#pieces without the pressure. well see. lets home my 26th year is better than my 25th was. bc last year sucked
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26th Oct: Trust // “Do it, I dare you.”
The clay bowl fell of the counter, as if in slow motion - its shapely form and brilliant glaze never seeming more perfect - almost taunting Tuff as he belatedly dove to try and catch it.
Too late by far; there was a telltale crash as shards of robins egg blue shot in every direction across the floor, beneath the table and counter and hutch.
Tuff landed hard after it, the eight year old’s body hitting the floorboards with a solid whump, hands outstretched and tragically empty of the last-minute save he’d intended to pull off.
It would be almost comical, if not for reality.
“Oh no,” Astrid whispered, her voice soft and afraid. She grabbed the egg basket off the counter and knelt beside him, quickly and efficiently picking up all the shards she could find and placing them in the basket. Tuff unfroze and followed her example, reaching under the counters as far as possible to grab whatever pieces he saw.
His heart was hammering and his mouth dry. Everything in the house seemed louder somehow, though there was only sound he was listening for.
It came sooner than he was ready for; the scrape of a chair backing away from the hearth, and footsteps walking with purpose toward the kitchen. Astrid put the last piece of crockery she could find in the basket as the kitchen doorway filled up with a towering figure.
“That better not have been your grandmother’s bowl, boyo.”
It was Astrid who answered.
“I’m sorry, Mr. Thorston. It was so pretty and my favorite color - I had to pick it up and take a look. But then I dropped it. I can do chores to pay for a new one?”
Tuffnut had frozen up at his father’s voice, but he glanced in amazement over at Astrid.
Hardsell Thorston glowered at the basket of shards but then snorted. “Fine. It cost about two copper. Useless damn thing anyway - think it had a crack on the bottom. Clean that up and then play outside before you break anything else.”
He didn’t look at Tuff, but the boy remained frozen like a rabbit in the vicinity of a hungry hawk until the man lumbered away.
After which, Tuff turned to stare at Astrid in shock. “You fibbed.”
Astrid Hofferson, all of nine years old, was the best behaved, coolest kid on Berk. All the adults talked constantly about how good she was. (Also, how much they wished certain other kids were as good as she was.)
Astrid took his hand and pulled him outside to the porch. In shock, Tuff went with her until she pulled him behind the coop. “Yes, I fibbed,” she answered fiercely. “But I did it for the right reason.”
“But - but now you’ve got to pay two coppers. That’s way more than that bowl was worth. It wasn’t bought - it was a gift from one of my cousins who made it. Or stole it and just said they made it.”
“It’s okay. I have some coppers I got for my birthday and I’ll just give him two. That way it doesn’t cost my mum anything,” Astrid said.
Tuff shook his head. “I broke the bowl. I brushed too close by it when we came in. You don’t have to give him anything. Anyway you aren’t supposed to lie.“
Astrid just looked at him firmly and Tuff realized it was a pointless argument.
“Tuff, remember when we went swimming the other week, and Fishlegs asked what happened to your back and you said they were just stretch marks?”
He bit his lip and looked away in shame. Astrid hadn’t been convinced then, and she wasn’t going to be convinced now - so there really was no point protesting.
“I just don’t want you to get anymore,” she sighed. “It’s worth two coppers to let your dad get drunk and leave you alone for a while.”
There was genuine honesty in Astrid’s voice and Tuff looked at her. He should be mad she was protecting him. He should be offended. A real man took his beatings and what was due to him without being scared or crying or telling anybody or letting a girl stand up for him.
Astrid wasn’t just a girl, though. She was his friend, and maybe a real man could also be grateful that he wasn’t getting thrashed to tears right now over a broken bowl. It wasn’t like there wouldn’t be another reason later, so he may as well enjoy a reprieve.
He stepped forward and hugged her tightly. “Thank you,” he murmured, face going a little pink.
Astrid smiled and set the basket down among all the junk in the corner, then took Tuff’s hand. “Come on. Let’s go get Ruff and play some ball.”
She pulled him away and the shards of blue stayed right where she had left them.
***
Astrid sighed, pulling another nail out of her mouth and holding it in place as she hammered it through a hole in the metal brace. She had been after Hiccup for months to do a little work on their house before winter, but to be fair this was superfluous- she’d wanted a hook in place to hang up a Harvest banner.
New Berk had all of its main structures up by now, but it was dreary and unpainted. Rains had hit earlier here and the wood had to dry and unswell before anyone bothered with carving intricate designs and decorating.
Hiccup was busy with Chiefing duties, which meant walking around and making sure everyone was getting along and doing what they were supposed to be doing.
Tempers were not at their best. Everyone’s mood was sour and most days Hiccup sniped at her once he got home. Having to walk everywhere instead of riding on a dragon probably had to hurt - the rain always made him sore.
The dragons were gone now, which left a hole in everyone’s hearts and it also meant a lot of work the dragons’ help had freed up time to do wasn’t getting done.
There was a wedding coming up too, several weddings actually, but the only one people could seem to get excited about was Hiccup and Astrid’s.
It was an awful lot of pressure, but whenever she found herself doubting whether she wanted this, she reasoned that it was just the weather getting everyone down. And the dragons. And anyway, she couldn’t take this away from the people - she was sure it was akin to cancelling Snoggletog.
She finished with the hook, then climbed down the ladder backwards, unaware of the broken middle step that Hiccup had forgotten to tell her about. They had never needed ladders - not for a while, she mused and then - as if she had jinxed herself by a thought, her foot went through the step with a crack and she slid down the rails with a yell, spitting out the rest of the nails in her mouth.
“Whoa! A!”
Arms suddenly caught her about the waist, stopping her from falling any further and pulling her away from the ladder. They set her gently on her feet. She breathed out in relief, sagging back against Tuff’s chest.
Falling hadn’t been a real worry for a while either.
“Thanks,” Astrid breathed, turning to look at him. “That was suspiciously good timing. Just passing by?”
“Uh. Well, yeah, sort of. I have something for you. A housewarming gift, of sorts. As you know, since Hiccup stopped doing all of his inventing, and left a very obvious gap, I decided to fill it with pointlessly intriguing things of my own.”
Astrid raised an eyebrow, but she grinned. “Well, okay, let’s see it.” She knew whatever Tuff had made for her would be colorful at least.
He pulled his gift out of his satchel with a flourish and then frowned at the hopeless looking tangle of twine and objects. “Oh ... hang on, just a moment, it got all ...”
Looking flustered, Tuff worked quickly to tease out the knots and unwound it before once again holding up the gift. “Ta-da!”
It was ... indescribable, but certainly colorful. Pieces of blue crockery, painted animal teeth, and a boar tusk hung by various lengths of twine around ... was that a Nadder spine? Astrid grinned, touching it.
Whatever the contraption was, it reminded her of Tuff’s old home on Berk, cluttered and mysterious, with everything from ages old birthday and funeral banners to bunches of withered forgotten herbs hanging from the ceiling. Whatever got put up or set down on Thorston property generally never got moved again. She’d been honestly shocked the Twins had been able to move Hardsell.
“What is it?”
“I call it a storm-song. Because whenever there’s a storm, it makes noises. Pretty noises.” He climbed up the rickety ladder like a squirrel, easily avoiding the now missing step and hung it on the hook that Astrid had just put up.
He jumped down to land beside her as the wind picked up, sending the pieces tinkling against the spine in the middle. Astrid grinned. It was pretty.
The blue crockery caught her eye.
“That’s not your grandmother’s bowl, is it?” Astrid asked, surprised. Like everything else left on the Thorston property, that egg basket full of shards had never moved an inch since that day. She’d given Hardsell two coppers for it like she’d promised, and naturally the bowl hadn’t been replaced.
“It is. I ... well, I wanted to make you something from it for a long time. So when we were packing up, I went out to get some things from our old coop that Chicken might want and I found the basket.”
He smiled fondly. “I remember that day. You told a fib,” he added, whispering like it was something scandalous.
Astrid laughed, covering her face in mock exasperation, and knocked her shoulder against his until Tuff laughed too.
Hardsell’s bullying days were long past. Having a protective Zippleback as a friend had certainly evened the odds, and even with the dragons gone - Tuff had moved out to his own place. Ruff had followed suit and the man hardly even bothered their mother, just sitting before a new hearth in the same old chair.
She still remembered other times though, and other marks on Tuff’s body, and the helpless raging fury that had encompassed her every time she was at the Twins’ house.
Before dragons, Astrid remembered locking eyes with Hardsell a few times when she was over. She was ten and she had her axe at her belt and a protective arm around Tuff’s shoulders as Madge tended to the burns on them from their shift on the water brigade.
Do it, her eyes had challenged. Try to hit him in front of me. I dare you.
Each time, Hardsell had snorted and pretended that he’d been looking through her, turning his attention sullenly to the fire.
His one braincell could probably retain that the Hofferson girl was the Thawfest axe-throwing champion for three years running.
Nobody hit her friend any more now, and nobody would, so long as Astrid had breath in her body.
The wind sent the shards clinking prettily against the Nadder spine, blues and yellows adding some much needed color to the world.
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REVIEW // RWBY | 6.11 | “THE LADY IN THE SHOE”
AKA my Naruto: Shippūden experience revisited.
Welcome in to my review of Volume 6, Chapter 11, entitled, “The Lady in the Shoe”.
In this episode: Atlesian pride is at sea. A shared demon is faced.
The hands, though … the hands.
HOW SHŌNEN OF YOU.
We’re officially in a weird spot with this, the sixth and current season of RWBY.
I have – as have most of us, I’m sure – known for a long time now that the 26th of January would be the airdate of the season finale. Despite that knowledge, it was never something that had never rung any alarm bells in my viewing experience of the season – until now.
With only two (!) episodes left for this season, we remain hanging on the cliff of an uneven storyline’s hastily-escalated climax. (Remembering of course that the finales have tended to be at least double-length episodes.)
The whole thing was very entertaining, and at times, edge-of-the-seat action material. As a singular package, this episode is very good. And if there were, say, five more episodes left, instead of just two, I wouldn’t have any issues at all.
But therein lies the issue. Naruto and Dragon Ball can pull off storytelling like this – RWBY has struggled with it forever, yet the show can’t seem to stay away from it or find the formula to make it work within its own limitations.
I’ve criticised this show in the past for its tendency to act like it has more time and more room to manoeuvre than it actually does. This is also not the first time I’ve identified shōnen storytelling characteristics in the show. But it seems to remain an ongoing issue directly affecting the pacing of seasons. As up-and-down as last season’s overall quality was, it was one of the better-paced runs in the show’s history. And when this season opened with a good episode, then an ok episode, then four great episodes in a row, and we were getting these great set ups with the antagonists and Team RWBY’s internal issues, I thought that the lock had been picked after all – that the show could stay consistent in quality and pace at the same time.
Call it a wandering focus, or a loosening of the grip – the unique, tight direction of this season was lost with the arrival in Argus. The early stories of the primary antagonists were pushed to the sideline, as was the Ozpin story. Any problems still within Team RWBY were instead transformed into Qrow’s issues with life itself, and even though Yang and Blake are fighting Adam now and will probably smack his ass around next week, they have had far less to do with each other than one might have expected, given their obvious issues.
Of the main storylines for this season, the only one that has been consistently featured and worked on is the story of Ruby’s personal growth, which is still fantastic as far as the positives go, and this episode continues to build on that by giving her some fun moments, with Weiss in particular.
I struggle with the grade for this episode, too. Perhaps more than any other episode I’ve assigned a grade value; this could well be the best episode I’ve not given at least an “A-“, and it’s solely down to the season’s recent pacing woes. Ultimately, it was all very well done. In fact, I would go as far as to say that the execution of Blake’s plot was flawless in this episode, and I must spotlight it.
It was staged and crafted in all the right ways, from fighting and flying around in the trees to being forced into the open above a waterfall. The swordplay choreography hit its beats without making the fight look like a dance, which maintained the sense of danger. It created some telling images, such as Blake catching one of Adam’s swords in the sheath of her own weapon, or Blake losing that sheath to the water, or Blake’s own sword being shattered to pieces. She’s had this weapon forever, and now it’s gone – you can’t say that’s not a big deal. For a second, I thought she had been stabbed again, and the afterimage clone was used to counter that strong parallel of the first fight with Adam, years back. The scene held its drama throughout, and built even higher as the fight progressed onto the bridge and brought Yang into the situation.
And even though it left on another cliffhanger, it was not the irritating sort like the fight against the mecha suit. It was more in keeping with better shōnen cliffhangers, an ending which still had deeply satisfying components despite choosing not to resolve the overall storyline. Yang’s arrival was momentous on its own, tossing her beloved bike into the water, and then squaring off with Adam. In another acknowledgement of the parallels, the fight was back-and-forth rather than Yang’s original headlong charge into defeat.
Consider the complexity at play here. Despite being the fresh fighter and going toe-to-toe with an old tormentor, Yang knows that she cannot defeat Adam on her own – only “hold him off”. When her hand shakes again. of course Adam is quick to call her out for her supposed lack of nerve. And of course, Blake is there to take it and reinforce their bond. “She’s not protecting me, Adam. And I’m not protecting her. We’re protecting each other.”
They both had turns fighting him solo in the Volume 3 finale. They both lost spectacularly, and Adam has haunted the both of them ever since. Blake wounded his pride at the end of Volume 5, but that wasn’t a real fight. Here, they will, at last, fight him together, and exorcise the demon they both share – the demon that tore them apart in the first place.
An ending like that to this story – and this whole scene, really – is almost enough to make up for potential storytelling malpractice. So, let’s bring it home, Volume 6: I can’t say I’m not intrigued about what happens next.
OBSERVATIONS:
What’s more impressive? Sniping a missile out of a sky from the ground, or catching a missile with a giant mecha suit and throwing it at a moving airship? Open the polls.
I see Weiss and Ruby riding on a giant bumblebee … Nothing.
I feel like Nora’s trying to get something from Ren … I’m stupid.
The fight against Cordovin was something straight out of an JRPG – plenty of making the sword-wielding heroes look tiny against a giant boss enemy. Not quite Final Fantasy or Nier, but in the ballpark.
The reveal of Adam’s scar is pretty gnarly. No one tell Weiss about the SDC brand right on his freaking eye.
Blake didn’t just lose her weapon – she lost her coat. Oh my goodness. Let’s just … whew.
I got chills when Yang blocked the charged strike and just frowned at Adam.
Of course, I would have preferred both stories to wrap up in this episode, but given how both it played out, I feel instinctively that one of these two storylines should have ended with this episode.
The Gang vs Cordovin isn’t the most compelling fight on paper, and it isn’t helped by some heavy-handed emotional manipulation, but hits all the points it needs to. That cliffhanger was genuinely annoying and unnecessary, though.
Cordovin isn’t a great antagonist, is she? Like, we were literally introduced to her four episodes ago, and here she is having a fight stretched over three episodes. Remember Neo and Cinder? And Salem’s crew? I’d care more about a fight with any of those jokers than I do about this fight with Cordovin. It’s still cool to see Ruby and Weiss killing it, and Qrow seems to have stopped his moping.
The main disappointment with the realisation that the finale is so close also comes from the promising set ups from the early parts of the season, such as Cinder’s involvement with Neo, or Emerald’s return to the villain crew – or even more recently, with Saphron and Terra’s issues with the Atlesian camp kind of fizzling into nothing. A lot of ideas which started strong but seem to have since been shelved for either the finale or Volume 7, which doesn’t really feel necessary. With Atlas almost promising to be a battleground, the next season pretty much writes itself, and skipping through these random Volume 6 subplots feels like a bit of a waste.
GRADE: B+
Against the time pressure of a rapidly winding-down season, “The Lady in the Shoe” puts RWBY in a strange place. On the one hand, it is another example of the show’s historically misguided tendency to dig itself into the "shōnen" hole and demand more of itself than it can deliver, and leaves the trajectory of the remaining two episodes in a murky state. On the other hand, it is an episode buoyed by strong execution and compelling character beats. Blake vs Adam, in particular, is a scene which goes down as one of the strongest and most complete of the entire series, in terms of fight psychology, staging, and dramatic involvement. At the very least, it all keeps one guessing. – KALLIE
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The title of this post makes it sound like I just jumped on the wagon of a new fad diet, but this story is a lot more involved than that and starts a lot further back than just last week.
On Monday, June 26th, I underwent a roux en y gastric bypass, a procedure which aids in weight loss by bypassing a a portion of the stomach and intestines altogether. This was a decision I did not enter into lightly. I spent a long time thinking long and hard about it, even before I approached my doctor to talk about weight loss solutions.
We discussed all my prior attempts – Weight Watcher’s memberships, the gym, what worked, what didn’t, what changes I made that I kept and which fell by the wayside and why. I’ve been trying on and off for more than six years to return to a weight where I felt comfortable in my own skin.
Not a number on the scale. Not a dress/jeans size.
But a place where I still had 1) energy to do things I wanted to (or needed to) do, 2) was not hindered by dozens of little ‘indignities’ 3) and when I could walk up a small flight of stairs without being winded.
A place where I was happy being me.
It’s those little ‘indignities’ as I call them that really weighed me more than anything else.
Like, being able to sit down, cross legged on the ground for a family picnic and not have to have help up. Or crawl, like a toddler, with my fat ass in the air, to a place where I could support myself up. That’s one of the main reasons I played on the ground with my daughter, but hardly every my son. Why I stood when everyone else sat on the ground. Embarrassment, and the inability to do it myself.
Or the TMI things like how much effort goes into being clean after having a bowel movement. I won’t go into those details. If the sitting on the ground thing is embarrassing, then that certainly is. Let’s just leave it at – it takes more than a few pieces of toilet paper to do it.
The little indignities really add up after a while, but they don’t amount for all of what went behind this decision.
There is also the stark reality that I am 5’2″ short, over 230 lbs on a good day (my highest was 248 a few years ago), have been asthmatic since I was eleven years old, have a dislocated hip, and arthritis in my back. On top of that, both sides of my family has a history of diabetes, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, and thyroid issues. I take asthma medicine now and it’s hard enough because there are four of them.
But as I watch my mother gradually taking more and more medications for her every-growing list of health problems, I realized that this would be me someday. Not four medicines, but forty. Well, maybe not literally forty, but pretty much close to it. The thought of it, the thought of being in my 60’s and 70’s, on upwards of twenty pills a day and still overweight? Still suffering the little indignities whose list keeps growing. Still not able to go poop without taking a shower afterwards. Still not able to get up off the ground by myself. Still not able to be a human being.
It’s frightening.
This is what I told my doctor, and she gave me information on weight loss, exercise, and sent in a referral to a bariatric doctor. It took six months to actually see the doctor, and another six month to have surgery. Time in which I did more exercise (mostly in the form of walking with my Fitbit), had to attend meetings with doctors, nutritionists, psychologists, and support groups. A lot of meetings. I have folders full of information, lists of foods and diets, side effects and risks.
As prepared as you think you are for something to happen, you never really until it happens, and this was a very big, life changing and permanent decision for me. And even with the doctor’s assurances, there were complications. The doctor did his best to minimize them, and that was a good thing. It could have gone so much differently.
My complications were due to me having a lot of scar tissue, from when I was a baby. You see? As a newborn, I had something called an esophageal fistula, which basically means that my esophagus was not attached to my stomach in the correct way. I had three major surgeries in the first three days of my life and then spent a month in the NICU. But that was in 1975, and forty-two years later, I had a LOT of scar tissue. Which the doctor was concerned with, because if he couldn’t cut through it, he might have to do the bigger, open-chest-cavity surgery on me to perform the bypass.
I feel I have been blessed that the doctor who performed my surgery is one of the best in our area and very knowledgeable and caring. He went into my surgery prepared to do whatever he could NOT to have to fully cut me open. And luckily, he did not.
However, he did have to cut through layers of scar tissue which had been torn and reformed so many times that it was basically adhering to my stomach.
So… what was supposed to be a 2-3 hour surgery (routine) was a six hour surgery and not so routine. And those three extra hours have set my healing back a lot.
First, having spent 6 hours in surgery, 2 and-a-half hours in recovery sleeping… I had spent too much time on my back and in one position… and this exasperated the arthritis in my back. I woke up from recovery, still groggy and barely awake, and in so much pain in my BACK. Not the places the doctor had cut and stitched. But I had a hard time explaining that to anyone because they had me on many narcotics that I couldn’t communicate well.
I needed to sit up, or stand up, and it was HOURS before I could explain to anyone that this was my problem. It was 3 am, when the nurse finally listened enough to understand, and helped me sit up. She also promised to call the doctor and get me an anti-inflammatory medication for my back.
But that day on my back was a huge set back in my initial healing process. I was too sore to lay in bed, too sore to sit up in the chair, definitely too sore to walk around the hallways like we were supposed to. I was just… sore everywhere.
So, instead of going home the following day like I was supposed to, I stayed for a third day and almost a fourth. But at the last minute on the 28th, the doctor decided to let me go home, released to my own devices.
At home, I’ve been slow going. I haven’t been able to sleep in my own bed, because I can’t lay in a comfortable position. But every day I am getting a little better. It might take me a little longer to recover than I would like, or expected, but I am going to, and I am going to be fine.
One day at a time.
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A picture of me the day before my surgery. 230 lbs.
A foot-selfie with my husband in the bakground.
My hospital meals.
Aren’t they yummy?
For real?
This was taken after they told me I’d be going home finally… and then I waited ALL DAY to actually leave.
I’ll be blogging about my new weight loss journey here, using the tag Weight Loss Journey. I’ll be showing off pictures, talking (the much hated exercise) and sharing goals as I make or break them. I’ve also been keeping a hand-written journal since the day after the surgery. I may transcript pages, or scan them to share, if I feel like it and if it pertains.
I’m honestly just making it up as I go along.
The Beginning of a New Weight Loss Journey The title of this post makes it sound like I just jumped on the wagon of a new fad diet, but this story is a lot more involved than that and starts a lot further back than just last week.
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