You walked through the house you and Sommy were trying to make a home. It was hard to make a home when he was never at home. He worked a lot but he loved his job and sometimes you got to work with him. You were technically ‘a friend of the NYPD’ but the Special Victims Unit consulted you on cases where they needed psychological assistance or input from a professional on behavior.

You and Sonny didn’t get to spend much time together, not as much as you would’ve liked anyway, but he made sure every moment was special. He brought flowers and Chinese takeout home at three in the morning and you would watch a movie. You danced on the balcony at your old apartment. Every few months, he’d request a few days off and you’d would spend the weekend in a cabin upstate,the two of you.

You picked the mug out of the sink that Sonny must have used when he left for work that morning and poured yourself some coffee, looking around at the boxes in towering columns around your house.

Your house. You smiled, suddenly losing you bitterness towards your surroundings. You pictured a toddler, a little girl with Sonny’s eyes and your hair, your nose, his smile, slapping her bare feet against the hardwood. Your little fantasy was over when Ace came running down the hall, pounding down the hall, his giant paws making a sound similar to a herd of elephants. His tail was wagging furiously and he was showing all of his teeth. Sonny always called it Ace’s smile and he’d learned to do it on command. Sonny brought Ace home a year before, he found him on a bust and the dog was going to be taken to the pound otherwise.

You spent most of that morning the same way you had the past four mornings, unpacking boxes and signing for new deliveries.

Around 3 that afternoon, Sonny’s mother stopped by to drop off a dish full of leftovers from the dinner she had made for the two of you the night before. You hoped it was your lucky day and Sonny would call, wanting you to bring him lunch.

“Y/N,” she started in as she followed you to the kitchen. “The two of you have been here for four days and you haven’t unpacked yet?”

“Uhm...no.” Your voice was squeaky and cheerful, as it always had to be with her. “We’ve both been working.”

“Working? You’re home all day.”

“I have a job Mrs. Carisi.” You turned around with a huge smile on your face, trying not to react so she’d get bored and go home.

“You don’t have a real job. You went to school 12 years and for what?”

“My doctorate, Mrs. Carisi.” You gritted your teeth. She sighed.

“Don’t you have any clothes of your own? Everytime I show up, You’ve got on some lounge pants and a t-shirt of his, they don’t fit you,Y/N! He’s a skinny boy. He wasn’t skinny like that when he lived with me, you know.”

“Yes, well-“ you were interrupted by your phone ringing. It was Sonny. You snatched it up and answered it quickly.

“It’s Sonny.” You mouthed to his mother. “Hi, honey.”

“Hey, I’m going to take a break soon, think you could bring me lunch?”

“Yea sure, I’ll bring you some lunch.” Yoh answered in the same overly cheerful voice.

“Are you okay?”

“Yes, honey I’m fine. It’s so funny you asked to bring lunch because your mother just dropped in to give us the leftovers from last night, isn’t that so nice?” You were hoping he would understand.

“Oh, I see.” He chuckled. “I’ll see you in a few babe. I love you. Tell Ma I love her.”

“I will. I love you too.” You looked at the background on your phone, you and Sommy acting like goofballs in an art museum.

“Well?” Mrs. Carisi demanded.

“Oh! Um- he told me to tell you thank you and that he loves you.” She smiled. “He asked me to bring him some lunch so, I have to go. Thank you Mrs. Carisi.” You grabbed your keys and headed for the door but she scoffed. “Is everything alright?”

“Aren’t you going to walk me out?” Her eyebrows raised in a power play. She knew her hold over her son and so indirectly, you .

“Of course, how could I forget?” You turned back, linking your arm with hers as you walked her back to her car and closed her door for her. You threw up both middle fingers as she drove around the corner.

You walked to the precinct, taking in the sun and the cool breeze.

You never knew what you would walk into when you went to spend Sonny’s break with him. But you always went when he asked.

“Hey, sweetheart.” Sonny kissed your head when he greeted you.

“I brought leftovers, your mom dropped them off at the house.” You followed him to the break room, saying hello to Sonny’s coworkers as you passed through the bullpen. “How has your day been?”

“Oh, you know, the usual. Dirt, scum, shit. I made a bust, really pissed off some big guys, apparently.” He shrugged his jacket off and sat down across the table from you.

“Dominick...” his hand wrapped around yours, trying to ask you not to worry, but he knew you always would.

“How’s your day been?” He was chewing already, covering his mouth as he spoke.

“Dirt, scum, shit.” You smirked.

“I’m sorry baby, what happened?”

“Nothing, I feel like just as I’m making any kind of dent in the boxes, more just show up. And your mom, god.”

“What, Ace isn’t helping you unpack?” He grinned back at me.

“No, he definitely helped me make a bigger mess than what there already was.”

“Sounds about right.”

“Mom giving you a hard time again?”

“Again? It never stopped.” You laughed.

“I’ll talk to her about it. She’s only like that ‘cause I’m her only son. You know? She doesn’t want me-“

“I want my lawyer!!!” There was a loud yelling coming from the office, so Sonny jumped to his feet, you following after him. “I want my fucking law- YOU! Carisi!” The man screamed, beginning to kick and bump against the two cops bringing him to the interrogation rooms right past the break room. “Is that your little bitch Carisi?” The man spat at you on his way past the doorway.

“That’s enough!” One of the cops warned.

“I’ll make sure the same thing happens to her that happened to those other girls!” He kept yelling until he was locked in a room himself. You didn’t think anything of it, when they brought in suspects, obviously most of them were usually very upset, cussing, throwing insults, making threats, and saying disgusting things like that.

“You okay baby?” Sonny turned around, grabbing your face in his hands, checking you, even though you’d never been touched.

“I’m fine.” You answered statically. “That’s the guy you pissed off, I’m assuming.”

“You’d be correct.” He sighed.

“Please just be careful, baby.” Begging for his own sake. Sonny was the type of man to run into a burning building to save a kitten, which meant he got himself into all kinds of predicaments. Sonny’s eyes glossed over, looking at you apologetically. “Sometimes I wish you were a librarian or something.” You joked just to hear him laugh.

“I gotta get back to work, doll. I love you.” Sonny placed a kiss on your forehead. “Be safe on your way home, okay? Text me.” He threw his trash away and gave you one last look before he left the break room.

Your house was several blocks from the precinct but you didn’t mind the walk. It’s easy to feel like you’re being followed on the sidewalk in New York, but you had a feeling in your gut that told you that you truly were being followed. You weaved through larger crowds and took a couple wrong turns, trying to shake the feeling but you ended up hailing a cab. The ride home calmed you down, and Ace’s presence when you got home was enough to put the whole thing completely out of your mind. You texted Sonny, plopping down on your bed, which was just a mattress on the floor, Just got home, hope you have a nice rest of your day. Be safe out there baby. I love you.

It was around 8 when you woke up from the nap you were taking to 9 missed calls from Sonny, one from Olivia, and one from Fin. You opened a voicemail from Sonny.

“Hey. The guy you saw at the precinct today, his name is Emmanuel Cost, he uh- he made bail. It’s probably nothing, just make sure you lock the doors okay? I love you.”

And then the next, “Hey sweetheart, just call me when you get this honey, okay? I’m just worried about you is all.”

“Y/N, you need to get out of the house now. Take Ace and go to my moms, alright? Nothing happened, no news, just want you to be safe, babe, I love you so much. Please call me back when you get this.”

You jumped when you heard a crash downstairs. You tried calling Sonny back with no answer so you left him a short message, trying to be as quiet as possible, you covered your mouth and the speaker with your hand. “Sonny, I think someone is in the house, I just heard a crash downstairs, don’t call me back, just get here, please.”

And then you called the police, creeping downstairs with your baseball bat and Sonny’s gun tucked into the back of your pants, hoping you wouldn’t have to use it. As you got closer to the bottom you heard someone rustling through the boxes and when you got to the bottom you peaked around the corner to see a tall, broad figure in the darkness going through my things. He was in the living room, which was connected to the dining room so when he turned his back you ran as silently as possible across the hall into the kitchen. you placed your bat silently on the mat in front of the stove, pulling the gun from behind yourself and snuck through to the dining room.

You held the gun up, aiming directly for his head and cocked it, obviously drawing the mans attention. “I don’t know who you are or what you want but my boyfriend is a cop and him and his friends are on their way, so I suggest you get the fuck out of my house.”

“So you’re the bitch, that detectives little old lady.” He sneered. “You gonna shoot me, puta?”

“If I have to.” you were shaking, your whole body was, but you couldn’t let him think you wouldn’t pull the trigger. You heard sirens in the distance. There was no promise they were coming to your house, not in New York, but you prayed they were. “Sounds like I won’t though. You’re going to jail.”

He took steps toward you, moving like a tiger stalking prey. “I’m not going to jail.”

“Stop, right there.”

He didn’t. He kept coming towards you until you were standing face to face, your gun inches from his forehead now. “You know what I could do with you?” You could see a sick smile in the moonlight. He squeezed your face so hard your jaw popped.

“You’re not doing shit with me.” You scoffed. Before you could blink, he had slapped the gun out of your hand and punched you in the face. You fought until he wrestled you to the floor, on top of you holding your hands down with one of his. He got out a pocket knife, obnoxiously flipping it open and dragging the blade across your cheeks.

“Qué hermosa.” His disgusting breath rolling into my face so you spit in his. “Fuck! Little bitch!” He leaned back, to wipe the spit off his face and you fought as hard as you could to get free, grabbing the gun just as he grabbed your ankle and yanked you back. You slung your arm around and banged the pistol across his face. He fell on his side and when he looked up, he saw you standing over him, a gun pointed at his face.

“Y/N!” You heard Sonny scream as he burst in the door, gun held high.

Other officers were yelling, identifying themselves as NYPD, all of them surrounding the man on the floor. But you couldn’t put the gun down, you could only stand there, frozen, tears starting to roll down my face. Sonny took the gun from your hands. “It’s okay baby. Come here.” He wrapped his arms around you, kissing my head. “Are you hurt?”

You shook your head, sobbing into his bulletproof vest. “C’mon baby let’s get you to the hospital okay?” Sonny hooked his arm under yours, around my back after he wrapped his windbreaker around your shoulders. The sirens outside screamed at you as you stepped outside with Sonny.

“Dominick,”

“I know baby. It’s okay. Let’s go, let’s just go.” He rode with you in the ambulance and sat with you in the room while the doctor stitched your forehead and checked you over.

“You know, I’ve been thinking about today, you know?” He said when the doctor left to do your paperwork.

“Sonny, please, it’s okay, really.” Yoh smiled softly at him, trying to make him feel better.

“No, J, it’s not okay. I-” his face turned red and his eyes started to water as he sat back in the chair he had pulled beside your bed. “I’ve been thinking for a while now.”

“Sonny…” You croaked. You thought he was going to tell you it was over, tell you he loved you but you couldn’t be together, he didn’t want to see you getting hurt. “Dominick, don’t do this.” He’d pushed you away before over minor incidents with suspects calling your phone, leaving threatening letters at your old apartment. You knew something like this would happen, it was bound to with your jobs, and you knew he would blame himself for it and you prayed he wasn’t pushing you away for good.

“Please, just let me finish.” he gave your hand a squeeze. “I love you baby.”

“I love you.”

“You are the most important thing to me and I want you to be safe.” he started. “I will do everything in my power to protect you for the rest of my life, so that nothing like this ever happens again.”

“Sonny-”

“Baby, I want you to marry me.”

“Dom, I- What?”

“Marry me,Y/N. I know this isn’t the most romantic thing I could’ve done.” he chuckled. “And I-I don’t have a ring, I’ll get you one, anything you want. But marry me.” he huffed it all out breathlessly.

“Y/N, Barba is here to ask a few questions.” Olivia appeared in the doorway with Rafeal. “Sorry, is now not a good time?”

“This is the best time.” You cried. “Yes!” You looked back to Sonny, tears falling quickly over your cheeks. “Of course I will, Sonny.”

“What’s going on here?” Barba stuttered. Sonny’s face was red and glowing.

“I’m gonna marry her!” Sonny exclaimed, his own tears drenching his face now. He stood up, looking back at them before he leaned over your bed, hugging me tightly.

“My ribs, baby, my ribs.” You grunted.

“Oh right.” He sniffled, straightening out his shirt. “Sorry.”

“It’s okay.” Liv and Rafael both looked confused and slightly uncomfortable by Sonny’s outburst, Barba more so than Olivia.

“Well, congratulations.” She clapped her hands together.

You gave your statement to the Barba and the police handling the investigation. When it was all over, Sonny took you to a hotel near the station for the night

1 0    t o    w i n

‘OK Jeff. Which group supported Smokey Robinson on The Tears of a Clown in 1970?’

A clock sound effect ticks.

‘Um.. I think that were The Miracles’

Ding

‘Correct, well done! Question 10, listen carefully… name the song title and artist of the following 90s one hit wonder.’

‘You’ve got this, Jeff!’ adds the radio Dj, nonchalantly. Despite his genuine admiration at Jeff’s knowledge of music, he couldn’t make himself interested in the outcome of today’s Ten to Win.

And if you think

That I've been losing my way

That's because I'm slightly blinded

And if you think

That I don't make too much sense

That's because

I'm broken minded

Jeff did have this, he remembers playing a cover of it when he was younger. Suddenly he’s back on stage of the Hillsborough Working Men’s club, clad in freshly ripped jeans and a white T shirt with the sleeves rolled over his shoulders, thrashing his bass guitar like his life depended on it. Yes, he can see the setlist in front of him in his mind’s eye.

‘I think that was... Inside, by um Stiltskin’

‘Congratulations Jeff! That’s 10 out of 10, you really do know your music. You just won yourself a digital radio!’

Jeff feels immense elation having won the quiz, indeed this is the most exciting thing that has happened to him all year.

‘Aw fantasti-’

‘Yeah really well done. Is there anyone you’d like to give a shoutout to, Jeff?’

Jeff sits on the sofa in his living room with his new smartphone held next to his ear, wearing an old Aerosmith T shirt and dressing gown. The room is small and sparsely furnished, with a threadbare carpet and dated off white floral wallpaper. Beside the sofa is a small wooden cabinet. Across the room, next to a fireplace in which stands an electric fan heater, is a huge flat screen impulse-bought television playing on mute. There are no ornaments other than a few photographs on the mantelpiece and an ashtray on the cabinet. Old and yellowing white lace curtains droop over the window, allowing in a little light. In the corner by the window sits an acoustic guitar on a black stand.

‘Um, yeah.. There’s my cousin Derek, who’ll be listening at work’ says Jeff. His cousin wouldn’t usually be the first person to enter his mind, but hearing that track had started a flood of memories of his days in his old band, which Derek, or Del back then, was the lead singer, along with his best mates Tony and Gaz on drums and guitar. The memories bring a wave of nostalgia, but also something else.

‘Also my two sons, Will and Joey, they’re both at their mother’s today, but they said they’d listen t’ the show… um.. All the fellas at work and… and’

He stares at the bare wall above the television set. Suddenly his eyes feel weary and his face feels heavy. Another memory comes to him.

He’s sitting in the passenger seat of his uncle’s van with his bandmates, their equipment in the back. BBC radio 2 is playing over the speakers, for background noise and so the guys could complain to each other about radio stations never playing ‘real music’. In truth, Jeff quite liked the old pop songs they would play, but he wouldn’t have told any of the others. He liked and respected most genres of music, which was probably what made him the most talented at writing songs for the band.

A man had just lost a quiz and was asked if he’d like to mention anybody. It was always men or women of a certain age, who would proceed to reel off a pre prepared list of people they knew like they’d just won a BAFTA, usually followed by the line ‘and anybody else who knows me that I haven’t mentioned’, like everybody they’ve ever met is listening, and they can shout in all of their faces ‘Remember me? Look at me now! I’m on radio!’, Jeff thought.

‘Listen to this guy, makin’ such a big deal of being on the radio’ grunts Tony distastefully, his elbow resting on the window frame, holding a lit cigarette out of the window. ‘I bet this feels like his 15 minutes of fame. After he hangs up he’ll go back to being a fuckin’ nobody.’ The rest nod in agreement. ‘I tell you now lads’ he continues ‘we’re not gonna be like that. We’ll be on the radio alright, just not doing a stupid quiz’

‘Hopefully we won’t be played on a crap station like this.’ adds Jeff, earning him a few chuckles from the others. He didn’t like classing people as nobodies or successes, but he did agree with his mate. In fact each member of the band had a desire to make something of themselves. He supposed it was due to angst of growing up in a small northern town, however he was sure that in himself, and perhaps the others, it came from something much deeper, didn’t it?. It was about doing more with his life than he watched those around him do. He didn’t want to live in the future, in the past or only at the weekend, he wanted to really live for every second, following his passion and putting his heart into what he did; and what he was passionate about, more than anything, was music.

‘Jeff? Sorry I’m going to have to hurry you up’

‘Um yeah. Sorry. A-and...’ he lets out a sigh and a dry laugh, almost mocking himself.

‘And everybody who knows me who I haven’t mentioned’ he hears himself say.

The nostalgia recedes like an ocean tide, leaving him empty and all too aware of the present moment, the empty flat, the familiar silence except the sound of water running through pipes and occasional quiet whoosh of a car passing outside. The radio host says something but he isn’t listening, and he’s put on hold.

Jeff thinks of all the people who know him who he hasn’t mentioned. Other members of his family, who he keeps meaning to see more often, his friends he meets at the weekends to play pool and get drunk, and his coworkers, who he sees almost every day.

Cher’s ‘If I Could Turn Back Time’ plays in his ear, distorted and crackling, as he pictures the last 20 years of faces, and with the faces, memories.

The band had played regularly for three years, playing to crowds that increased in size each night, earning themselves a small following. One of their best performances was at a nightclub in Leeds, to a crowd of over a thousand people. The frenzy of the crowd was like nothing the band had seen before. People were jumping up and down and bouncing off of each other like one giant crazy pounding mass of screaming faces and waving arms that could burst through the walls. The energy that came off this thing was immense, like a powerful force that spurred the band to another level. By the end of the show, each member of the band was utterly worn out and dripping with sweat, the pickups on Gaz’s guitar were splattered with blood from his fingers (which they all found extremely cool).

It wasn’t just the performance that made that night so special for Jeff, it was also the night he met his wife. After the show, the band had gone to the club’s bar, where each had necked the most refreshing beer they would ever taste. After ordering a second they were approached by a girl with red lipstick and a big wavy hairstyle, who introduced herself as Debbie, saying how great the performance was. She was clearly drawn to Jeff more than the others, to his surprise. Admittedly, being the bass player, he was often overlooked by their female fans after the show, something that Del and Gaz would enjoy winding him up about. Because of this, and the fact he was still coated with sweat and had beer dripping from his chin, he didn’t expect her to be interested in him, but she was, and the two got on well. She had travelled with the band for a while before moving into Jeff’s flat. She saw Jeff as a perfect opportunity to get away from her parents, and the fact he played in a rock band was an added bonus. Perhaps she had rushed things a little, but she did suppose she loved him.

Six months later. The two are in the kitchen. Debbie is pregnant. The two had known for a while, yet neither had really mentioned the changes that were soon to come, especially regarding the band. Eventually she decided they’d avoided it for long enough, and brought it up one day before breakfast. She explained that having a baby meant that he’d have to get a job with a more steady income, and that he wouldn’t be able to travel as much with the band anymore. Of course Jeff had already thought about this, he just didn’t want to face the truth. On top of this, she also said that traveling with the band had had an effect on her as well, and that they weren’t spending as much time together as she’d like. This he hadn’t thought about. Obviously they weren’t the only couple to have thought about this, as a day later, the band were in Gaz’s living room, his girlfriend in the kitchen, when Gaz suggests that they call it quits on the band. They all eventually agree.

Del manages to get Jeff a job at Hardy & Co, the factory where Del’s brother worked. Jeff remembers being in the interview, sat across from some miserable looking manager, who had huge bags under his eyes and yellowed uneven teeth and sour breath, trying to explain his O levels and how hard he was willing to work blah blah blah, when all he could really think about was leaving his dreams and passion behind for a 9 to 5 job that meant nothing to him. He got the job and since then life had gone on like it does for most. He and Deborah got married. The baby was born followed by another a year later. At the factory he worked his way from floor assistant to supervisor. He struggled to think of anything that had made his life much different from the thousands of other ‘nobodies’ his age, apart from, maybe, the fact that his wife cheated on him. Then again that might be more common than you think, he thought, if television dramas are anything to go by.

Of course, he hadn’t spent his life in misery, dwelling on the fact that his band never became a major success. He’d had his ups and downs like anybody. There had been moments of immense happiness, such as his wedding day or when he held his children for the first time. In fact, until hearing that song in the radio quiz, he hadn’t thought about his band or old dreams in a few years. He never forgot his love of music either, as he was always listening to new tapes and CDs, and was known by his colleagues as the man to go to to settle an argument about who topped the charts in what year, or who played a certain song. He had a job to do all day, friends to meet at the weekend, and kept himself entertained in his free time, like everyone does.

Only seeing the years flash before him now made it seem so empty and pointless, leaving him feeling overwhelmed with regret and hopelessness and with a sinking in his chest. He felt like he’d failed himself. Like he’d let himself down. He couldn’t just blame himself though, and he started to feel irritated at the whole world for screwing things up for him.

His talent, his dreams, his passion for music had come to nothing. Well, he had gained one thing from it all; winning this radio quiz. Maybe he’d impressed a few listeners. Maybe he’d --

‘Hello? Is that Jeff’

Jeff stands up quickly when he hears the voice, remembering he should be ecstatic that he’s won the quiz, but unable to shake that strange mix of wistfulness and exasperation.

‘Yeah... still here’

When did I become such a fucking failure

‘Hi, congrats on winning today’s quiz. Could you please tell us your full name and address so we can send you your Sony D.A.B radio?’

This is what his lifelong love for music had come down to. This is what he had to show for it all. A Sony D.A.B fucking radio. Maybe he could show it off to visitors. Maybe people would ask him where he got it from, and he could tell them how he had won the quiz. It wasn’t much but it was something. He snickers at himself again, sardonically.

‘Yeah yeah, it’s um Jeff Stephens--’

The phone beeps.

‘Hello?’

No reply.

He takes the phone away from his ear and looks at the screen. Instantly he realises the stupid phone has hung up, like it keeps doing all the fucking time. I don’t even get the fucking radio. He isn’t sure whether he wants to laugh or cry.

He stands motionless in the silent room for a few seconds. The empty hole inside him has quickly filled with white-hot rage.

‘FUCK!’ he screams at the top of his voice, straining the veins in his face.

‘FUCKING SHIT FUCKING--’ he aggressively lobs the piece of shit smartphone at his guitar in the corner, smashing the screen, snapping the case and leaving a huge dent in his guitar.

‘PIECE OF SHIT’ he yells, his voice faltering this time. He collapses into the sofa, his anger becoming despair.

‘Stupid fucking phone’ he cries.

‘Stupid fucking guitar, fucking band’ tears fill his eyes.

‘Fucking job... fucking kids...fucking...all this shit’

He opens his mouth to say something else but doesn’t, and slumps back further into his sofa and he doesn’t move for a while.

Our Stone-Topped Coffee Table Hack

For everyone who has been asking for the details on our new coffee table (glimpses of it have made their way into my InstaStories over the last few months – and boy did you guys notice!), I’m finally writing up all the details.

How many words can someone possibly share about the hunt for and the creation of a living room coffee table that checks every one of their oddly specific boxes, you ask? Well, settle in. I shall regale you with a tale of woe and triumph and there’s even a random not-sure-it-even-works alien joke worked in there for good measure. Plus I’ll show you exactly how to get this exact coffee table if you want to pull this same hack at your house (it is BEGINNER LEVEL EASY).

Let’s back up for a second. You know how sometimes you dream about an item that doesn’t exist and you’re like “I like this one thing but wish it had that other top or that other wood finish.” Like you want to pull a Frankenstein combo move and merge three things together? That is exactly how my search for a living room coffee table has felt.

For ages we had a huge white padded ottoman and loved it. We literally kept it for like seven glorious years until it died a very slow death by flaking and peeling everywhere (we’d find little peels of it upstairs in our bedroom – it really got around in those final days). This is a picture from two years back:

It was perfect for small kids (no hard edges to bump into) and there was storage inside for games and blankets. A big padded ottoman is still my favorite living room tip for any family with smaller kids, but over the last few years we’ve started to really enjoy coffee tables since the kids are older. We have one at the beach house and it’s great for casually doing a puzzle or playing family games. There’s just something nice about having a centralized solid surface to you can rest things on and gather around.

And let me tell you, since upgrading from ottoman to coffee table in this living room, we have played SO MANY epic family games (Sequence or Ticket To Ride are near-nightly occurrences) and it’s really nice to use a room with a TV for way more than watching TV. Highly recommend it if your kids are old enough that the change would make sense for you.

But anyway, back my over-a-year-long coffee table hunt. I know. That sounds very high maintenance. I’m learning that I am, in fact, extremely needy when it comes to coffee tables. I’m ok with this fact. I’ve been called worse 😉

You might remember that last fall we bought a cheap secondhand coffee table for $35, just because the flaking ottoman NEEDED TO GO and I had been searching for a coffee table that I really loved for a while and couldn’t find one. So I basically was like: we are being crazy by holding out for this perfect thing, when all we need is something that’s cheap and fine in the meantime – so we can get that peeling beat up ottoman that literally drops “dandruff” all over our house outta here.

You know that saying: don’t let perfect be the enemy of good? We were literally living with terrible (the flakes everywhere were as maddening as inexplicably finding glitter everywhere), and for the cost of one meal at Panera we got a secondhand table that made zero mess and worked fine. We never should have waited that long. It was a huge step up. It wasn’t the perfect size or material that I wanted – but it was such a relief. No more shavings everywhere, plus it gave me a gift: the giant release of urgency to find that oddly elusive perfect coffee table.

Well, we got that “just for now” coffee table last fall. As in, over a year ago. And ever since I’ve looked pretty much everywhere, but this room is sort of an odd layout, so a rectangular coffee table is just too narrow. Even a very large round one feels too small in the room because it doesn’t connect the accent chairs as nicely as a larger square one does – which makes it feel like a legitimate connected conversation area. So after hours and hours of searching and scrolling… and even doing some in-person exercises, like trying a few different combos just to be sure (like a round coffee table two white leather poufs, etc) I was 100% certain I wanted a large square one. Like around 3′ wide by 3′ long. Big and solid.

Easy to find right? Well, to make a short story long (my specialty! Ha!), it wasn’t. Because I also wanted it to be a similar wood tone to the side chairs and the side table that we already had in there (the darker old “placeholder” table didn’t tie into anything and I didn’t love that – and I felt like metal legs would’t be as warm looking as wood ones with our old secondhand rug).

I also wanted it to have an extremely durable, water-ring-safe top so the kids could draw with markers or play spirited board games without worrying about the finish. Which led me to the following thought… “that sounds a lot like our kitchen island – which is polished quartz.”

Polished quartz is super durable, the shiny finish always looks gleaming and lovely, and there’s no worry about juice or wine stains like you have with marble. The kids do very messy art projects on the kitchen island, and everything wipes right off. It has just been wonderful for our family. But who the heck makes a giant square quartz coffee table with a wood base in the exact size that I wanted?

Nobody, that’s who.

So I was like… what if I make one…? Not exactly make it from scratch, but I bet I can find a nice solid square wood coffee table that I love (not necessarily the right wood tone, but that can be changed) and then stain it the color I want. And then what if I just go to a stone yard and buy a cheap remnant piece of quartz (we made our living room fireplace surround with marble remnants and it was so much easier and more affordable than I expected). And you guys… this idea that felt kinda hair-brained at first. Well, it worked like a charm.

It really was as simple as ordering this unfinished wood coffee table (I loved the shape of it and the x-details on the side of it – plus the fact that it was unfinished meant I didn’t have to do any stripping or sanding to get it back to a raw wood finish because it literally came that way). I ordered it on Amazon, it came within a few days, and I took it out of the box and assembled it.

After I wiped it down with a damp cloth to make sure no dust or weird dirt was on it, I stained it Provincial by Minwax (which is also what I stained our accent chairs a while back – it’s a great wood tone). I applied two coats of that in the garage, where it could air out – followed by two clear coats of Polycrylic matte sealer – make sure you get the blue labeled one that’s water based because the oil based one tends to get really yellowed over time).

Then we took a trip to the stone yard and I basically was like “TAKE ME TO YOUR LEADER! AND BY LEADER I MEAN CHEAPEST REMNANT PIECES!”

To anyone who doesn’t know about local stone yards and their remnant pieces, they’re basically the excess parts of the slabs that kitchen or bathroom clients don’t use (the stone yard cuts the counters for them, and some extra pieces of the original large slab are leftover). Since they’re smaller pieces for smaller jobs that typically wouldn’t work for a big kitchen island or a long span of cabinets, they’re traditionally marked at least half off. Our local place charges around $40 a square foot for quartz remnants, instead of the regular price which is usually around $90. For any locals wondering, we use Capitol Granite, who also made our kitchen island.

So for this huge block of quartz to top the table that is around 3′ wide by 3′ long, we paid around $370 ($40 x 9 square feet). Yes, that is NOT CHEAP. I had some second thoughts about if I was being extremely irrational and overthinking this far too much. So I did what any person who is teetering between “this is too much” and “but it’s exactly what I want” does, and I looked around for similar options to see if I really was getting the best deal, or paying through the nose. This gut check can be hugely helpful and illuminating either way it ends up going. And suddenly I felt much much better, because similarly sized stone-topped tables were upwards of $800 and in many instances they were $1,000 plus!

Even the ready-made ones that I found in those higher price points didn’t have all the features I was looking for (ex: wood legs, the right 3′ x 3′ dimension, good reviews, a quartz top that wouldn’t stain like marble, etc). Take this $1249.00 one for example. Suddenly the cost for my own quartz remnant ($370) added to the cost of the base that I bought (it was $149 thanks to the markdown they were running that day) didn’t sound that crazy. Especially for exactly what I wanted.

So yes, this coffee table was $519. Not the most expensive thing in our house, but definitely more than I thought I’d pay for a coffee table over a year ago when I started my search if I’m being honest. I don’t know what I expected, maybe under $300? But I can tell you that it completely meets all of my hopes & dreams for a coffee table, which I have since learned is surprisingly hard to do, so I can’t even be mad about that extra $219. Especially after the realization that I’d never end up with exactly what I wanted unless I made it myself. AND DANGIT THAT’S PRICELESS. Well, not priceless, but well worth the effort.

I love that it feels like something we’ll have forever and I really like how it ties into the marble on the fireplace and looks great with the kitchen counters too. Seeing the gleaming coffee table top between the shiny kitchen island and the stone fireplace surround is just lovely. In fact our son very enthusiastically proclaimed that he liked that the top of the coffee table is a giant coaster so they don’t have to use coasters on it. I laughed SO HARD (we have stone coasters in the same color/pattern – you can see one on the end table below). The table really is a giant coaster, so he’s onto something.

Oh and as for making a solid table even more solid, we added these satin brass corner brackets around the edges, because they blend in and stabilize it even more. See, when you put your feet up on a table over and over again, it can start to rock and not stay super square, and when it starts to rock back and forth, you have to worry about it loosening and continuing to rock more and more. And in an extreme situation it could eventually collapse. These hold it square. No rocking = no getting rickety or unsteady. Such an easy way to add even more strength and it only took a few minutes to screw them in (we predrilled small holes so they went in smoothly).

This thing is SOLID. As in, the kids can’t move it. Not an inch. Which is kind of nice because they used to push the ottoman all over the place – and it would do that annoying thing to us where it slipped out from under our feet sometimes when we both had our feet up on it. This stays put. We also used a few dabs of adhesive to attach the quartz to the tabletop, just because we worried that it might shift somehow over time. Although once we got it home we were like… this is so heavy it probably won’t ever move. But it’s better to be safe than sorry.

Oh and one more tip: order the coffee table first & assemble it so you can measure the exact size of the top. Sometimes every single table varies slightly, and you want to get a remnant piece of quartz that’s around 1.5″ wider and 1.5″ longer than your tabletop so it has a 3/4″ overhang on all sides, which looks really proportional and doesn’t read like an afterthought.

So that’s it! The story of Frankenstein-ing a few things together to get exactly what I had been hoping to find. Life will not end if your coffee table doesn’t do everything you want it to, or fit into the room as well as you’d like, or if it gets drink rings, or if you buy a $35 craigslist stand in and it stays there for a year or even ten years. But if you have a picture in your mind of something that you think would be amazing for your family, it’s nice to consider that you don’t only have what’s available at a store to choose from – you can always try to hack or combo-move a few things to hopefully end up with something you love that’ll last a nice long time.

Speaking of the long haul, our $35 “placeholder” coffee table that used to be in our living room ended up being the perfect shape and size for the beach house living room! So it’s happily living there now (and we have big plans to alter the top to work really nicely in that room – more on that here).

I love that our “just for now” secondhand find has worked out to be a long term solution for another space. And the coffee table that was in the beach house living room before is living it up in our son’s room as an often used play table (picture it covered in Pokemon cards & blocks to his little heart’s content). In summary: the sisterhood of the traveling coffee tables is real, and I’m gonna need Alexis Bledel and Blake Lively to take this to the big screen.

P.S. Want to read about other things we’ve built or hacked? We have a whole category of posts about furniture upgrades & building stuff.

*This post contains affiliate links*

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Pickup Post #9 - No more sun, no more fun

Well, as you may have guessed, living in the mid-west, it is almost winter, rapidly approaching the official first day on December 21st. The yard sales petered out completely about 2 months ago in mid October, maybe a little earlier. If you recall I mentioned they were already slowing down at the end of August on my last post. All I have left now are thrift stores and work finds to go on. I have decided to stop checking LetGo and OfferUp as a safety measure. Some stories about folks basically being mugged or even shot at those transactions spooked my wife and I and we decided that I not use personal meet up options. This will cut down on the finds yes, but I’d rather be safe than sorry.

We had a really long dry spell these last few months too. While the first game was found back in August, and the second on the first day of September,  everything else shown here were all found after November 1st. The Yard Sale scene dried up only a few weeks after the first was found, and even then was already becoming sparse pickings. Recon was showing next to nothing for video games, and what sales I would hit, wouldn’t have any out, already sold what they did have listed before the sale even scheduled to start (damn swap meet and flea market parasites! Have you no couth!?), or didn’t have any to bring out if I asked. Very discouraging. Must be the area. I see so many people with Youtube channels that can still find tons of stuff in their area, they can still put together videos around monthly. Not here. So this tells you why no posts until now, this is the first time Ive had a good amount of finds to even show.

It’s not to say I have nothing to report, the thrift stores have not been too bad at least for disc based games. This is a pretty good post in the game department, though we are going on about 3 months of stuff here, rather than just one, so that helps I guess. Unfortunately no hardware finds to report, these are all games. But quite a few, so settle in anyway, I have pictures of everything, it’s a long way to the bottom.

I’ll try to put everything in the order I found it, with the date I found it if I have it.

We are going all the way back to the end of August for the first one.

Resident Evil 4 - Wii Edition found 8.21.17 at Goodwill.

Pretty good shape. Disc has some light scratches, but plays the game fine. Some discoloration on the case, it is a little more brown than I’d like so that could stand an upgrade. Manual is pretty crispy, I like to see that.

This one supports a classic controller, which I will probably use if I ever get around to playing it. Alternatively, I may emulate it on Dolphin, both to get a better resolution, and just the ease of using a PS2 controller. Couldn’t pass it up complete in box. $3.21.

Moving on.

Next one is the first of only two Sony console games in the list, the rest are for Nintendo consoles. A little bit of a flip from the beginning of the blog where it seemed like the Sony PS2 finds would go on forever.

Need For Speed Underground - Found 09.01.17 at Goodwill

Not a HUGE NFS fan, but as I stated in a previous post, I did like the Hot Pursuit games back in the day on the PSX. So I’m giving these a chance.

Case and manual are in great shape as you can see. Disc is above average, and it plays fine. It won’t install using HD Loader though, which is weird, but I’m not that worried about it. If anything I may emulate this one as well, I can always rip an image of it with my Mac. From there I can play it that way or manually put it on the PS2 HDD. It was an impulse buy in September, I was desperate after more than a two week dry spell. Little did I know I was in for almost exactly a two month dry spell after that. Regret buying it now? Maybe a little, but we’ll see later when we get to it, maybe it will be a fun play. On to the next.

My son is a Mickey fanatic right now. He has a giant plushy that is almost as tall as he is that he carries everywhere. He watches Mickey Mouse Club House, and Mickey and the Roadster Racers, pretty much daily. So when I saw this one I had to pick it up. If for nothing else to give him a kick out of being able to control his favorite character. Even if he is still too young to even figure out how to get out of the first chamber.

Epic Mickey - Found 11.01.17 at Goodwill.

About as good of shape as Resident Evil 4, no damage to the case, artwork is in good condition, manual is pretty crisp, and the disc has about the same light scratches on it. So it plays fine. Kid loved it by the way.

One thing that made me nervous even before buying it though was this warning on the back of the case:

I do have a modded Wii, I use USB Loader GX with the Home Brew channel to load my games from a 64 GB USB thumb stick. All the games I have loaded are in my collection, I don’t download or pirate games. Everything is legit, and even the images are of MY OWN games. It is simply to make it more convenient, and so I don’t have to handle my games just to play them. So to tell me I can’t play a game on MY OWN Wii simply because it has an innocent mod seemed ridiculous to me.

Until I thought about it a little more.

It is less ridiculous than I initially thought simply because of the fact that I do understand that the mod would allow you to download games and play them, so I can’t be too upset at this I suppose. Nintendo couldn’t do much about the modding community, but they could try and make it more difficult (or so they thought) to play real games on these consoles. Just because I have an ethical line drawn doesn’t mean everyone else does. I’m sure most people would be just as happy and guilt free to download images of any game they want and load a huge drive right up with hundreds of gigs of games. Though making someone not be able to play a real game on a modded console would only encourage someone to download that game instead of buy it, so I feel this was ill advised by Nintendo. In any case, personally, I want to see the same games on the screen that I have on the shelf. Period. The benefits are two fold, convenience, I can switch games quicker, and because it is quicker, I’m not handling them and taking them in and out of the case, possibly causing them to receive more scratches and fingerprints. All good reason in my book.

Anyway, enough of that. Back to Epic Mickey. Sure enough, when I put it in to test it prompted for an update to the system menu, likely looking to reset it back to factory. Which I would not do. I’m not reverting my Wii just for one game. It took a while to get it just right, where all artwork, games, and titles showed up the way I wanted, and played properly. Instead, I opened USB Loader GX and decided to install the game anyway, see if maybe once it was an image, it would bypass this nonsense.

It did. The game plays fine when launched as an image from USB Loader GX. So this is good news. It will make me less leery of other games that have the same or similar warning. Fantastic.

Next up, Wii Play - Found 11.28.2017 at Goodwill

This one was an impulse buy. I saw it in the bin, it’s only worth a few cents more than I paid for it, which was $3.21. According to Pricecharting it comes in at about $3.79 CIB. I am not planning on selling it, and I will buy games worth a lot less, if I am planning on keeping it for myself, plus, I have heard that it can be fun, and it was in absolute perfect condition.

It looked like someone took it out of the wrapper, played it once, and then stuck it on a shelf until they donated it. So I had to snag it, I’m a sucker for games in immaculate condition. This one is perfect. Flawless disc.

Speaking of immaculate condition.

Max Shininess.

Max crispiness.

Max Payne - Found 11.30.2017 at Goodwill

This one also looked like someone took the cellophane off, played it once, then stuck it on a shelf and it sat there until it wound up at Goodwill. I’ve not tried the Max Payne series, and I figured for $3.21, might as well.

It always impresses me when I can pick up a game that is well over a decade old, and it looks like the day it was unwrapped. Just that perfect mirror shine that you can usually only get on a brand new game.

What story does this or any new condition game tell? Did it literally sit on a shelf and not move for 10 or more years before it was swept into a box and brought to Goodwill? Or was the owner just very careful with his or her games, taking really good care of them every time they were played, perhaps loading it on a HDD to play without touching the game further just as I did? Somehow I picture the former more than the latter. But you never know. Here it now sits.

This next one isn’t a great game, or even in great condition, but I was absolutely FLOORED to find any GameCube game at a Goodwill, some others might see it all the time, but I never see that. Gamecube at my Goodwills is like seeing a Unicorn. Often even if you do it is a terrible sports title. This wasn’t a terrible sports title. Maybe a terrible title, that remains to be seen, but it wasn’t sports!

Pac Man Vs. / Pac Man Adventure 2 - Found 11.30.2017 at Goodwill

Unfortunately it is in very rough shape, and is missing a disc.

DOH!

I almost put it back on the shelf, really. Especially when the one player game was the one missing. I can’t even play the game that remained unless I have two people. But I thought, well, they are usually pretty flexible here, maybe I can get it for a buck or two less if I ask.

I asked.

She offered to reduce it down to the DVD price, instead of the video game price. So $1 off. Not terrible, so about $2.13 or so for that one. I decided to snag it anyway. I probably could have argued down to $1, or maybe even free, the manager there is pretty nice. But she was unavailable at the time and it wasn’t worth that much hassle. I got a discount. Can’t complain. Maybe the other disc will turn up at some point in my future hunting.

I did also get an empty Wii Play case for free. This is something any collector should try to do. They typically throw away the game cases that have no games in them, I assume this is true at most Goodwill stores. If one makes it out onto the shelf, or perhaps gets relieved of its disc while on the floor by another, much less scrupulous patron, I bring them to the counter with my purchase. They always let me take them for spares at no charge. Wii Play is certainly not the most valuable game or case to have, especially with having picked up an immaculate copy already, I don’t even need a case upgrade. But any spare case in general never hurts when you are in this business. Beat up cases come along all the time. See the Pacman case above, wish I had a spare one of those. Though double disc cases are a little harder to come by for GameCube though. Only a handful of double disc games on that platform, I think 23 or so the last time I looked. A lot of the Resident Evil games were multidisc, a couple TMNT titles I believe, and I recall a 007 game, and I think a Lord of the Rings game in there. The bonus disc copy of Mario Kart DD had one too. So unless I come across an EMPTY case for one of those 23 or so games, I doubt I get an update for this case. One possibility is I find an empty case for JUST Pac Man Vs. *shrug*

In any case... (ha! pun intended), last from that set, a game I have not played on this platform, and one I have not played in a VERY long time in general.

A remake.

One that does actually look to have been done quite well. At least from what small amount I’ve seen of it so far.

007 Goldeneye on the Wii - Found on 11.30.2017 at Goodwill

I am not sure how I feel about this one. I have always been a very big proprietor of no first person shooters on consoles. Ever. Mouse and keyboard is natural, controllers are clunky, slow, and just generally terrible for FPS games. Because of this I was never a big fan of this game on the N64. But I did play it, I own it, and it wasn’t that bad as a single player game. When it came out, I was big into Doom, Quake and Quake II, especially Quake II death match. Which is insanely fast paced and action packed. For Goldeneye, my friends are like OMG it’s amazing, you have to try this, 4 player death match!

So we play, and I’m having the hardest time aiming, getting shot in the back taking MANY SECONDS to even turn around and shoot back where with the mouse its a twitch of the hand and I’m turned around and firing back at the person. Plus it’s only 4 people, I’m used to 12+ person bloodbaths. I just couldn’t get into it. So the death match / multi player, while what most people would say was the games best feature, fell flat on its face for me.

I had a little more fun with the single player game, the controls you can get used to, and the AI is a little more forgiving to you know, make it possible.

This game has all redone graphics, voice acting, the whole nine yards. Should be an interesting trip down memory lane.

It’s in good shape, crispy manual, case in good shape. Barely a scratch on the disc, can even see the online code that was used to unlock “Classic Conflict Mode”. Not 100% sure what that is, I would have to google it to remember.

Next up, the final two finds from just a few days ago.

Worms: A Space Oddity - Found 12.04.17 at Goodwill

I used to play Worms World Party on the Dreamcast back in the day. Always fun. Especially with friends. This one was not valued very high, even CIB, but I intended to keep this one for myself.

I think Pricecharting has it at about $4.99. So still a deal based on that, I’m sure it’ll be worth a play, and my son likes Angry Birds so he may dig this as he gets older.

Finally, last one for this post, on the same trip as the Worms find, I found this little gem.

Dragonball: Revenge of King Piccolo

Not a Dragonball fan, but when I saw it I knew it had to be at least double digit value. Those anime type games usually have good prices. Sure enough I peeked on pricecharting and it is going for $14.99. Yup, no interest in playing that one but it will be going home with me and straight up on eBay. $15 value is about the minimum I would need to buy something from a Goodwill to sell on eBay. After buying the game for $3, Paypal fees, eBay fees and shipping, even on a DVD case video game you are looking at netting perhaps $7. I’m ok with that, but anything less than that and forget it.

Good condition case, crispy manual, good disc. It should get me a good $6 - $8 in pocket after all fees and shipping. Cover the cost of at least 2, if not 3 more games from the Goodwill down the road.

So that is it for finds on this post. Here’s the recap Pic that I will probably post on Instagram as well. @oldnintendonerd.

The official business. We had eight games from Goodwill at the normal $2.99 plus tax making it $3.21 total. It was Resident Evil 4, Need for Speed Underground, 007 Goldeneye, Epic Mickey, Wii Play, Worms: A Space Oddity, Dragonball: Revenge of King Piccolo, and Max Payne at that price.

Total $25.68

Pac Man was a reduced price totaling $1.99 plus tax at $2.13. Grand total for this set of finds is $27.81.

$83.90 - $27.81 = $56.09 game hunting money remaining.

As for future funds, I still have a loose copy of Mario Kart Wii to put on eBay, as well as the Dragonball game from this post, so we have a chance to recoup at least $10 - $15 of that back. I was just asked about my PS2 bundle which caused me to retest it. unfortunately it is not reading the more beat up discs very well. This is the one I fixed. Still boots right up to games that are closer to like new condition. But it really struggles on the beat up ones. The PS2 I have at home as “My PS2″ boots up these beat up ones just fine. So the one I have for sale appears to be getting tired. I’ll see if I can adjust it some more and get more of the discs to read, if not, I may deeply discount it for her just to get rid of it. Buyer would know full well she’d have to get discs in good shape for them to play is all.

Hopefully the thrift stores keep providing some bounty as the winter months settle in. Though I’m thinking a lot of cleaning and donating doesn’t really get done this time of year, but I’m still hopeful.

I probably won’t post again until 2018 sometime. Hopefully at least once before Yard Sale season really kicks off, but I can’t promise anything. Happy hunting and happy holidays!

2017.12.08

Alright, so today was good. I successfully convinced myself to get out of bed at 10:15, so that's progress. I'm hoping I can fall asleep on only one Xanax tonight but I'm not gonna push it if it's not working. Anyway, I got up and got dressed, then pretty soon after headed out to brunch to meet my cousin with my brother. This is the cousin who's baby shower I was at two weeks ago and she's due in mid-July, so by the next time I'm in NY she'll have had the baby. I'm so excited to be an unofficial aunt!! Lol. I'm hoping it's a girl, so I can buy a ton of adorable little girl clothes, because they're so adorable they just make me melt. And if not I can always just give them to my other friend who is having a girl a week or so afterwards, so that works lol. We were going to this place's new location that I'd been to their old one of, but it's. Even some time. I ended up getting a Belgian waffle with berries, and it was okay, not as good as I was expecting but oh well. The conversation was good, we talked about the baby and upcoming delivery as well as just catching up on each other's lives and the latest adventures we've had, and of course some gossip from our former school lol which is always both interesting and rather ridiculous, so that's always enjoyable. But yeah, overall it was a pleasant meal. Drove back with my brother and discussed various legal things, which is what most of our conversations consist of because it's pretty much the only topic we can have a civil conversation about without it devolving into some sort of argument (sigh). I have been needling him lately just because I can get away with it by like when someone would say something related to men and women but fairly benign I'd just like sigh and be like "ugh, the patriarchy" or "thanks patriarchy" (in the way one would say thanks Obama) and I know it always gets a rise out of him and I immediately have to tell him I'm kidding and just teasing him but he still is all peeved about it and it's so funny, it feels like finally getting a very small amount of payback for all the torture he gave me in our childhood (double sigh, but not getting into that now). By the time we got home we didn't have all that much time before we had to head to the grad party for our family friend's youngest son, so I worked on cleaning out my purse in an attempt to find my insurance card, which was unsuccessful much to my irritation. I'm hoping I'll find it when I get back to Chi tomorrow and I just like left it somewhere random, otherwise I have to order a new one which is a pain, and they always want to make a copy of it when I go to PT appointments so I know they wouldn't be pleased if I didn't have it. Sigh. My purse definitely needed to be cleaned out anyway though haha, it was collecting a lot of junk papers and dirt at the bottom. It's not too worn out, but I'm not sure how much more life it has in it. I can probably get it to last through August at least when I come back to New York. I tend not to do very much personal shopping when I'm in Chi just because I like doing those things with other people and usually just do them with my sister. I was anxious to get to the party because I wanted to see my friend, the older brother of the kid who graduated that I grew up with and did shows with, who I haven't seen since December when we saw jersey boys, and my parents tend to take forever to get places (much to my eternal irritation) so I went ahead with my younger brother and my younger sister, since we apparently needed multiple cars for people to leave at different times anyway. We arrived on time, but we're still some of the first people there besides a few family members. It was mostly family people arriving at first, most of whom we know because we've seen them at many many parties over the years. They always have a huge 4th of July party with all of the family in attendance because their oldest son's birthday is July 3rd and their dad's birthday is July 5th, so with the 4th already being a holiday it just makes sense to have a party, so I'm used to seeing these people every year. There were some children, a little boy that was 20 months old, and then two little girls, the older of which I had played with at the 4th of July party two years ago and ended up pushing her on the swing and talking to her for a good amount of time, because I love children of course lol. I knew she wouldn't remember though, she's 5 years old haha. And then her younger sister is about 2, and I don't think I've seen her before. So I was playing with them a bit and then assisting in getting their dog in the back because the older girl was absolutely petrified of her (she's about 20 pounds a giant ball of black and white fluff, but children aren't always rational) and then helped them set up a movie in the super intense home theatre they have (they're like giant movie buffs) so just like slowly winning the kids trust lol so I enjoyed that. We stayed at the party pretty much all night, mostly hanging with my friend and sister, but also talking to various people throughout it. The second oldest brother who is my age and I was good friends with for years when we were younger (until his younger brother started doing theatre with me and we became much closer) had his new girlfriend there, who by all accounts is his first girlfriend, so we spent a while talking to her and teasing him about various things. This is the boy I took to prom and have known literally my whole life, so I definitely get to tease him about this lol. She was really nice though and I like her a lot, so I'm happy for him. At one point in high school, like freshman year, I thought I might have romantic feelings for him, but it was a very fleeting thought and passed rather quickly. If I was interested, I would've made a move a long time ago lol so I'm just happy for him. His younger brother however is a more complicated story. I've kind of vacillated between considering him romantically or just platonically for a few years now. I think I'm romantically attracted to him but not sexually attracted to him? Like I think we could have a great romantic relationship and I'm attracted to that potential but I can't see us really having a sexual relationship. And I mean, he's one of my best friends and has been for years, we're really close and have done so much together and just really enjoy each other's company, so I think to some degree those type of romantic feelings are just a result of that. I have zero idea if he has any attraction to me, it's never a subject we've broached and honestly not one I've ever considered actually broaching with him. I figured if he decided to bring it up I'd probably be willing to give it a chance, but I'm not gonna just go for it when I'm not sure how I feel. Anyway, I'm getting off topic. I enjoyed talking to everyone though, even if I had to ignore a few comments that bugged me a bit for the sake of not starting fights at family events. There was a bit of a spat between my mother and my sister, starting over my sister's shirt that my mother didn't approve of, and then moving on to the subject of therapy. My mom was saying she doesn't want to do it because she doesn't think my sister needs it, and I was just like "well you're not in her mind so you can't really make that determination" and basically just ended up mediating the fight while also advocating for my sister. I've always, always encouraged parents to take their teenagers feelings seriously and not just blow them off as teenagers being overdramatic and hormonal. Teens aren't stupid, they have strongly developed feelings like any adult would and if they say they're struggling you need to listen to them and take them seriously. I know too many parents who didn't and it ended up really hurting their kid and their relationship with their kid because of it. By the end of it my mom wasn't fully convinced, she said we'll talk about it more, but I'm gonna keep on her about it by phone because I very strongly feel this is something that needs to happen. My mom was objecting that my sister doesn't open up to her and she needs to do that before she can open up to someone else, but I said I think the exact opposite is true, that if she gets comfortable opening up to someone else it's more likely that she will start opening up to my mother, and that did seem to make sense to her. So hopefully she's considering it. I'm not a psychologist, but I know my sister has anxiety issues and I've been saying that since she was like 8 and started doing poorly in school, and she often says she feels like she has issues controlling her anger and I feel like that definitely needs to be addressed. So hopefully that will work out. I think we ended up leaving around 9, and upon getting home I immediately grabbed my laptop and tuned in to the live recording of the DCTV podcasts marathon they've been doing all day that I was just then being able to listen to, and I spent the better part of two hours listening to that and commenting in the chat while also doing various other computer things. It's always my goal in the chat to say something that gets them to mention it on the actual recording, and I was successful twice tonight, both with very funny reactions, so I felt good about that. After that ended I got in the shower then went on my phone for a bit before writing this post, and now I'm gonna go to sleep because I have to wake up nice and early to get to the airport in the morning. Goodnight my lovelies. Sleep restfully.

You never quite know what wonderful thing is going to happen on tour. Whilst visiting Chiang Dao on our Thailand: Hill Tribe Textile Tour in 2019 we were lucky enough to be invited to an intimate Dara Ang wedding ceremony. Ly, the bride, is the daughter of Pacam, one of the women we work most closely with through our projects with the Dara Ang cooperative. I first met Ly in 2015 on a visit to her family’s village at the foothills of the mountains of Chiang Dao. On that visit, 16-year-old Ly tried on her mother’s wedding outfit so that I could take a photo of the traditional dress. I never thought then that I’d be attending her actual wedding, with her wearing the same outfit for real! 

I have been good friends with Pacam, Ly’s mother since I first starting visiting the Dara Ang as part of my exploration of the hill tribes of Thailand. Pacam is one of the elders in the community and quite exceptional; an extroverted matriarch whose personality is as flamboyant as her traditional dress. Although she speaks no English, and I speak no Dara Ang or Thai, we have managed to forge a close relationship and I always stay with her when I visit the village. When I told her the dates for our textile tour, she had the beautiful idea of inviting the participants to her daughter’s wedding after our weaving workshop. The resulting experience was one of the most insightful and heartfelt I’ve had on my many visits to the Dara Ang.

All photos by Noel Besuzzi.

CLICK HERE TO VIEW OUR ANNUAL THAILAND: HILL TRIBE TEXTILE TOUR

I have been visiting the Dara Ang for four years and this was our third textile tour to the village. We helped the community establish their backstrap weaving workshop for tourists and part of our community work and fundraising is for the women’s cooperative in the village. We arrived at the village the day before the wedding and preparations were well underway. Unfortunately, the preparation of the pig had been placed next to our backstrap weaving workshop. Although it wasn’t ideal, it was a gentle reminder of how different life is in the community compared to life in the west. The sacrifice of an animal is the most day to day reality of life for the Dara Ang; why should it interfere with a weaving workshop? The Dara Ang are very connected to the animals that they live with and rely on for many aspects of their lives. Thankfully, they are also hugely accommodating and were happy to move the preparations to a different part of the village whilst we wove. The workshop itself was lovely as we all worked individually with different artisans to choose colours, finish weaving a bag and then hand sew and embellish the finished piece. This also meant we had a custom Dara Ang bag to wear to the wedding the next day!

Weaving sparkly rainbows as only the Dara Ang can

Momtaz managing the delicate tension of her backstrap loom with the support of Noi

Kerry immersed in her weaving

Checking the weft threads are the correct tension

Maylot hand stitching a freshly woven bag together

Our group walking through the village after our weaving workshop.

Our home for the night, a simple but sufficient bamboo barn.

The homestay doesn’t have mains electricity so we have to eat dinner and shower by candle light.

Young girls of the community prepare a bonfire and sing local songs

After the workshop, we headed to the bamboo barn where we were to stay the night. It is the simplest of all the homestays on any of our tours – there’s no electricity so we rely on candles in the evening – but it is one of my favourites. Young girls from the village visited us to make a bonfire and sing traditional songs. We rose early the next day so as to be ready for the ceremony and ate banana pancakes in the fruit orchards next to the river, with the hills and the jungle behind us. Pacam had told us that the wedding officially started at 4 am: this is when the Shaman would begin to make his preparations for the wedding by visiting the spirit house to connect with the ancestors before bringing their energy to Pacam’s house, ready for the ceremony to start at 9 am.

CLICK HERE TO VIEW OUR ANNUAL THAILAND: HILL TRIBE TEXTILE TOUR

Sprit house

The basket of offerings the local shaman prepared for the ancestors

The shaman sits chanting quietly in the corner of the room

Ly before the wedding, waiting to start the ceremony

Ly’s traditional outfit was handed down from her mother Pacam.

Back in the heart of the village, it was all systems go: everyone was running around preparing food and there was a lovely sense of joy in the air. We entered Pacam’s house where we found Ly in her amazing wedding outfit, dressed in all the family’s very finest garments with newly woven fastenings and a newly embellished jacket and traditional head wrap. The Shaman was also already in the house; he was sat facing the corner, communicating with the ancestral spirits and throwing rice over the top of a basket of offerings. Inside were different ceremonial items: water; rice wine; parts of the flesh from the recently slaughtered pig; fruits; money; incense and different leaves.

When he was finished, Imcam (Pacam’s husband) came in and spoke with his daughter and son-in-law to be. He gave them an envelope filled with giant old silver coins from Myanmar: family heirlooms now passed on to the young couple. They put their hands together over their hearts whilst prayers were readout. Then, the couple made a prayer with one hand each and the traditional hand-tying ceremony began. Imcam and Pacam placed money in between the bride and groom’s palms, gave their wishes and intentions, and then began wrapping cotton threads around them to join their hands together. 

The ceremony begins with Imcam and Pacam offering their blessing and giving the couple an envelope of large silver coins.

The couple receives the blessing from the Shaman with their hands in Wai, the prayer position.

Imcam and Pamcam, Ly’s father and mother, are the first to bless the couple in the hand-tying marriage ceremony.

Hands are bound together with cotton yarn, each wrap represents the guests well wishes and advice for the newlyweds as well and gifts of money.

Coins passing between the husband and wife’s mouths was traditionally used as an icebreaker for the newlyweds who would have only met on the day of their wedding.

The whole community then began to take their turns to bestow their good wishes on the newly married couple. One by one they came into the house, gave money, offered their matrimonial advice and continued to entwine the couple’s hands together with yarn. Some people also placed a coin in the groom’s mouth; an old tradition that used to encourage intimacy between the couple as the woman took the coin from his mouth into hers. It used to be common for the bride and groom to have never met before the ceremony and this was a way to break the ice, but Ly and Jaturaporn had already been together for about six months. After about an hour, it was our turn to wish them well. 

Each tour participant had prepared a message for the couple: ‘we wish you many happy children’, ‘we wish you a peaceful marriage’, ‘may you always go on adventures together’. These sentiments were shared with the couple and their hands bound together even more tightly with each wish. By the end of the ceremony, their hands were full of envelopes, cards, coins and solidly bound together. Once upon a time, the young couple would leave the ceremony to unwind the yarn together and consummate the marriage. Although this no longer happens, it was still joked about many times! 

Here I am offering the happy couple our gift and well-wishes on behalf of the group and our team. Our guide Fon (on my left) was able to translate for us.

Children watching the ceremony through the window

The newlyweds enjoy hearing their guests well wishes and advice

The groom wore a bright yellow shirt and bright blue trousers with a very clean, pink hand towel wrapped around his head, similar to the ones worn by the Dao of Tinh Tuc in Vietnam. He was also wearing Pacam’s temple bag: a very important part of the Dara Ang traditional dress. Ly jangled every time she moved as she was adorned in real silver: coins hung from her back, there were diamond-shaped silver patterns down the front of her jacket, an embossed silver belt and huge silver necklace and bracelets. The fringing on her jacket was aluminium and from a haberdashery shop in Chiang Mai, but everything else was part of her mum’s personal collection of silver jewellery from Myanmar.  

It was an extremely intimate ceremony and very beautiful for everyone to be able to connect with Ly and Jaturaporn and to share that sacred moment with them. It was really quite emotional; for a westerner, it’s normal for guests to be situated far from the actual ceremony and to have very limited contact with the bride and groom throughout the day. But we were right there with them, sitting only a foot away as the whole community came and expressed their love, support and guidance for the couple. 

After the ceremony, we all went out to enjoy the feast. There was nothing fancy, no formalities or rules, just a joyous celebration in the community. Ly and Jaturaporn even went and changed into their normal clothes. We feasted with them and then went on our way, grateful for the unique opportunity to have shared this authentic ethnic minority ceremony. Although I have visited the Dara Ang many times and will continue to for years to come, this was really something I will never forget.

Our group were welcomed into the ceremony for a truly unique and insightful experience. Left to right: Pamcam, Me, Shannon, Kerry, Maylot, Noi, Charis, Margret, Sarah, Noi, Lamorna, Momtaz and the newlyweds, Ly and Jaturaporn in the centre.

Pamcam and I share a happy embrace after a successful day

Group hug! One weaving workshop and wedding complete!

Our spectacular group of ladies on the 2019 tour

Noel, Maylot and Pacam

Suggested further reading for Thailand

TEXTILE TRIBES OF THAILAND: AN INTRODUCTION TO THE DARA ANG (PALAUNG) & TEXTILE TRIBES OF THAILAND: AN INTRODUCTION TO THE AKHA ETHNIC MINORITY

The intimate details of a Dara-Ang wedding You never quite know what wonderful thing is going to happen on tour. Whilst visiting Chiang Dao on our…

Nov 6, 2019

1. Rapper T.I. has made the shocking revelation that he accompanies his 18-year-old daughter to the gynecologist every year to ensure that she is still a virgin. Appearing on the Ladies Like Us podcast, the 39-year-old stressed how important it is to him that his teenage daughter Deyjah Harris has not had sex yet, admitting that he accompanies her on her annual gynecological checkup to confirm that her hymen isn't broken.

'And yes, not only have we had the conversation [about sex], we have yearly trips to the gynecologist to check her hymen.'

Lest the podcast hosts Nazanin Mandi and Nadia Moham think he was joking or exaggerating, T.I. then went into more detail about their doctor visits.

'So it's this one time we go, I think this might have been after her 16th birthday. This is what we do. Right after the birthday we celebrate,' he said.

'Usually like the day after the party, she's enjoying her gifts. I put a sticky note on the door: "Gyno. Tomorrow. 9:30."

Of course, doctors can't share patient information without the patient's consent, so T.I. cajoles his daughter into giving it.

'So we’ll go and sit down and the doctor will come and talk and the doctor’s maintaining a high level of professionalism,' T.I. explained.

'He’s like, "Well, you know sir, I have to, in order to share information" — I’m like, "Deyjah, they want you to sign this ... so we can share information. Is there anything you would not want me to know?" "See doc? No problem."'

The doctor has even explained that there are many other ways for a hymen to break besides sex, and in fact, many virgins no longer have hymens intact — but T.I. doesn't care.

'So then they come and say, "Well, I just want you to know that there are other ways besides sex that the hymen can be broken, like bike riding, athletics, horseback riding, and just other forms of athletic physical activity."

'So I say, "Look doc, she don’t ride no horses, she don’t ride no bike, she don’t play no sports. Just check the hymen please and give me back my results expeditiously."'

T.I. defended his actions, explaining that he thinks a lot of people wish their parents had been more protective of them, suggesting that his daughter will look back on her father's behavior and be grateful that he was so involved.

'I think that most kids in hindsight, looking back, they always thank their parents for not allowing them to damage themselves as much as they could have,' he said.

But he went further, admitting he doesn't want guys to take the time to woo his daughter even though she's now an adult.

'They're no fun. Who wants a virgin?' he asked. 'Like, really? All that work.'

The hosts of the podcast laughed hysterically throughout T.I.'s story, but also called Deyjah a 'prisoner' and told the rapper he was encouraging men to be 'vultures.'

T.I. is not nearly as worried about the sexual activities of his 15-year-old son, King — who is already sexually active.

2. Hollywood mega-agent Patrick Whitesell, 54, goes public with six-month relationship with Australian actress, 36, after his divorce from Lauren Sanchez is finalized following her affair with Jeff Bezos. Pia Miller, 36, has reportedly been dating agent Patrick Whitesell, 54, since May.

Lauren Sanchez, 49, filed for divorce from Whitesell in April and the same month Miller called off her engagement to photographer Tyson Mullane.

The actress stayed Mexico's El Dorado Beach Club May where Whitesell is believed to have a second home Miller posted a Paris snap June with Whitesell and the partial caption, 'I'm in love' In August they did Italy with Ryan Seacrest and last month visited Utah. They posed for a picture together in October as his divorced was finalized and  finally appeared on the red carpet together on Monday in Los Angeles. Hollywood agent Whitesell represents A-listers including Ben Affleck and Matt Damon. Miller appeared in Aussie soap operas Home and Away and Neighbours.     

                    It was almost three years after Whitesell appeared with Sanchez and Bezos at a party for Damon's Manchester By the Sea.

3. It was recently reported that they had an 'attraction to each other.' And it seems like Kylie Jenner and Drake are one step closer to creating another super couple. The 22-year-old self-made billionaire and 33-year-old Canadian rapper have been hanging out as more than friends according to a People report on Wednesday morning. An insider for the publication said: 'He and Kylie have been spending time together recently.'

'They seemed to be enjoying each other's company,' another source told the site. 'They were joking around and Kylie was laughing. She seemed to be really happy and in a great mood and her and Drake seemed very comfortable with each other. There seemed to be an attraction there.'

This comes after Kylie's split earlier this fall with ex-boyfriend and father of daughter Stormi Webster, Travis Scott.

Drake has dated several celebrities, most notably Serena Williams and Rihanna.  

4. CrossFit co-founder Lauren Jenai has just gotten a wedding present she never imagined — her jailed fiance Franklin Tyrone Tucker is being freed on $2 million bond just before the couple was to be married in jail. The 11th-hour bond deal has even brought Jenai closer with her ex-husband, she said — as he offered to chip in and help with a loan.

Oregon-based Jenai was in Key West, Fla., with her family this week to marry Tucker inside the Florida detention center where he’s been held for about two years awaiting trial on murder charges. But on Wednesday morning, a bond deal was reached with prosecutors that could see Tucker released as soon as Wednesday, Page Six exclusively learned. “It’s a huge success and a long time coming,” Jenai told us of Tucker’s impending release. She was still hammering out the logistics, but, “once everything’s in place, he can walk out of the jail.” She told us the development was a total shock. “It’s shocking … I don’t know what I’m doing or saying,” she said via phone. “I’m happy.”

After his release, Tucker will remain under house arrest with an ankle monitor, but he’ll be able to leave the house for church, legal meetings or a job, Jenai said, and the terms are being hammered out.

Jenai told us that she and Tucker’s lawyers have been trying to negotiate a bond deal for a year-and-half. Initially, she’d said she would put up $1 million, but this week, prosecutors came back with a $2 million offer. (There were logistical issues since Oregon is a “no bond” state, Jenai said. The state does not have bail bondsmen or bounty hunters.)

As Jenai tried to get the money together, she even called her ex-husband, CrossFit founder and CEO Greg Glassman, she said. The pair had gone through a bitter divorce, but Glassman jumped into action to help his ex, we hear.

“We had a bad divorce, we’ve had issues,” she said of Glassman, who she added was “leary” of the relationship with Tucker. But she said that despite their divisions, she and her ex are now friends.

She said she called Glassman when she needed to get together an extra $100,000 to make the bond deal happen. “I said, ‘If you say no I understand,’ but 10 minutes later he was making it happen.”

In the end, she did not need the funds, but Glassman told her, she said, “‘I was going to do this … I hope I get love credit.’ It was really cute.”

Jenai reportedly sold her CrossFit shares for up to $20 million as part of her split from Glassman in 2013.

5. Logan Paul, the controversial and unhinged YouTuber, will take on rival influencer KSI in an amateur boxing match in Los Angeles on Saturday that is being hailed as the 'biggest event in internet history'. Paul, 24, is best known for his outlandish and, at times, tone-deaf pranks. In the last two years, he has faced criticism for filming a suicide victim in Japan and was accused of animal cruelty for tasering rats. Now, the loud-mouthed influencer is set to rake in millions through the fight, which will be aired on sports streaming giant DAZN.

‘I’m excited to ruin JJ's face and I want to thank DAZN for giving me the platform to do so.'I’m finally getting what I wanted from the beginning — no headgear, 10-ounce gloves, and the opportunity to dismantle JJ’s repugnant face in Los Angeles, my home city,' he said of his British opponent in a recent statement. He also claimed to have been preparing by 'drinking the blood of cows'.  But despite putting in the hours in the gym, fans have questioned his jacked-up physique.

Some are even demanding that he be drug tested.

He is typically unperturbed by the criticism.

On Twitter, where he has 5million followers, he joked: 'I hope I pass my drug test' beneath one of the photos critics had called into question.

On Monday, he was busy touting the special boxes VIP ticket-holders will receive when they attend the match at the Staples Center on Saturday

He is still pushing ticket sales. They start from $41 but cost up to $725.  

FA Cup first round: Haringey Borough eye AFC Wimbledon giant-killing

FA Cup first round: Haringey Borough v AFC Wimbledon Venue: Coles Park, Tottenham Date: Friday 9 November Kick-off: 19:55 GMT Coverage: Live on BBC Two, the BBC Sport website and app, live text commentary on the BBC Sport website

They are one of only a few clubs in the top seven tiers of English football to hand out free season tickets, they have a midfielder who has played against Luka Modric, and five years ago they attracted a crowd of just 17 (seventeen) to a league match.

On Friday, Haringey Borough will host a club record crowd of around 2,500 as the non-league team look to spring an FA Cup first-round shock by knocking out AFC Wimbledon, who play four leagues above them, in a match to be shown live on BBC Two.

Located on White Hart Lane, just over a mile from where Tottenham’s booming 62,000-seater stadium is taking shape, Borough’s Coles Park ground has a main stand with 270 seats.

The only team surviving from August’s preliminary round, Haringey have already created club history by reaching this stage for the first time.

Haringey v Wimbledon tie to be shown live on BBC[1]

FA Cup first round draw[2]

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Their run includes a 97th-minute winner at Brentwood Town in the first qualifying round and coming from behind in three of their five games. In doing so, the Isthmian League Premier Division club have earned £57,890 in prize money – a huge amount for a part-time club who cannot afford to pay a wage to all their players.

“We’ve got a few contracted players – the rest are on expenses which covers things like petrol money and buying a pair of boots,” said Tom Loizou, in his 11th season as Haringey manager.

“Even the contracted players are on a bare minimum when it comes to wages.”

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‘One of the fastest growing fanbases in the country’

On 26 February 2013, Haringey entertained Biggleswade United in the ninth-tier Spartan South Midlands League Premier Division. There were more players on the pitch than people who paid to watch.

Having spent around £1m on ground improvements, including a new 3G pitch, Borough took the bold decision to give away free season tickets in the summer of 2016 – despite requiring £140,000 a year to keep going.

“We’d spent all this money on a new stadium and had nobody to watch us,” Aki Achillea, a criminal defence solicitor and chairman of Haringey for the past 14 years, said. “I banked on the fact anyone with a free season ticket might buy food and drink.”

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The giveaway has been such a success that it remains in place today. Borough’s average league attendance has jumped from 58 in 2015-16 to 262 this season, and manager Tom Loizou said: “We have one of the fastest growing fanbases in the country.”

With little in the way of gate receipts, however, Haringey have had to be resourceful in terms of raising income.

The club receive a rent for hosting a car boot sale three times a week, while finances are also boosted by hiring out their £500,000 synthetic pitch during the week.

“A few years ago we couldn’t even get a sponsor, people just laughed at us,” 58-year-old Loizou, a former Leyton Orient caretaker manager, added.

“Now we’ve got a van hire company who are in White Hart Lane. Instead of cash, they have given us a mini bus to get the team to away games. We can’t afford a coach to every away match.”

The man who faced Modric

Four years ago Georgios Aresti was rubbing shoulders with the likes of Modric, Mario Mandzukic and Dejan Lovren.

The central midfielder, born in Limassol, made his one and only start for Cyprus in a 2-0 friendly defeat in Croatia in September 2014.

Four months earlier he had come up against then-Manchester United midfielder Shinji Kagawa when he appeared as a substitute against Japan in front of 58,000 in Saitama.

Aged 24, Aresti is a veteran of almost 100 top-flight Cypriot games – including 43 at Ethnikos Achnas where he was on a £40,000-a-year contract – and joined Haringey towards the end of last season before re-signing in July after a trial at Barnet ended without an offer.

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Desperate to earn a living playing professionally in England, the former AEK Athens player hopes his performances for Haringey, where he picks up around £100 a game, will lead to greater things.

In September, 18-year-old Haringey defender Themis Kefalas signed a one-year deal with Championship club Queens Park Rangers,[3] and Aresti hopes to follow a similar path.

“I want to progress my career and I think I can do it,” said Aresti, who scored in the 3-2 win at Brentwood Town in the first qualifying round. “Haringey is a small club in a small league but there are lots of scouts that come to our games.”

Despite only being at Haringey for a short time, Aresti has already established himself as a cult figure with fans.

“He makes goals and sees things other players at this level can’t see,” added Achillea. “Our fans love him and sing ‘George Aresti is a gift from the Gods’ at games.”

Achillea, too, is popular with Borough fans. One banner reads “The People’s Republic of Haringey Borough. Vote Aki Achillea Prime Minister!”

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Injured trying to empty a bin

Haringey’s team also includes Michael O’Donoghue, a 22-year-old defender who has played in League One for Colchester United, midfielder Rakim Richards, who works for the Tottenham Hotspur Foundation[4] and Michael Ademiluyi, a former Southend United youth forward who has recently worked in security at The Oval cricket ground.

Meanwhile, Portuguese midfielder Jorge Sambu is hoping to make an impression against Wimbledon after recovering from a work injury.

The 27-year-old refuse collector for Kensington and Chelsea London Borough Council missed the start of the season after damaging his knee while trying to empty a bin.

How Haringey got the FA Cup first round Preliminary round: H v Stanway Rovers 1-0 – Chinedu McKenzie First qualifying round: A v Brentwood Town 3-2 – Georgios Aresti, Chinedu McKenzie, Karl Akinwande Second qualifying round: H v Erith Town 2-0 – Joel Nouble (pen), Chinedu McKenzie Third qualifying round: H v AFC Sudbury 2-1 – Chinedu McKenzie (2) Fourth qualifying round: H v Poole Town 2-1 – Jorge Sambu, Joel Nouble

“My knee just gave way and I only started playing again last month,” said Lisbon-born Sambu, who is in his fifth season at Haringey.

“I came to London to live with my mum at the age of 14. At first I used to beg her to go back to Portugal but she said it’s a better life for us here. I love London now.

“I’ve had two promotions with Haringey and I’ve had an offer to sign for a team in a better division this year.

“I chose to stay at Haringey because I don’t think I will find another team like this. We’re a very close-knit group and we look after one another.”

‘We’re the only team in White Hart Lane’

Above the bar in Haringey’s six-year-old clubhouse is a sign that reads ‘White Hart Lane N17’.

It was paid for by Loizou, who says: “There’s only one senior club on White Hart Lane – and it’s not Spurs. Their official address is High Road, Tottenham.”

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Achillea has been a Tottenham season ticket holder for 30 years and travelled to the Netherlands in October to watch them against PSV Eindhoven in the Champions League.

One of his ambitions is to get Spurs boss Mauricio Pochettino down to watch Haringey. Another is to see Tottenham Hotspur Ladies, who currently play in Cheshunt, groundshare at Coles Park.

“Spurs Ladies playing on White Hart Lane would be fantastic,” he said.

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Borough have a women’s team of their own. Long-serving Haringey secretary John Bacon often acts as an assistant referee at their home matches in the Eastern Region Women’s Premier Division[5] – at the age of 80.

Haringey’s Brit Award winners

Former Haringey players include Ricky Otto,[6] later a Birmingham City winger, and Leon Rolle – also known as DJ Locksmith.

Rolle, who was Borough captain, Kesi Dryden and Piers Aggett were all registered with Haringey before helping launch Rudimental, the drum and bass band who won British single of the year at the 2014 Brits.[7]

“When I first took over they were in the process of forming a band and playing football for us,” added Loizou.

“They weren’t famous at the time and I didn’t take a lot of notice of them. It’s not my kind of music. If it had been Frank Sinatra playing centre-half it would have been very different!”

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Meanwhile, British singer-songwriter Emeli Sande[8] turned up in 2015 to watch Haringey win promotion from the Essex Senior League and even wrote a message on Facebook[9] after her visit to Coles Park.

Eight years ago, Ben Corbyn, son of Labour leader Jeremy, managed Haringey Borough’s under-18 team.

References

^ Haringey v Wimbledon tie to be shown live on BBC (www.bbc.co.uk)

^ FA Cup first round draw (www.bbc.co.uk)

^ one-year deal with Championship club Queens Park Rangers, (www.qpr.co.uk)

^ Tottenham Hotspur Foundation (www.tottenhamhotspur.com)

^ Eastern Region Women’s Premier Division (fulltime-league.thefa.com)

^ Ricky Otto, (www.bcfc.com)

^ British single of the year at the 2014 Brits. (www.bbc.co.uk)

^ Emeli Sande (www.bbc.co.uk)

^ wrote a message on Facebook (www.facebook.com)

BBC Sport – Football

FA Cup first round: Haringey Borough eye AFC Wimbledon giant-killing was originally published on 365 Football

processing

so my eyes have never stung so bad before....like, they feel so raw and itchy omfg they look fine (if a little small, which is because of my giant black circles) but they feel fucking awful

i just think i need to write everything down because that’s what i do, obviously, to cope and process (hence the title)

so mom woke me up at 9 this morning. i wasn’t angry anymore, i know she was just trying to protect me from “~seeing death~” as she put it, and i didn’t have to explain why i lashed out. (fun fact: i hate showing honest, raw emotional vulnerability to literally anyone #worstfear, and i felt like she was just. laying the sympathy on a little thick? and i was so shocked and bewildered and i couldn’t process it, so. hence. lashing out. but i think she understood and we started over this morning.)

it took a lot more questioning and badgering for her to say “okay, if you want to  do this,” and i got dressed in a hurry. i put lemongrass and lavender oil on because i thought it could keep me calm (i was wrong).

it was an hours’ drive to the hospital. usually i love it when we pass the huge brewery by the side of the road, it means we’re getting close to family, but this time when i saw it i teared up again. it meant we were getting close and i didn’t want to get close. 

when we got out of the car mom told me that i could wait in the waiting room if i wanted, and i shot her the blankest look i have. i think she got it.

as we were walking the fucking maze of hallways, i tried thinking “so now i’m one step closer. one more step closer. and another step closer,” but it didn’t sink in until we were at the doorway to the ICU ward. didn’t sink in until we pulled the curtain back a little and i saw everyone.

i saw aunt debbie first, and her face just softened when she saw me. that was it; my throat choked up so bad. i couldn’t look at uncle larry at first, so i hugged seth at first, who drew me in tight and close and murmured, “hey kiddo, thanks for coming,” and i tried not to cry too hard. then i hugged darya, who looked ashen and small, then crouched to hug grandma lea, who was the most put-together of all of us the entire time. (after, on the way out, she’d murmur to josh, “how did harold and i produce such emotional progeny?” and smile.)

then i hugged aunt debbie, who rocked me back and forth. “lavender?” she asked after a while, and i nodded into her shawl, still not looking at uncle larry. “it’s my favorite.” 

then patrick ducked in, with ellisa. they had been doing some paperwork across the ward. i wasn’t surprised to see patrick, but i was surprised at how he looked - usually (unless he’s onstage) he looks so put together and bright, but now he looked sad-eyed and had his hair sticking up in every direction. he bear-hugged me and instantly went to hold darya, who by then was back to stroking larry’s hair back.

(darya talked to me a little, quietly, about how she would love to go with me to temple. i’m so glad to have her.)

ellisa i hadn’t expected. i knew she drove seth to the airport, but i didn’t know she’d came down herself. i was glad seth had her, even after they’ve broken up; she’s such a gentle and kind person, just full of love and sweetness. she hugged me with so much warmth i dissolved into tears again, and then went to hug seth. 

 “i’m glad you came,” aunt debbie told me. “he loved you and nick. well - i shouldn’t say ‘loved.’ he’s still out there somewhere.”

i met john, larry’s friend from high school. i guess he checked last month at their old school and larry’s track records still stand. he told me they went to vietnam together - larry was the medic attached to their marine unit. god. 

after a while the rabbi came in. i had honestly expected a wisened guy in robes, so i was a little surprised that this one was in a button-up and slacks, and the only thing to show he was a rabbi was the kindness in his face and the yamaka bobby-pinned to his thinning hair. he introduced himself, and we shuffled around the bed.

it sounds so #fake, but those prayers were unlike anything i had ever heard. i had been crying on and off, but as soon as the rabbi began, it was constant and silent. i’ve never heard such pure and beautiful expression of - anything, let alone grief. it struck such an archaic and fundamental chord with me, i found myself humming along with the rabbi and everyone else. it was a song i just knew, even though i had never heard it before. it was hard to get the sound out, because my voice had just stopped working, but i tried.

the rabbi explained that the next prayer would be a lot like the one to end yom kippur, only in reverse - not thanking for the new year, but for the ones past. after that was a prayer that still stays with me. the english translation was beautiful, unlike any words to any kind of prayer or song i’ve ever heard before, but to hear it in its actual language was so emotional.

i wonder if it brought comfort to anyone else in the ward? i hope so. 

after, we stood around the bed, watching larry breathe. the rabbi had gone to notify the doctors that we were ready.

when he came back, he stood with us and at his suggestion, we all talked about larry. not a lot of memories, but who he was, what he meant to us. i wanted to say that he taught me what “uncle” meant, what “quiet goodness” meant, but i couldn’t, even though i tried. 

the nurse came in and told us what would happen: they would take out the tube that was breathing for larry, and he would die. josh, mom, john and i stood out in the hall to give everyone else a little privacy.

that was the worst part of all of it, i think, thus far. staring at that blue curtain, suddenly a part of everything that was going on around our little bubble of love and mourning. i was staring at the curtain, still quietly crying, hearing the sucking sound of the tube slowly coming up through larry’s throat, and mom had to guide me back against the wall so i didn’t get run over by a cart. it was full of food, guided by a wide-eyed intern who couldn’t be much older than me. on his way back out of the ward, he slowed and said, “i’m sorry for your loss,” painfully earnest and awkward.

that completely broke me. i had to bite through my lip to keep from sobbing out loud, but my whole body started shaking. we heard another sucking sound from the room, i don’t know what it was, but at that same moment there was another sound from the other corner of the ward.

i had heard from mom a few days ago that one of patrick’s co-workers’ friends’ son was in the ICU, coincidentally in the same condition as larry. we didn’t know until later that he was the same age as darya, and that he had died only two seconds before larry. the sounds of that family grieving was so different from ours - serrated and loud. a woman was wailing “my baby” over and over, and then a man joined in, impossibly pained - “my boy, that’s my boy, no no that’s my boy.”

i didn’t even register it very much. it did bring me out of the haze i was in though. by that point, the nurse was drawing the curtain back and ushering us back in.

seth was crying in earnest now, making tiny awful gulping sounds. ellisa held him tight as he leaned over larry and stroked his hair, traced the shell of his ear. aunt debbie was on the other side of the bed, grasping his hand. patrick had darya wrapped in his arms from behind like he could hold her together. 

john didn’t step back through the curtain, just watched from a small distance away. 

it was terrible. there were no more words, no more songs, no more soft laughter when that awful grief subsided a little and we could take comfort in one another. it was just watching the residual heartbeats fade on the monitor.

when larry’s heartbeat dropped to 30, and the machine started beeping, darya’s back bowed and she bent over larry’s bed, her whole body shaking. patrick just went with her, burying his face in the back of her neck. larry was slowly draining of color - his fingertips, his face going gray. his mouth was already slack. 

it took a long, awful time for his heartrate to reach 0 - longer than i expected. when it finally happened, we all just gasped in unison. aunt debbie kissed larry’s cheek, shoulders shaking.

the rabbi grasped larry’s white hand and we all sang, “death has come.”

after a moment, josh, grandma lea, mom, and i went to wait in the waiting room while aunt debbie, seth, and darya (with ellisa and patrick as silent and unwavering support) discussed with the nurses and rabbi what is/was to be done with his body until we decide on a service. john quietly disappeared.

we all walked to the front of the hospital together. darya and patrick led the way, hand in hand, but when patrick went to get the car darya reached back for me. we held on to each other tight. 

when we emerged from the hospital, darya and i took a huge breath together. we were facing the mountains with all that snow, and the day was bright and crisp and clear. darya had said before beside larry’s bed, “it’s a beautiful day for him to go,” and she was right. mom and i stood with our arms wrapped around her before patrick pulled up with the car.

going back to the house was surreal. i found seth and darya sitting with motzi on the floor, shaking their heads in bemusement, but looking a little more colorful than they had. i guess motzi has started eating again.

“the dumb old dog outlasted him,” aunt debbie said, and tossed motzi a pizza crust, which took him about five minutes to get up and shuffle over to.

i usually associate grief with a large spread of food, because the only other time i’ve really actually encountered Death In The Family is with this family. (Cousin Daniel is a whole other story, and i couldn’t have gone to that funeral if i had wanted to at the time. but with pop-pop, there was no lack of food to be had, even if grandma lea went green at the sight of it.)

even rosie was subdued. (-ish.) she meowed when she saw me, loud as ever, but stayed somewhat still as i petted her.

“hi rosie,” i said, “it’s me, your least favorite human.”

darya laughed a little, and i swung rosie up in my arms and cradled her like a baby. rosie meowed again, clearly offended, but allowed me to coo at her for a few minutes before she started squirming in earnest. i set her back down – she rubbed against my ankles.i don’t know where sophie was, but out of the two cats she always curling up on larry’s chair the most before passover. after looking under some chairs, i went into the dining room to get some actual food.

“it’s not halla,” aunt Debbie said when she saw me picking at a roll, “but it’ll do.”

it was nice to sit with everyone in the living room. but strange, because everyone looked normal, if a little smaller than usual, and we were making small talk. about trivia pursuit and the trivia games that go on in Glendora. about what colleges i’m applying to. about business development.

ellisa and seth were perfectly in sync, dipping their heads together, whispering. ellisa took seth’s hand (neither of them were eating) and kissed it, and i looked away. i don’t know if they’re back together, but it’s good to see him (and her) comforted.

mom went back in the dining room to get more food, and there we found the exchange student, raquel, who must be new. grief makes everyone more approachable, so mom smiled at her gently and said, “it must be hard being here with all of this.”

raquel nodded a little. “yes. but – is larry okay? is he better?”

mom and i stared at her for a second before it hit us. in all the grief and flurry of setting up the food, we all must have assumed someone else told her. mom set down her plate.

“larry passed,” she said, and raquel nodded.

“but he’s better?” she asked, and my eyes stung.

“oh, honey,” mom said. “larry died.”

raquel’s eyes immediately filled with tears and i took her plate so she could hug mom back more easily. we helped her into a chair – her entire little body was shaking – and she told us between gasps that larry was the best host father she had ever had.

that would have made him so happy. he loved each and every exchange student like another kid to tease and care for. i was reminded again about how, on every update darya made on larry’s condition, there was so many comments from all over the world, from past exchange students wishing him well. and then i thought about the huge card the kids made at the elementary school for larry, how they drew him in his crossing guard vest, each of them saying “get well soon mr. larry!,” and wondering who would tell them. i wondered what the little boy who dressed up as larry (complete with a little mustache) will do.

aunt debbie came in and saw us huddled over raquel, still crying, so i went back into the living room.

around 2:00, ellisa brought in her cello and played for us for a bit. she had brought it to record a piece on seth’s request, to play for larry in the hospital. now she played for us, and it was beautiful.

she made the cello sound like i’ve never heard it – warm, and full of love. seth closed his eyes and looked so at peace listening to her play. aunt debbie closed her eyes too, and darya cried silently for a little while longer.

when ellisa finished, mom and josh and i knew it was time to go. hugging everyone good-bye was rough again: i didn’t know what to say. aunt debbie held me and said, “when you feel this grief, say ‘thank you god.’ when someone does you wrong, say ‘thank you god.’ everything is something to learn from and be grateful to.” i hope she knows i understood her.

seth kissed my forehead again, something i still find so soothing. darya held me tight and stroked my hair. patrick cracked a few of my ribs, and grandma lea kissed my cheek. i told ellisa “see you later,” and she smiled at me so sweetly, with her eyes crinkling up, and went to take seth’s hand in the living room again.

i wasn’t at all embarrassed or ashamed of crying like i did, after a while, in the ICU. we were just family, together, existing and mourning and being together. i’m really lucky to have them. and i’m so thankful to have known larry.

as seth said, before we shut off larry’s machines, “he really did a good job with this whole life thing. good job, dad.”

thank you, god.