean points out that there were just a few errors in a form he filled out yesterday. Ian is very remorseful. Dean doesn’t think it’s that big of a deal. He just wants him to fix the errors. Very un-Ian-like, Ian starts freaking out over his mistakes. Ian runs to the bathroom and Dean follows. He finds Ian staring at himself in the mirror. His breath frosts just before all the water and soap turn on. He insists Ian leave with him. Ian turns to look at Dean, and stabs himself with a pencil. GUH. Dean sees the reflection of an old man in the bathroom stall door as Ian dies. Dean calls for help.

Dean is relaying the events to the authorities when he sees Sam looking on. Later, he calls Sam to his office.

For Thirst Science:

Sam and Dean learn that they both started working at Sandover three weeks prior. (Dean! You picked a hell of a week to start the Master Cleanse!) Sam asks Dean if he saw something when Ian died. Dean doesn’t quite admit it but he saw a ghost! Sam wonders about the suicides. “What if these suicides aren't suicides? I mean, what if they're something not natural?”

Sam brings up his dreams again. “So you're telling me that your dreams are special visions and you're some kind of psychic?” Lololololol. No, OF COURSE NOT. Sam shows Dean emails that Ian and Paul got that sent them to HR on the 14th floor --the HR office is on the 7th floor. Hmm. They decide to head to the 14th floor and room 1444.

Mr. Blandface McBlanderson heads there first. It’s an old storage room. The air gets frosty, electronics buzz on. Sam and Dean rush down the hallway after hearing the man’s cries. The door is locked but Sam Fucking Wesson just busts it open. Dean is duly impressed. Sam is too.

The ghost old man attacks Sam and Dean but Dean smashes him away with a wrench (an IRON wrench).

Decompressing back at Dean’s place, Sam longs for beer. “I’m on a cleanse,” Dean explains as he gets him a water. “I got rid of all the carbs in the house.” Oh DEAN.

At the end of this cleanse you chalk a pentagram on the floor, light a black candle, and barter your soul to get rid of those last five pounds

They compliment each other on their ghost fighting prowess. Sam “Boy Wonder” Wesson briefly tells Dean about how he feels out of place in his life. That’s SO MUCH oversharing, Sam! They decide to hit the research track. Dean finds………..the GHOSTFACERS.

We montage our way through Smith & Wesson’s research, interspersed with Ghostfacer tips. A guy named Sandover turns out to be the ghost - a workaholic who lived for his company. Turns out he’ll kill for it too. They trace a number of historical deaths to Sandover employees. It turns out that the room with the ghost attack was Sandover’s office.

The Ghostfacers continue to educate Sam and Dean on the finer points of ghost hunting: SALT. IRON. GUN.

Dean absorbs this, then wonders where one might even purchase a gun. Isn’t there a waiting period? Oh, sweet summer child. This here is the United States of America and it’s far too easy to get a gun. The Ghostfacers lesson continues...

Ed: The aforementioned super-annoying Winchester douchenozzles also taught us this one other thing. You have to burn the remains.

Harry: Okay, this next part gets a little gross. Sometimes you might have to dig up the body. Sorry.

Ed: It's illegal in some states.

Harry: All states.

Ed: Possibly all states.

Smith and Wesson return to the office to search for pieces of non-cremated Sandover. Sam gets cornered by a baby-faced security guard, leaving Dean alone to continue the hunt. In Sam’s elevator, electronics start to glitch. It’s probably nothing! The guard pries open the elevator door and crawls out onto the next floor.

The elevator slips and the guard falls victim to the blood cannon. Sam adds this incident to his list of Terrible Things That Happen in Elevators.

Sam and Dean reconnect by a historical display which includes Sandover’s gloves. Those gloves seem like likely candidates for remnant DNA...and in short order the ghost proves them right. Old Man Sandover zaps in as they break the glass. They fight!

Sandover looks like he’s got the upper hand, lowering his brain-zapping fingers to Dean, when Sam lights the gloves on fire. Sandover goes up like a torch.

Smith and Wesson are amped up after the fight! Sam wants to hunt ghosts full time. Dean scoffs at this. “How would we get by? Stolen credit cards, eating diner food drenched in saturated fats, sharing a crap motel room every night...You don’t want to go fighting ghosts without any health insurance!” Wise words.

For Look at this Well-Prepared Sunshine Science:

Sam confesses that his hunting dreams featured Dean as well. “What if that’s who we really are?” Sam wonders.

Dean defends the reality of his life. HE WENT TO STANFORD. His father’s name is Bob, his mother’s name is Ellen, and his sister is Jo. Excuse me. I’m just going to….stand outside my door and HOWL MOURNFULLY about this with the local coyotes.

“We’re supposed to be someone else.” Sam tells Dean that he started at Sandover because he broke up with Madison - but now her number leads to an animal hospital. (I swear to god, I’m gonna chew off my own arm at this show.) Sam says that Dean’s more than just a corporate suit. Dean shoos Sam from his office.

The next morning, Sam’s back at the daily grind. He steps back from his phone and then swings a crowbar at it, Office Space style.

Upstairs, Zachariah smarms his way into Dean’s office and clucks that he looks tired. He’s heard good things about Dean and offers him a generous bonus.

Zachariah hints that a big promotion could happen in 8-10 short years of constant work and sacrifice. The joy in Dean’s eyes fades. Dean turns it down and tells Zachariah that he plans to quit. “I have some other work I have to do,” Dean tells him. “This - it’s not who I’m supposed to be.” Zachariah smiles and zaps Dean’s brain. The camera desaturates.

“My god am I hungry,” a confused Dean observes as Zachariah chuckles. (Stop reading Goop, Dean! Get off that cleanse!) Zachariah explains that he’s Castiel’s boss, and he’s on Earth to ensure that the Winchesters fulfill their destiny - as hunters!

“You’re a hunter,” Zachariah explains. It’s in Dean’s blood. (I hiss at this.) And if Dean works hard enough, he’ll do everything he’s “destined to do. All of it.” GUH. Zachariah urges Dean to embrace his life. It could be worse, after all!

Semi-quote Kinda Life, Baby:

Good stuff

Did you try turning it off and then on?

Look, man, I don't know you, okay? But I'm gonna do a public service and let you know that you overshare

How the hell did you know that ghosts are scared of wrenches?

I don’t believe in destiny. I believe in dealing with what’s right in front of us

Most folks live and die without moving anything more than the dirt it takes to bury them. You get to change things

Want to read more? Check out our Recap Archive!

#spn recap #dean winchester #sam winchester #spn 4x17 #It's A Terrible Life #zachariah #supernatural season 4

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vtforpedro · 3 years ago

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long, long health update - tw in tags please read them

I am going to speak very frankly about suicidal ideation; please don't read further if this is triggering for you ;3; but please know that I love you I had my follow-up appt with my neuropsych on monday to go over my results and whatnot. it was virtual, and I was in the middle of a head episode and I told her I wasn't doing well, but within about 5-10 minutes, she was saying I should probably go to the ER lkajflaj I guess it looked pretty bad lmao anyway I told her all the reasons I couldn't. medical trauma, being dismissed b/c I have doctors who manage my headaches, and I know it's not life-threatening even if it is 10/10 agonizing, so why are you here. they're so dismissive. she said that they have medication to possibly help break the cycle of constant migraines but I've been treated with those before and they didn't do shit migraines are secondary to iih. it's the iih that needs to be fixed ._. she said I still deserved to not suffer and that the ER is very strict about keeping covid patients away from other patients and I didn't have the heart to tell her they intubated a covid patient 10-15 feet away from me last time I was in an ER 😭 anyway so the results. she said she wasn't worried about anything going on that was concerning or indicating something wrong in my brain. I DID score quite a bit lower for someone my age on information processing (which is exactly what I said I was struggling with to my two neuros who were both like ehhh) and some issues with memory but they weren't super specific and so it could be something neurological, could be my migraines and constant agony lmao, could be my Emotional State. could be all of them at once, I suppose ;) she went into more detail about some of these things but it was the two questionnaires I filled out that were HNNN. so once all the data is entered from like 300 questions it shows a good look into my personality and perceptions and all that and it makes a cool little graph (OR SO I THOUGHT). the kind that looks like mountain peaks. so she points at the one that is waaay higher than the rest and nearly touching the top of the box and she's like 'do you see this one' me: yeah 😬 her: this is your feelings and ideations about suicide me: 😬 😩 😬 her: when I see a score this high, I stop what I'm doing and I call the police to have them escort you to a hospital me: 😬😬😬😬😬 her: but I didn't do that. because when we spoke in office you told me you felt this way and why you don't do it. you told me it's something you've lived with for a long time and the pain you are suffering is what makes it so bad. and I trust you me: 😭😭😭 okay her: do you see this line down here? this is people who have suicidal ideation recorded on this test. you scored 98% higher on suicidal ideation compared to people reporting suicidal ideation HNNNNNN. she said it probably wasn't surprising to me and asked me if I was safe again and all that. I assured her I was and said in my previous appointment; I've had suicidal thoughts since I was like 12? maybe earlier. there have been very few times in my life not surrounded by abuse and trauma so I'm never really free of it. I've had four traumatic incidents causing increasingly horrible episodes of ptsd in nine years. all through my 20s. still here woo, lol and she said she knew that and had a patient not long after my first appointment who had similar circumstances in their life. and they told her it's almost a comfort having it. cause I was saying it's in the back of my mind at all times and I won't do it, but yeah, it's always there. anyway she said they said the same thing; it's always there, always in the background as 'hey I'm an option!' even though we aren't going to harm ourselves. it's a comfort knowing there is an option even if we plan on never using it? idk it just spoke to me and I felt it in my soul we talked about some emotional stuff after and I cried and it was a thing. it felt really good to speak to a psychologist who, just as she was in the first appointment, seemed genuinely concerned and wanted to help

me. I told her I was ready for therapy and she said she'd already looked for therapists for me lkasjdlkja and gave me a group that I emailed yesterday. I don't think they'll take my insurance but she said to message her through the portal if they don't and she'll try to find someone who does I don't remember if I mentioned it, but since she knew about the head shit before I met her, she dimmed her office lights without asking if I needed it and like as soon as we started the virtual visit, she leaped up and dimmed them and said she should've thought about it before the appt 😭 (I keep my brightness really low on my computer and use the warming feature 24/7 on comp and phone and my apt is really dimmed but it still helped a lot when she did it) she kept saying 'you did nothing wrong. it was the choice of others to do what they did. you don't deserve to carry their choices. you deserve to be able to hand it back to them. you don't deserve to be in pain. you did nothing wrong. you deserve to be free of what they did and you deserve to not suffer in such physical pain' I'm so wary of doctors but I really like her and I feel fortunate to have been referred to her ;3; speaking for a long time and especially emotionally is hard for me, so I might try to do two sessions a month once I find a therapist and see if I'm ok with that. trying to keep everything virtual while delta is out there I read her report and her official diagnosis is uhh really strong for major depressive disorder, severe. and severe ptsd with disassociative symptoms so!!! I claimed both of those on my disability application and the person handling my claim told me when I had this appt to call and let her know because she wanted the info. I signed a release the day I was there when I told my neuropsych that cause MH stuff is different than other medical records. she said she faxed it to the woman handling my disability application but I was gonna call her and ask if she received it and also tell her I have a new neuro so she will probably request his stuff too I called today and her voicemail box is full so lol try again later today's been awful. last night was horrible. got a bill for over $800 from my colonoscopy/endoscopy even though I asked numerous times if insurance was covering it and was told yep, every penny. so I was on the phone with insurance and the surgery center for 45 minutes. insurance seemed confused af but the agent I spoke with got some help from people who handle this stuff I guess finally she told me not to pay it, they're going to send them a letter to get it sorted (idk if this means I won't have to pay it at all or if they're going to try to make it that way. but I think govt insurance, which is what I have, works differently. like doctors kinda have to follow what they say vs. the other way around) and not worry about it for the next 30 days. I'm still gonna worry about it lmao they used a nice scare tactic on the bill that this was the 'LAST AND FINAL NOTICE' despite the fact they've never sent me anything else. my mom and the insurance agent said nah that's just what they do to scare people into paying fuckin love america <3 land of the free. the american dream! greatest country on earth 💜🖕💜 I just don't want it to go to collections and have to fight credit bureaus to get it off my credit so it's not destroyed |: anyway my head hit like 10/10 bad while I was on the phone cause of the talking a lot and trying to PROCESS INFORMATION and stress and also the fucking hold music, which I have to hear in some way b/c I gotta know when they're back on the line hnnnnn bad day. it's 1pm and bad, bad, bad day. bad month all around. I want this shit to stop anyway. I'm sorry about the suicidal ideation talk, but it's important to talk about that stuff. it can get severe but it can also get better. it does, eventually, even if it comes and goes. it always does get better I'm sorry, I also really needed to get this down somewhere. feel like I'm going to explode emotionally AND physically and I need to talk about it. hopefully

soon I'll have a therapist to talk to so I can get a lot of this stuff worked on. got my whole life to chat about so it'll probably take a long time but I'm willing to let it lmao therapy doesn't usually work for me anymore but idk I've had a lot of shit happen in less than two years so maybe it will this time I'm trying! I really am trying if you read this rambling monster, thank you. love you all and please stay safe

#vtforpedro personal #tw suicidal thoughts #tw suicidal ideation #tw suicide #tw mental health #tw depression #tw anxiety #tw mental illness #personal #medical #also she is obligated by law to report suicide risks and right now that's to the police so I can't blame her for that #we desperately need crisis intervention rather than fucking asshole cops but that's just what it is right now

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hangrypa · 4 years ago

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s/p first year as a PA

I was hired as a hospitalist primarily for the transplant service. However, in the setting of the pandemic and staffing shortages, I am all over the place now and work in almost everything non-pediatric and non-surgical.

In my first few months as a PA, I was incredibly overwhelmed. I went from being a learner who switches specialties every month to a fully-fledged provider making life-or-death decisions on an hourly basis. Oftentimes I’d find myself in the room of a patient actively crumping, surrounded by the patient’s family and multiple nurses awaiting instructions on what to do to save the patient. I thought that I faced a lot of pressure in school, but it was nothing compared to this.

And just when I started to get a hang of it all, the pandemic hit. What a nightmare. As mentioned above, I was hired to work with with transplant patients. Prior to the pandemic, my transplant colleagues and I were masking and gowning for almost every patient: 1 surgical mask and 1 gown per patient and per patient encounter. But once COVID hit, we were rationing PPE. 1 N95, 1 pair of goggles, and 1 face shield for the pandemic. 1 surgical mask per week, and 1 gown only if a patient had Cdiff or a history of MDRO bacteremia.

What did the pandemic mean for our transplant patients?

Our patients are on immunosuppressant medications to prevent transplant rejection. Unfortunately, this makes it difficult for them to fight infections.

Our department did what it could to prevent COVID. We'd test patients on admission for COVID, regardless of symptoms or exposure history. If they were positive, they went to the COVID team and quarantined on their unit for a period of time and had to test negative before returning to our unit and being transplanted. We took many other measures to reduce COVID risk to the best of our ability.

People still died. To see someone get transplanted successfully and then die of a virus is horrifying. Unfortunately, despite our admission tests, sometimes patients contracted COVID within the hospital. Patients would be happily FaceTiming their family one moment, telling them all of their plans for once they were discharged- then the next day they'd be intubated. We tried Remdesivir, Dexamethasone, prone positioning, etc. But the virus moved through them quickly, and these efforts often were too late. No amount of hoping and praying brought them back.

As a first year PA, I learned to go to an empty conference room, close the door, and remove my mask before calling to the family of the deceased. This way, as they gathered around the phone in their homes, the family could hear me unmuffled as I delivered the news. Also, this way my tears didn't ruin my mask for the rest of the week.

I learned a lot this year. It's been a mixture of crying and laughing. There are times that I question why I ever became a PA, and then there are times when this career feels like home. In addition to transplant, I’ve also been working in the ED, IMC, ICU, inpatient hospice, clinic, and infusion center these past 6 months. I’ve learned quite a lot along the way.

Lessons learned as a first year PA:

1. Check your pager hourly: This is in addition to checking it whenever you get paged. Sometimes I’ll get paged while I’m rounding, read it, and then forget about it. Now I go through my pager at every hour to ensure that I already responded to all my pages and then answer ones that I missed/forgot. On a semi-related note, a while back I wrote about good paging etiquette.

2. Let people know when you're out: I work a rotating schedule. As a result, it’s hard to predict when I’m in or out of the hospital. Sometimes I’ll come back on service and find urgent emails or texts that are a few days old. Now I leave an away message with my return date and my supervisor’s contact information on both email and hospital text. If someone really needs to get a hold of me, my supervisor has my personal cell phone number.

3. Be conscientious of what time you consult: I generally try to get all of my nonurgent consults done before 3pm. Many services have only 1 resident covering after 3pm, so I try not to page/call unless I have an emergency.

4. Call the nurse if something needs to be done urgently: Being a nurse means being the ultimate multitasker. Room 5 is due for his IV Amphotericin, Room 2's Foley is supposed to come out prior to void trial with Urology, Room 1's infusion completed and is beeping, and Room 4 is a bit altered and yanked out her PICC. Now I’m placing an order for Room 3 to get IV Lasix due to concern for pulmonary edema. However, the nurse may be preoccupied with Room 4 and not see the order in the computer for some time. If I really need to the patient to get the Lasix right way, I’ll place the order through EMR and then call the nurse and see what their situation is. If they’re crazy busy with Room 4 and likely to be unable to get to the Lasix within the next 15min, I ask whether they’re okay with me asking another nurse to give the Lasix now. Usually the answer is yes.

5. Value your nurses: Nurses know the patient best. They’re the ones answering call bells, giving meds, doing dressing changes, etc. Unfortunately they oftentimes bear the brunt of everyone’s frustrations, from patients to patients’ families to attendings to managers. Not to mention, they’re the ones doing the dirty work. Bedside nurses are the heartbeat of healthcare, but they also are high risk for burnout. Always support your nurses, whether that’s volunteering to answer a patient’s family member’s 17th phone call of the day or responding to a patient’s call bell yourself.

6. Know how to get a hold of someone quickly: It’s less than ideal to page someone repeatedly. At my hospital, if I need to talk to an attending urgently, I call the operator and ask them to connect me directly to the attending’s cell phone. If a patient is crashing and we’re not in the ICU, I dial the emergency number and call a rapid response, which sends people running into my patient’s room.

7. Plan your discharge meds from Day 1: The goal of every admission is to treat the patient and then discharge them safely. Send medications early for prior auth and call the pharmacy to make sure that they have medications in stock. (One time a patient’s insurance didn’t cover Levofloxacin, of all things.)

8. Keep social work and care coordination aware of all needs from the start: Does your patient looks unsteady? Place a PT/OT consult and let social work and care coordination know that the patient might require home therapy services and/or DME so that they can start looking at services and companies that may be covered by insurance. Does your patient have a central line? They’ll likely need a home health service to teach them how to care for it daily at home. Do they seem to require frequent transfusions? They’ll probably need labs on discharge. Is the patient’s living situation safe (no heat/AC, possible abuse at home, financial difficulties, etc)? They may need alternative housing.

9. The attending is not always right: Generally speaking, the attending has the last say on how the team manages a patient. However, I’ve come across situations in which an attending’s decision put a patient in more danger. Sometimes asking them about their decision can help steer the care plan toward better patient care. Other times you just have to stand your ground and be okay with being on the receiving end of an attending’s misdirected rant. Report these instances to your manager and to other higher-ups.

10. Always have gloves in your pocket: You never know when you’ll find a mess. Or which part of the body someone asks you to examine. Or how hygienic a person is (or is not).

11. Verify weird vitals: I was very new when I walked into work, opened a patient’s chart, and promptly bolted down the hallway when I saw a patient’s O2 sats recorded as 15-20s. I found the patient sitting up in bed, eating breakfast, and bewildered by me bursting into the room. Turns out that overnight someone mistakenly recorded his respirations as the O2 sats.

12. Remove whatever tubes you can: Anything entering the body is an infection risk. Does your patient still need that Foley placed by the surgery team? No? Yank it (don’t actually yank because ouch). Is your patient A&O and able to eat without aspirating? Remove the NG tube. Does your patient have good veins and require infrequent transfusions/labwork? Pull their central line.

13. Take a buddy with you to emergencies: Two heads are better than one. Even if you’re a seasoned provider and well-equipped to manage an emergency, you might need another body to help with performing CPR, making urgent calls, grabbing supplies, etc.

14. Ask your patients about premeds for procedures: We all have different levels of pain tolerance. A procedure goes far more smoothly if your patient is comfortable. Note: if you’re going to premed with Ativan or an opiate in the outpatient setting, make sure they have a driver.

15. Be good to your charge nurse and unit secretary: I don’t know how they do it. If I had to manage the unit’s signout, patient complaints, calls from other floor, being yelled at by providers, verifying paper orders, and finding beds for incoming patients- all at the same time - I’d lose my mind.

16. If your patient is mad, just shut up and listen: There are many things that you can’t control: the time it takes for a patient to get a room, the temperature of hospital food, the dismissive attitude of your attending, etc. And oftentimes the patient knows this. My reflex is to want to apologize for things and overexplain why different things are happening. But sometimes the patient just needs to rant. Take a step back and just listen. That can make all the difference.

17. Fact check your notes: The framework for your progress note often is the note from the day prior. It sounds obvious, but make sure that you go through the note and make updates and changes accordingly. If today is 01/15, there’s a good chance that the Fungitell from 12/31 is not still pending.

18. Try to learn some nursing skills: This is one of the areas in which I most envy my NP colleagues. If a patient’s IV pump is beeping or their central line need to be flushed, I oftentimes awkwardly step out of the room and look vacantly into the distance for a nurse. I’ve finally figured out how to spike a bag (albeit I do so very slowly, and it certainly makes the RNs giggle some). I talked to our unit’s nurse manager, and she’s willing for me to learn some nursing skills from the staff during a slow day- we’ll see when thing slow down!

19. Be kind: Generally speaking, being in a hospital is stressful. Patients are feeling out of sorts, and staff are working with constant dinging in the background. I rant plenty on this website, but I’m kind to everyone at work (with few exceptions) because it makes things more comfortable for everyone. Additionally, if you are always kind to your patients and colleagues, your reputation will speak for itself. One time I was walking down a hall with poor reception while on my ASCOM with a notoriously standoffish nurse from another unit. My phone cut out. She called my unit’s nurse manager to complain, and the nurse manager told her that I would never hang up on purpose. My interactions with the nurse going forward were always more pleasant in nature.

20. Support your team: The best colleagues are not the smartest colleagues; the best coworkers are the ones who have your back. Whether it’s a medical emergency or just a strange situation, it’s important to be supported and to give support.

I know that I’ve learned a lot more than this, so I’ll likely be adding to this throughout the year. Happy Snow Day, all!

#hangrypa #PAblr #physician assistant #PA-C #PA

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imaginetonyandbucky · 4 years ago

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The Buy In

Chapter 10: Epilogue

by @dracusfyre

"I feel like you're going to try to sell me a time share," Bucky said, studying the bland conference room Tony had reserved. It looked like probably every other conference room Bucky had ever been, as if they were all ordered out of the same catalogue; beige walls, carpeted floor that had the feeling of being beige while actually having flecks of red and blue in it, and the tables and chairs with wheels on them so they could be moved easily. Tony had even pulled down a screen and to all appearances, was setting up for a powerpoint presentation.

"It's all about presentation, Mr. Barnes," Tony said. He picked up a clicker and a red dot appeared on Bucky's chest, then started moving around in what Bucky eventually recognized as a heart shape. "Gotta know your audience and what they'll respond to. Too fancy, and they'll be scared off. Not fancy enough, and they'll feel like they're being scammed. A hotel conference room fits neatly inside that middle ground."

"You've put a lot of thought into this," Bucky said. He glanced at the clock, saw that they had a few minute before people were supposed to arrive and dipped his head for a quick kiss.

"Well, yeah," Tony started, but then there was a knock on the door. Tony opened it to see that part of the security detail started bringing in the refreshments for the meeting, coffee and donuts and croissants and other breakfast-style food that people would probably pick at and leave mostly untouched. "Natasha helped," he continued, poking at the refreshments table and rearranging everything slightly. "She's better at that side of things, the headology, as she calls it."

"I can see that." Bucky watched Tony putter. Looked like Tony was nervous, which was kind of adorable. "So you can't even give me a sneak peak at what you're talking about today?"

Tony shook his head. "For right now, you're a potential investor, not my lover."

"Ok, ok," Bucky said. He realized he was following Tony around as he puttered aimlessly and made himself stop. "So I got to see KT today. Brought him his laptop so he could start catching up on homework."

That made Tony stop rearranging the plates and napkins and turn to Bucky with a smile. "Good! So that mean's he is doing well?"

"Yep. Should be out of there soon. Any update on Rumlow?"

Tony's smile turned evil. "From what I hear, he's had a run of bad luck lately, such a shame. He lost his service pistol, which, you know, big no no. And did you know someone stole his patrol car, spray painted it, and left something unmentionable smeared on the seats? Then did the same with his personal car, which was found laying upside down in front of his apartment building?"

With a force of effort Bucky kept his face blank. "Strange."

"Very strange," Tony agreed. "Insurance didn't even pay out, mysteriously enough. Apparently they had dropped his coverage the day before and he hadn't gotten the notice yet."

"Crime in this city is getting really out of hand," Bucky said seriously. "He's lucky it wasn't something worse."

"Oh it will be, give it time."

There was that smug look again that Bucky loved, and he started to sneak another kiss when there was another knock. This time the security guard was escorting people inside, a middle-aged Black couple that looked around cautiously, like they were expecting the conference room to contain something nefarious. Bucky straightened immediately, trying to look professional, and smiled at them as Tony welcomed them inside, calling them by name and offering them a warm handshake. There was a steady stream after that, until the conference room was about half full.

"Hello everyone, let's get started," Tony said, taking a head count and looking at the clock. "All of you are here because you either were recommended by a friend or a family, or I sent you a personal invitation. Thank you for being willing to join me today for this presentation, and please save your questions for the end. As you all know, my name is Tony Stark, genius billionaire playboy philanthropist, and in this presentation I'm going to ask you for money." Tony grinned as almost everyone laughed. "Then I'm going to tell you what you're going to get for your money, and then I'm going to explain how you're not even going to notice that your money is gone."

As interested as Bucky was in the presentation, he kept getting distracted by watching Tony effortlessly charm the room, making eye contact with each person and joking just enough to keep people interested without derailing his speech. It was a warmer, more authentic show than what Bucky had seen at the Policeman's Ball and it made Bucky's heart turn over with affection as he watched. KT had been right when he said that the buy-in speech could make you a believer; not just in the astonishing amount of benefits that Tony offered to people who agreed to the buy-in, but because Tony's enthusiasm for the project was contagious.

"So why do you need our money?" One guy interrupted. "If you've got so much of it?"

"Good question," Tony said. He leaned against one of the tables, putting his hands in his pocket and crossing his legs at the ankle. "Yeah, the majority of the start-up money came from me. Since this organization is technically a nonprofit, I get to write it all off of my taxes, the way rich people often do. But I ask for your money because if I paid for all of it, then it would belong to me, wouldn't it? The whole point of this enterprise is to build ownership and equity in the community. You own the health clinic and the child care centers, the retirement homes and the apartment complexes. Not only does it mean you get to decide what to do with them, but it means that you start having a place at the same table that all of the billionaire developers and well-connected real estate moguls do."

"But the stuff about the taxes and stuff, where we just hand it all to you, that's tax fraud, isn't it? Which is illegal?"

"Well, yes, in a way," Tony said honestly. "You avoid paying taxes the same way rich people avoid paying taxes, by finding loopholes in the tax code and driving semi-trucks through them. But also, I'm the criminal, not you. If we get caught, I'm the big bad con artist that scammed honest folks like you out of your hard earned savings. There will be a class action lawsuit after the criminal proceedings, my lawyer will fight hard but not too hard to defend my assets, then they will eventually get divided up among all my victims in the kind of feel-good, good guys win story that is made for Hallmark TV. In the mean time, my job is to help the community fund the type of social welfare projects that the government should be doing but isn't, by taking from people who don't deserve it and giving it to the people that do. Which the government should also be doing but isn't."

"So this is like, socialism," a young woman said in accented English. "Instead of paying the government taxes, we give that money to you, and you like, do all this stuff with it."

"Pretty much. Grassroots socialism with a capitalist veneer. I like to think of it as stone soup, from the kid's story."

"But why?"

"Because it's the right thing to do," Tony said, like it was obvious. Bucky hid his smile in his hand and hoped he didn't look too besotted; he'd sat all the way in the back for a reason. "I don't know else to say it. Why should I have so much when others have so little? I give a lot it away, because there really are so many problems that can be solved by throwing money at them, but some can't. Some need systemic change, which means empowering people, which is what I'm trying to do. That's why it's a buy-in, and not a handout." There was still some obvious reluctance among the group, and Tony's smile turned a little sad. "Look, I get it. You are used to people promising a lot and not delivering. And you think this sounds way too good to be true, right?" No one really answered, but the way they kind of avoided Tony's eyes said a lot. "Let me tell you a story.

"So I've been donating regularly to the free clinic on 17th for a while now. A few years ago, there was a kid volunteering there because he wanted to go to medical school. But he was in a shit position - his parents made too much money to qualify for the grants and needs-based scholarships, but not enough to actually afford tuition or even qualify for good student loans. So the doctor in charge of the clinic emailed me and told me to do something useful with all of the blood money I was getting from Stark Industries, and so I did. I paid for his entire education, and he came back and is currently the head physician at the rehab clinic. So if you want there to be a catch, if you need there to be a catch so that you can believe what I'm telling you, then that's the catch - you have to try to give back at least as much as you were given."

There was a long, thoughtful silence after that, and Tony wisely let it sit for a while instead of trying to fill it with words. "You don't have to answer now," he said after a few moments. "The forms that you would need to fill out for the buy-in are right here," he added, tapping a stack of papers next to him. "Take one with you, and think about it. Any last questions?"

"Yeah, I got one," the young woman said. "I heard you stole Jeff Bezos' car, is that true?"

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A/N: If you enjoyed this story, come find me over at @marveltrumpshate where I will be participating in auctioning off TWO fanfics! One auction is a fic with art (with @massivespacewren) as WrenFyre and the other is a solo fic as Dracusfyre. All the money goes to a good cause of your choosing, so I hope to see you there!

#tony stark #bucky barnes #tony x bucky #winteriron #no powers au

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oimoi-op · 4 years ago

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when were you diagnosed with t1d?

Ok, so storytime! Short answer is, as of today, barely over two months ago.

(Very long post warning y’all, contains hospital mention and extensive, possibly upsetting descriptions of health conditions, specifically DKA)

My family doesn’t really have a history of T1D or even T2D, though my second-cousin-once-removed has had T1D for over a decade now. So, there was never any reason for me to try and get tests done for it. The only sign I really had up until last semester was two copies of a variant of an HLA gene that I knew about from a 23andMe report (which, according to the report, put me at a higher risk for celiac’s and nothing else), but of course at that time I had no idea that that could mean anything serious; after all, that sort of thing only happens to other people, right?

My college started in-person classes in the latter half of August. By October, I started feeling tired, having a lack of appetite, and needing water very, very badly. I actually went to my school’s clinic, and my erratic heartbeat prompted the doctor to recommend me for a Covid-19 test. My school’s protocols meant that I had to quarantine at my home (since I live within two hours of campus) until I got a negative test result. At home, I was drinking water all the time and sleeping constantly, and my parents had commented on how I’d been losing weight. I thought these were all good things. I had been slightly overweight at my high school graduation, and I’d always heard that drinking a lot of water is good for you, so I thought I was actually in excellent health even if I kind of felt like shit most of the time.

Well. Uh. I was wrong.

When finals came around in mid-November, I was just fucking tired. I’d get a decent eight hours of sleep and still have to take naps during the day. Hell, I was even late for work because I slept through one of my nap alarms. Studying was a pain in the ass. Attending classes was a pain in the ass. Staying awake for Zoom classes was a pain in the ass. I was waking up at 5 am to go to the bathroom, and then I would drink the rest of my water, refill it, drink half of it again, and then go back to sleep. Finally, November 20th rolled around, and I got to leave campus. It was my birthday (yeah I am a Scorpio and that weirds all of my friends out lol), and my parents took me to Fusion. And I just...couldn’t eat at all? I love hibachi, but I couldn’t even eat half of my food. The chef even got me a delicious banana split that I had to basically bully my younger sister into eating with me.

For the next week, I was sleeping about 18 hours a day. I didn’t think this was weird because I’d just had finals so yeah, it makes sense that I would be tired after exams and whatnot. I went shopping with my mom, sister, and sister’s bff. We were only out for a few hours, but I was fucking wiped out y’all, like in pain. Thanksgiving arrived, and again, I love food, I love eating, but I was not hungry in the slightest. I basically had to force myself to eat some of my favorite holiday foods just so I wouldn’t offend my mom, and then I didn’t eat for the day.

The very next morning, I was puking my guts out.

This started a pattern for the next few days: I would eat chicken noodle soup or some other food, sleep like the dead, and throw up every morning and every night. I started chugging large bottles of Gatorade constantly (which, if you know about diabetes and its health complications, did not help my situation in the slightest). I started breathing erratically after very little exertion. Like, I’m talking standing up and stretching brought about heavy, labored breathing. I weighed myself on my parents’ scale, and I was under 130 lbs. Now, for some people this might seem like a lot, but due to my height and build I could fucking see some of my ribs. That was when I started to realize that something was very, very wrong, but “losing weight is good” and I didn’t want my parents to laugh at me for voicing concerns (though, for all their faults, in hindsight, I doubt they would’ve). Yeah. Don’t do that, folks, that’s not a good mindset to have.

On Sunday, my mom took me to town to get tested for Covid. This was despite me saying that I didn’t have symptoms (which I knew very well due to some of my friends catching it at school). Rapid test came back negative, so I did a culture test. Hell, while I was sitting in the damn chair, I was about to pass out. I asked for a nausea pill but my mouth was too dry for it to dissolve. I got a cup of water, downed it all, and felt like my throat was on fire. For the rest of the day I felt so, so awful. At some point I was walking toward my bed in my room and I fucking fell. I’m fucking lucky there was carpet.

Regarding the rest of that night, things start to get blurry, for the lack of a better term. I legitimately cannot recall everything that happened that night or the following two days, so I will just try to explain it in the way I remember it best.

Around...midnight or one??? I was on fucking fire, so I went to my bathroom and decided to lie on the floor. The floor was hardwood and not at all cold, and it wasn’t fucking comfortable even in that state, but I was just in so much pain I didn’t even care. My mom must’ve heard because she found me there and asked me what I was doing. I said something about the floor. She asked me to go back to bed, but I must’ve scared her because she asked me if I wanted her to lie in the bed with me. I don’t remember what I said to her, but we were in the bed and she was trying to hug me, but she was too warm and so I told her to stop. I kept feeling this burning just below my chest, like there was acid in me (which I guess wasn’t too far off), so I would randomly sit up to try and alleviate the pain and not cry. I remember asking my mom to take me to the hospital in the morning.

My mom put me in the truck (I think around 5 am is what she told me). I remembered hearing my dad. I was lying down. Then I was awake, but I was on the floor. I thought this was wrong so I tried to tell my mom that but I guess I couldn’t talk. Then I was in a hospital bed, the ER I assume. My mom gave me some water with a sponge, and I was just so fucking thirsty. Then I was in the ICU hooked up to a bunch of machines. I didn’t know what was going on, but my mom kept giving me water with that sponge. That is all I remember from Monday.

I remember a little bit more from Tuesday. My mom said something about diabetes, but that didn’t make any sense to me because I wasn’t “fat” and I’d been losing weight, even! What had I done to get diabetes? I was thirsty and tired, so I slept a lot. At some point I really needed to use the restroom so I unhooked my IV???? (I mean I must’ve disconnected myself somehow but I can’t remember the details) which set off a shit ton of alarms and people were Very Concerned and kept asking me Why Did You Do That? But I just needed to go to the restroom, and they told me to use the Red Button to Call the Nurse (it was already there, and I now realize that we’d probably had a similar conversation about the Red Button to Call the Nurse possibly multiple times before this) in the future. A Chopped Teen Tournament from 2017 was playing on the TV nonstop. There were commercials for CGMs. I thought that God wasn’t being very funny about the whole thing.

As of now I remember even less of Wednesday, but I know that felt better. There was this diabetes specialist who kept talking about insulin and life at college moving forward, but I wasn’t really there, either because of being so out of it for health reasons, disassociating, or a combination of the two. My mom told me she had emailed a professor so he would give me an extension on an assignment that was due by then, and I remember crying because I thought that was just so nice of him. That night, this guy got me in a wheelchair and put me in another room, which I would later learn was the ACU. My night nurse was this nice woman named Tanya, who had a very thick Eastern European accent. She got me orange juice to take some potassium pills, but it felt like swallowing rocks. I didn’t really get a lot of sleep, so I was awake when the nurses changed shifts. I remember one of them expressing surprise that I was out of the ICU so early.

My mom took longer to come that day because nobody had told her I’d been moved. I’d had plain Cheerios and orange juice for breakfast, but I couldn’t really eat because my throat hurt so badly. I talked to a lot of doctors. I guess at this point or somewhere near it I accepted that I had diabetes, but it wasn’t really real until the same diabetes specialist was going over carbs. I thought I was never going to eat shit I liked ever again. I really wanted a fucking McChicken sandwich. I signed some papers for Medicaid because I had aged out of the CHIP while in the hospital. I finally texted my friends and explained to them what had happened. I was so fucking tired.

I got out the next day, so that was Thursday. Normally, I would’ve been in the hospital much longer (especially because my Medicaid hadn’t been approved, meaning no insurance had approved of my insulin yet), but Covid cases were on the rise and the hospital wanted me out of there. The diabetes specialist and one of my nurses snuck me two fast-acting and two basal insulin pens, and I was out. I ate half a McChicken, a small fry, and drank my first Diet Coke. It tasted like diesel mixed with piss.

That’s the gist of it. The hospital staff was very nice and thoughtful the entire time, I think. I felt as though everyone involved cared about my health a lot.

For those of you who aren’t T1D or just don’t know, what I experienced is called DKA, short for diabetic ketoacidosis. To simplify, I was very close to entering a diabetic coma. My sister later told me that our dad had said (I assume a doctor had told my mother, who, in turn, had told him) that I was “approximately 45 minutes” away from death. DKA happens when a diabetic (usually a T1D like me) has too much blood sugar in their body due to them lacking the insulin necessary to break the sugar down, so their body breaks down their fat reserves and muscle to get the energy it needs. This is why I lost around 50 pounds over the course of a few months (I was 118 lbs. when I entered the hospital, the lowest I’ve been since grade school). I was officially diagnosed with T1D on November 30th, just ten days after my 19th birthday, which is a little older than normal I believe. It’s...well, it’s not fun, but I feel very grateful for my large support system, and tomorrow I’m trying out a CGM for the first time and applying for both it and a pump, so things are really looking up

#personal #iamapincushion #t1d #type one diabetes #type one diabetic #dka #diabetic ketoacidosis #tw hospital #tw dka #i don't think you meant me for to respond with such a long answer #but #well #it's something i've been wanting to post for a while now and this seemed like a good opportunity

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zecretsanta · 4 years ago

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FIC: Four Times Hazuki Kashiwabara Almost Lost Her Kids (and One Time After They Found Her)

To: @mortellanarts

From: @grumpsterkitty

For mortellanarts for Zecretsanta 2020 – “Lotus and her kids on Christmas”. This story mentions a near miscarriage.

AO3 LINK

(1)

It was an accident.

An honest accident. Not like the ones that would happen at home.

She asked to watch the surveillance tape, after, once she had seen the doctor and she had reassured her that everything was fine. Even in black and white, she could see the horror on Wendy’s face as she tripped over the electrical cord. She replayed the moment when Wendy stumbled into her, knocking her into the copier. Watching as her pregnant belly seemed to compress to an impossibly small size.

If she had lost the girls, she probably wouldn’t have been able to forgive Wendy.

To be honest, she hadn’t forgiven Wendy.

Which wasn’t entirely fair; perhaps the bulk of the blame was on the repair technician, or whoever decided to put the copier against the west wall, which had fewer power outlets, or whoever built and wired the building to begin with.

The blood - her blood - looked dark grey on the video. It looked innocuous, like spilled soda.

She left the job three months after the twins were born, when she was sure they’d all be able to transfer to her husband’s insurance.

(2)

She cursed under her breath as she dropped the first aid kit. The alcohol wasn’t even in here, she remembered, as she saw the band-aids scattered across the ground. A tiny drop of blood slid down her ear and onto the Ace bandage.

The doorbell rang just as she managed to find the alcohol in the clutter under the sink. She sloppily splashed some on a cotton and glanced at herself in the mirror. The blood hadn’t gotten on her outfit, at least. The doorbell rang again, and again, and again, as she barreled down the stairs.

“Dammit, when did you get so impatient? Girls, Liz is early, are you done with -?”

She was cut short when she entered the dining room and saw their dinner plates still on the table, barely touched, and her daughters nowhere to be found.

“Girls?”

The doorbell ringing continued, but she ignored it. She went through the rest of the house, picking up the pace as each one was empty. She was only upstairs for what, ten, fifteen minutes? Just long enough to change and put on her damn earrings. She called out their names as their babysitter kept pressing on the doorbell.

In panic and rage, she stormed to the front door and flung it open, ready to scream. But it wasn’t Liz, just Nona and Ennea standing there with popsicles in their hands.

“We didn’t realize the door would lock behind us,” Ennea explained. The grating music from the ice cream truck got louder as it came down their street.

Hazuki allowed herself a sigh of relief before she chastised them. “You left, without even asking, to get dessert, before you finished dinner?”

Nona just shrugged while Ennea at least had the decency to look embarrassed. “Mom, come on. You know they’re the only one who have the blueberry ones we like. We’ll still eat our dinner. We promise.”

“We promise,” Nona reiterated. “Even the carrots.”

“Maybe half the carrots?” Ennea said, a grimace on her face. “I read if you eat too many, you can turn orange.”

“You eat too many blueberry popsicles, you’re going to turn blue. You have a perfectly reasonable portion of carrots on your plate and I expect them to be all gone when I’m done.”

Her daughter’s expression changed, from disgust to worry. “Mama, what happened to your ear? Daddy … he didn’t come by, did he?”

“No.” Hazuki kneeled in front of them. “Remember that paper I told you about? He can’t come here or he’ll get in a lot of trouble. It’s just been a little while since I wore earrings and my holes must have closed up. I tried to force it through and I shouldn’t have. Now finish up your dessert and eat your dinner.”

Her twins exchanged a glance before heading to the dining room. She took a deep breath and went back upstairs to finish getting ready. As much as she had wanted to wear her new jewelry, she could see the earlobe swelling up.

There would be time for wearing earrings, later. Now that she didn’t have to worry about her husband ripping them out of her ear.

(3)

It started to drizzle, but she stayed on the bench. She could see Deanna about to cross the street into the park. She had her hand on the stack of hundreds in her purse. Deanna waved at her and Hazuki clenched her teeth.

It was silly. Nobody had tailed her, she was certain.

Deanna sat next to her, seemingly uncaring that the bench was wet. Hazuki handed over the envelope of cash without a word.

“It’s definitely done?” Deanna asked.

“I think he could appeal, but he probably won’t. He didn’t actually want the girls. He just wanted to hurt me.”

“I hate men.” Hazuki must have made a face, because Deanna laughed. “I can hate men and still be a hooker.”

“I thought women in your price range called yourselves ‘escorts’.”

“We’re all the same. Just because I don’t stand on a street doesn’t make me better.”

“Well. Thank you.”

The smile faded off Deanna's face. "I've done this before. That wife wanted to get out of a prenup and take his money. Which I could respect. Guy was an asshole. Do you have a picture of your kids?"

The sudden shift in topic left her mental gears spinning for a moment. She supposed there was no danger in it; she had researched Deanna thoroughly before emailing her. She dug into her bag and pulled out her keys, with the keychain the girls made for her last year. The picture inside the heart-shaped frame was of the three of them, the girls flanking her on either side, all of them smiling.

As she handed it to Deanna, the other woman looked like she might cry.

"I see my boy a few times a year, and that's it," she said finally. “My ex didn’t have a problem with what I did when he got to benefit from the money I made. Then I found out he was having an affair and he needed to tell the court I was an unfit mother so I wouldn’t get custody and he wouldn’t have to pay child support.”

“System is biased against women.” She took her keys back and tucked them back into her purse. “I work hard, take belly dancing lessons, and already started dating again. That was enough to make the judge question if I was a good mom. If you hadn’t been willing to –”

“Nobody’s going to protect us. We have to do it ourselves.”

They sat there in silence for a few moments as the rain started to taper off.

“What does your ex do, exactly?”

Deanna snorted. “He works for a health insurance company.”

“Any idea how good their firewall is?”

(4)

“Excuse me? Hello? Does anyone work in this hospital?!”

The nurse who came over looked exhausted, with dark bags under her eyes; any other day, Hazuki would have felt bad being so harsh, but she had been there for almost ten minutes and hadn’t gotten a single answer.

“Which kid is yours?” the nurse asked in a near monotone.

“Nona and Ennea Kashiwabara. I got a call they were brought here.”

“Ah, the twins. Yes. I’ll find their doctor.”

“Wait, are they okay?” The nurse seemed to ignore her as she walked down the hallway. “Can someone just tell me if they’re okay? What the fuck is wrong with you people?”

She felt a hand on her shoulder and almost took the man’s head off when she turned around. He was entirely too tall, with a well-chewed pen stuck behind his ear.

“I’m Detective Lynch. Can I help you?”

“I just want to find my damn kids!”

“Kashiwabara, right? The staff here are a little overwhelmed, but your kids are in good hands. And your girls are okay. Nona has a scrape on her knee, but that’s the worst of it.”

“Did you interrogate them? They’re minors. You can’t –”

He held up a hand. “I met the detective who rescued them at the pier. I rode with one of your girls here.”

“Did you say the ‘pier’? The – but – I was told they were found in a building in Nevada. Where – what the hell happened to them? They were missing for days!”

Lynch opened his mouth as if to respond, but suddenly seemed distracted by something just off to her left. She turned to see what he was staring at, but he reached out and took her hand.

“We’re looking into it,” he said, his voice barely above a whisper. “When the nurse comes back, go be with your daughters. Take them home. I’ll give you my card.”

He barely took his eyes off her as he pulled out a business card and scribbled something on the back. He handed it to her and walked off without another word. His cursive was sloppy, but she could clearly read the message – not safe, text me, I’ll call you.

“Mrs. Kashiwabara? Your girls are in room 407.”

When she turned around, there was no one there but the tired-looking nurse.

“The … the policeman who found the kids, where is he? Is he still here? Can I talk to him?”

“No, ma’am. I think he went back to the station. 407 is this way.”

She realized she was clenching her fists and had crumbled up Lynch’s card. But the writing was still legible.

(+1)

“Are you really sure you’re both okay with this?”

Nona cracked open the oven and clucked her tongue. “Not quite. And yes, mom, although it’s a little late to ask again now. And stop eating all the deviled eggs, or you won’t have room for dinner.”

Hazuki rolled her eyes; before she could grab another egg, Ennea swiped the plate out from under her hand.

“Need me to help with anything?”

“Sure mom, you can make the cranberry sauce.” Nona handed her can and an opener. Hazuki sighed heavily as she cut the lid off and schlorped the dark red jelly tube into the bowl.

“There, sauce is made.”

“It’ll be good to see Mamoru again.” Ennea told her.

“Oh, you’re on a first name basis now?” Nona teased. “What happened to Detective Watanabe?”

“He hates formality and you know it. Did you know he shares a name with a porn director?”

“Seriously?”

“Girls.”

“It’s true, though,” Ennea insisted. “The guy did a film called Virgin Rope Makeover.”

“Did Mamoru tell you that?”

“No, mom, the internet is a thing.” Nona peeked in the oven again. “Ah, finally.”

Hazuki tamped down the urge to remind her daughter that the turkey pan would be hot and heavy and to be careful. She had never been one of those mothers while her girls were growing up, but ever since … ever since, it was hard not to be overprotective. As soon as Nona had the turkey out, Ennea put in the pie. And then the doorbell rang.

“Okay, please no mention of porn directors,” she told her daughters.

Ennea rolled her eyes as she set a timer and followed Nona out to the living room. When Mamoru came in, he had to duck his head to avoid hitting it on the doorjamb. He inexplicably had a large cardboard box in his hands.

“Hey, so, uh, hi. I brought wine, but then I realized I didn’t know if you liked red or white, to I got both, but the girls couldn’t drink it, so I got grape juice, but then I realized I didn’t know if they liked red or white, so I just got both of those, too.”

Nona took the box from him and grimaced as if she hadn’t anticipated how heavy it was. “No worries.”

He shrugged out of his coat and Ennea giggled as she took it from him and put it on herself. It was so big on her it was practically a dress, and when she held up her arms, it was clear her hands were where his forearms were supposed to be.

“I call it … Three and a Half,” she declared. Hazuki smiled and Nona chuckled, but Mamoru looked puzzled.

“Oh,” he said finally. “’Cause I was Seven.” With that, he let loose a loud guffaw.

“Go on,” Ennea told him. “Dinner is basically ready. Do you feel like carving the turkey? Mom and I usually butcher it when we try.”

“Uh, sure.” He followed Nona as she hauled the box of beverages into the dining room.

As Hazuki put her arm around Ennea, she heard Nona ask, “Is it true you share a name with a Japanese porn director?”

(fin.)

#zero escape #9 hours 9 persons 9 doors #mortellanarts #grumpsterkitty #zecret santa 2020

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raywritesthings · 4 years ago

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Bird in a Storm 3/17

My Writing Fandom: Arrow Characters: Laurel Lance, Oliver Queen, Tommy Merlyn, Thea Queen, John Diggle Pairing: Laurel Lance/Oliver Queen Summary: The confrontation between the Hood and SWAT on the roof of the Winick Building goes differently, altering the course of Laurel’s career, relationships and efforts to save her city forever, the shockwaves of such an altered path making themselves felt throughout her family and friends. *Can be read on my AO3, link is in bio*

The end of the next week started out as a normal day. More normal than the last couple weeks had been, anyway. She had gotten up early, moving about the apartment with care not to wake Tommy, and gotten dressed for work. This was helped by the fact that she finally had use of both arms again. Talk about taking small things for granted.

Since she could drive herself, she met Thea at CNRI instead of being picked up by her brother or his bodyguard. She hadn’t minded that routine, but she liked having the freedom of her own movement.

A few hours into filling out some of the preliminary paperwork for a deposition, she received an email on her computer. Their boss wanted to see her in her office.

“Thea, see if you can locate the Schmidt folder. I’ll be back in a few minutes.”

Laurel headed back into the office. “Hey, Eric. What’s up?”

He looked up, the slightest frown on his face. “Sit down, Laurel. And close the door.”

She did so. “Why do I feel like this isn’t a ‘just checking in’ meeting?”

Eric sighed. “Because it’s not. Look, Laurel, you’re one of our best here. You know that. And I don’t like having to do this.”

There was a but hanging so heavily there she didn’t even bother to voice it. Just kept staring her boss down.

“It’s our investors. The ones we have left, so you can imagine we need to do all we can to hang onto them.”

“Yes.”

“Which is why I’m telling you they’re not exactly happy to have you on staff here.”

“What?”

Eric held up his hands. “Look, everything with the Hood is kind of making them nervous. Makes me nervous a bit too, if I’m being honest. The guy’s unpredictable. And they don’t like his methods.”

“I’m guessing they like his choice of targets even less,” she said with narrowed eyes. It figured they were more willing to empathize with their guilty fellows than to care about the innocents the Hood had helped.

“The point is, they’re not comfortable continuing to support our organization while you have this- this connection to him. And Kate Spencer has had a few things to say about it as well.”

“Let me get this straight.” Laurel leaned forward in her chair. “They’re holding my job hostage?”

“They’re holding all of us hostage. If you aren’t gone, CNRI is. But, there’s one way they’re willing to reconsider.”

“And that would be?”

“If you were to make a public statement clarifying that you do not support the vigilante known as the Hood or his activities, they would be happy to see you remain on staff.”

“Happy to see me toeing the party line, you mean.”

“It’s out of my hands, Laurel,” Eric said. “You’re the only one who can help yourself here. Do you understand?”

“Yes, I understand.”

“I’ll expect your decision tomorrow.”

Laurel was able to register the dismissal for what it was, even if she felt detached somehow from this moment. Like this was happening to someone else, and she was only a passive observer. She stood and left the room to return to her desk, but it didn’t even feel like she’d been the one to move. Her mind was too busy racing.

The philanthropists who thought they were God’s gift to man for keeping CNRI’s doors open were getting nervous about her connection to the Hood. To Oliver. If she wanted to stay, she had to delegitimize his whole mission to save the city. But she couldn’t, not when it was the one thing she really had left to believe in.

“So I got that file you were asking for—” Thea looked up as she approached and paused. “Hey, you okay?”

She was a beat too late in responding, and she was sure her smile looked forced. “Yeah. Just, uh, had to go over some things with my boss.”

“Okay.” Thea was watching her, so Laurel pushed everything else from her mind for the time being. She didn’t want her friend to worry.

Her boss was giving her the day to decide, but Laurel already knew what her decision had to be. Without Oliver, she would have never seen Adam Hunt’s victims get back the money they were owed thanks to the judge Hunt had bought who she’d been due to present the case in front of; she’d be dead in the ground thanks to Martin Sommers and the Triad; Peter Declan’s daughter would be an orphan. There was no decision to make. Even if it cost her her job.

Laurel stood. She couldn’t maintain her composure here, and she needed time to think about what her next move would truly have to be.

“Hey, Thea? I actually need to take a half day today. I’m really sorry.”

“Okay,” her friend agreed uncertainly. There was almost a scared look to her eyes.

“Just ask Anastasia for any additional tasks, and you can go home whenever you want.” She shrugged into her coat and rolled her left shoulder a couple of times to work some lingering stiffness out of it. She’d been out of the splint for only a couple of weeks now, and her mandatory physical therapy had just drawn to an end. That was lucky; no job would mean no health insurance. Yet again, it was probably on purpose. No one would know better how bad the optics would look on firing an injured nonprofit employee than a group of lawyers.

Laurel paused alone in the stairwell and pressed a hand to her forehead. No job… what was she going to do?

---

Tommy was just getting ready to head out to the Verdant when their front door opened and Laurel walked in.

“Oh. You’re still here.”

“Hey, you’re home early.” He leaned in for a brief kiss, but Laurel turned her face so that his lips landed on her cheek instead.

“Yeah, there’s a reason for that.” Her smile faltered and then fell as he stepped back to look at her. “I lost my job.”

He dropped his keys. “What?”

“Apparently it has been decided that CNRI and I should part ways because the investors are making noise upstairs. Not to mention the DA,” Laurel explained. She walked around him, setting her bag down and kicking her shoes off along the way.

“Noise about what?”

“The Hood,” she admitted as she found her spot on the couch.

Him again. He only barely held back a groan. “Well, what about it? You told the police you didn’t have any information to help their investigation.” He eyed her sitting there for a moment, wondering not for the first time if that was true.

“They think my association with him sends a message. And they probably don’t like that he’s gone after some of their friends.”

“But that’s what he’s doing. It doesn’t have anything to do with you.” He walked over towards the couch as well. “Just because the Hood’s got some creepy thing for you—”

“He does not have a thing for me,” Laurel said with a shake of her head.

Tommy felt that was very much in dispute, but he set it aside to focus on the main issue.

“There’s gotta be something we can do. They can’t just fire you like that, after all the cases you’ve won them.”

“Well, they said I could possibly stay on if I publicly denounced the Hood,” she told him.

Relief hit him like a wave. “Okay. Good. At least they’re not totally unreasonable.”

“I’m not going to do it, Tommy.” Her voice and gaze were completely steady even as she was turning the whole world upside down. “I can’t.”

He only barely kept his voice below shouting. “Laurel, come on. What’s the problem?”

“It’s intimidation, for one thing. They’re trying to delegitimize what he’s doing. Stop people from taking his message to heart to keep them from fighting against the powerful and the corrupt in Starling.” Laurel crossed her arms over her chest and continued, “And anyway, it’d be a lie. I still believe in what he’s doing, and I think it’s a good thing. I don’t want to be a part of what stops that.”

“You do good things for the city. Think of your clients, all those people you’ve helped.”

“A lot of those people this year only got help because the Hood intervened. Hunt, Sommers, Brodeur, all of those guys would have walked away from a regular court case. The justice system in this city is broken, no matter how much I wanted to believe otherwise.”

“So you’re fine with him just breaking it more?”

“If that’s what it takes to keep innocent people from suffering.”

She was determined to be stubborn. There was no getting through to her, at least for the moment. Tommy threw his hands up and went to grab his jacket.

“How long did they give you to decide?”

“Tomorrow. I have to go in and clean out my desk.”

“Or to make your statement. I have to go to the club, but we’re not done talking about this.”

“I’ve made up my mind, Tommy,” Laurel said.

He paused at the door and shook his head. “Just let the idea of unemployment and no money sink in for a few hours, okay? It did wonders for me.”

He headed down to his parked car in a much sourer mood than he’d wanted to be in to start back at work. Laurel was determined and not listening to him. But if she wouldn’t listen to him, maybe…

He was going to have to swallow his pride on this one. At least for the moment.

---

Tommy was running late. Oliver didn’t mind that so much; it put off his plans for tonight. The longer he could avoid heading to Queen Consolidated to confront his own mother, the better.

And he soon received additional distraction in the form of his sister, who hurried up to the bar with a nervous sort of energy.

“Hey, what’s going on?”

“Ollie, I think Laurel was fired.”

“What?” He couldn’t have heard that right. “What for?”

“I don’t know. She went in to talk to her boss, and then she told me she was taking a half day, but Anastasia and some of the others started talking after she left,” his sister said all in a rush.

Some people talking was just gossip, but why would they assume Laurel had been fired? What was going on?

He spotted Tommy at last, and his best friend looked in about as bad a mood as he’d ever seen him.

“Ollie, you gotta help me out.”

“Laurel was fired.”

“Yeah, how’d you — oh, Speedy, hey.”

“Hey,” said Thea. “It’s true?”

“Not quite.” Tommy looked at him. “She says they’re willing to let her stay if she just makes a statement about how crazy and wrong the Hood is.”

Oliver didn’t have to feign his shock. “They’re firing her because of the Hood?”

“Yeah, well their investors are kind of his target profile, aren’t they? And he is crazy, I agree with them on that.” Tommy scowled. “But Laurel doesn’t.”

His eyes squeezed shut. “She’s refusing to make the statement.”

“She’s refusing to make the statement,” Tommy echoed in confirmation.

“Well, isn’t it enough that this guy got her shot?” Thea asked. “I mean, they have to know she’s not in league with him if he was willing to use her as a human shield.”

Oliver tried not to wince at the words or the disgust with which Thea spoke them. His sister wasn’t wrong to feel that way; it was one of his lowest moments, and he was still paying for the repercussions of it now.

And Laurel was paying for them perhaps even more.

Tommy’s anger had faded. He turned to him with pleading in his eyes. “I can’t watch her throw her life away on this guy, Ollie.”

“You won’t have to,” he promised. Oliver walked away from the bar and out to the back, swinging onto his motorcycle. As he drove, the comm hooked into his helmet activated.

“Oliver, we really need to get a move on.”

“Not right now, Digg.”

“Why not?”

“Laurel’s been fired because of her connection to the Hood.”

There was a pause on the other end. “Damn.”

“I have to talk to her. My mother can wait another night.” He knew he couldn’t put it off forever, but Laurel’s problem was far more time sensitive.

He went up to her apartment and knocked, and Laurel didn’t look at all surprised to see him when she opened the door.

“So, I take it you heard the news?”

“From Tommy.” He stepped through the doorway as she moved back, and he stood by the couch rather than sit down. Laurel shut the door and walked over.

“I’m going to make sure Thea is given another sponsor there to finish out her community service,” she told him, which caught him off guard for a moment.

“Well, thank you. But that’s not my main concern.” He looked her in the eye. “Tommy said there’s a way for you to keep your job.”

“I’m guessing he also told you I’m not interested in that way.”

His brow furrowed. “Laurel, this is an easy fix.”

She scoffed. “What about any of this is easy?”

“No one’s asking you for my identity. They’re just asking you to say what I’m doing is wrong.”

“How can I do that?”

“You just—” he struggled for the right word for a few moments. “—do.”

“But you aren’t — what you’re doing is complicated,” Laurel settled on. “And your methods sometimes have concerned me. I don’t know that I agree with everything. But it’s necessary work. For the state that this city is in, it’s needed.”

He tried changing tactics. “My father asked me to right his wrongs, to bring justice to the people who are poisoning the city. Letting those same people force you out of your job is directly counter to that mission. I can’t let that happen.”

Laurel only frowned. “Maybe it’s all about the mission to you, Oliver, but the people in the Glades don’t know that. What they know is that for the first time in years they have hope. They feel like someone has seen their struggle and decided to do something about it. How can I tell them that they are wrong to believe in that and then turn around and expect them to trust me to fight for them?”

He didn’t have an answer for that. They both knew it. Where he relied on secrecy and lies, Laurel had always kept her integrity when dealing with her clients. Letting her in on his identity had complicated that.

“How can I let you do this, Laurel? It’s your career, your life.”

“And it’s my decision to make. I would’ve made it knowing your identity or not, but at least knowing it gives me more than just a blind faith.”

Oliver didn’t know how Laurel or people in the Glades could have faith in him. He was a killer going after other killers. That was all. He wasn’t some hero.

“What will you do?” It was the only appeal he had.

“I haven’t figured that out yet. But I’m going to. You don’t need to worry about me.”

“It’s not that simple, Laurel.” He shook his head. “I’m always going to worry about you.”

She sighed. “Then I guess we have to settle for that.” She walked over to and sat on one of her chairs. “Look, I’m not happy to be losing my job, but I’d be even less happy if I compromised myself to keep it.”

“Nothing’s totally free from compromise. Sometimes we have to do things we don’t want to to keep going,” he said.

“But I haven’t been going anywhere at CNRI,” she replied. “All of my big cases this year have been won or settled because of the things you were doing as the vigilante. The law on its own has stopped being able to fix things in this city. Isn’t that why you’re out there?”

The problem was she was right. The problem, too, was that being right didn’t get her job back. He sat on the arm of the couch.

“What can I do? Do they need money? Different backers? I could—”

“You need that money to disguise purchasing your arrows,” Laurel cut him off. “And it would be your mother’s call as to whether Queen Consolidated became a full-time backer.”

Considering the little John had picked up from spying on his mother, Oliver doubted she would make the time or expense at the moment.

“Oliver, you set out to save this city, not my job.”

“Well, it’s part of saving the city. You help save it,” he insisted.

Her lips twitched into a smile despite herself.

“You’re really going to tell them no?”

She nodded.

Oliver sighed. That was the thing about Laurel; when her mind was made up, that was it. And unfortunately, he hadn’t made a single argument for why she should denounce the Hood that didn’t ultimately come back to keeping her comfortable. Laurel never cared about that.

“I’m sorry,” he told her. Ultimately this was his fault. He’d gotten too close, forgotten that while he’d protected his own identity with a hood that Laurel hadn’t had that same protection.

“It’s going to be fine, Ollie. I’ve already started a job search,” she stated.

He gave a small grin. “Of course you have.”

“So, you can tell Tommy that things will be okay,” she continued. “I know he’s upset.”

“He’s just worried about you.”

“Well, he seemed more angry at the Hood than anything,” she replied. “Do you think…?”

Oliver shook his head. “The less people that know, the better. And like you said, he isn’t exactly a fan.”

Laurel’s shoulders slumped. “Yeah.”

His phone buzzed, and Oliver checked it to find a message from Digg: Your mom’s gone home

“Something wrong?”

“No. No, I just missed something tonight.”

“You mean the vigilante did?” She stood and moved to the door. “Really, Oliver, I don’t want to be in the way of anything.”

“It’s fine. It wasn’t urgent.” Digg would probably say otherwise, but that didn’t matter right now. “You’re more important.”

“Well, now that you’ve seen I’m perfectly fine, I shouldn’t keep you any longer.”

He got up, meeting her at the door. “If you need anything,” he began.

“I know where to find you,” she finished for him. “Goodnight, Ollie.”

“Goodnight.”

As he left, Oliver did decide to take an early night. He wasn’t sure he wanted to go back to the club and Tommy empty-handed.

Laurel leaving CNRI because of the Hood. What had he done?

#lauriver #laurel x oliver #laurel lance #oliver queen #arrow #green arrow #black canary #my writing #bird in a storm

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tracykestler · 5 years ago

Text

36 and what a world I have seen

Honestly I’ve been terrible at journalling lately. Love handwriting in quill and ink style, but my current life leaves me exhausted after work and most of my time spent in education. But currently the Covid-19 pandemic made me consider the important world events I have witnessed.

Born in 1984 I lived in a world of rapidly changing technology but still being forced outside to play. We always had an Apple computer in our house for as long as I can remember. Played the Oregon Trail in black and white, then in color. That was the standard computer game of my childhood. Mom got us Mario Teaches Typing, probably the only “video game” I ever played at that point. AOL was a thing. All those CDs in the mail with updates. I never really got into it, but my twin sister did.

Also a child of the Disney Golden Age of animation. Dramatically influenced my life to the point I went to work for Walt Disney World after college. Still a Disney fanatic to this day.

Apparently my family visited Yellowstone National park (age 4? too young to remember anyway) then not too long after the park had the fire.

Was alive though not conscious of world events when the Berlin Wall fell. Watch the birth of CNN during the first Desert Storm when my dad was there overseeing some of the first drone flights. The military required a pilot on hand for those flights. He told us later how some Iraqis would surrender to the drone plane, not that it was ever one of the ones he supervised. And according to my mom I frequently asked to NOT watch the 24 hour stream of news because it was too depressing and I knew that’s where dad was.

Really started to pay attention to news (not that l enjoyed it but that’s the timeline for how chidden develop) during the O.J. Simpson trial.

By that point I had lived on both coasts of the USA, crossed country twice, lived in many different environments from Washington’s cold wet seasons to California’s deserts California’s coast to landlocked suburbia of Georgia.

Where I learned to drive, had a single Nokia phone for me and my twin in our tiny Cabrio convertible (I hate convertibles). Got a personal computer for the first time, where before it was a single family computer. The iMacs were coming out right when we were heading to college. My sister got the desktop, I got the laptop and have never looked back. Still have my gumstick shuffle iPod floating around and it still works.

Got to watch the insanity of Indecision 2000 and appreciate political humor for the first time.

I’ve been to 9 different schools for 12 years of school, not including college. That would make it ten. Was a freshman in high school when the Columbine shootings happened. Some weeks later we had a pipe bomb threat at our school which forced all the students out to the football field. From the top of the bleachers we could see the bomb squad and their dogs entering the school. All I could think of was if someone really wanted to kill at lot of people, there on the bleachers would be the place to do it. Then at some point in my adult life someone did it at a movie theater showing The Dark Knight.

Saw the images of the Oklahoma City bombing. Heard about the Unabomber. Watched the Waco Texas incident.

But my senior year was the time of 9/11. My math class was out in the hallway doing a math related science type experiment, can’t tell you what it was. But that day was the only day I have ever heard a school of nearly 5,000 students absolutely silent during class change. Thus Desert Storm part two happened.

Right before I headed off to college. So I wasn’t super savvy about applying to colleges. I only applied to one. Didn’t have a clue as to what I wanted to do with my life. I’ve done a wide variety of sports, been writing fiction since at least 10 years old, drew and painted fairly well, thought about doing animation or architecture (did a semester learning thing with a local firm, decided it wasn’t for me).

Ended up getting a degree in two foreign languages but not fluent in either. It did greatly improve my understanding of the English language. And I had the privilege of an exchange program for a school year to Japan, plus of study abroad summer to Germany. Would never regret any of that. Even if it didn’t get me a degree that got me a job.

Instead I went to Disney World as part of their internship program. Been in foods and hospitality for a significant portion of my life (thus far). Loved working there. Got to work with the Characters and it was fabulous. Even with the frustrations of all work environments.

But it couldn’t last. Minimum wage was raised, but the cost of living out stripped the earnings for a single person living alone. Prompting a move back home with parents to get another degree. Then the Housing bubble burst, loans defaulted, mortgage crisis, resulting in the Great Recession. It did get me a house in my name but basically an income property for my mom as her inheritance from my grandmother. All the while I’m going to school to be a nurse.

Now let’s not forget about the many weather crises I’ve witnessed via the news. Hurricanes Katrina, Sandy, Harvey, Maria to name the ones I easily remember. The Class 5 tornado that wiped out a midwestern town. The volcano in Iceland rerouting planes. The tsunami in Indonesia and Sumatra. The massive earthquake in Haiti. These are only the ones that easily come to mind without researching what happened during the years I’ve been alive.

Not to mention the diseases that I’ve seen via the news. First to mind was the Ebola outbreak while I was in nursing school. Saw the hype on the Swine Flue, SARS, Avian flu to name a few easily remembered. Those never reached me personally. Now it’s Covid-19 unfolding. Called SARS-CoV-19 now, but that later.

But its not all disasters. Went to the Atlanta Centennial Olympics still have the t-shirt. Was alive during the first black president.

Took part in the massive phenomena that was Harry Potter and still love it to this day. It showed me that fiction/fantasy could be a mainstream genre to write for. I started writing FanFiction at that time to fill in the long spaces between books. Started when fan fiction.net had the 7or 8 main characters to choose from for tagging. It was like the Wild West of figuring out what you were about to read. Learned about Slash, yaoi, lemons and such the hard way. But being exposed to it that way did open my eyes to what goes on in other people’s heads. Knew immediately that just because I didn’t like something didn't mean I had to hate on it. I left it alone once found and kept going. Really helped increase my tolerance to other cultures and thoughts.

Met my best friend on a role playing site and we wrote nonstop during our college years. Went to her wedding, have a lovely Renaissance style dress as a bridesmaid gift. Still am in touch with her. We don’t write together any more as we have moved in our lives with adulting. But I still have all those stories and hope to turn them into something.

Had my first camera cell phone in Japan as just a basic free phone. Was shocked to find cameras in the States were not standard. One of my friends in Japan kept doing selfies before they were called selfies. Blind positioning of the camera for pictures. Then came the iPhone and the world never looked back.

Joined Facebook when it required a college email. Used MSN messenger and Yahoo messenger to communicate with people around the world. Didn’t join the Twitter or Tumblr movement until after they became established. Saw the boom and bust of the Dot.Com bubble. Watched the Dow Jones numbers increase without the income to invest the way they said to.

Lived right above the poverty line during the Recession. Not knowing if I could make it the next month. Never being able to claim poverty on the tax forms. Caught in the income dead space of not being able to afford health insurance from the markets but in a state that didn’t allow for Medicaid expansion.

But I do not have the worry now thankfully.

Jobs wise I’ve been a telemarketer, dishwasher, a line cook, a hostess, server, janitor, assistant manager, and now I’m a nurse. I started on med/surg, ED, Cardiac, and ICU. In a small rural hospital getting smaller in a time when rural were shutting down because of no funding. They serve areas with a high rates of unemployment, uninsured, drug and alcohol abuse.

Worked at a busier hospital were no bed was left empty. Sicker patients. Work in a mid-size place. Some days super busy, some slower.

Covid-19 had the affect of somehow doing both. First few days was almost empty, now it fluctuates. Mostly rule outs. And the protocols are changing hourly which makes life frustrating for us. It’s the constant unspoken threat of going into work not knowing if you’ll have the right equipment to do the job. I’m not scared of the virus itself, not even of the collapse of the economy. I’m scared of the surge that will put my coworkers at risk.

I live alone (my little sister lives with me now) so very little contact with others. But they have kids and a much closer physical distance to their older parents. I know I will add days to my weeks if they have to stay out for any length of time.

So this is the first time a world event as truly affected me. It is a terrifying time which prompted this summary of my life so far.

I went into a restaurant and saw no one. I never thought I’d see that day. I don’t want people to loose their income, but if people were to go about their daily activities we would loose so many in one go. All I can do is my job.

The more I watch the more depressed and stressed. At work is worse.

I’m teaching myself a new craft because of this. I have taken up leather working to make masks. It helps the creativity outlet. I started drawing class early in 2020 and was set to continue drawing and add painting when the social distancing started. I admit it felt overblown in the beginning. Now the numbers are changing rapidly and we are really seeing what happens in close communities. Just keep working. It’s part of life now. No matter how much if feels like a movie plot line.

But back to other things I’ve seen.

LGTBQA and others coming into the forefront of society. Saw legalization of gay marriage. Quite thrilled with that.

Didn’t hear the term Asexual in reference to a sexual preference until my early 20s. Immediately recognized similar stories to me. Never had an interest in sex or having a partner. A name did make things more relatable, but I will never fully understand people who seem to base their entire existence on their sexual preference.

I’ve been call sir many times based on how I dress. I still sound like a female. Can’t fault anyone for using the appropriate pronoun for what they see in front of them. But that’s a culture that’s growing. Preferred pronouns. But I have to admit that an online friend referred to me as “they” despite a lady being in my username and it felt nice. So in honor of the Special Snowflake term that floated around, I’m an nonbinary aromantic asexual. Probably with a fem-romanitic leaning.

Saw the rise of the Millennials. I’m caught between Gen X and the Millennials. Now that all the Millennials are of age to vote, perhaps change is underway?

I’m back in college for my 3rd and then 4th degree. In nursing. Online. Watching the world combat a virus.

A US that is split down the middle politically. A world with more pollution problems than we can handle. Governments preferring to coverup mistakes and corruption than help their citizens. The term Public Servant is obviously not taken seriously in some places. See Flint, MI and their water. Lobbyists creating bills that benefit corporations rather than people. Politicians that never retire and keep getting lucrative reelection donations from those very corporations.

The rise of narcotic drug use, prescription drugs. Pill mills.

Sex scandals taking center stage in the news rather than things that actually affect daily life. Among things I will never understand is the fear of Transgender women in the women’s restrooms when it was always a straight conservative man who was the center of all these sex scandals.

Asexual brain at work. I simply do not understand. Conclusion: If you look like a certain gender, you’ll most often be treated as that gender.

What I do miss were the kid shows and cartoons in the 90s. They were super progressive with great literature themes. I knew the story of some of the greatest classic literature simply by the references in those shows.

Also the era of War on Drug commercials. Recycling promoted.

My favorite: Captain Planet. Not only was it pushing for a cleaner earth it had different nationalities. Stereotypical, but a far better representation than what I am seeing in kids shows today. It was diverse in that multiple skin tones were seen on screen together rather than specific skin tones marketed to that specific demographic. Now I do like how many more cultures are represented, I just want them shown in ways where color and culture is not the primary focus.

It also surged a desire to protect the planet. The knowledge that we need clean water and air. Educational shows like Magic School Bus and Bill Nye explained what is happening in the environment long before Global Warming became political. With the global shut in we see the world cleansing itself.

Now the marijuana legalization issue. No one has died from overdosing on weed. Unlike Alcohol. Yes smoke isn’t good for your health like cigarettes, but the complications are not as prevalent, well studied, or as life threatening with what is known. The disconnect of state legalization and national illegalities is mind blowing. I hope to see that break so we can study it.

Overall I know I have seen a lot of historical events and I hope to live another 36 plus years to see more. 3 decades, the change of a century and the change of the millennia. Y2K hysteria included.

The world is changing. The outcome is unknown. Peace be upon us all.

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prorevenge · 6 years ago

Text

A social media marketing agency fires me while being sick without any notice or explanation.

I worked for a social media marketing company. I'd been there almost a year and hadn't used any of my 14 paid days off. I was the only contract worker, but I didn't complain. The money was ok, paid the bills, and my degree was not in business.

It's Saturday. I got from a whole day of running errands, it was raining and nasty, I was wet and cold, I felt sick. I emailed to my team and HR that I'm feeling sick and will be updating them. I felt it's important because there was a big pitch the whole agency was bending over. On Sunday, I felt it in my bones. I wrote another email. I didn't want anyone else to get sick before the pitch. Monday morning I was pouring gallons of shit water from my ass. I threw up twice, couldn't eat, couldn't swallow even water, couldn't sleep, couldn't move, no health insurance. I sent another email on Monday saying I feel worse, sent what I was able to finish to my manager and the team and wished luck with the pitch.

It was strange that this time I didn't get any, "get better," "sorry to hear that," etc. I was so sick I wasn't thinking too deeply about it though and decided to mindlessly binge on Netflix. Tuesday morning, I'm asking if all looks bueno. No response. I'm texting to my manager because this wasn't normal. No response. Then, I couldn't log in to my email. I got locked out from my work email. Doesn't take a genius to notice that something wacky has been going on. I got all my shit from Dropbox and whatever accounts I had on an external hard drive. I started making peace with the thought that I'm being fired. I just didn't know what for.

The next morning I see an email from HR with the subject "Effective Immediately" and saying, "Due to your repeated absences and your abuse of the paid time off, it was decided to terminate your employment." That's it. No further instructions, nothing. I tried to call my manager, but he didn't answer. He texted me later that day to give the address where my belongings should be delivered. I was still sick on Thursday. On Monday I got an email asking to sign it and send back. No instruction if I should do it by mail or email, just a lot of words reminding me what was in my contract: confidentiality blah blah blah, non-compete clauses blah blah blah, company's intellectual property blah blah blah. It looked like it was copied from an online template. I asked HR to send me a copy of my contract as everything was on my company's laptop. The contract was worded the way that working or even contacting with their clients could put me in legal trouble.

I got another job almost 2 months later. With maxed out credit cards and a $3K loan, I felt little helpless. They treated me like a piece of trash. After winning the pitch the agency has been bragging on social media about how amazing and millennial they are. On the company's social accounts they were trying hard to turn every little thing into a huge win. For me, every day was harder because the new job sucked, I felt excluded and didn't feel I'm the part of the culture. So, I've been checking the old agency's social media like a maniac. It got so bad I had to delete the Facebook app from my phone and install some chrome extensions to prevent me from visiting their social media. I stopped going to the gym, was eating unhealthy, broke up with a girl who actually liked me over a stupid argument, was stressed, and felt like a loser.

One day they posted a blog with so much praise for themselves... I cringed. While scrolling through everything people were saying, I realized that their pride blinded them to anything but positive feedback.

After 3 months since I got fired, my bank offered me skip a pay or something like that for 2 next months and I used the $700 to buy as many fake likes, follows, views, etc., as it was possible. From 2K they went to almost 50K followers on Facebook. They were getting 300-500 likes on their Instagram posts, their Twitter also jumped high from only 200 followers. After a week the $700 got me, I decided to go full in for another week and added $500 to the revenge budget. I was more selective, knew more, had better sites for cheaper, I was posting comments everywhere praising the agency, I even created a fake site which was "featuring" the best social media campaigns and ads. I created fake 2 months worth of content in the form of "awards," "special features," and fake polls, and then featured this agency on the front page. Every comment was retweeted, shared, commented back, thanked. It seemed they enjoy the ride a lot. From 1-2 post a week before I got fired they jumped to 2-3 posts a day on every platform. They were so full of themselves they thought they got all of this with their hard work.

2014-2015 was the golden era of Facebook and social media for this type of activities. After over 2 weeks of the hype, suddenly, one of their most cocky posts of theirs got 0 likes. Null. These fools were so caught up in the chase of their 'hard-earned' success, they didn't even check who likes their shit, who follows them. Those were bot accounts, all of them probably in India, cheap as hell, from some scammy sites you don't want to associate your business or name with, or even your IP. The agency had almost 120K followers on Facebook at some point. Going from less than 2K followers to 120K, imagine how the engagement went down. All their organic posts were non-existent. The whole agency looked like idiots because it was apparent from the outside it's all weird and that the hype's fake.

They were trying to get that hype back they started writing useless blogs like more pointless and worthless content would fix anything. Their headlines were screaming "clickbait," their posts and the volume of images they were posting looked desperate. One day... Oops, their FB is "not available." They got blocked! Since there were hundreds of thousands of the same cases in review (blocked accounts for similar schemes, etc.) and they had $0 ad spend on that page, they would wait months to get their account back. They had to create a new FB page, a new Instagram account, and after they shared again the link with their "we're honored to be featured..." I replaced the URL to link to another business in San Francisco lol and removed their entry from the front page. I wasn't even aware at the time, but after these 2 weeks of imverybadass behaviour they lost a few crucial employees. I heard a rumor they left the agency in the mid-project and someone inexperienced, with no fucking clue and their own projects had to finish it. It had to be a shit show. The client refused to pay and eventually they lost every single client they had on a regular yearly contract. From 25 employees, in less than 1 year, they went to 9! I don't think they realize even now the ratios of likes to comments was suspicious. 2K likes on a photo post with only a single comment saying "Amazing!", posted by Rakesh Johnson from nowhere, with the profile pic of an anime character...? You need to be a true-born idiot to buy that, and they were "an agency."

They still have fewer FB followers than they started with before firing me. They gave up on Twitter. Instagram is also bad, no engagement, no regular posts. Overall, $1,200 bought me back my self-esteem, which I consider money wisely spent.

As of today, I've been talking to that girl I screwed up with and things are looking promising. I'm making more than my previous manager (according to Glassdoor), and he is still with the same company, not having any client on any sort of retainer fee. Only small projects, zero social media activity, almost a dead company, with no talent wanting to work there, and a bad reputation in the area Imagine, a social media marketing company gets kick out from Facebook... laughable. Bunch of egocentric people who got the taste of their own bitter piss. Sometimes I really want to add another nail in the coffin, but I'm a better man now. I moved on and don't consider them worthy of my time. This post is my final goodbye to this issue.

TL/DR: A social media marketing agency fired me for being sick. Got their ass kicked by their own ego and have been recovering ever since.

(source) (story by PierceJames)

#prorevenge #by PierceJames #pro revenge #revenge stories #pro revenge stories #pro #revenge #revenge story #last10

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fisherfurbearer · 5 years ago

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I would absolutely live to hear about Future Plans and heritage fruits! My partners and I are looking at buying a house by the end of the year and I'm so excited at the prospect of a back yard to fill with food plants and gardening and everything! So I'd love to know more about someone else's plans!!

mmMMMMMMMMMMMMMM YOU OPENED THE CAN OF WORMS THE WORMS ARE OPEN THEY ARE EVERYWHERE NOW!!!! OHHHHHHH JEEZ!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! NOTHING CAN STOP THIS!!!!

MMMMMM. I LOVE. DOMESTIC CROPS AND ANIMALS. SO MUCH.

SPECIFICALLY “heritage” varieties. The pre-industrial/commercial varieties that people lived on for hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of years, or even the stuff younger than that, it’s just...so!! Good!!!

You didn’t QUITE ask for this but this is where I’m going with it. I LOVE. LOVE. LOVE. The HISTORY of our domesticated crops (specifically fruits and vegetables, but mostly Tree Fruits!!!! But I’m also suuuuper partial to heirloom sweet potatoes/normal potatoes even though I don’t like the taste of sweet potatoes, they’re just SO FRICKING COOL and I want to learn more about other vegetables too) and animals is just....HOOOOO!!!!

Locally adapted,, perfect little....NUGGETS that just...perfectly fit their own SPECIFIC LITTLE NICHES...no matter WHERE you live, no matter HOW much space you have, no matter HOW good or bad your soil, NO MATTER WHAT, there is ALWAYS something to grow or raise, and we can thank so, so much of that to the incredible variety of heritage crops/animals (and methods of agriculture) out there. Mild, cold, hot! Lots of space, little space, no space!! Fertile, barren!! Every condition in every color and shape and flavor and size and ahhhhhhh!!!!! AHHHH!!!!

Hold onto your butts because this is one Hell of a Mega Ramble okay, there is so much to talk about here, oh man.

Some background, which you can skip if you want...!!! It’s a LOT and it get’s VERY NEGATIVE but also VERY GOOD AND HOPEFUL, it’s a real big story and it’s My Story and gives a lot of insight into Why I’m Like This but it’s okay to skip for sure!! Anyway:

I’ve been researching (i.e. writing literally 1.5-2k+ words nearly every single day) for literally 7 years now about all of my various Passions and Plans in life. Obviously breaks were taken due to Sad Times but no matter what I did, no matter what happened, I’d always come back to my dumb awful stupid notes. I have notes on my current laptop, my old harddrive, my SO’s laptop, my stepdad’s laptop, my SO’s OLD gaming laptop, my old netbook, my OLD OLD netbook, every phone I’ve had in the past 7 years (which has been like uhh...five? I have bad luck with phones..) and COUNTLESS pieces of paper and cheap composition books.

To call it research, it seems to silly. Writing these words here, to you strangers on the internet, I CANNOT EXPRESS TO YOU how VITAL these notes are to my VERY EXISTANCE.

I have been researching and writing and talking to folks and asking questions and LIVING AND BREATHING this stuff for LITERALLY, LITERALLY HUNDREDS AND HUNDREDS if not ALMOST A THOUSAND OR MORE HOURS at this point!!!! If we were to actually SOMEHOW backtrack all the way to late 8th grade/freshman year when I first started dipping my toes into reptiles and fell in love with my first jumping spider that landed on my arm after I read Darren Shan’s Cirque Du Freak, after being so fascinated by the intelligent giant magic tarantula in the first book, and gathered ALL of my notes from then to NOW (I’m 21 now, if I was in college, I’d be graduating next May) it would EASILY surpass that. For YEARS in high school my family thought I was always playing games on my laptop, but really from the moment I got home to the moment I went to bed, I was watching lets plays with one side of the screen and reading, reading, reading, and writing, writing, writing with the other. For HOURS. Every. Single. Day.

Hell, this has been my most recent “Renaissance” of writing, after The Big Realization of earlier this year (I’ll get to that), and this is AFTER I went on a horrible depressed/manic rampage and deleted like 80% of my notes (that would have been from...hmm. This is what I didn’t delete, what Jessie recovered, and what I’ve added...so March to Early September, when Jessie switched my notes to a new program (I lost a lot of notes from lack of autosaving so now they’re on our nextcloud so I can’t lose them...but I’m too stubborn to use it still) and this is still like. A lot.

Keep in mind the average 10-11 kb file is 1500-1700 words for me. My biggest files (only of the ones I still have, on this laptop) are 40-60 kb. (Also these are Big Secrets that I don’t ever show anyone but Jessie, who I’ve been with now for almost 7 years, so this is pretty dang important to me and a big thing to be revealing.)

Current folder I’m usually saving to:

Nextcloud I don’t bother to use usually but probably should use:

Again, this is ONLY on my newest laptop, and this DOESN’T include the files I deleted a few months ago, nor the files I lost from February-early April after Jessie updated my computer and wiped my files, and I still have a BUTTLOAD left on my old harddrive from last year, but we never moved it up and I don’t feel a need to. (I’ve learned so much. So. Much. In the past year. I think I’ve matured a lot and really become more...Me. But I’ll get to that.)

Also doesn’t include the SEVERAL notebooks I’ve filled front to back this year (cheap $0.50 ones from work...I’ve blown through a couple biggish ones and I think 2-3 little quarter-size memo books) and all the receipt papers I have crammed into my work uniform...

But anyway why is this important? It really helps iron in just how HUGE this is to me. My future “Plans” aren’t just...it’s really important to me. Okay? I am but a humble stranger on the internet and my life and everyone elses’ respective lives are infinitely more complex than we can ever dare imagine one anothers’ existences to be, but just trust me when I say that I’m not pulling this from nowhere, this shit isn’t some sort of “fad” to me, this has been a long, long series of events and realizations and heartbreaks and so, so much pain that have finally led to everything kinda falling into place sometime this year where it hit me.

You see...all of my research topics followed a pattern. It went, in my rough memory, something like this.

It started with reptiles. Lots of reptiles. So many reptiles. I was so naive and young then and my sources sucked and I was very much a novice who dreamed of owning all sorts of cool reptiles when I got older, and of getting a gecko when I went to college. That was how it started and it went downhill from there. I branched off into gardening (I wanted and still want a blue tongue skink and had thoughts about how I’d grow a garden for vegetables and squashes and stuff for the skink and feeder insects) and THAT grew into this whole THING about raised bed gardening, square foot gardening, then into permaculture, which planted the seed for many things to come...and now I’ve ALWAYS LOVED BIRDS,, but when I learned that keeping CHICKENS was a thing (thank you Jennifer (Nambroth)!!!!!!!!!! Our emails back and forth are still saved forever, our talks about chickens changed my life and way of thinking Forever!!!) and I researched that, then I’d jump back to reptiles again, and back to chickens, then more reptiles, then chickens and QUAIL, or OTHER poultry,, and so on and so on. This beautiful fluid branching path that would always rebound on itself and I’d drop some topics, gain new ones, revisit old ones, learn what I liked, what I didn’t like, what were brief interests, and what were there to stay.

Some topics (chickens, new caledonian geckos, antaresia pythons, tarantulas, gardening...) would always come back. No matter what I did...they came back. As I grew as a person, I started to figure out what was important to me (CONSERVATION, animal welfare, reptile/invertebrate enrichment, vivarium design, combining art with animals, and did I mention CONSERVATION? and combating climate change/The World but that came later.) and while some of those points didn’t show up in my research until later...like my obsession with native wildlife/plants and domestic species...it never went away.

And as I grew older, outside of my research life went on, and I really went through A Lot in these seven years. Undiagnosed anxiety/depression all through high school, practically living in the guidance office junior/senior year, dealing with an emotionally abusive and animal abuser teacher for many years, living with my emotionally abusive/narcissistic mother, and eventually going to an amazing art college and having both the best and worst time of my life (Hahah!! Almost straight As and skipped a writing class with my amazing scores and was top of my class, Dean’s list first semester, in the Visionary Women’s Honors society, worked in the admissions office and did lots of cool things, but hahaha also really wanted to die and was Destroying Myself) and trying to get help while keeping it a secret from my mom...lo and behold of course she eventually found out about the Depression when I had to go inpatient near the end of my second semester, and she. HA, I can’t even cry about this anymore. She literally disowned me (took all my money, sold my car, cut me off of health insurance, made me pay my own hospital bills, refused to do my FAFSA for college anymore, dropped all support, and later when I had to come home because I relapsed again and the college made me go on a medical leave of absense, she threatened to kick me out and call the police [hilariously enough though the house was owned by my stepdad, not her, so she couldn’t do anything. Also I never did anything to her and she was just crazy and made up excuses. But yeah not fun trying to walk to work and being threatened over the phone that she was going to have me dragged out of work by the cops and not to come home, hahaha!!!!!! But then also when I did live with my neighbor for a few days she was apparently so distraught?? Haha what a weird person!!!! I haven’t seen her for three years now and it’s been the best thing that ever happened to me. Don’t mourn for me, it’s SO Much better now. Speaking of, she was a PETA-hugging ARA nutjob and if she knew what I was planning on doing she would’ve disowned me either way!!!!!!), and of course fighting to be able to move out and rent an apartment with my SO (I hate the word boyfriend. It’s been 7 years come January 11th, and we’ve been through so fucking much. And she [my mom...] and other people always made fun of him being my BOYFRIEND that that word is tainted for me...so Significant Other it is) and then being forced to live alone there for a couple months,, and then even after that, the fights with his family, the car accident in November, my mom ruining all chances of me going to college (keep in mind I had after leaving college, spent the next TWO AND A HALF FUCKING YEARS OF MY LIFE trying to make it so I COULD go back, spent all of my time, energy, hope, eVERY OUNCE OF MY BEING trying to do so,,, and she manipulated me and then lied to me and made it so I couldn’t), my rebounding depression, my Intensifying Aggression (terrifying. Developed when I was in college...I guess it’s some kind of rapid bipolar disorder, maybe triggered by me going on antidepressants in college, they said. But it was so long ago and they never knew the full story for a proper diagnosis anyway. But it’s gotten manageable and We’re Coping), the housefire on Christmas, moving Once Again to the new place and being told I can’t bring my 15 year old cat (he’s with my stepdad still now but it’s not okay.), the rats have to be in the basement, and oh yeah if you want to attend college again loans will be nearly 13% interest hahaha!!! and then finally just straight up breaking down in February and not leaving bed for DAYS and nearly committing suicide, just the real worst time ever, and my former therapist/psychiatrist place weren’t responding (turns out they discharged me!! haha kinda hard to make appointments WHEN YOU DON’T PICK UP THE PHONE and we DIDN’T GET THE NOTICE IN THE MAIL because our HOUSE WAS CONDEMNED and my mail was being sent to my STEPDADS an hour away!!!!!!!! Also really hard to talk to you when you BLOCK OUR FUCKING NUMBER and HANG UP ever time we fucking call haha!!!!!! Literally on the verge of suicide and not on my anxiety meds for MONTHS but hey sure that works too guys!!!!) which really didn’t help, and yeah it was really just the pits! Just the absolute pits, the Very Worst.

Now at this point I don’t remember exactly when/what changed, but SOMETHING did.

Leading up to February, I wanna say it was about October that I started getting kinda weirdly depressed, and I started REALLY tanking after the fire. After the fire, I had to move back to my stepdads within the night, and had to live without Jessie again and commute really far and keep the tarantulas a secret and in general be very alone and very sad. I started wearing down and it was getting so hard to just...enjoy. Anything. Even just taking care of the pets became difficult, and doing art or researching was impossible. I just...didn’t care anymore. I stopped caring.

On top of that, my climate grief and general feelings of Despair were at an all time high, and I just didn’t. Fucking. CARE. What happened next.

I spent YEARS of my life WEARING MYSELF TO THE BONE trying to get into college, the get back into college, to just try to do this thing that I was supposed to do, my ONE hope of having a career and a future that I probably wouldn’t even be happy with (I was an illustration major. I liked drawing. It’s what I was best at. But looking back, I wouldn’t have been happy doing it for a living. And Moore [no that’s not what my blog is named for, it just also happens to be my last name] was a great college but it just...wasn’t worth $30k a year with no cosigner for loans, even AFTER my scholarships) and my body and mind were wearing down and no matter what I did I didn’t care about myself, my animals, my partner, my life, nothing. I can’t explain how terrifying that is. Of all the time in my life, I think this was the worst. On top of my life problems, it must be said again that my climate grief and Misery regarding the state of our country and the world was also at an all-time-high, and I just felt...POWERLESS. Powerless and empty and uncaring and dead inside. I really wanted to just...drive off a bridge or eat a ton of pills (which I did do a couple times, don’t do that. Please. It’s NOT worth it.) and just stop Existing.

But then something just...changed.

I don’t know what it was, exactly. But I got SOMETHING back. SOMETHING “clicked”.

I’m crying a bit now. It’s so stupid to say, but I truly believe this is what saved my life. Realizing my purpose in life. That everything fell into place and finally made sense.

I’m going to be a bit more concise here but...basically...many of my passions and smaller aspects of myself all fell into place, so PERFECTLY.

It hit me that...ah jeez.

I will digress one more second. For those of you who don’t know, I have two Eurydactylodes geckos, named Vladimir (E. vieiliardi) and Estragon (E. agricolae). They are named for my favorite drama that we read in AP English, Waiting for Godot. It’s an aburdist theater play about two men who wait under a tree for someone (we don’t know who, just that his name is Godot) and that’s about it. Everyone had a lot of different things to say about that weird little book, but my take on it was that it’s supposed to be what happens to two men when they lack a “purpose” in life. Existentialism, and all that. They sit there and sit there and completely lose themselves just WAITING for this guy that they don’t even remember, they don’t even know why they’re there, and they do nothing to try and change that. The difference between existentialism and absurdism, however, is that absurdism specifically discusses this idea of a Chaotic Universe, this Lack of Meaning, this pointless quest of humanity to seek value and meaning in a universe without reason. It’s a fruitless effort, it’s Absurd! But the beauty of absurdism, this tiny idea that stayed with me in the goofy names of my geckos (I chose the names because I thought the play was amusing and I loved the characters’ relationship, which is Quite Gay and so Loving and Charming it warms my heart, and I loved that they called each other “Didi” and “Gogo”) and really held true to my own life. I DO NOT believe that THIS is why this change happened for me, but it’s ironic, no?

Back to Absurdism, Absurdism says... “here is this meaningless, Chaotic, RIDICULOUS universe. There is NO reason for ANYTHING, there NEVER will be, you DO NOT MATTER, you DO NOT HAVE A PLACE HERE. There is NO POINT to anything. So fuck it, and try to find one anyway.”

My original therapist did not understand why I found this so wonderful and inspiring. It’s so rebellious and selfish, I LOVE IT. To embrace the Absurd is to take the bull by the horns and flip it upside down! It’s to stare all of this dreadful pointlessness in the Void, and when it says “Why bother? Why care about these insignificant invertebrates? These ridiculous reptiles? These ABSURD apples???” and flip the bird both hands and say “BECAUSE I WANT TO, BECAUSE I SAID SO, BECAUSE I AM HUMAN, AND I CAN!!!” It’s...also more than that, it’s this long, defiant lifelong journey, this stupid, ridiculous journey of fumbling about trying to find one’s place in a cruel, vast world, and finding oneself in that journey.

I love people. I love the ABSURDITY of humanity, of people, of myself, of others. A Huge part of my Future Plans has to do with People, and Community, and Changing my little patch of the world. It’s not much in the grand scheme of things, but I know it can make a difference to someone and myself and that’s what matters.

Anyway back to the Clickening.

Around that time I had a moment like that. It was as if something in my mind was screaming at me, listen. You are here, and you have always been here to love animals, to love life, to make art, to tell stories with your art, to raise little sheeps.

And like that, it started Something.

I agreed to go to a local doctor, and was put on antidepressants. I’ve been on them since late February. I also got accommodations for work, so I have two excused absenses due to mental illness each month, which was good, because they tried to fire me 4 times now and they haven’t succeeded yet. (I’m DAMN GOOD at what I do, I’m just Sad and Unlucky and Dumb, but I’m doing a lot better now!!) I started taking all of the things I learned in the past many years and what I’ve learned about myself as a person (I won’t talk about it here but I’ve always struggled with my Identity [not gender wise, just...with my mental health and my mood disorder, it’s really hard to know What is ME and What’s The Illness) and it all started falling into place. My needle felting, my love for animals, conserving native wildlife AND heritage breeds with restoration grazing and positive impact forestry, utilizing my Overwhelming Charisma (in person I swear I’m quite a good talker! Way better than my typing here!) for education, outreach, and farmers market sales, my love for life and my fellow human beings and my plans to work hard to help feed my local communities and encourage sustainable agriculture and the dismantlemant of capitalism Love of our native wilds and backyards alike (I also have Big Thoughts about getting native peoples input as well, but I need to research that more and actually talk to people, but that would be in future years!!), and so, so many things!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

That started in late February/early March now, and since then I’ve still had Really bad times, but I’d say in the past mmmmm...probably since late July? I think yeah since about then things have really taken great turns. I’ve Matured a lot, really embraced who I am and what I want to do, and while I KNOW my plans are going to keep changing over time (tentative goal is to look for/buy our property in 2025!! That gives us 5 years post-graduation to settle down and see how things go, where Jessie will be working, where we’ll be living, how my mind changes, all of that!!) but I KNOW in my BONES in my SOUL that this is what I have always been meant to do. To raise things, grow things, and to Care.

ANYWAY WOW HAHAHA YOU SURE DIDN’T ASK FOR ALL THAT BUT THERE YA GO THERE’S THE BACKSTORY, THE FIRST HALF OF THE WORMS!!!!!!

TL;DR: I’m a sad sap who is now slightly less sad and has Big Plans that were 7 years+ in the making and I want to take all my Big Thoughts about exotic welfare (well, reptiles and spiders mostly, but sure) and also apply it to DOMESTIC welfare and Make a Dang Difference!!!!

Okay now I’ve become very burnt out, I’ve been writing for like two hours now? So this part will sadly be shorter, but I will definitely write more about it again if you or anyone else has questions or actually wants to hear about it.

Basically...the amount of These Plans that I am willing to let you folks know, is uhh...oh jeez where do I even begin, haha...

Well it started small plans (early years of research, when I used to think a small greenhouse was Super Wild and Crazy) but nah bruh we goin’ full hog, literally. My plans are to get a decent sized property, still in my state, and have a HUGE focus on Sustainability and Positive Grazing/Management! That means rotational grazing to IMPROVE soils!!! Thinning the woodlot and clearing brush for the HEALTH of the forest!!! Reintroducing blight-resistant american chestnuts to restore our forests and support a healthy wildlife population!!!! Using both honeybees AND cultivated native bees [did you know that’s a thing???? You can buy native bee cocoons, like raised humanely, and raise them for pollinating plants!! Like Orchards!!] and grazing pastured pigs and chickens under orchard trees, while also providing BUTTLOADS of native flowers and domestic tree blossoms for native pollinators!! All that great stuff.

My biggest focuses would be raising practical heritage livestock for sustainable agriculture and conserving heritage fruit trees, with a focus on apples and pears. I also want to grow a lot of mutually beneficial/low-impact perennial resources...think honey, maple syrup, nut trees, stuff like that! And I want to graze on pastures with native grasses and locality-specific wildflowers (check out Ernst Seeds, especially if you live in/near PA like I do!! Wow it’s so frickin’ cool) and focus on northern european short-tailed sheep (finnsheep, gotland, icelandic, leader, shetland, and soay) and small landrace American hogs (american guinea hog, ossabaw island hog) and the more recent but so full of potential idaho pasture pig. I also want to raise icelandic landrace chickens for utility (parasite/pest management, composting), conservation, and eggs. I also want to raise rabbits (silver fox crosses for meat, and french angora crosses for fiber! I have a dream of producing high quality tri color angora for spinners...three colors on one animal, and I want them to be especially great for fiber artists who want to raise their own fiber animals but don’t have a ton of space) and I have BIG orchard plans...SO MANY ORCHARD PLANS, HHHHHOOO YES....SO GOOD...also COPPICE WITH STANDARDS and FORESTRY and HOO YES!!!!! I LOVE SOME GOOD OL FORESTRY!!!

I think the best way to describe my current plans standings is that it seperates into a couple different “zones”, for my Current Ideas. This has taken months and so many countless hours of thinking, researching, and ironing out, and I’ve made so much headway in just this past week, but basically imagine this...

It’s mostly split into two pastures, the orchard, and the woodlot.

PASTURE 1

Pasture 1 would be the largest, where we would rotationally graze two primary groups of ruminants. Polled NES-T sheep (finnsheep/gotland) and horned sheep (icelandic/leader) with dairy cows (dutch belted) as well. Dutch belted for milk and specifically cheese production, and they would be grazed in front with the icelandics to help take care of the taller grasses that the sheep would avoid, and help keep the sheep a bit safer. All would be guarded by livestock guardian dogs. Group #1 of the icelandic chickens would be grazed behind them, to help break up manure and disrupt parasite cycles.

Pasture itself would be mostly a big bluestem/little bluestem/indian grass/switchgrass mix, with a good variety of livestock-safe wildflowers (small portion being nitrogen-fixers like tick trefoils and pasture pea) and seed-producing flowers for birds (wild birds and our birds!). Would be rotationally grazed 1-2 days at a time (avg. 3-4 days total) with a 21-35+ day rest period. Polled NES-T sheep would be moved to “silvopasture” (copse with standards, a portion of the woodlot, with coppiced trees for fuelwood/timber interspersed with standard-sized mast producting trees [would double as nut and persimmon orchard, and hog foraging in fall/winter!!!]) in the summer to help them deal with the heat. Summer would be the best time, as it’s after the spring predator pressure and before the acorns fall, which could be bad for them if they ingest too many. Rams and hogs would otherwise graze this land with much longer rest periods otherwise (more like 30-45 days or so).

PASTURE 2

Smaller pasture with similar planting, arranged ‘paddock paradise’ style for a small group of icelandic horses (SO GOOD, and useful!! Little horse hooves are much kinder to the forest than a UTV, and herding on horseback is less stressful for the livestock) and rotationally grazed shetland and soay sheep. Pretty simple, but important. Would also contain Icelandic chicken group #2.

ORCHARD

Worthy of a novel all on it’s own. I want to grow semi-dwarf heritage fruit trees with the fruit drop type synced to the rotation of pastured hogs (idaho pasture pig, american guinea hog, ossabaw island hog) and group #3 of icelandic chickens. Hogs would be in orchard spring-fall, and in the copse with standards fall-early winter. Hogs and chickens would be moved to a holding area during rainy times to help preserve the orchard floor and during winter, where we would also have a large waste management/composting set up for them to root and turn to their hearts content. Should be a lot warmer than the outside in the winter too, and I plan on it being in a high tunnel/hoop house so its covered.

I am ALL ABOUT pairing livestock with crops and encouraging multi-purpose acreage in general, so this is definitely one of my FAVORITE plans so far, and every time I revisit it, it gets better. I also want to raise BEES (honeybees, mason bees, leafcutter bees!!!) for honey and pollination. I also want to plant BUTT-TONS of native flowers and goodies for pollinators, as well as lots of seed producing plants and sunflowers for the chickens to forage for by themselves. These would be some happy livestock, for sure.

WOODLOT

Another huge part of the plan is that I want at LEAST 1/3-1/2 of the property to be Woods. Only a small fraction of the Woods would be managed for livestock foraging and more frequent harvesting (still looking at a good 7-10 year coppice cycle though for trees) and the rest would still be tended to, with the help of the local forestry folks, but it would be preserved for wildlife and low-impact timber and nut/fruit/sap collection.

The VAST MAJORITY of the farm would be multi-purpose acreage for both livestock AND wildlife benefit (and people too of course) and I truly, truly believe and KNOW it can be done. In fact it HAS been done, IS being done, in so many different ways by so many different people in different times, and I know that I want to be a part of it and I can make a difference and use my weird passions for Good and make a dang difference.

Ohhh jeez I’m real sorry I didn’t quite answer your question though but I hope this gives a little insight into what I mean?? And if anyone has Specific questions after reading this (if you make it to the bottom, bless your cotton socks, I’m so proud and also distressed) I can definitely answer them a bit better than this. And hopefully much less...whatever this is, haha!!

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transgenderteensurvivalguide · 6 years ago

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hi so. basically. somebody outed me to my parents, who are incredibly transphobic. I'm safe for now but my parents are going to hospitalize me in an attempt to "fix" me. I'm trans male and I've known for years, but they refuse to listen to me and just say I'm delusional. I think I'm just looking for?? advice?? I don't really know what to do, or how to ask for help or anything. thanks :)

Lee says:

There’s a chance your parents are all bark and no bite and won’t actually try to do it, but in my experience with hospitalization, you won’t be admitted into a psychiatric ward for being trans.

If your parents are honest about what they’re doing because they genuinely believe that you identifying as trans is you showing psychotic symptoms, and they tell the doctor or nurses you see at intake that they’re trying to hospitalize you in an attempt to “fix” you so you aren’t trans anymore or that you’re psychotic but the only symptom you have is thinking you’re a man, there’s a very low chance you’ll be admitted.

If your parents lie about why they think you’re believing in delusions and make up fake symptoms, there’s a chance that the doctor will believe them over you. But even then, I don’t think you’d be hospitalized for very long, because in that situation they’d be trying to do a brief hospitalization to stabilize you and maybe start medication (sort of a catch and release type thing) and it would be obvious from what you tell them and your behavior that you don’t need long-term residential care.

Whenever you see a psychologist who is evaluating you, make it clear that you will not voluntarily consent to being hospitalized, and your parents are trying to hospitalize you because you’re transgender. Repeat this to every single adult you speak to from the emergency room to the ward and so on. You’ll have a better chance of getting out quickly if you do this, so make sure you repeat that to literally everyone you see.

If you are admitted to a psychiatric ward, you’ll get a packet of info on the first day that should have helpful information, and you can request to call the patient advocate person. I forget what they’re called, I don’t have the packet I got with me, but look through the packet and request to call whatever patient advocates are listed! If a patient advocate isn’t listed, then tell the staff you want to call a patient advocate and ask them to find the number. Keep asking if the request gets lost when shifts change.

Hospitalization won’t be that bad, esp if you aren’t mentally ill- it’s not the end of the world. Think of it as a really really boring short vacation, you’re in a room for a long time with not much to do and they won’t let you watch PG-13 movies. You’ll probably be allowed to color in your room since you won’t be a risk for doing something bad with the supplies. I spent a Lot of time coloring and looking out the window.

Here’s more on what to expect- read through all of them!

Hospitalization: a guide and what to expect