#winter bathroom

[not-available-for-comment]

So I work in a large institutional building with the sort of basement that Will have roaches, no matter how careful you are or how much you exterminate. Because the building is also very old, these roaches are the size of Buicks and utterly fearless as well. This circumstance has led to a phenomenon I call Winter Bathroom vs Summer Bathroom.

I work on the second floor (first floor for you Europeans), and it gets very cold in the winter. So roaches typically don’t make it to my floor in the winter months because it’s just not worth it compared to the relatively stable warmth of the basement/presumably they don’t survive if they attempt it. Once it starts getting consistently cold, I feel safe using the Winter Bathroom, which is conveniently located only three doors down the hall from me.

However. Ever since the summer when a THREE INCH roach took up residence IN THE TOILET BOWL of my favorite stall (my favorite stall!) and survived repeated dousing with toilet bowl cleaner (!!!) by the janitorial staff and was only evicted when I complained and someone hired an exterminator, I have not felt. Entirely at ease. In the Winter Bathroom during the summer months. I now continue using it until I see an inevitable roach in or near it once properly warm weather arrives, and then it is dead to me until autumn.

Once Roach Watch has posted an alert, I transfer my attentions to the Summer Bathroom. The Summer Bathroom has enough faults to keep it from being my preferred pit stop. It’s about 3x further away, down a different hall, and passes close to an office of people who may try to engage me in awkward conversations that I usually don’t have all my faculties available for if I’m nipping out for a quick piss mid-task. It’s also busier than the Winter Bathroom. However, crucially, the Summer Bathroom is in a slightly newer and much more recently renovated wing of the building, and I have never seen a single roach in or near it.

Anyway, my first roach sighting of the year was last week, so I’ve been working on remembering to use the Summer Bathroom since, and every time I think about the little ways we mark the changing seasons and how absolutely no one is ever going to understand the slightly elegiac tone of my first several pilgrimages to Summer Bathroom.

[crumb-crumblet-s-crumbington]

RE2 lethan AU where leon finds ethan hiding under a desk in the racoon police station

[valeovalairs]

I hate them actually <3

anyway my shitty rendition of the purps

[nayimi23]

Bathroom

[livesunique]

Grand Princess Maria Alexandrovna's Bathroom, 1850s,

Winter Palace, Saint Petersburg, Russia,

Water color by Eduard Hau,

Height: 35.3 cm (13.8 in); width: 24.2 cm (9.5 in)

Courtesy: Hermitage Museum

[honeycrispjamz]

precrash mistynat, 1992-1996

[wickerfemme]

cute little nuncore look

[bxby-ju]

I get dressed up to remind my boyfriend how lucky he is

[ibadbitch]

High mirror pics

[evidenceof]

the other day i imagined the kinds of postcards nix and dick send each other after after. if they fell in love during the war and never pursued it stateside (yk, true to life etc). dick never takes the job. lew never tries to force him. they marry who they marry but send each other postcards.

dick's are all from pennsylvania, if only to show lew existing buildings and street corners, 'this isn't hicksville, lewis.' sometimes dick gets a hold of postcards of places he'd like to visit and send them to lew. lew tells himself it's only out of curiosity, the need to be out in the world when he buys himself tickets those same beaches, mountains, and quaint little towns from dick's wish-i-was-there postcards. lew sends dick a different one of different views, an i-wish-you-were here from the same places. dick keeps them in an album beside the fading photograph of him and nix in their pinks and greens. when nix has had too much to drink, his handwriting loops together furious ts and js the same way dick writes in cursive on the back of landscapes.

at some point lew tells dick that he's terrible at correspondence. dick says he knows this, he has always known this. but he doesn't tell lew they've been sending postcards to each other at least once a month. because dick wishes he wasn't counting and lew's busy doing the same. lew sends two postcards from the same place to make up for it. dick's album runs out of space so he buys another.

lew keeps dick's postcards in different coat and touser pockets. he knows he likes finding dick everywhere even in the insides of his dinner jackets. the closest thing he has now, a measly substitute he knows, to falling into step behind his best friend. dick's postcards are folded and refolded, dog-eared and thumbed down. they fall out when lew fishes out his flask from the same pockets. once lewis almost abandons the latter altogether, when the postcard, mountains of austria, was caught by an errant breeze. on the back dick wrote that one of the cows had given birth, and that he had celebrated by having not one, but two (can you believe it, lew?), cups of ice cream. lew caught the thick rectangular thing in time, all new beginnings and old habits he wished he could witness. his flask now dented forever.

they never say, 'i love you.' but at some point they stop writing, 'your friend,' and instead sign off to say, 'yours,'

'always' is left unsaid but they never stop sending each other postcards. 'yours, lewis nixon' 'yours, dick winters'

[toyastales]

An elegant bathroom

[icewindandboringhorror]

sneeping with his legs up over his head for some reason... weird boye

[laxi0v0]

[aliengirl]

What's the point on living on a tropical country if its gonne be 5 °C

[dragons-and-yellow-roses]

Applying to an apartment with little income and terrible credit score, in hopes that they'll be desperate enough to take me

[softquietsteadylove]

This Year

"Gil?"

"Oh," he looked up from sweeping the floor of the shop, still wearing his suit and everything. He sniffled and swiped at his nose, "h-hey."

Thena came into the shop, letting the door drift closed behind her. She also still had on the dress she had worn to the school formal, with her white coat unbuttoned over it. "We turned around and you were gone. What happened?"

"Uh," he tried to turn around, pretending to sweep more thoroughly. He hunched around the stick of the handle, "well...remember how I was gonna ask that girl?"

"I recall."

Thena didn't really like her, but when he had asked her if he should ask, she had given him her support anyway. Thena was a good friend, like that. All their friends were.

"Well," Gil sighed, finally setting down the broom and toying with the tie that was loosened but still hanging around his neck. He must have looked so stupid, "she never showed."

"She stood you up?"

"Wait!" he rushed out, knowing that if Thena got out the shop door, she was going to run to that girl's house and throttle her with her bare hands. "I-I mean, I dunno, maybe she had something come up. Maybe...maybe she had something more important to do."

Thena walked closer to him by the front counter. She crossed her arms at him, "nothing should be more important, if she's the right person."

Gil sighed again, not done with his pity party. He still had the stupid flower he was going to give her, too. "Guess she wasn't."

Thena softened, losing the hard edges to her severe expression. Everyone always said Thena was so scary looking, and maybe he could see it if she was pissed off. But he never thought of Thena like that; she was actually really sweet and considerate.

"Then she's not worth your tears."

He sniffled again, but Thena reached up and brushed some off his cheek for him. It wasn't like he had any reason to act like a tough guy around Thena, anyway. After spending all their lives together, it wasn't like she didn't know he cried at sappy movies and videos of puppies walking for the first time.

"And if I ever see her-"

"Hey," he chuckled, grasping her hands in his before she could start naming the litany of things she would do to his failed date. "Look, it doesn't matter, okay?"

She still had a face that made it seem like it very much did.

"I mean," he shrugged, "just 'cause she talks to me in math doesn't mean she wanted to go out with me. Guess I could have thought of that before asking her, but whatever."

"Gil," Thena started and then paused. She liked to choose her words carefully. She looked at him, tilting her head because after hitting middle school he was finally taller than her. "You don't need her."

He chuckled, "thanks."

"I'm not just saying that as your friend," Thena continued. It was more words than he was used to, from her. "You are kind, and sweet, and as far as I'm concerned you are the only boy I have ever known to have any sense."

He snorted, "c'mon, what about Kingo?--or Druig? Or your own brother?"

"Certainly not," she rolled her eyes before paving over his interruption. "You are the best person I know and...and I would hate to think that you wouldn't believe me."

He did feel like the best, when she put it that way. He sighed, just staring at her under the hum of the fluorescent lights of the shop. He always thought they were kinda depressing, like in apocalypse movies, giving a weird tint to people's skin at night.

But Thena always looked so beautiful.

Thena raised on her toes, in the low heels she was wearing to match her dress. For having said that she was only going because their mother said that she had to if Ikaris went - which was a very Ajak thing to say - she certainly hadn't been lazy about her outfit.

Gil closed his eyes, smelling her perfume as she pressed her lips to his. He forgot about the broom, his arms looping around her back as she slid hers around his neck. He had never kissed a girl. He had - secretly - been hoping that tonight would be his opportunity.

This was far, far better than he could have expected.

Thena pulled away, her eyes darting around, looking at him and wondering what he was thinking. She must've let Sersi and Makkari do her makeup because her eyelashes looked darker and longer than usual. "Gil?"

He blinked, still just staring at her. He felt like he was king of the world, though! Man, kissing was way better than everyone made it seem. He had thought surely it had been overhyped, but no, definitely not.

"Gil!"

The rest of their friends also piled into the shop, also looking haphazard with ruffled hair and half buttoned coats. Sersi came charging in first, her hair bouncing around her. Ikaris slid in right behind her, looking the most frustrated. Makkari and Druig followed in after.

"Are you okay?" Sersi asked, "last I checked you were waiting for your date. Next time I go for some punch no one has seen you and Thena's gone too."

"Uh," Gil blinked, as if time had paused and now he was no longer holding - and kissing - Thena, but now Sersi was talking to him and Thena had slid three feet away. "Y-Yeah."

"Yeah?" Ikaris repeated, obviously not the one most enthused to have left the party. He looked over at his sister, though. Despite the rule that if Ikaris went, she had to go, Ikaris was still her brother (annoying and somewhat overprotective). "What?"

"What?" she asked back, even more defensively.

"What's wrong?" he asked more directly, walking closer to her as if he could smell someone expressing interest in her.

"Gil, are you okay?" Sersi asked him much more sweetly (what she saw in Ikaris, none of them would ever know).

"I'm okay," he smiled, nodding at her. The sting that had him dragging his feet all the way home and in here had faded. It almost felt totally healed, actually. "I, uh, got stood up."

"What?!"

That bitch. Makkari shook her head, although Druig was clearly in agreement with her, even if he was too much of an old soul to ever call a girl a bitch.

"Look, it's okay guys, really," Gil again tried to dissuade his much more bloodthirsty friends (Thena, Druig and Kari). "I think it might have been a misunderstanding, actually."

"You're making excuses for her," Thena pursed her lips. Although, given what just happened, maybe her distaste of his date wasn't just disapproval. He raised his eyebrows at her and she rushed to look away from him.

"I drive you all and no one can close a single car door?" Kingo huffed at them as he finally joined their little pity-party. He looked at Gil over everyone else's heads, "you good, big guy?"

Gil snuck another look at Thena, who blushed faintly. He chuckled, "yeah, I'm a lot better, now."

"Good," Kingo let it suffice. He had his moments of deep emotional understanding, always peppered in between his usual need for attention. "So, what's the plan?"

Everyone looked at everyone else, standing around in Gil's uncle's shop attached to their home.

"Uh, hey!" Gil smiled, finally tugging his tie off completely. "Gramps only ran out to get some pizza and stuff. I was just gonna lock this place up anyway. You guys can come in and...hang out, if you want."

"Party at Gil's!"

He smiled, relieved that he hadn't spoiled the night for anyone. Makkari and Druig happily linked hands and went to the fridges to pick out drinks for everyone. And he knew they would have no problem ditching the formal dance, dates or not.

Ikaris gave his sister another glare, but they were equally stubborn, so there was no way he was going to get any answers from her here and now. He let Sersi drag him away by the arm to pick out sweets.

Sersi did lean back to whisper to Thena, "I assume you went through with it."

Thena swatted her away, as well as Kingo, who gave her a look that seemed between Sersi and Ikaris' levels of knowledge. She ducked her head.

Gil swayed in her direction as their friends helped themselves to the family shop. He felt pretty confident for a guy who had been stood up on his first official date a mere hour earlier.

"You didn't have to invite us to stay," she advised him, also swaying in her hesitation to choose a direction.

He shrugged, pulling just one hand out of his suit pants pocket. "Hey, we should have some fun tonight, right?"

Maybe surprised by his optimism, she smiled. "I suppose you're right."

"Uh," he started and looked around, losing some of that confidence again. Thena just looked so pretty, it was hard to think straight. "I-I guess this is kinda lame, but..."

She stared as he pulled out the flower he had gotten from behind the front counter. "You got her a rose?"

"Well, I wanted to get something," he shrugged, snapping off the long stem like it was nothing. He chuckled, "i actually picked the white one because...it reminded me of you."

Thena let him slip the budding rose into the bun binding her hair together. She stared up at him.

"Sorry," he blushed, slipping his hands into his pockets again. "I'll pick you something more special, next time."

She smiled, visibly resisting the urge to touch it now that it was settled in her hair. She looked towards their friends, already heading towards the back door that would lead through his garage and to the house. She tugged at his sleeve faintly, "it'll be perfect."