being a collector and living with your parents is so hard, my room is so small and i dont have any room for my STUFF but i have so much STUFF

White Noise (What an Awful Sound) Ch.2 (Crystal/Gigi) - Meta

A/N: I hope everyone enjoyed the first chapter! I’ve been having a lot of fun writing it. Please leave any feedback/opinions/suggests you have, I love reading what people think about my work! :)

“Gigi, breakfast is ready!” The sound of her mother’s voice woke Gigi up. She rolled over to check the time on her phone, 9 am. Ugh, who the hell wakes up this early on a Sunday? Her parents must really be laying into the new “suburban” lifestyle. Breakfast together early every morning, family dinners. Oh maybe they’ll even have movie night! Gigi ignored all the texts she’d received from her friends back home while she was asleep, rolling herself out of bed and walking to the bathroom. She rummaged around in the box labeled “Gigi’s Toiletries” in her mom’s beautiful cursive. Pulling out her face wash and moisturizer before turning to the sink where her toothbrush rested from the night before.

Once back in her room Gigi picked out an outfit for the day. Scanning through the clothes she’d already put away in her closet, she decided on a long, pale green skirt that had a small slit revealing some of her left leg and just a cropped white shirt. Gigi gave herself a quick once over before rushing downstairs.

“My god, would you look at that. Sleeping Beauty has finally joined the rest of the living.” Gigi’s dad said. He was sitting at their dining table sipping coffee out of a mug and scrolling on his phone. Gigi was willing to bet all of her savings he was looking at Facebook. These damn 40’s somethings, always on their goddamn phones. Just shameful.

“There’s so evidence to prove I’m not sleep walking right now.’’ She said, taking a seat next to her father.

“You washed your face, brushed your teeth, and got dressed.” Gigi’s mother replied, poking her head out of the kitchen.

“Right…so what’s for breakfast?” She eyed her father’s plate but he had already eaten what was on it.

“Cereal for you since you decided to take so long.”

“Paul stop it,” Her mom hit his arm playfully before putting a plate of waffles in front of Gigi, “apparently, your father’s version of unpacking the kitchen is only taking out the waffle iron.”

“Hate to say it but I’m not surprised.” Gigi said.

“I am shocked and appalled by how little you two think of me, really. Just wow.” He replied, feigning hurt. Gigi’s dad stood from the table, taking his plate into the kitchen and placing it in the sink. He whispered a small ‘thank you’ before pulling Gigi’s mom in for a kiss. The teen just ignored her parents, public displays of affection were normal in their house. Gigi had a theory that her father was so affectionate to make up for how much time he spent at work back in LA, always hugging, kissing, or holding her mother’s hand just to let her know he’s still there.

“Anyway, Gigi honey, your father and I need to go to the store and get some things for the house. Do you want to come with us?” Gigi just shook her head, she could use this time to unpack her room some more. “Okay, well we should be home before 4. Please don’t forget, we’re going over to have dinner with the Methyd’s at 5.”

“I will be ready, promise.”

Her parents made their way out the front door, her mom yelling something about wearing a jacket if she left the house. Please, like Gigi was gonna leave the house. Where would she go? To hang out with all her friends here in Missouri? No Gigi was going to go back upstairs and unpack her room. She hated living out of boxes, even if it had only been a day. Back home she waited until the very last second to pack up all her things. Nicky, her best friend, had told her to ‘stop stalling and pack your shit already’ to which Gigi argued that she hadn’t been. Now she was willing to admit Nicky had been right. Just because she refused to throw some random crap she’d had all her life into a box didn’t change the fact that the ‘For Sale’ sign outside her house was real. But now Gigi was ready to settle into her new room.

About an hour later Gigi had made good progress on her room. She’d just finished organizing her books when she heard a crash followed by a lot of expletives that she was glad her parents weren’t around to hear. Gigi walked over to her window, trying to see what was going on. She chuckled to herself as she watched Crystal struggle with an easel on her porch. “Oh my god she’s losing a fight to a fucking easel.” Gigi said, slipping on a pair of white sandals before running downstairs and out the front door. She made her away across the street, still smiling at the sight.

“Want some help?” She asked, finally reaching the other girl.

“Jesus, fuck. You were not supposed to see this.” Crystal laughed. She ran a hand through her curls before looking up at Gigi, a fake pout painted across her face. She is way too adorable for her own good, holy shit.

“Well, too bad.” Gigi said. She bent over and started picking all the art supplies that, she guessed, had been knocked over during the struggle.

“I can’t get it to stand up. I don’t know what’s wrong, it was fine up in my room.” Crystal sighed, giving up and letting it drop to the floor. Gigi nodded.

“Okay, well how many times did you let it do that?” She joked.

“I-I may have dropped it three times while dragging it down the stairs, yeah.”

“I think I may know what your problem is.” She said.

“Wow, you know I am so glad Missouri has someone of your intelligence level living in it now. If it wasn’t for you I would still be fighting for my life against that thing.” Crystal pointed in disgust towards where the easel lay on the porch. Gigi just laughed in response. A silence fell over the girls. To Gigi’s surprise, for one of the only few times in her life, it wasn’t an awkward silence. Crystal wasn’t expecting a response from her, instead she turned her attention to focus on organizing her paints.

“Uh, okay, I, um, I was wondering if maybe you wanted to hang out today?” Gigi shifted in her spot, running a hand awkwardly through her hair. Crystal raised her eyebrows and smiled.

“Actually, I’m just not entirely sure I can handle a full day with you,” Crystal said. Gigi’s eyebrows furrowed, “I mean you just have such an overpowering personality.”

“Right, yeah, I’ve heard that about myself many times.” Gigi nodded in relief.  Just as she finished talking Crystal phone vibrated, she pulled it out of her back pocket to check the notification.

“Well Ms. Gigi Goode, you’re in luck. My friend Lux just asked me to go thrifting with her. Wanna come?” Crystal stood up and walked closer to Gigi. She bit her lip while waiting for the brunette’s response.

“Oh um, yeah sure. I’d love to.” Gigi said. In that moment she was positive she would’ve said yes no matter what Crystal invited her to.

Crystal ran inside to grab the keys to her car and say bye to her mom before dashing back to Gigi and grabbing her hand, “Okay let’s go.” She pulled Gigi toward her car, her skin burning where they’d made contact. Crystal’s car was very old and a horrendous mustard color but she loved it because it got her away from her parents. She was the only one in her friend group with a car, which meant all her friends loved it too. Gigi had to admit, Crystal was not a very good driver. She was always just a little bit too far over the speed limit for comfort and drove with her left leg up on the seat. They drove in silence, well Gigi was silent. Crystal couldn’t help but sing along to every song that came on as they made their way in town to the thrift store. Crystal’s taste in music was definitely different from Gigi’s, playing songs from King Princess, Cage the Elephant, and Hozier, whereas Gigi was more of a pop girl. She basically played Dua Lipa on repeat 24/7. Sitting so close to Crystal while Cherry Wine played throughout the car made Gigi feel overwhelmed, she tried to slow her breath as she stared down at where their hands both rested on the console. She resisted the urge to intertwine their fingers together, missing the feeling from earlier. She studied the other girl’s fingers, the way they dance ever so slightly to the music, the chipped purple nail polish she wore. She had rings on almost all of her fingers.

“You okay?” Crystal asked, glancing at Gigi out of the corner of her eye. She looked like she was going to be sick. But as soon as Crystal spoke Gigi snapped out of it, smiling and peeling her eyes away from their hands to look up at Crystal.

“Yeah, just uh- never mind.” Gigi stopped herself from saying something stupid. She felt foolish, she hadn’t even known this girl for 24 hours and she already had the urge to profess her love to her. She didn’t even know if Crystal was gay. Well, actually that’s not true, she listened to King Princess and Lana Del Rey. The girl was definitely some flavor of gay. Plus nobody that dressed like that was straight.

“What? No, tell me!” Crystal pouted.

“It’s nothing. Just your music makes me feel like I’m in a coming-of-age movie or something.” Gigi said. She tried to fight off the blush creeping across her cheeks. Crystal just laughed, making Gigi regret she said it.

“I like to listen to this kind of music when alone or like painting. It makes me feel calm and inspired. Or like I’m gonna be the next great sapphic artist,” Well, shit, there it was. The confirmation Gigi needed to insure her gaydar wasn’t completely broken. She swallowed hard, not wanting to show any reaction. “I just need to find my muse.” Now it was Crystal who was stealing glances at their hands, moving her hand just close enough that she could feel the heat radiating from Gigi’s. Missing that same heat when she reluctantly pulled her hand away so she could pull into a parking spot.

The girls made their way into the small shop that was filled with very loud clothes. The way Crystal dressed suddenly all made sense. There were only three other people in the shop, they were all standing together loudly talking about how horrendous the huge bubble gum pink dress in front of them was.

“Oh thank fuck, finally. Crystal you have to try this on!” One of them said, grabbing the dress off the rack and running up to Crystal. She stopped and gave Gigi a confused, but welcoming look. The girl looked so much like a fairy, Gigi had to suppress the urge to ask her how Tinker Bell was.

“Hi, I’m Daya.” Another girl, the tallest in the group, came up to them and put her hand out for Gigi to shake.

“Gigi,” She said, taking her hand. Gigi couldn’t help but notice how pretty they all were. What the hell is in the Missouri water?

“That’s Lux,” Crystal said pointing to the small blonde who was being swallowed by all the fabric of the dress she was holding, “and that’s Daegan.” Crystal pointed to the girl who was standing next to Daya.

“I really like your hair.” Gigi said, looking at Daegan’s bright pink hair. She wished she could pull off a color like that but alas she was destined to have boring brown hair for the rest of her life.

“Oh, my god thank you.” Daegan said, “I like her, Crystal can we keep her?” She made puppy dog eyes toward the girl who just laughed.

“Excuse me, hello?!” Lux huffed from under the dress, “Can we get back to Crys trying this on please.” She whined.

“Holy shit, yeah babe you have to try it on.” Daya said pushing past Gigi and taking the dress from Lux. Gigi felt her heart drop into her stomach. Babe? Crystal had a girlfriend? Not just that but a fucking hot girlfriend? Ugh the homophobia of it all. Gigi just walked over to the nearest rack and started looking through all the clothes, trying to ignore the giggles coming from Crystal as Daya pushed her into a dressing room.

A few minutes later Crystal emerged from the dressing room, pulling the thick velvet curtain back dramatically. She walked confidently out into the middle of the store and spun around for all her friends to see.

“You’ve never looked better.” Daegan said as she pulled her phone out to take a video of Crystal dancing around like an idiot. Crystal curtsied and let out a ‘thank you’ in a horrible British accent.

“I think we found your prom dress!” Lux added jumping up and down like a little kid. Crystal made a disgusted face.

“I’m not going to prom, and even if I was, I would never wear a dress.” She put a finger in her mouth and pretended to throw up.

“Ugh not this again. Crystal Elizabeth Methyd you’re going to prom, you have to,” Daya crossed her arms and stared sternly at Crystal for a few seconds before giving up and turning to Gigi, “Tell her she has to go to prom.”

Gigi looked between the girls confused. What kind of power did they think she had over Crystal? They’d just met, you couldn’t even classify them as friends yet. Shouldn’t Daya be the one to convince Crystal, she’s the one that’s her girlfriend here not Gigi. “I-I’ve never been to prom before but I’m sure it’s really fun. My mom says everyone should go to at least one of their proms.”

Crystal rolled her eyes, “Your mom sounds like mine.” Why couldn’t her friends just leave it alone? She already told them a million times she wasn’t going, although the thought of seeing Gigi in a prom dress did intrigue her. Crystal turned around and walked back into the dressing room.

The girls stayed in the shop for a couple of hours, trying on ugly hats and way too big sunglasses, before Lux declared that they had to leave because she was hungry. Crystal bought three button up shirts, that Daegan said looked something her dad would wear, and a bright turquoise and pink windbreaker that Gigi’s mom definitely would have owned in the 90’s.

They all climbed into Crystal’s car, Daegan complaining that making her sit in the back was transphobia. Crystal just ignored her and opened the passenger door for Gigi. She felt awkward in the front, shouldn’t Daya be sitting here so they could hold hands or something? Gigi ignored her thoughts, enjoying the way Crystal’s perfume smelled.

Being in the car with Crystal’s friends was very different than being with just Crystal. Daegan immediately stole the AUX to play Megan Thee Stallion, Doja Cat, and Nicki Minaj while Lux complained that she wanted to listen to Grimes. Crystal just ignored them trying to focus on driving with all the yelling going on around her.

They had finally calmed down, Lux accepting that there was no chance in hell Daegan was changing the music for her, until the question of where to eat came up. Daya voted for Taco Bell while Daegan complained that they had Taco Bell last time. Lux suggested Chick Fil A before being shut down by Crystal, reminding her that they no longer supported the restaurant because of their anti-lgbtq beliefs. Lux rolled her eyes while Daegan joked that the only reason she ate there was because their hatred for her existence made it fun.

“What about pizza?” Gigi offered. Before anyone could protest Crystal said yes, giving everyone in the back seat a stern look. They all murmured reluctant okay’s before changing the subject to gossip about someone from school.

They finally pulled into a small pizza place with picnic tables scattered out front and a burnt out sign that read ‘The Big Slice’. Daya and Lux grabbed a picnic table while Crystal and Daegan went in to order, Gigi opted to stay outside and wait for them to come back.

It was kind of awkward without Crystal there and Gigi found herself racking her brain for something to say. The other girls hadn’t said anything since they sat down either, instead staring at their phones.

“Uh, so uh Daya how long have y-you and Crystal been dating?” Gigi asked, nervously looking between her and Lux.

Daya choked back a laugh, “What? Crys and I aren’t dating. Ew that would be like dating my sister.”

“Oh I’m sorry, I-I just heard you call her babe and assumed.” She couldn’t help but feel relieved, hoping her face didn’t show it. Lux busted out laughing at the idea of Crystal and Daya together and couldn’t stop.

“I call everyone babe, don’t worry.” Daya assured her. Gigi swallowed, oh god could she tell that Gigi liked Crystal. She thought she had been discreet when she looked at her but apparently not.

“Oh I’m no-” She started to protest.

“What’s so funny?” Daegen asked as she and Crystal made their way to the table. She sat in between Daya and Lux while Crystal planted herself right next to Gigi.

“S-she,” Lux tried to get out, pointing at Gigi, “she thought you two were dating.” Daegen joined in and after a couple of seconds Daya found herself laughing too. Gigi tried to laugh but it just came out as an awkward chuckle. The only one who wasn’t laughing was Crystal. She wore a horrified expression, her eyes bouncing between Gigi and Daya. “Why, why, uh um why would you think that?” Crystal’s eyebrows furrowed as she turned attention completely to Gigi. But she just shrugged and said it didn’t matter.

The conversation was forgotten as soon as the waitress brought out the pizza and everyone was too busy stuffing their faces to talk about how bad of a couple Crystal and Daya would make.

As time passed it became easier for Gigi to be around Crystal’s friends, she actually enjoyed how loud they all were. With everyone else fighting to talk over each other no one really noticed Gigi’s lack of input. Thank god, she used to hate how her friends back home would always try to pull her into the conversation. Why couldn’t they understand if she had something to say she would goddamn say it.

“Oh shit. It’s almost 4. My parents are gonna be home soon and I promised I would be there to get ready for tonight.” Gigi said looking down at her phone. She started to stand up from the table.

“Oh okay, I’ll uh drive you home.” Crystal said, standing up too.

“You don’t have to, I can just walk or uh call a lyft or something.” Gigi said, secretly hoping Crystal would insist.

“Excuse me, what about us?” Lux whined.

“Also what’s tonight?” Daya asked.

“Huh? Oh Gigi and her parents are coming over for dinner.” Crystal mumbled, knowing there was bound to be teasing from her friends. They all raised their eyebrows but before any of them could say anything inappropriate Crystal pushed Gigi toward her car. Crystal yelled at them to find their own way home.

“I hate you, bitch!” Daegen shouted at Crystal. She just put up her middle finger and held it up as she climbed into the driver’s seat.

“Don’t let her make you listen to One Direction Gigi!” Daya added before Gigi closed her door, unable to hear them anymore. She couldn’t help but laugh.

The drive was quiet, but this time it wasn’t a comfortable silence. Both of them wanting to say something but too afraid to say it. Crystal put on the same music from before, calm love songs that made Gigi feel like she never wanted them to stop driving.

“Why did you think I was dating Daya?” Crystal asked abruptly, pulling Gigi out of her daydream.

Gigi’s eyebrows furrowed, “What?” God why was she bringing this up again? Gigi never wanted to think about that again.

“C’mon I wanna know,” Crystal pouted, “please!” She begged, turning to look at Gigi.

“It’s nothing, I uh, heard her call you babe and I just assumed,” She shrugged trying to look anywhere but at Crystal.

Crystal didn’t respond, instead they just fell back into uncomfortable silence. Gigi tried to come up with something to say. God the one person she actually wanted to talk to and she couldn’t come up a single fucking thing to say.

“This doesn’t sound like One Direction.” Gigi said.

“Yeah I uh, I only bring that out with people I like,” Crystal shot her a devilish smile, “sorry.”

“You’re such an ass, oh my god.” Gigi laughed, hitting Crystal lightly on her shoulder. She watched as Crystal picked up her phone and unlocked it, quickly changing the song to ‘What Makes You Beautiful’ making Gigi laugh even more. “That’s more like it.”

Crystal finally pulled into her driveway, reluctantly putting the car in park. Gigi lingered in the passenger’s seat, not wanting to miss the heat from Crystal’s body. She slowly unbuckled her seat belt, grabbing the handle to the car door.

“So uh, I’ll see you tonight, yeah?” Crystal asked, unbuckling her own seat belt.

“Yeah, yeah. I’m looking forward to it.” Gigi pulled herself out of the car.

She was halfway down Crystal’s driveway when she heard her name. Gigi spun around to face her, “Yeah?”

“I had fun, uh with you,” She stopped as if she was searching for a difficult word, “today. I had fun with you today.” She ran a hand awkwardly through her hair.

Gigi chuckled, “I had fun with you too, Crystal.”

“Okay, good.” Crystal spun around and stumbled cheerfully up the stairs of her porch, turning around to wave at Gigi one last time before disappearing into her house.

Gigi continued walking back to her own house, smiling the entire way.

Quaranmemes for Quarantines

Tagged by @reallyginnyf​ <3  Putting this under a cut since it’s pretty much doubling as my weekend wrap-up as well.

when was the last time you left your home? On Thursday I had to run a few quick no-contact errands -- dropped a bulk mailing off on the rear platform at the post office, deposited a Fedex envelope into one of their pickup boxes, and then ran some miscellaneous groceries over to my Mom’s house.  Today I went for a run, but only around the neighborhood, so that doesn’t feel like it counts. 

what was the last thing you bought? I’ve actually been doing a bit of online shopping lately -- bought a sewing machine (still need to sit down and set it up), a gas-powered pressure washer (arrived today), a new bathroom scale and a vacuum sealer.  Last thing we bought in-store were some small necessities from Walmart.

is quarantine driving you insane or are you finally relaxed? This is tough to answer, because I’m never actually relaxed.

I worry about someone in my immediate family getting sick, but beyond that the quarantine doesn’t really trouble me.  I’m largely a homebody, and honestly this has kept us from a lot of unnecessary spending, so all the places I’d probably be going would just be buying shit that we really don’t need. I think my anxiety only ramps up when we have to go somewhere, like when my parents need groceries, and we have to go through the whole process of masks and gloves and fully decontaminating everything once we get home.  We have it down to a science, but it’s still a whole process.

But I’m frankly enjoying the time at home.  I’m a very “routine” person -- I’m comforted by having lists of things I need to do, and places to put things, and then doing it all by rote.  We worked very hard to make our house be a place where we enjoy being, creating, relaxing and working, and now we’re reaping the benefit of all those things.

who are you spending quarantine with? My husband Marc and all the cats.  I only see my parents long enough to drop things off at their house.

do you have pets to keep you company? We have three of our own -- Bones, Spencer and Rosie -- plus two fosters, Baby and Blue.  There is also a semi-feral cat, Fidget, that we feed and care for, and he occasionally spends a night inside if it’s particularly cold or wet out.

what are your current responsibilities? We’re both very fortunate in that we are fully capable of working from home, and both our employers are in full gear.  Mine is actually busy enough to need to hire new people for the sudden influx of work, apparently. So I work my “day job” during the day, and when I’m not working I’m cleaning and doing laundry, trying to keep our chest freezer topped up with ready-to-prepare meals, a lot of organizing and a bit of gardening.  I really need to sit down and do something creative, although my muse has been completely dead for... longer than I’d care to admit.  I’m going to give it a bit of a try tonight, though, so we’ll see.

Just lately I’ve been on a purging spree.  Thursday, Friday and yesterday I cleaned out every corner of the art room / office and made three piles of craft supplies to give away.  I also gathered together two enormous bags of various clothes and gave that away as well.  My next step is probably to switch out my winter wardrobe for the summer stuff, although we’re expecting a good week of cold, rainy weather so... maybe not quite yet.

do you have a room to yourself? Well, if I ever needed time to myself I could certainly find it.  The art room / office is unoccupied when we’re not working, and when we are I can always come down to the living room or go into the bedroom with my laptop, or I’ve got a little “writing chair” in the dining room, by the back patio, that’s nice to sit in.  I can be content anywhere in the house, basically.

are you exercising? I wasn’t, but a few days ago I decided to change that.  I need to get better control over my physical well-being (and self-image), so I made myself a little weight / diet log, included columns for water intake and exercise, and signed up for a “virtual 5k”.  Today it was just warm enough to get outside, so I went for a run.  Technically we went for a run, but Marc got winded not too far into it and had to head home again.  I grabbed my earbuds and went back out.

Got in 2.27 miles before deciding to head back home.  Because the weather is going to be shitty I plan to kick the fosters out of their room for at least 45 minutes every day so that I can get some treadmill time in.  With any luck we’ll shortly have space cleared in the attic so that we can do yoga and maybe barre as well.  

town, country, city? We’re in a semi-rural suburb in Bucks County, PA.  It’s... suburban, but very very blue collar, and there’s plenty of farms around, large and small.

how’s your toilet paper supply? We seem to be OK.  I am a prepper by nature, and I made sure to stock up before things started to get bad.  I’m also being very mindful of how much I use, which helps.  I’m more worried about my folks, who blow through resources like crazy, but I don’t think it’s terribly hard to come by as long as you can get to a store.

what’s the worst thing that you had to cancel? I was a bit bummed about the Colin Firth concert being cancelled in the early part of this month.  That was going to be a nice night out.

To be very honest, my biggest regret is that we took on the fosters when we did.  No one in this area is in a position to adopt two cats, and to be honest... they’re not very good fosters.  Blue is friendly and outgoing, she likes to play, but she’s not cuddly -- she’s not really interested in being petted or held and doesn’t seem to want to sit in your lap for very long.

Baby likes Marc well enough, but she continues to run from me whenever she sees me, and forget about coming up for a cuddle.  She’s just... fucking miserable.

We’re also giving up on trying to integrate them with our cats.  They don’t have very good “cat manners” (they have no sense of personal space and will get right up in the other cats’ business), and the two of them have twice now gone after Rosie in what was a semi-playful, semi-aggressive manner that she definitely did not appreciate, so that’s the end of that.

It would be different if they got along with our cats, or if they were cuddly, but Blue is the only one that I’d consider truly adoptable.  Baby is fucking miserable and I have no idea how the fuck we’re going to adopt them out.  I’m desperately trying to find someone that can take them, but I don’t have a good feeling, and I honestly don’t know what we’re going to do long term.  It was a mistake taking them in, and I regret it, but I’ve got to find a way to deal with it now.

what’s the best thing you’ve had to cancel? This is going to sound terrible but... we were planning on going to a “Return of the Living Dead” convention in June.  Had tickets, a hotel, everything.  Technically it’s still on -- they haven’t cancelled the event yet -- but we’ve agreed we won’t be going, even if it’s still on in June.  Too much of a risk.

In theory this was going to be super fun, and I actually was excited about it, but... honestly, going to so many comic cons has really burned me out on other people who attend conventions, and the idea of being around mobs of people acting like smelly, poorly socialized assholes about something that I genuinely love was kind of stressing me out.

I didn’t want to see something that I love gatekept, I didn’t want to be “fake geek girled” about it by somebody with B.O. and no social awareness.  It was starting to stress me out. So I’m sad that we won’t be going, but glad that I don’t have to stress out about it.

who do you miss the most? My boss, I guess?  He was fun to hang out with and bullshit with, and we can’t really do that the same way that we did when we were in the office together.  I’m pretty lukewarm on everybody else I used to see in person day to day.

do you have any new hobbies? Ugh, please, I already have so many fucking hobbies.   Uh. Well, I did buy the sewing machine, so... :/  Let me get it set up and actually sew something before I start calling it a hobby, though.

what are you watching the most? Marc and I have been binge-watching Ozark and a show called Futureman, which are both compelling and extremely difficult to watch in different ways.  I’m still waiting on new content from the lady that lives in Japan, haha... this is probably a good opportunity to go back and watch whatever videos I haven’t seen yet.

are you still going to work? Remotely, yes, every day.  I’m actually using the time to try and get myself better organized and establish good work habits and routines that I can carry through to when things start to normalize.

what are you out of? Mmm... nothing, I don’t think?  I’m getting low-ish on yeast, since I’ve been baking so much, but I’m not even really low on that yet.  I’ve tried to do a “dried cranberry yeast starter” but I’m not convinced it took... I need to drain off the yeast liquid and add some flour tonight, see if it grows or if it’s a dud.  

have you made any changes to your hair during quarantine? I trimmed my bangs about a week ago, I think, because they were getting frustratingly long.  Fortunately I didn’t butcher them too badly.  Today I helped Marc give himself a trim, and he’s looking quite dapper again, so I guess we’re not in too bad of a shape.  I chopped my hair to the shoulders back before the quarantine so it would have to get much, much longer before it became problematic for me, and even then.  I’m still debating if I even want to color my grays at all, so I’m not concerned about “touching up roots” or anything like that.  I am what I am. 

Not tagging anyone because A) I’m terrible at tagging, B) Most of the people I follow that are “real people” and not just content-posting accounts are mutuals of one another.  If you want to participate, please consider yourself tagged.

what are your top 10 fav breaking bad episodes?

10. Bug (4x09) 

this episode has TOO many iconic moments. skyler scamming the IRS by pretending to be dumb, gus walking toward the bullets, mike telling walter to shut the fuck up and leave jesse alone, jesse having dinner with gus, and then the Ultimate moment where jesse beats walter the fuck up and pulls the “can you walk? good :) then get the fuck out of my house :)” card GOD the whole episode is like the start of jesse’s realization that he should trust mike and gus more than walter and it feels so good to watch

9. Shotgun (4x05)

after a whole season of watching jesse in a deep depression it’s such a relief to reach this episode. the COMEDY of the start where walter storms into los pollos with a GUN and the music is so intense and hes like WHERES GUS FRING WHERE IS HE WHAT HAS HE DONE WITH JESSE and then on the phone jesse is just like “im fine” like god its literally unbeatable. it’s obviously the beginning of mike and jesse’s relationship, plus on another level the beginning of gus and jesse’s Real relationship because it signals the first time gus begins to trust him. PLUS provided us with the iconic you are not the guy youre not capable of being the guy i had a guy but now i dont you. are not. the guy. 

8. Dead Freight (5x05)

i know everyone says dead freight but dude.......it’s such a fantastic episode from start to finish! it’s such a weird combination of like, drama thriller but also sitcom hilarity? because obviously the stakes are really high and you know that if they get caught they’re going to prison like, forever, and also jesse could have straight up got run over by a train but at the same time it’s hilarious? i also love the emphasis on jesse being a problem solver at this point in the show and being able to accomplish things that even walt and mike can’t necessarily do without him. the last 60 seconds..........well we dont have to talk about that

7. Rabid Dog (5x12)

okay originally i wasn’t going to put any 5b eps on here, not because they aren’t amazing but because they aren’t exactly the kind of thing i can put on in the background and rewatch yknow? but rabid dog is so amazing because its FINALLY the point where jesse is done with walter. like it’s the final severance between them and just watching walter’s panic grow throughout the episode as he realizes that it’s going to end with one of them dying but not being able to accept that is just ... fantastic. it summarizes the complexity of their dynamic so succinctly for a single episode

6. Peekaboo (2x06)

obviously a quintessential jesse episode deserves a spot on the list. everyone is always like “this is the episode where i fell in love with jesse!!!!” and like personally i was already in love with him but yeah this episode confirmed it. it’s the first episode in the Jesse Loves Kids saga obviously and it presents the conflict he feels over like, the secondhand guilt he feels over supplying the product that puts the kid in his shitty living situation but also the knowledge that he’s trapped now. when he goes back into the house for the kid and tells him to close his eyes it’s like.......a compromise that jesse holds onto for the rest of the series. he knows he’s doing bad things but he tries to find ways to make them even a little better

5. 4 Days Out (2x09)

bottle episode #1 baby! one of the earliest episodes that is entirely dedicated to walter and jesse’s dynamic and it’s just.....classic brba. cooking in the RV out in the desert baby! jesse being dumb! walter being an asshole! ah wiiiiiiiiiiire! it’s such a good like.....foundation episode. it’s one of those episodes that you rewatch after finishing the series and you’re like “god everything has changed so much” and honestly if someone wanted to watch like One episode of breaking bad to get the gist of the whole show i would probably suggest 4 days out

4. Sunset (3x06)

another literal classic and also the first episode i watched with my mom hehe so it has a special place in my heart. in some ways it’s a very tragic episode because watching the RV get destroyed literally made me cry, but it’s so thrilling and exciting and it sets up the conflict between hank and jesse which is honestly a fav. i honestly don’t even have that much to say about it i just......love this episode it’s so rewatchable. and this is my own private domicile and i will not be harassed bitch!

3. Full Measure (3x13)

remember when Bill Hader was like “you know the end of an episode of TV that makes you gasp and wait all week for the next episode, well breaking bad has those moments constantly throughout the entire 60 minutes” THIS is the kind of episode that applies to! the battle and shifting power between gus and walter is obviously center stage but ultimately it comes down to jesse. the shot in the arcade where jesse is sitting alone and there’s the single red light GOD LETS GET INTO BREAKING BAD COLOR THEORY BABY! the episode is just so ..... dramatic and intense but artful and careful and ultimately it contains arguably the biggest moment for jesse’s character arc in the whole series

2. ABQ (2x13)

okay not to be a demon but i love this episode endlessly. i wish i could just combine it with Pheonix but i cant so ultimately i choose this one (despite it not having the water on mars conversation) it’s clearly like one of the saddest in the entire series especially for jesse but it’s so good. the introduction of mike automatically makes it memorable but the scene of jesse and walter in the crack den is burned forever into my memory its just so.....haunting. and in this episode i can FEEL myself being manipulated by walter. like i JUST watched him let jane die and i still catch myself watching ABQ and going “aw he’s talking jesse down.....he’s holding him........he’s taking him to rehab........” and that’s exactly what walter DOES to people and to catch him doing it to YOU is insane 

1. Fly (3x10)

taylor u literally knew this was coming sdkfjsdfkj yeah i think this is the greatest episode in the whole show ok! ozymandias whom! yeah it’s another bottle episode but i think it’s better than 4 days out in accomplishing the ultimate goal of a bottle episode which, to me, is putting the characters together in isolation for so long that eventually their boundaries fall down. i mean obviously the concussion and drugs are part of the reason that walter starts getting so open with jesse, but the fact that they’re enclosed in the lab until walter can accomplish a meaningless goal that’s borne from paranoia just makes the conversations they have that much more meaningful. i know a lot of people don’t like this episode because its “boring” but to me, when i watch tv shows, i ACHE for even one of the single moments that this entire episode is comprised of. the fact that vince was like “okay and now let’s dedicate an entire episode to this lingering guilt that walter feels over killing jesse’s girlfriend an entire season ago and that’s the whole thing” is so bold but also so admirable because he’s truly giving something so huge (jane’s death) the attention it deserves where most shows would just sort of drop it to make room for more plot. im literally rambling but it’s just a perfect balance of what we know, what walter knows, and what jesse knows which are all conflicting and battling. “it’s not coming down, it’s staying up there forever” like ARE YOU KIDDING ME

Thomas Crowther wants to restore the planet, but first he needs to know how many trees, fungi, worms and microbes live on it.

Thomas Crowther bursts barefoot from his office into the corridor, sweating through his faded T-shirt and grinning with exhilaration. It’s a warm July day and he has just finished telling NBC News that Earth could sustain another 1.2 trillion trees, which would absorb 200 gigatonnes of carbon, and that the next thing to do is to “stop talking and start planting”. His claim, based on figures published that day in Science, comes from the latest in a string of high-profile ecology papers from his laboratory at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich (ETH Zurich) that have drawn the attention of the world’s media — and Crowther is loving it. Publicity, he believes, will get him closer to his goal, and his goal is nothing less than restoring the planet.

At 33, Crowther has risen from struggling student to steward of a 30-strong team with a multimillion-euro grant that should keep his lab going for 13 years — rare stability in a world of short funding cycles. His hallmark is to amass thousands of individual observations and weave them into large-scale conclusions: he and his colleagues have counted the world’s trees (3 trillion) and its most abundant animals, nematode worms (0.4 sextillion), and have mapped global tree-root fungi. Invasive species are next.

Crowther’s maps are bouncing onto the pages of leading science journals — five so far this year in Science and Nature alone — and he has just won the British Ecological Society’s Founder’s Prize. His fans say he is part of a new wave in ecological research, using machine learning on vast, scattered data sets to tease out broad patterns about the state of the planet. His critics think he is trampling on nuance and oversimplifying — sometimes dangerously so.

“He’s a bit of a disrupter,” says Mark Bradford, a soils and ecosystem ecologist at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut. “He’s the Uber of the field.”

Big ecology

It was a chance conversation after football practice that compelled Crowther to start counting. In 2012, having completed his degree and doctorate at Cardiff University in the United Kingdom, he arrived at Yale to begin a postdoc in Bradford’s lab. After an evening kickabout, a master’s student who had worked for a tree-planting organization told Crowther that although scientists had counted trees in hundreds of thousands of spots around the globe, nobody knew how many trees there were in total. What’s more, although scientists scoffed at the usefulness to science of deriving such a number, the funders of tree restoration projects were keen to find out, to provide a quantitative basis for their work.

Satellite imagery was supplying the best estimates at the time — but satellites couldn’t tell what was going on beneath the canopy. Crowther, encouraged by Bradford, decided to look for ground data from actual tree counts “where somebody has been standing on the ground, counting the number of trees, measuring how big they are and telling us what species they are — the simplest thing ever”.

The data might be simple to collect on the ground — but persuading scientists to share their work with him seemed at first impossible.

“When I started, every professor at Yale said, ‘This is ridiculous, you can’t do this … no one will ever share data,’” he says. “And when I started they definitely didn’t want to — no one wants to give all their hard-earned data to some stupid postdoc who’s just starting up.”

But he gradually cajoled more scientists into complying, until eventually he had amassed data covering about 430,000 hectares — an area roughly the size of Rhode Island. With his colleague Henry Glick, a data scientist, he examined the satellite imagery for these hectares and used machine learning to make millions of comparisons between the two data sets — ground and satellite — to find repeatable correlations that would otherwise have gone unnoticed. The duo used the satellite imagery to extrapolate how many trees lived in areas that lacked good ground inventories. For example, data from forests in Canada and northern Europe were used to revise estimates of the number of trees in remote parts of Russia. This led to the first global model of tree density and the figure of three trillion trees. The team published the map in 2015.

Although the error margin for the estimate ranged between one trillion and ten trillion, the figure of three trillion trees caught the public imagination. The “Billion Tree Campaign”, a reforestation initiative launched by the United Nations in 2007, was upped to a trillion, and Crowther’s database lives on as the Global Forest Biodiversity Initiative. It now includes 1.2 million forest plots.

The work is still a point of pride for Crowther. “That will be one of the biggest contributions I will have made to science,” he says. He pauses for a thoughtful second, then jumps to his feet with a slap of his yellow flip-flops. He jogs down some stairs to his desk in the corner of a large shared office, and clicks the mouse to reveal more than 200 global maps, each of a different physiological or chemical characteristic of the planet, ranging from solar radiation to the biomass of soil bacteria and from urban development to the whereabouts of root fungi.

The lab’s hallmark maps are created from perhaps a million separate pieces of ground data that have been interrogated with machine learning to understand how they are connected to existing global data from sources such as satellites and ground sampling. That requires knowledge not just from ecology but also from remote sensing and data science. “You need, like, five different experts along that process,” says Crowther — which is one of the reasons he has shunned the separate office offered to him by ETH Zurich and is instead crammed into the same room with the group manager, the theoretical ecologist, the microbiologist and the remote-sensing and data analyst who make up his senior science team.

Daniel Maynard, the theoretical ecologist, says that Crowther has created an unusually flat team structure, and has deliberately selected scientists who fill gaps in his own expertise. “Tom’s not an expert in any of the things we do. He’d be the first to say ‘I know nothing,’” Maynard says. “Though he knows a lot more than he’s letting on.”

In the new work, led by Jean-François Bastin, the team used satellite data on tree cover, and aligned them with maps of ecosystem characteristics, giving a model of which environments support how many trees. Subtracting existing forest, urban areas and agricultural land, they arrived at a figure for how much of the world could in theory be reforested (see ‘Big pictures’).

Growing ambition

Crowther speaks with a rapid and earnest eloquence that makes it hard to believe him when he says that he couldn’t string together even a simple presentation until a few years ago. At school in the Welsh seaside town of Prestatyn, he bumped around at the bottom of the class. He poured his energy into sport instead, playing tennis for his country and winning the Welsh Junior National Championships twice. After scraping into Cardiff University, he was disruptive until his tutor, Hefin Jones, struck a chord by suggesting that ecology could be played like tennis — it was fun, competitive and had an end goal. Crowther regards it as an epiphany: he remained, and completed a PhD in wood-rot fungi. Jones then ushered him towards the postdoc at Bradford’s lab.

The tree counting he did there, plus a further high-profile paper predicting a dramatic loss of carbon from soils in the Arctic, attracted the attention of a private Dutch foundation, DOB Ecology in Veessen. Founded by one of the country’s richest families, it funds projects to protect and restore threatened ecosystems and enable people to live in them sustainably.

The courtship took two years, “and about 100 interviews”, says Crowther, during which he was encouraged to inflate his ambitions to match the pocket and vision of his funders. They wouldn’t take him seriously, he says, until he had sketched out his vision to 2030: to paint a picture of Earth’s ecology in quantitative terms. (Now, he says, his mission is to go “beyond the realm of science” — to start a global movement.)

DOB Ecology also insisted that he budget for 4 non-scientists among the original 14 positions it funded. Between them, the non-scientists liaise with environmental organizations, cultivate the massive networks of scientists needed for sourcing data, maintain a slick website and manage Crowther’s time. He has since added a Head of Art and Culture; one of her first planned projects is an installation at the Vatican in Italy, to encourage people to consider the beauty of nature. “Science without communication is nothing,” Crowther says impetuously. “It’s not even a thing — it’s just papers in people’s drawers.”

Aside from this emphasis on outreach, his interdisciplinary focus and a target to complete 13 major projects in 13 years (of which 9 are done), he is free from direction from his funders, he says.

“Very few people of that age get the chance to build something so big so quickly, and he has taken the chance and run with it,” says Peter Reich, a forest ecologist at the University of Minnesota in St Paul.

As Crowther races off to talk trees to the news network Al Jazeera, his team is hard at work doing the mechanistic studies that take up a lot of their time. In the basement, a couple of master’s students are clamping the reluctant leaves of saplings to measure oxygen and carbon dioxide flow. A loudspeaker plays recorded traffic noise to soil fungi to test an offbeat theory of Crowther’s that sound makes them grow faster (so far, he’s right). Next door, the worktops are crowded with clusters of chopped tree parts. In the office that Crowther rejected in favour of a desk in the communal room, four staff hurl themselves around a ping-pong table, playing “the smashing game” — a chaotic version that incorporates walls, ceiling and floor. It is one of several that Crowther invented and prescribes are played daily to break up the mental effort, forge bonds and keep life fun.

To reduce the unknowns, Crowther was looking for “any quantitative information on any component of the soil community that we could find”. Nematodes — which specialists have scrutinized in thousands of soil samples around the world — were an excellent candidate. “It’s a phenomenal amount of work,” says Bradford of this sampling by soil ecologists, “and it doesn’t normally translate to high-profile manuscripts.”

Crowther’s convening powers may be his central talent, says Bradford. There are other teams applying artificial intelligence and remote sensing to ecology, but Crowther “is pulling together really large empirical data sets” Bradford says. “To me, that’s a really valuable resource just on its own.”

Once the disparate data had been assembled, the lab’s data scientist, Devin Routh, fed them into 250 different machine-learning models that were looking for links between numbers of nematodes and 79 parameters from the lab’s base maps of soil quality, climate and vegetation. They discovered three principal predictors of nematode numbers: soil sandiness, carbon quantity and acidity.

From that, the team was able to predict the number of nematodes worldwide: 4.4 × 1020, ranging in density from less than 100 to more than 2,300 per 100 grams of soil. And, in contrast to plants and other animals, they are more abundant at higher latitudes, locking up the huge carbon stocks of the Arctic and sub-Arctic regions.

But the real significance of the work, says Crowther, is that, in nematodes, the researchers have found a powerful new predictor of soil activity around the world and hence an idea of where climate change will have most impact.

The team has since repeated the mapping exercise with tree-root fungi, publishing the first global map of their whereabouts and quantities in May this year. On the basis of this work, Crowther went on to suggest that rising temperatures will cause fungal species that release carbon to the atmosphere to spread, and those that store carbon to diminish.

These two global patterns — of fungi and nematodes — are just the start of Crowther’s ambition to help transform ecology into a big-picture discipline that can sharpen up climate models, reveal how the planet is responding to climate change, and demonstrate how to restore it.

But some of the leaps Crowther makes are too much for other modellers. Charles Koven, a leading modeller of soil-carbon processes at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California, objects to Crowther’s prediction about how fungus distributions will change under a warming climate.

“I would argue you don’t want to make those kinds of extrapolations into the future for the reason that it’s not just the climate that’s changing — a lot of things are changing, particularly the CO2 concentrations,” he says.

Koven points out that Crowther Lab models are statistical — they find links but don’t tell you if these are causative or correlative. But he welcomes the fungus map because it will help him test his models of cause and effect.

There’s also the question of whether the messages Crowther and his prolific communications engine are broadcasting are sufficiently nuanced. Hartmann’s colleague Susan Trumbore, an Earth-systems scientist, says that there is another, more sombre message to be found in the maps that come with the tree-restoration paper — that the risk of tree loss among intact forests around the world dwarfs what could be achieved through planting. This has not been publicized.

Two months on, Crowther is chastened by the furore his paper created among scientists who thought its message might encourage the public to relax about curbing carbon emissions as long as they planted enough trees. “We certainly did our communications a little bit wrong, and we’ve learned from that,” he says. “I want to be extremely clear that cutting greenhouse-gas emissions is absolutely essential if we are going to have any chance to stop climate change.”

Although critics such as Williams think that Crowther’s messaging needed more refinement before its release, others think that there are benefits from stirring up discussion outside academia. “We need the Crowthers who are out there pushing the limits and giving us big numbers and big potential that will help excite people,” says Robin Chazdon, who studies tropical-forest regeneration and restoration at the University of Connecticut in Storrs. But at the same time, she says, “we need to have local solutions and stakeholder engagement and decision-making on what trees go where.”

Over lunch on the roof terrace, it’s seven minutes until Crowther talks to the BBC. “I would like to make it clear that we are really excited by the detail,” he says suddenly. “The point is, I don’t believe it’s science until you’ve put it in that context: I can say ‘that bird is flying weirdly’ — that’s not science; that’s what most of ecology is at the moment. It’s natural history.”

But now is the time for Big Ecology, he says, with the pressing need to understand where carbon is and how ecosystems process and respond to it. “I think the biggest criticism we always get is ‘this is going to be a huge undertaking, we probably can’t achieve all of this’,” he says. “I think that’s extremely dangerous because that’s the kind of thinking that has got us in this mess.”

Ok, I’ll throw my hands up and admit it – I really dropped the ball on the blog. A big increase in work, a tough break up and a general lack of motivation meant that I didn’t really think of updating this during phase three so… well, I didn’t. But I’ve just begun phase four and it seems like a shame to leave the blog ending such abruptly so I thought I’d do a post to sum up what to expect after your first sea phase.

First up, there will be stories – so many stories! You’ll be hard pressed to find a situation where someone won’t chip in with ‘well, when I was at sea…’. It sounds a bit obnoxious but honestly, it isn’t. Hearing how the classroom lessons relate to everyones sea time really helps to contextualise the theory.

However, the downside to this is that it can be hard going back to looking at ship life from an academic standpoint – I think we all struggled with frustration at one point or another after four or more months of hands on application. It reminded me of the differences between the driving theory test and, y’know… actually driving. Sure, it’s the same for the most part, but everyone has their nuances and no plan survives contact with humanity so sometimes you just have to suck it up.

In many ways Phase three felt like two semesters pushed into one. The first four-ish months was quite eclectic – Meteorolgy and Stability come to mind as the toughest of the units. There is a lot of information to take in for Met but the exams seem to follow a formula so if you can get hold of a few past papers then you should be able to refine your revision areas nicely. I have no problem admitting that maths is not my strong point so Stability is proving to be a bit of an pain but that’s a common one for people to struggle with.

The second half was much more law based – in fact, aside from the ship handling unit in the simulator (which was great) and the four week NAEST short course (which wasn’t quite so enjoyable), it was pretty much all law of one description or another! On one hand that means very few exams, but on the other there are a lot of essays. Different strokes for different folks but I prefer coursework to examinations so, aside from the subjects being quite dry, that wasn’t too bad.

You’ll also have to sit your Signals exam which is one hell of an expensive resit if you fail! To pass you’ll need to identify 18/20 for both flags and morse code as well as score 9/10 on general questions and convince your tutor that you know the meanings of the flags. There’s no easy way to learn ‘em – you just have to do it. I found that making revision cards and hitting them hard for half an hour every night helped, as well as group revision sessions with my coursemates. It isn’t fun but I’d recommend getting on that during your first sea phase so it isn’t such a commitment during phase three.

I’ll openly admit this though – I was pretty burnt out by the end of the second semester, as were most of my coursemates. There were a few bits that would have been useful to have known before our first sea phase and others which felt a little unnecessary, especially given that we don’t get our exceptions anymore when going for our Chief Mates ticket. Ah well, it was a struggle but we all got there in the end.

On a more general note, Warsash has properly moved into central Southampton now. As a whole, I prefer it – I like living in the centre with The Art House and Forbidden Planet within walking distance and having easy access to the facilities at Solent is a real bonus. The college building that is now Warsash Maritime Academy is a pretty standard college building, a bit clinical but perfectly practical. And that’s where it falls down a bit – the Warsash reputation is built on legacy and we left that behind at the old campus. There’s no real maritime vibes in the new place. It’s also led to a lack of community vibe – in the old campus you’d make friends with engineers and officers from different phases, drink with visiting Officers in the bar and have breakfast with your classmates. There’s none of that in the new place. It’s just…where you go to class. I’m glad I got to experience the classic Warsash as this isn’t it. Will that cause problems for Academy? Only time will tell. I feel like a lot of people will come to it with more of a ‘university student’ mindset which could be troublesome but I’d be lying if I said that the old Warsash site wasn’t a nightmare if you actually wanted to do anything. Swings and roundabouts I guess.

On the subject on the city centre, I’m sorry to say that you’ll have to get better at budgeting – accommodation is generally quite expensive and you’ll be surprised at how much you lose to food. I stayed in Emily Davies, the most basic of student accommodations available to us. On the plus side the location amazing – you’ll be two streets back from the high street. In terms of picking up supplies, going out and catching a coach/train it’s a dream. The downside is that it’s quite expensive for what you get – it is massively outdated and in need of a refurb. The bathrooms in particular feel like something from a low end holiday park. There’s also only four washing machines for the four blocks of flats (so, 16 flats x 4 rooms = 64 rooms, times four buildings… 256 people. Ouch!) and no real social area so that’s a big vibe killer. Honestly, if you can, talk to your sponsor companies and see if they’ll pay your accommodation allowance (if you get one, that is) direct to you and get a house or flat somewhere with your mates – you’ll be better off and probably make more memories that way as the set up, along with everything I mentioned about the new building, can make it quite a lonely experience.

So, yeah, sorry for the long post – I wanted to give an honest idea of what to expect during phase three at Warsash. It is long, it isn’t easy, and it’ll lead into the longest sea phase of the lot.

No one said it would be easy.

Until next time, stay lucky.

bellarke + 'out looking for another bunker when they accidentally stumble across an old intact museum, bellamy gives clarke a tour using his History!Nerd knowledge'

Vague S1 AU go!

When Clarke thought about the ground, she thought about a lot of the things they got, grass and trees, running water, the feeling of dirt under her feet and the sound of birds in the trees. Sunlight is just as good as she thought it would be. Nature, for the most part, hasn’t let her down.

“But shouldn’t there be more stuff?” she asks Bellamy, with a huff.

He glances at her over his shoulder, snorts out a laugh. “What, there isn’t enough down here for you, Princess?”

“Don’t tell me you didn’t want more too. We should be in the middle of civilization here, Bellamy. There should be history, right?”

“There should be, yeah.” There’s a pause, and Clarke lets the silence stand, waiting for him. Their friendship is still a tentative, nebulous thing, and she’s trying to figure out how it’s going to go. She’s trying to get a feel for him.

He doesn’t make her wait too long. “Do you know where we are?” he asks.

“Right now?”

“Historically speaking. Where they put us down.”

“United States, eastern seaboard.”

“Near D.C. The capital is around here somewhere, Clarke. There must be so much stuff around here, if we could find it.”

“Have you been looking?”

“I figure we can survive winter first,” he says. “And then work on exploring.”

“What do you call this?” she asks. “If it’s not exploring.”

“This is surviving. We’re looking for bunkers, not–”

“History?”

“Ruins.”

“Aren’t bunkers ruins?”

“Useful ruins. And we’re not looking for them for historical reasons.”

“But they are history.”

“What, does that really matter to you? They’re history, fine. That’s still not what we’re actually looking for.”

“But do you know, in theory, where any history might be?”

“You want to go on a field trip?” he asks, sounding dubious.

“I’m just wondering if there’s anywhere you’ve been wanting to go.”

“My geography isn’t that good. But if we’re out here enough, we’ll probably find something, right?”

That’s the answer she was really looking for. “So, you’re going to be out here a lot?”

He shoots her a smirk. “Just until you want to bring someone you actually like,” he teases, and she laughs.

“So, you’ll be out here a lot.”

“Yeah,” he agrees. “Sounds like it.”

*

When they find the museum, it’s completely by accident. Three days later, on the trail of what they think is another bunker, but when Bellamy gets the hatch open, even the air smells different.

“It looks bright down there,” he says.

“Automatic lights, maybe?”

“Maybe. What do you think is powering them?”

“Could be solar cells. Rigged to turn on when—“

“Someone breaks in? Friendly.” He glances at her. “Going in?”

“Like you said, they seem friendly.”

He climbs down first, like he always insists on. He’s not one of those people who wants to lead so other people will do his dirty work; Bellamy Blake is always willing to be first in the line of fire.

Instead of looking back up to spot her as she follows him, though, he’s staring into the bunker, apparently transfixed.

“Bellamy?” she prompts, soft enough she hopes no one will hear, if he’s found people down there. “Problem?”

He looks back at her and grins; it’s an expression she’s never seen on him before, not even when they found the gun cache. There’s no mean edge to the expression at all; he’s delighted.

“You have to get down here.”

He does watch her as she climbs down, but he’s looking almost giddy, like a kid in a candy store.

“How many guns are down here?” she asks. “Is there a tank?”

He turns to the room with a flourish of his arm; all drama, all the time. “You said you wanted history, Princess.”

The Apocalypse Archive, says a bright sign over a set of clear double doors. A Museum for the After Times.

“Holy shit,” she breathes.

Bellamy is practically bouncing. “They must have seen it coming. Whoever made this place. And they wanted to store it for posterity.”

“Do you think we’ll find anything useful in here?”

“You were the one who wanted to find something historical,” he says. “Don’t tell me you changed your mind now that we actually did.”

“Just wondering where you stand on raiding a museum for supplies.”

His look of absolute horror is an answer all by itself. “It’s a museum, Clarke.”

“What if they have a tank?”

“So you wanted to find historical ruins and take their stuff.”

“Isn’t that where the first museums came from?”

He glares at her as he holds the door open. “We’re not taking anything unless we need it.”

“I’m actually more interested in the space,” she says, looking around with interest. “If this place is big enough and has actual power, we could live here.”

“You want to move into the museum?”

“Just if it makes sense. But we should investigate first. See what’s around. Although,” she adds, frowning, “I don’t know where to start.”

If anyone had ever asked, Clarke would have said she had a decent understanding of museums. She read about them when she was a kid, and there was a display of artifacts from the ground in Alpha Station, curated carefully, but it was nothing like this, a strange hodgepodge of things, with no clear order she can see.

“With the introduction,” says Bellamy. “We, the staff of the Apocalypse Archive, recognize that many of our current facilities may not survive climate change, nuclear war, and everything else humans are doing. We hope that some of us will survive it, and that if we do, this museum will serve as a record of what came before, both good and bad. It would be impossible to capture the full scope of human history, but we’ve done our best. It repeats in a few other languages,” he adds, fingers tracing the words on the wall. “Spanish, I think Chinese, French, maybe Arabic?”

“That’s Korean under it,” says Clarke. “I’m pretty sure.”

“So, this looks like a timeline,” he says, moving down the wall. “I guess they wanted to keep it as universal as possible, I don’t see any other text. Starting with the Big Bang here–” He gestures to an image of an explosion that Clarke wouldn’t have immediately called as the start of the universe. “And then we go into the history of life on Earth.”

“Imagine not knowing if all this knowledge would survive.”

“It might not have,” he points out. “Grounders seem to have lost it.”

“Which is weird, if you think about it. We had people who survived and remembered, that’s part of why we know. They lived down here, but they made whole new lives.”

“Maybe the reason they survived was that they’d already given up on all this stuff.” He follows the timeline, pointing out innovations as he spots them. It’s quite a piece of work, huge, showing how continents moved, splitting, when humans show up, and tracking different civilizations across the world. It’s not comprehensive, but it’s detailed enough that even with both of them working together, they can’t figure out what all the pictures represent.

Bellamy still gets most of them.

“I wonder how long this took,” he muses, tracing an image of a mushroom cloud.

“I wonder when they started.”

“The introduction said climate change,” he says. “That puts it after 2000, I think. Global warming was preferred before that, it was this political thing to switch it so people couldn’t say that a colder spring meant the problem wasn’t real. Probably 2010 to 2020.”

Clarke blinks. “You have it down to ten years?”

He shrugs. “That was when the climate change problem got really noticeable, and it just got worse in the Trump presidency, when the United States was doubling down on destroying the environment. It’s amazing they put off the end of the world as long as they did, honestly, after that mess. Plus, this is the new UN symbol here,” he adds, pointing to the end of the timeline. “That went into use in 2025, and it would have taken them a while to build this place. Probably started around 2018.” He looks around. “I think we’re supposed to start here. Ancient civilizations.”

“How did you get interested in this stuff?” she asks, curious.

“What stuff?”

“History.”

“My mom always liked it. Octavia too. It wasn’t like we could socialize much. Even if–having friends meant they wanted to spend time with you, and it wasn’t safe, so I just didn’t have friends. I read to O a lot, and she always had a lot of questions. I was her brother, I was supposed to know everything. And I like it. I like the true stuff.”

“Okay, so–tell me about the ancient civilizations we’re seeing here.”

“Don’t act like you don’t know plenty about it too.”

“I’ll handle the art, you can take the history.”

He smiles. “Deal.”

It doesn’t feel like meeting Bellamy for the first time, not really. But it feels like finding a new part of him, a part she’d always known about, but only in the broadest strokes. He knows who Oppenheimer is, but she never knew why he knew, and she tells him about her father’s fascination with the atomic bomb, while he shares his own favorite historical periods, the ones that interest him most.

“I spent a lot of time thinking about how we got here,” he admits. “And why the Ark was how it was. I still don’t get how we all decided to speak English.”

She has to laugh. “Yeah? What would you have picked?”

“Esperanto is a pretty logical choice.”

“I’ve never even heard of that one.”

“It’s kind of cool. I don’t know if it ever could have taken over completely, but it would have encouraged people to stay multilingual, which would have been nice. Some guy in–late 1800s, I think? Made it as an international language. I actually learned it, for fun.”

“You never stop surprising me,” she says without thinking, and he frowns.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“I remember when we first got down here. I never would have guessed you taught yourself languages for fun.”

“I thought that was the only way to lead. To protect everyone.” He smirks. “You saw how much good trying to talk about survival was doing.”

“You were the one who was arguing with me!” she protests, laughing.

“What, you think Murphy wouldn’t have done the same thing?”

“He wouldn’t have been as good at it.”

He taps his finger against one of the statues. All of the works of art in the Archive are reproductions, she’s pretty sure, made to survive and educate, and they’re well done, if not completely convincing. They get the job done. “I was doing what I thought I had to do. To protect myself.”

“And us.”

“I wasn’t protecting everyone.”

“We needed a leader, and like you said, what I was doing what I wasn’t working. I’m not saying you were perfect, and we could have done better those first few weeks, but we could have done worse too.”

“Wow. Don’t get too enthusiastic,” he says, but he doesn’t quite land the delivery. Now that she’s getting to know him, she knows how he uses sarcasm. “Oh, hey,” he adds, the most obvious subject change of all time. “Philippines. I want to look at this.”

“Yeah?”

“That’s where my dad’s family was from. At least that’s what my mom told me.”

“I don’t think I know anything about them. My history is pretty spotty.”

“That’s another language I tried to learn, Tagalog. My mom told me my dad spoke it too, but he died before he could teach me.”

She slides her arm through his, deliberate, and he startles, but just for a second. “So let’s check that out,” she says.

“Yeah,” he agrees. “Let’s see what they’ve got.”

*

By the time they’re thinking of leaving, it’s too late to make it back to camp that night, and the archive is getting cold and dark.

“I guess it is solar powered,” says Clarke.

“And they weren’t planning on anyone living here.”

“Which is weird. I guess it was designed to survive whatever happened, but not keep anyone alive in here.”

“Maybe after they did all this, they weren’t sure we really deserved to survive.” She cocks her head at him, and he raises one shoulder. “Sometimes, reading history makes you think humanity was a bad idea.”

“But you still want us to survive.”

“Us personally, yeah. But I don’t think I would have made it on the Ark. If they’d floated O, I don’t know–”

He looks away, and Clarke’s heart lodges in her throat. It’s easy to remember how close they all came to not making it, to being floated to give the Ark more air, to dying even if they didn’t. But Bellamy should have had his whole life ahead of him, and it’s hard to remember that even without knowing anything, he didn’t see a future for himself.

“We should just spend the night here,” she says, giving him a smile. “See how it is. If this is somewhere we could live, it would be a lot better than the drop ship. There’s a lot of space.”

“If we got rid of the stuff.”

“Survival first, history second, right?” she asks, and he looks around the museum, clearly unsure.

“Maybe we’re making history now,” he finally says. “We just need to figure out where we fit in with all this.”

“Let’s do that in the morning. This cloth isn’t historically relevant, right?” she adds, nodding to a drop cloth under a bust of an ancient philosopher.

“I doubt it.”

“So lift that up so we can sleep on it.”

He does, but his eyebrows are raised as he looks at her. “We?”

“It’s cold in here. And there’s only one blanket.”

He doesn’t object as she finds a clear patch of floor, and when she gestures for him to lie down, he does it. The cloth isn’t huge, so she settles half on top of him, and between the two of them they get themselves wrapped up, close and tight.

“We are going to make history,” she tells him. It’s easy to feel sure of it, when they’re close and warm in the darkening bunker. “You and me. Together.”

“Yeah, I think we are. In the morning, though.”

She smiles against his neck. “Yeah. In the morning.”

Bleach Headcanons For The Wounded Soul

ALL RIGHT I KNOW THE ENDING WAS ALL KINDS OF JUST.....WHAT??? AND A LOT OF UNANSWERED THINGS So to make MYSELF and hopefully the fandom feel better I'm gonna dump alllllll the headcanons here for you ( if it's ship specific stuff u want just send an ask I ship a ton of things my friends ) SPOILER WARNING TURN BACK NOW IF U DO NOT WANT SPOILING - Toshiro babysits Kazui and Ichika quite often and demands payment of either watermelon or dragon themed decor Renji bought him a dragon shirt and Toshiro got super excited over it Ichigo , secret art guy , managed to one up this by making a drawing of Hyorinmaru's human form and gave it to Toshiro as a cheer-up gift one day. Ichigo got free babysitting for a whole YEAR - Byakuya and Toshiro become close friends after the Quincy war ( they were friends before but at some point Toshiro ends up with Byakuya's scarf in the manga so they musta been best bros ) and Toshiro is named god-father of Ichika - Uryuu and Ichigo become much closer and Uryuu has dinner at Ichigo's every week and they catch up. Uryuu teaches Ichigo about Quincy stuff and Ichigo teaches Uryuu the good things about shinigami . They visit their mothers graves together every year. - IZURU MADE A FULL RECOVERY HE'S FINE HE JUST RETIRED - JUSHIRO IS FINE THAT little sad scene was just a nightmare sequence okay haha ( JUSHIRO IS F I N E) - Kurotsuchi eventually becomes a decent damn father to Nemu and checks himself once he realizes how much evil he's wrought ( BUT REALLY THOUGH GIVE HIM A REDEMPTION ARC SOMEONE) I mean I used to hate him so much but I hate him a little less because he DID save Toshiro and Rangiku He does good things by accident sometimes I mean maybe he has a tiny heart -Ikkaku marries Keigo's big sister and Keigo is so scared but so happy for them too - Grimmjow gets a happy ending ( just let my angry cat be happy please) - KISUKE AND YORUICHI GET MARRIED AND ADOPT GINTA AND URURU - Yuushiro Shihouin is FINE, he's F I N E - Toshiro and Momo start dating soon after Kazui and Ichika are born , Byakuya is the best man at the wedding Toshiro names their first son Hyorinmaru ( Nicknamed Hyorin ) And Hyorinmaru is of course god-father Toshiro is the CUTEST dad . He brings baby Hyorin with him everywhere , wrapped in one of his scarves . It's very distracting at Captain's meetings because who's gonna scold Hitsugaya when his son is so cute ? Plus Nemu pretty much adopts all of the Hitsugaya babies the minute she sees them so Kurotsuchi will fight anyone who tells Toshiro to leave the baby at home , because he LOVES to see Nemu happy ( and is secretly fascinated by the super strong reishi of the Hitsugaya kids) All of Squad Ten adore the Hitsugaya babies , anyone who so much as makes a Hitsugaya frown gets a beat down from the tenth AND fifth division ( Shinji is the most ecstatic god-father ever and Hiyori thinks it's adorable) They have like six or seven ( or more ) kids and every one of them is super strong in fighting Their third child Shiromo actually challenged Zaraki to a fight when he was seven , and Zaraki LOST. To a seven year old. Momo tells everyone about it for centuries . Zaraki never lives it down . Shiromo Hitsugaya gains his first rival before puberty. They have a winter home in Karakura town and visit often . Ichigo adores their youngest child , and not just because he's named Ichigo! Little Ichigo Hitsugaya thinks Big Ichigo is the coolest thing since his dad , and listens to Ichigo talk about old fights all day. They do art projects together and play soccer and Ichigo makes sure Little Ichi learns first aid because obvi his folks are gonna need it one day - Mizuiro becomes a profitable business man who helps exiled Shinigami adjust to the human world and helps humans who see spirits learn how to stay safe from Hollows - Tatsuki helps Mizuiro with his business and eventually he's the best man at her wedding when she marries her girlfriend , and SHE'S the one who gives him away a year later when he marries his boyfriend - Orihime is a Full-Bringer , the Full-Bringer group just didn't know about her yet. They find out pretty soon after the Quincy War and soon start training her and she becomes best friends with Riruka . ( I mean if Kubo ain't gonna tell me why she can do the thing I'm making up my own thing ) - Kyoryaku marries Nanao and they have four daughters ( Shunshui doesn't die from the Ise curse he lives well into old age he's fine ) - Chad runs a nonprofit orphanage / children's home devoted to finding kids loving families . Kisuke and Yoruichi adopt four to begin with and adopt more over time as their children grow up and move out. Tatsuki and her wife adopt twin girls that can see ghosts . They become a famed ghost medium family Mizuiro and his husband adopt a blind boy , a deaf girl , and a nonbinary kid. - Kisuke eventually figures out how to remove the Hogyoku from Aizen and Aizen finally gets executed for his crimes - Keigo runs a blog of conspiracy theories , most of which actually happen to come true at some point. Turns out Keigo's family is descended from a runaway Quincy and Keigo is the first in generations to develop any type of Quincy power. He has glimpses of the future but can't control it. Uryuu is stunned ( and mildly annoyed) that Keigo is a Quincy but helps him out nonetheless. - Tatsuki gets famous worldwide for punching a sexist on national television and soon every corner store has souvenir Tatsuki shirts - KOMOMURA IS FINEEEEE - Shuuhei becomes the next captain of squad 9 -Soi Fon gets a girlfriend - UNCLE BYAKUYA BYAKUYA IS THE UNCLE TO THE CHILD OF ANYONE HE'S FRIENDS WITH And he gives all the kids scarves and flowers and etiquette lessons ( and plushie Mr.Seaweed dolls ) - OKAY BUT IN THE MANGA BYAKUYA LOVES TO DRAW THIS LITTLE CHARACTER THAT'S JUST A HUMANOID SEAWEED It's amazing and adorable and I love artist Byakuya - Karin introduced Toshiro to ice puns and puns in general. He gets a tumblr and an instagram. He posts pics of defeated enemies and lots of sweet stuff about Momo . And memes The memes haven't stopped since You think he was sarcastic in fights before? ICE try , bitches ( Rangiku tries to disown him three times ) - OH YEAH SHINJI ADOPTED HIYORI OKAY - There's a betting pool in the Gotei 13 over who Zaraki challenges to a fight most often that week. Toshiro wins regularly ( he bets on himself and Soi Fon ) Once Toshiro actually takes up Zaraki's challenge , because he's stressing out over having his first child and Momo is sick and there's been weird Hollow activity and Zaraki just hit a nerve . He ends up getting hurt pretty bad but managed to win and now there's a new betting pool over when Zaraki is gonna beat Toshiro ( or if anyone CAN beat Hitsugaya anymore ) - Whenever Toshiro looks sad , Momo makes it a rule that you have to hug him every time you see him and give him a compliment. Rangiku and Byakuya enforce this rule , doubly so when Toshiro is recovering from injury. One time Kensei tried to refuse to hug Toshiro and Byakuya glared at him from the shadows for a solid hour while a very concussed and confused Toshiro just watched from his hospital bed . Kensei lost the staring contest and gave Toshiro an awkward hug and for lack of a better idea just went " Your Bankai is very artistic to watch , good job " Toshiro smiled for about an hour and later Kensei got a thank you card from Byakuya " You made Toshiro smile today , I can like you now " - Whenever shit hits the fan in a battle and Byakuya is by Toshiro he just picks him up and books it for home while Toshiro protests and tries to go Bankai -When Momo swears in front of Shinji for the first time he hugs her like a smug parent and she is confused - Toshiro jokingly leaves a jar labelled " Zaraki's Swear Jar " in the Captain's Meeting room and no one tells Zaraki it's not official so in meetings Zaraki just drops whatever's in his pocket at the beginning of the meeting in the jar The prices range depending on severity and vulgarness " Damn " is a nickel " Fuck " is a dollar Anything sexually overt is three dollars The money goes toward whatever is most pressing at the time - repairs , medical supplies , equipment .... - Once in a war Momo is kidnapped and Toshiro just decimates a whole army to rescue her and from then on the enemy was terrified of Toshiro , who's unaware of it for a few weeks while he recovers from injuries. But when he shows back up at the front the leader just surrenders like " DON'T MURDER US WE DIDN'T KNOW SHE WAS YOUR WIFE " Uhhhhh that's it for now I'm tired , but enjoy! @hitsuhinahappiness @xxhanabifireworksxx

Take The Stress Of educator.

Ways to Make Your educator Appear like A Million Bucks

Once you have actually looked for something on our site, we will add it below for quick and also very easy accessibility. Teachers also need to give opportunities for students to be evaluated in manner ins which engages their passion locations - I commonly use the 'food selection' evaluation style, that asks trainees to finish the very same job however has them doing it in a way that matches their understanding design. As long as u count on the instructor u r embracing and also they trust u then wat the hell?! Once again, various educators have various expectations, be it pencil or pen or whatever. I ensure each pupil has actually earned some on the first day as it obtains them even more motivated ... plus I need them to have a bit of cash when I introduce the financial institution as well as checks which they pay a small charge for. En masse, I assumed we art instructors might brainstorm means to earn this feasible in our art rooms. Exactly what's outstanding is that teachers like this seem to regulate a higher level of respect, love, as well as inevitably, productivity, which results in our final 2 characteristics. That overview is also an educator that is playing his function of teaching you how you can carry out Umrah in the very best way ever before so that when you take a trip to Saudi Arab by Umrah Experts cost-effective Four star 2017 hajj umrah plan with group you will certainly not deal with any type of problem. Little is worse in the classroom than an instructor rocketing with a lecture, algorithms and also theories scrawled across a completely dry erase board, overwhelmed students struggling to keep up all the while. For example, an elementary trainee could be late due to the fact that she does not have grown-up aid to get up and get ready for school daily. http://reginadefitness.info/ The battles of the morning as well as very early class travel with them throughout the whole day. If we can cross out indecent actions of also some manager, indecent actions of an educator is a serious matter to consider. Teacher mentors require training in the interpersonal dynamics of this tough job. A great deal of functioning instructors require a few months off in the summer in order to take a break from the roughness of training. If you don't include your objective in your teacher resume ... a purpose that clearly and particularly specifies the teaching position you are making an application for ... then you are making it harder on the educator meeting board.

educator Is Critical To Your Service. Learn Why!

Sexy Individuals Do teacher:-RRB-.

With lessons on DVD, the ordinary person can take a seat to take a lesson any time of the day without bothering with conflicting job timetables and not having the moment to exercise methods prior to the next lesson. Yes, the trainees definitely recognize when the instructor is excited concerning a topic - it's capturing! New york city homeowners are eligible for the Applegate/Jackson/Parks Future Instructor Scholarship as well as the INSTRUCT Give, a grant that gives financial aid to pupils in return for an arrangement to teach in a high-need field in a low-income area. That sort of financial support to schools to supply brand-new instructors with assistance from caring veteran teachers is truly tough to find by in these financial times. In order to produce a setting for pupil success, the teacher needs to supply high quality direction along with suitable motivation Most significantly, the instructor needs to have the best attitude for management in the classroom. As an example, if they play at the end of course instead of cleansing their location, they do not leave up until their location is cleaned up. Or, that specific student that allowed others clean up for him/her will certainly have to cleanse the entire table/room the following day. A fellow instructor said they advised them of PeeWee's Play house which you recognize is a SUBSTANTIAL compliment! As the instructor you will should define what kind of collection will have to be constructed, the amount of items it will need to have and also just what showcases it will certainly have to need to get approved for factors. Think of this from a parent's perspective ... just how fantastic would it be to get an email every week allowing you recognize exactly what your child will certainly be servicing that week as well as just what the homework is daily of the week. Federal government websites are fantastic for offering educators with science materials, games and also interactive computer system programs. Miss Siebenhaar has actually had a global influence due to the fact that she makes everybody unique to her, makes on a daily basis important, and makes every lesson important. LOL Perhaps that's why I really have a lot of respect for grade school educators. As a consequence, the existence of condition has actually led to the institution and the classroom has entire to make some modifications in the means the method they teacher such a trainee struggling with behavior disorders. Teacher professional development is a great way to embrace as well as find out regarding multicultural education. As a student in Senior high school and having actually read this, this assisted open my eyes a bit on what the educators (namely the public education ones) have to go with and it appears no picnic.

February and March have been such busy month for me. Thought I really need to tell everyone my busy schedules the fun time I had with my friends, kids and family!

Month of February 

Birthday

February is my birthday month – sigh, another year older, nothing like a kid’s excitement when it’s his/her birthday, just hoping people do not squeeze to get me to tell my age… then followed by comments like ‘you look REALLY good for your age’! Enough the sympathy, I just don’t like to be reminded of my age that’s the truth. I didn’t do anything fancy on the actual day of my birthday, just took a day off on the day, enjoyed the luxury of dropping off kids at their classroom and managed to pop in an exaggerating smiling face to the teacher. Typical working mum guilty syndrome all over… I’ll stop here, otherwise it will be the kids or work talk again, the never ending working mum’s dilemma! Anyway, on my own birthday, I just really enjoyed the moment of fulfilling a mum duty that otherwise not possible on a normal working day for me…… Then on the Friday evening, I had a lovely meal with my dearest friends at Frankie and Benny‘s. Cocktail on offer – Hooray to my dearest friends! What do you do for your birthday? I’d love to hear your story about how to celebrate your birthday – just to give me some more ideas! Please leave your comments below to let me know!

Birthday cocktail!

  Scotland

Then there’s the excuse to visit my in-laws in Scotland because of my birthday. Kids are always looking forward to see their cousins in Scotland. When my kids and their 3 cousins gathering together, 3 girls and 2 boys are always having so much giggling about everything! It’s so lovely to see the kids having a lot of fun but it also makes every departure a difficult one as they are so fond of each other’s company. This time round, grandma Maggi suggested a swimming fun at the Double Tree Hotel by Hilton Strathclyde. What a lovely hotel! Even though my favorite hotel is under the MacDonald group that not only I had my 40th birthday there, we also booked in a MacDonald resort in Malaga, Spain! But Double Tree by Hilton is a good one, particularly the nice pool with Jacuzzi and sauna room along side the facility. It provides plenty of way to play with kids as well as a chance to enjoy yourself!

Double Tree Hilton Hotel Strathclyde

Swimming pool and jacuzzi hot tub

  Having lunch with grandma!

  NCT

As a charity volunteer, I devote some of my time to NCT (National Childbirth Trust) Preston, Fylde and District branch on a regular basis. I organise a group called NCT Stay and Play Group. It welcomes all parents, grandparents and carers alike with their kids to join in. The February group was taken place at Ham and Jam Cafe, a very family/kids friendly cafe located in the city centre of Preston. This month we were lucky to have a face-painter coming along and lending a hand to the group. She’s from from a local kids holiday club business called The Nest. My son M is sooo happy to have his face painted. Theme?! Ehhh just a green robot will do!

I have a robot face!

Book of the Month

February is also a book reading month! I was very happy that I finished a book – Water Witch by Carol Goodman. This is the 2nd book in The Fairwick Chronicles Series. It was recommended by a friends of mine, although it has an incubus as the centre of the story, who is a demon creature by nature praying on women to fall in love with him so he can turn into human shape. The whole story is rather romantic as Callie (the Water Witch) discovered herself really fall in love with him and he was willing to sacrifice his life for her in the end (ops, hope I didn’t ruin this for you for those who still want to read it yourself!) In the story there’s also a fairyland – Fay that Callie found out that she is the door keeper between the human world and the Fay. Creatures good or evil all played an important part in the story. I truly enjoyed this book and hope you would give it try here as well!

Like what you read so far? Join my free newsletter here!

  Month of March

NCT NNS

Through hard work and sheer determinations, 5 dedicated women volunteers (including myself) successfully delivered the charity NCT Sales (we called it Newly New Sales – NNS) on 11th March. The sales provides all parents and carers alike the opportunity to buy quality ‘nearly new’ children items, from clothing to toy, from cot bed to pram system and so on and on. We had about 100 sellers happily sent their items to sell at our NNS and an overwelming 250 buys turned up on the day. The chair lady Kate stayed almost 10 hours from the begining to the end. The sales generated about £3000 pounds of sales and 25% of the profit went to the NCT Headquarter! Well-done to all the ladies Kate, Emma, Natalie and Lorren, of course there’s myself. I managed to sell cupcake and hot/cold drink at the sales and raised £88 within 1 hour and half! Hooray!

Sadly our NCT Preston, Fylde and District branch is losing its chair ladies and facing closure after many years of hard work. The branch is still seeking for a new chair volunteer (until 1/05/2017) to take over and if you are interested please contact the branch’s Facebook page here!

NCT cake sale

  Hobby Craft

March is also a month running up to the preparation to Easter. I have discovered Hobby Craft has so many decoration and craft idea for Easter! They also have a ‘100s of lines at £1‘ sales on right now. I have got myself plenty of supply for kids’ to do their craft this Easter holiday break! Looking forward to the crafty fun! My girl B is always fond of making things, I also found their Easter bunny making a particular art project for her. Find out from their website and give it a try yourself!

Easter Bunny Making

Easter Crafts for Kids

ILM Course

Another thing worth mentioning here is I had a huge relief that I completed one of the biggest tasks I have to do for my ILM NVQ course. Phew! ILM is short for Institute of Leadership and Management. I feel extremely proud to be part of this and is studying toward a valuable qualification awarded by this reputable institute. Delivered by Preston College as an apprentice program, I will gain a Qualification on Principle of Leadership and Management as well as a NVQ Level 5 Diploma in Leadership and Management, double awards that’s the bonus! Although writing thousands of word on assignment isn’t exactly a fun task, I found the group discussion gives me so much inside about management! A guy called Garry told us how bad management could nearly cost him an electrocution death sentence -what the heck! Yep management IS really important in his company that’s for sure! Then again, I had to stand in front of the tutor to give presentation using the PowerPoint file I created myself, reciting all the words and try not script reading, a total challenge for me! I enjoyed the experience, particularly released when I received a few ‘good pass’ on the feedback mark sheet. Hours of practice has eventually paid off!

If you are interested in management theory or simply interested to know what ILM is about, please get in touch here, I will send you my PowerPoint presentation to you as a free resource, all you need to do is to get in touch and let me have your feedback!

ILM – Institute of Leadership and Management

Windermere Treetop Nets

We have been to Brockholes Windermere a few times, but never tried Treetop Nets until this March. It happened to be one of the rainy days, yet the kids enjoyed the 3-meter high up play in the trees (rain wasn’t heavy and stopped eventually!). According to their website, they are a UK first treetop adventure. Adults and children alike can all play in the walls of netting up and down the slide, kicking a ball or two, chasing around each other without any safety hazard. In the past when we came to Brockholes Windermere, most of the activities we do are walk around garden and the little children park. This is because most of the activities here are adventurous and targeting to older age children or adult. This is the first time M could join in as Treetop Nets accepts kids from age of 3 and above, so he pretty much enjoyed the ‘big kids’ game this time!

  Mother’s Day 

Last but not the least it’s about my Mother’s Day Sunday. I had a well-attempted ‘serving-mum-breakfast-in-bed’ style treat from my 10-year-old daughter B. Never mind fairy cake for breakfast, I got buttered toasts made by B herself with no help from daddy, plus some nice chocolate flower buds and a lovely heart-shaped balloon with a bear mum and a bear kid! Only my 4-year-old son M was too eager to ‘try’ the flower buds, that he forgot to leave one for his big sister… ‘all tried and they taste good’ he told B!!!(I was trying very hard not to laugh out loud…)

How’s your Mother’s Day Sunday? Would love to hear about your treat! Please leave your comments below.

Mother’s day treat

  That’s it from me now, hopefully I will be back here soon to tell you all about my Easter!

  The post Busy February and March! appeared first on .

Exquisite Corpse: The Tryout

I’d known that this tryout was going to be hard, but I had no idea it would be impossible. I mean, basically impossible. I’d spent all summer training, focusing on my reaction speeds just like EJ warned, only to show up and find out that everything had changed. Like, CHANGED. Overnight.

For those of you who have read the whole story and just want to skip ahead to the CYOA endings:

•  If you want to find out where Benedict put the cloak, read on for LRFYA's ending.

•  If you're looking for a hopeful conclusion, read on for FYAON's ending.

Otherwise, read on!

fyavanwa:

My big competition for goalkeeper, Taylor, got bit this summer, the night of the Fourth of July. She and her brothers were lighting illegal fireworks out on the basketball court, late, after everyone had gone home from the city-sponsored show, and when the cops showed up she ran blindly into the woods toward the park, and that’s where it happened. I didn’t find out until I showed up at tryouts, of course, otherwise I wouldn’t have come, or I would have went out, maybe, for volleyball instead. Because if you’ve seen Teen Wolf (and who hasn’t) you know that no one can beat a werewolf on a court or a field. No one. I looked like an idiot out there.

pghfya:

I lifted myself from the field, my cheeks burning. From the center of a varsity team huddle, Taylor nodded at me as I left the field. I lifted my chin in response, even though I was daydreaming about charging across the dry grass and launching myself at her position-stealing face. In the daydream, I win, but in real life, she’d slaughter me. Quite possibly literally now. It was clear I’d be spending another season on the bench.

I decided to walk home to let the sweat my dry on my skin and the humiliation mellow. The sidewalks were dotted with fellow classmates shouldering backpacks and making their own disappointed ways home: the wannabe jock parade. I turned the corner onto my street and found myself on the heels of a blonde girl with her head bent down, looking at her phone, probably. Her wavy hair was twisted up and she wore a leather jacket over denim shorts, a slouchy bag bouncing at her side. An art kid maybe?

At the other end of the street, a car engine roared and we both looked up. I didn’t even see the other thing approach us until it had barreled into her, knocking her through Mrs. Thompson’s honeysuckle bushes. I raced through the break in the sweet-smelling flowers and greenery to find the girl on her knees, straddling the thing, with what looked like a silver letter opener at its throat.  

What’s that all about, @fyaorlandonorth

fyaorlandonorth:

The girl pushed the letter opener deeper into the, well, what I can only describe as a wolf-man’s neck, and asked with murder in her voice, “Why are you following me, kibble-breath?”

“You know why,” he growled, his eyes fixed on her hand. “She’s getting tired of waiting for you to bring her what is hers.”

“Well, she can wait until she drops dead,” the girl retorted. “I’m not giving it up until I get my brother back.”

“Just give her the—” the wolf started, but she cut him off.

“This is how this is going to go. I’m going to give you a nice little reminder of our time together—” She traced a line in his skin with the blade and a well of red followed. “Then you’re going to crawl back to your den and tell your master that she can meet me tomorrow night outside the school gym at halftime, with my brother, or I’m going to take her precious and bury it in the deepest, darkest hole in the farthest part of the wood I can find and she’ll never see it again.”

“You’re such a b—”

She kneed him in the stomach, cutting off his air supply and sentence, then waved the letter opener menacingly. “You really wanna go there, fur-brain?”

He scrambled back as she jumps off him and made a rude gesture as he sprinted around the side of the house. I swear he looked a little like one of my classmates, but I couldn’t get a positive ID before I noticed those sharp green eyes focused in on me.

I sucked in a breath as she darted towards me with the blade still in her hand. “Whoa, whoa, don’t stick me!” I threw my hands up.

“How much did you hear?” she demanded.

I weighed my options: should I lie or tell the truth?

@lrfya, it’s all yours!

lrfya:

My eyes flitted down to the sharp blade in her hand, then back up to those green eyes shining with fire and intensity. The truth’s a lot less dangerous than lying. “All of it,” I said in a rush. “I’m sorry, please don’t stab me, I didn’t mean to, and I promise I’ll forget everything! I just—I saw you get attacked. I wanted to make sure you were okay.“ I was flustered, and was having trouble forming sentences. “Was that…is he…does that werewolf go to Hamilton High School?” The blonde girl eyed me appraisingly. At her gaze, my skin flushed and my heart quickened. This made me furious – it’s not like I’m some damsel in distress, swooning over a mysterious hero. Yes, she was stunning, all legs and eyes and hair, but I know how to take care of myself! I was on my way to save her. Not that I’ve killed a werewolf before, but at least I had on my silver necklaces. Plus, I had a tonic of wolfsbane oil mixed with holy water in my backpack for the direst of circumstances. Until I saw that letter opener, I was charging in like the cavalry to save the day. I stood a bit straighter, pushing my shoulders back and raising my chin. “Can I put my hands down now at least?” She nodded and dropped the letter opener. Apparently, I’d passed whatever test she’d silently been giving me. “He’s a junior there. You know about werewolves?” she asked. “I just lost my varsity spot to one,” I said glumly. She rolled her eyes. “Your varsity spot? Really? How terrible for you,” she spit at me. “I lost my brother to an entire den, or weren’t you listening?” Oof. Open mouth, insert foot. Maybe two feet. “I’m an idiot. I apologize. His name’s Matt, right? He’s in my French class. Who’s his master, that you were talking about? You said you took something of hers?” Her mouth set in a grim line. “You ask too many questions. Forget that you saw me here, or else.” She turned on her heel, grabbed her bag, and started to head back toward the road. I jogged after her, coming up beside her and matching her stride. I was not letting her get away that easily. “Why would a werewolf take your brother? It doesn’t make any sense.” I was nervous as I said it. My response to our town having become a werewolf home base has thus far been defensive as opposed to offensive. The werewolves I’d encountered up to that point had been mostly harmless, at least off the soccer field. I know in theory they’re dangerous, but here they’ve kept to themselves. I’d heard the girls in the locker room discussing that Taylor’s family had added a secure cell with chains in their rec room for the few nights of the month she changed. The girl sighed. “Because I stole something of hers. Now she’s taken my little brother hostage and she’ll turn him into one of them if I don’t give it back.”

What it do @lonfya?

lonfya:

This seemed like a no brainer, and I was sure there had to be more to it, but I wanted to keep her talking so I went ahead and opened my big mouth. “Give it back.” 

She rolled her eyes so hard I felt it in my retinas. 

“That guy –er –wolf? Whatever, he said she’d release your brother if you give it back. So…give it back. Problem solved.”

“Because the last thing La Lupine is going to do is keep her word.”

“La Lupine?”

“That’s what she calls herself now. Her real name’s Stacey. Or Macey, or Casey. Something like that anyway. She was some big Queen Bee before she got turned and she used her popularity to make half this stupid town think werewolves aren’t dangerous.”

I let out a little laugh. This girl’s obviously taken a knock to the head. “Dacey Jacobson isn’t a werewolf.” 

“You know her?” The girl stopped walking to focus all her attention on me. It was a little scary.

“Of course I do. Her sister Emily is my best friend.”

The girl smiled. “I think we got off on the wrong foot,” she holds out a hand for me to shake. “I’m Diana. I think we’re going to be great friends.”

Take it away, @kcmofya!

kcmofya:

“Haven.” I answered, taking her hand. It was surprisingly soft for someone who apparently spent her days looting and attacking werewolves.

“So, Haven, now that we’re BFFs, I’m going to need you to tell me everything you know about Dacey Jacobson.”

I hesitated for a minute. I did want to help her find her brother, but it almost felt like a betrayal of Emily. I’d never want to do something that could put her at risk. On the other hand, there was no love lost between me and Dacey. She’s been tormenting Emily, and me by extension, since we were 8 years old. I guessed it wasn’t that much of a stretch to think she’d be some kind of evil werewolf queen. 

La Lupine. That ridiculous faux French name sounds exactly like something Dacey would give herself. She could never allow herself to be just a common wolf. Besides, I really wanted to know more about Diana. She was fascinating and beautiful and could wield a letter opener like a switch blade.  

“How do you feel about coffee?” I asked. “Let me buy you a cup and we’ll talk.”

@kcfya It’s all you!

kcfya:

There was nothing quite like the sting of fresh coffee permeating through the air. It was the only solace I could find as I stirred on my steaming cup of triple expresso while Diana downed hers like the fire-hot coffee didn’t burn her throat in the slightest.

I told her as much of Dacey as I could manage on the walk over to the only halfway decent cafe in town: She was the quintessential “IT” girl who peaked way too soon. After failing out her freshman year and calling it a sabbatical, she’d returned home to torment Emily, and, by proxy, me, too. Apparently looks could only get a person so far, and not showing up for class for months on end didn’t bode well with GPA. Only one of the Jacobsen girls had both beauty and brains, and I knew it killed Dacey to see Emily succeed where she had always failed.

“She’s insecure,” Emily had said after one of her infamous rants. “She doesn’t mean half of what comes out of her mouth.”

“That doesn’t mean we have to take it,” I countered. “Why don’t you lure her outside and I’ll accidentally kick a ball into her face.” 

Emily snorted. “You’d have to make the shot first.”

“Touché.”

Was that only yesterday? I wondered. I shook my head. Time was moving at the speed of a bullet. I hadn’t even called Emily yet to tell her the results of the tryouts. Though by my lack of response, I was sure she had figured it out. 

My information on Dacey was apparently not as enticing as Diana had expected. That, or the scowl on her face was permanently etched there. The two of us stared at each other in silence, sizing each other up. I knew couldn’t take the girl if she decided she wanted to fight. I mean, I could leave a good mark, but I saw the way she took down that wolf-man, and was no looking for a repeat performance.

“Sooooo,” I drawled out. “I’ve told you all I know. How about you tell me why my home is now infested with a bunch of slobbering dogs and how your family is in the middle of it?”

@fyadallas go for it!

fyadallas:

Diana looked surprised — like maybe she hadn’t expected me to have that kind of backbone. “I don’t think you really need to know anything more than you do.”

“Oh really?” I replied, crossing my arms. The espresso was zinging through my veins like a firetruck on fire. “I don’t think you’re in a position to make that case. Especially since I can offer you a way in to Dacey’s house — I mean, her den.”

“You can?”

“Yeah,” I said, hoping the plan that was starting to form in my brain wasn’t just the caffeine talking. Emily hated her sister enough that I knew she would help me bring her down. “So spill it. Why is our town crawling with furpeople?”

Diana pushed her empty coffee mug away and sighed. “From what I’ve gathered, Dacey was turned right around the time that she failed out of school. And she spent a year or two just, I don’t know, dealing with it. That’s probably why she was extra bitchy to you, with this secret bottled up inside just festering there. So she bit this mechanic dude.”

“I remember her banging some tattooed guy who worked on cars.“

“He’s like her second in command now,” Diana says. “She started calling herself La Lupine, and they’re just terrorizing the town now, trying to turn as many people as they can.”

“What a bitch,” I said. “Not surprised, though.”

“So my little brother, he’s this uber-nerd who thinks he’s like Sherlock Holmes or something. He started sniffing around, trying to figure out how to stop her, and he discovered this thing she had, the source of all of her so-called power. And he took it. So she took him.”

“What was it?” I asked.

Diana cocked an eyebrow and smiled. “You’re never gonna believe this shit.”

What’s the precious object, @cltfya?? How will our heroes stop the werewolves?

cltfya:

I raised my eyebrows, waiting to be surprised and, impatient with Diana’s dramatic pause for effect, I blurted out, “Okay, spill!!” Diana fiddled with her phone for a moment to pull up a picture, then passed it my way.

I tilted my head and smirked, barely holding back laughter, “…is that…a fucking red cloak? With a hood on it…? Do you mean to tell me…” I put the phone down and shook my head. I passed it her way, almost insulted at the implication from such a seeming bad-ass as Diana. Did she really think I was this gullible?

Diana said, “No, I’m telling you the truth — I didn’t believe it at first either, but the fact that my brother is now kidnapped for stealing it? So yeah…that’s Little Red Riding Hood’s cloak. That’s what giving La Lupine her power and I don’t know where he hid the damn thing. Or how we can get him back from this bitch. I think I need help. My brother was in over his head and I just want him home safe, reading his comics and dreaming the dream. Can you help me?”

So next time on Exquisite Corpse…how will Haven help Diana bring down La Lupine? Where’s this cloak? Ball’s in your court, @cifya.

cifya:

Just then, I realized something. “I think I may know where Dacey has your brother.” I hoped my hunch was right.

“Where?”

“Emily and Dacey’s grandma is traveling all summer and they’ve been taking turns house sitting. Last week Dacey told Emily that she was just going to stay there the rest of the time and that Emily should stay away. I bet that’s her headquarters and where she has your brother. What’s your brother’s name?” I realized she hadn’t said it.

For the first time, Diana almost smiled. “Benedict. Let’s make a plan.”

I texted Emily to meet me at my house. It was time to make a plan to take down Dacey — I cannot called her La Lupine without rolling my eyes. I knew Emily would be willing to help. She was really mad at Dacey when she kicked her out of her grandma’s house.

Diana and I gathered some supplies and went back to my house. Emily was already there. She thought that I’d need some support after failing at tryouts, so she was armed with ice cream and Chex Mix. We hatched a plan for Emily to lure Dacey out of the house. Emily had a key to the house, so we hoped it wouldn’t be too hard to get inside. We had no way of knowing how many creatures we were up against. This wasn’t going to be easy. Our best hope was to get Benedict out unscathed. We made a plan, got in a few hours of rest, and were standing at the back door  at dawn.

All right, @ALVFYA, it’s up to you to finish this!

avlfya:

The three of us were dressed in all black as we made our way to Emily’s grandmother’s house. Unfortunately, Emily had no luck with luring Dacey out. Her calls and texts had gone unanswered, so that only left Plan B.

When we arrived, I look over at Emily and in a hushed voice said, “Okay, you know what to do. Diana and I will be waiting at the back door. Come get us when you’ve gotten rid of her."

Emily nodded confidently as she unlocked the door and stepped inside. Diana and I crouched down under the window and peered in. We located Emily as she slowly walked through the house. Then out of nowhere, La Lupine jogged into the living room and rose up on all-fours.

"What the hell are you doing here, scrub?” she asked as Emily sat her keys on the coffee table.

"Look, sis, I’m not here to fight. I just thought you could use some company tonight. I know how difficult things have been for you lately.“ Emily sounded cool and confident as she sat down on the couch.

Her sister looked at her skeptically. "I don’t know what you’re talking about. I’m fine. You should really go home.” Meanwhile outside, Diana and I began to hear howling.

“Oh shit!” I whisper-yelled. “The whole pack must be here!” We looked at each other nervously and sat down in the dirt, backs to the house. Hearts beating fast, we saw shadows dancing on the lawn, coming from the upstairs bedroom. As I peered back into the house, I noticed that Emily had coaxed her sister to the sofa. She was now passed out with her werewolf form cuddled tightly in the fetal position. An almost-empty popcorn bowl lay on the coffee table next to Emily’s keys, and Pretty Little Liars was playing on the flat screen tv. Then Emily silently tip-toed to the back door to let us in.

"I think Benedict is upstairs. I’ll keep an eye on Dacey.” Diana and I silently made our way up the steps. We continued to hear howls intermittently. I about pissed myself each time the sound rang out. Diana turned the doorknob of the master bedroom, and as she pushed it open, it slammed back. I looked at her in shock as the door flung open again, and a stranger’s paws took Diana by the collar. “What the—!” she exclaimed. I followed shortly behind her, and all of a sudden the werewolves-five total-were crouched down on their haunches and growling at both of us.

I quickly scanned the room and saw Benedict sitting in a corner with tears streaming down his face. He looked to be about 10 years old, clearly afraid. Without notice, the werewolves pounced. Diana high-kicked one right in the face and punched another, sending them back to the middle of the room. I stood there, frozen and perplexed on what my next move would be. Clearly my lack of athleticism would not be beneficial here. So I ran toward Benedict. I turned my head to see Diana in mid-air as she round-house kicked another furbag in the face, and then La Lupine made her way into the room.

“I see you’ve come for this little weasel have you? Well, you’re not leaving until I get my cloak."

"You’ll never see that again.” Diana quipped.

"Oh yeah? I’m going to make you wish you were never born!“

At that, La Lupine lunged at Diana, trapping her underneath. I quickly made my way to the open door, rushing Benedict out of the room to join Emily downstairs. I whipped around to find the other two werewolves making their way toward me. I quickly reached down into my backpack that I had flung to the floor upon the initial attack. I positioned the pepper spray and aimed at both of my prey. They began wailing and retreating backward toward the window. Diana and La Lupine continued to struggle on the floor. Finally, I grabbed the secret weapon out of my backpack. The small bottle gleamed in the moonlight. By this time, Diana had La Lupine by the neck, straddling her to keep her from maneuvering.

"Come on, Haven! Now!” I gently shook the bottle of wolfsbane into La Lupine’s open mouth.

In that moment, her big wolf eyes bulged, and her fur grew back into her skin as Diana rose to her feet. Not only that but the other werewolves resumed human form.

“What the hell are you freaks doing here?” Dacey asked as she smoothed her denim skirt. I eyed Diana.

"Oh, just dropping by to say hello.“ I winced. "I guess we better go.”

Diana and I walked downstairs, and she put her arms around Benedict. “Am I glad to see you!” I gave  Emily a quick hug before the three of us proceeded outside in the cold dark night. The cool air feeling good on my perspiring skin.

Once we had walked about a half a mile down the street, Diana turned to Benedict. “So kid, where’d you put the cloak?”

He looked up at her with an evil smile on his face, “That’s for me to know and you to find out…”

•  If you want to find out where Benedict put the cloak, read on for LRFYA's ending.

•  If you're looking for a hopeful conclusion, read on for FYAON's ending.

February and March have been such busy month for me. Thought I really need to tell everyone my busy schedules the fun time I had with my friends, kids and family!

Month of February 

Birthday

February is my birthday month – sigh, another year older, nothing like a kid’s excitement when it’s his/her birthday, just hoping people do not squeeze to get me to tell my age… then followed by comments like ‘you look REALLY good for your age’! Enough the sympathy, I just don’t like to be reminded of my age that’s the truth. I didn’t do anything fancy on the actual day of my birthday, just took a day off on the day, enjoyed the luxury of dropping off kids at their classroom and managed to pop in an exaggerating smiling face to the teacher. Typical working mum guilty syndrome all over… I’ll stop here, otherwise it will be the kids or work talk again, the never ending working mum’s dilemma! Anyway, on my own birthday, I just really enjoyed the moment of fulfilling a mum duty that otherwise not possible on a normal working day for me…… Then on the Friday evening, I had a lovely meal with my dearest friends at Frankie and Benny‘s. Cocktail on offer – Hooray to my dearest friends! What do you do for your birthday? I’d love to hear your story about how to celebrate your birthday – just to give me some more ideas! Please leave your comments below to let me know!

Birthday cocktail!

  Scotland

Then there’s the excuse to visit my in-laws in Scotland because of my birthday. Kids are always looking forward to see their cousins in Scotland. When my kids and their 3 cousins gathering together, 3 girls and 2 boys are always having so much giggling about everything! It’s so lovely to see the kids having a lot of fun but it also makes every departure a difficult one as they are so fond of each other’s company. This time round, grandma Maggi suggested a swimming fun at the Double Tree Hotel by Hilton Strathclyde. What a lovely hotel! Even though my favorite hotel is under the MacDonald group that not only I had my 40th birthday there, we also booked in a MacDonald resort in Malaga, Spain! But Double Tree by Hilton is a good one, particularly the nice pool with Jacuzzi and sauna room along side the facility. It provides plenty of way to play with kids as well as a chance to enjoy yourself!

Double Tree Hilton Hotel Strathclyde

Swimming pool and jacuzzi hot tub

  Having lunch with grandma!

  NCT

As a charity volunteer, I devote some of my time to NCT (National Childbirth Trust) Preston, Fylde and District branch on a regular basis. I organise a group called NCT Stay and Play Group. It welcomes all parents, grandparents and carers alike with their kids to join in. The February group was taken place at Ham and Jam Cafe, a very family/kids friendly cafe located in the city centre of Preston. This month we were lucky to have a face-painter coming along and lending a hand to the group. She’s from from a local kids holiday club business called The Nest. My son M is sooo happy to have his face painted. Theme?! Ehhh just a green robot will do!

I have a robot face!

Book of the Month

February is also a book reading month! I was very happy that I finished a book – Water Witch by Carol Goodman. This is the 2nd book in The Fairwick Chronicles Series. It was recommended by a friends of mine, although it has an incubus as the centre of the story, who is a demon creature by nature praying on women to fall in love with him so he can turn into human shape. The whole story is rather romantic as Callie (the Water Witch) discovered herself really fall in love with him and he was willing to sacrifice his life for her in the end (ops, hope I didn’t ruin this for you for those who still want to read it yourself!) In the story there’s also a fairyland – Fay that Callie found out that she is the door keeper between the human world and the Fay. Creatures good or evil all played an important part in the story. I truly enjoyed this book and hope you would give it try here as well!

Like what you read so far? Join my free newsletter here!

  Month of March

NCT NNS

Through hard work and sheer determinations, 5 dedicated women volunteers (including myself) successfully delivered the charity NCT Sales (we called it Newly New Sales – NNS) on 11th March. The sales provides all parents and carers alike the opportunity to buy quality ‘nearly new’ children items, from clothing to toy, from cot bed to pram system and so on and on. We had about 100 sellers happily sent their items to sell at our NNS and an overwelming 250 buys turned up on the day. The chair lady Kate stayed almost 10 hours from the begining to the end. The sales generated about £3000 pounds of sales and 25% of the profit went to the NCT Headquarter! Well-done to all the ladies Kate, Emma, Natalie and Lorren, of course there’s myself. I managed to sell cupcake and hot/cold drink at the sales and raised £88 within 1 hour and half! Hooray!

Sadly our NCT Preston, Fylde and District branch is losing its chair ladies and facing closure after many years of hard work. The branch is still seeking for a new chair volunteer (until 1/05/2017) to take over and if you are interested please contact the branch’s Facebook page here!

NCT cake sale

  Hobby Craft

March is also a month running up to the preparation to Easter. I have discovered Hobby Craft has so many decoration and craft idea for Easter! They also have a ‘100s of lines at £1‘ sales on right now. I have got myself plenty of supply for kids’ to do their craft this Easter holiday break! Looking forward to the crafty fun! My girl B is always fond of making things, I also found their Easter bunny making a particular art project for her. Find out from their website and give it a try yourself!

Easter Bunny Making

Easter Crafts for Kids

ILM Course

Another thing worth mentioning here is I had a huge relief that I completed one of the biggest tasks I have to do for my ILM NVQ course. Phew! ILM is short for Institute of Leadership and Management. I feel extremely proud to be part of this and is studying toward a valuable qualification awarded by this reputable institute. Delivered by Preston College as an apprentice program, I will gain a Qualification on Principle of Leadership and Management as well as a NVQ Level 5 Diploma in Leadership and Management, double awards that’s the bonus! Although writing thousands of word on assignment isn’t exactly a fun task, I found the group discussion gives me so much inside about management! A guy called Garry told us how bad management could nearly cost him an electrocution death sentence -what the heck! Yep management IS really important in his company that’s for sure! Then again, I had to stand in front of the tutor to give presentation using the PowerPoint file I created myself, reciting all the words and try not script reading, a total challenge for me! I enjoyed the experience, particularly released when I received a few ‘good pass’ on the feedback mark sheet. Hours of practice has eventually paid off!

If you are interested in management theory or simply interested to know what ILM is about, please get in touch here, I will send you my PowerPoint presentation to you as a free resource, all you need to do is to get in touch and let me have your feedback!

ILM – Institute of Leadership and Management

Windermere Treetop Nets

We have been to Brockholes Windermere a few times, but never tried Treetop Nets until this March. It happened to be one of the rainy days, yet the kids enjoyed the 3-meter high up play in the trees (rain wasn’t heavy and stopped eventually!). According to their website, they are a UK first treetop adventure. Adults and children alike can all play in the walls of netting up and down the slide, kicking a ball or two, chasing around each other without any safety hazard. In the past when we came to Brockholes Windermere, most of the activities we do are walk around garden and the little children park. This is because most of the activities here are adventurous and targeting to older age children or adult. This is the first time M could join in as Treetop Nets accepts kids from age of 3 and above, so he pretty much enjoyed the ‘big kids’ game this time!

  Mother’s Day 

Last but not the least it’s about my Mother’s Day Sunday. I had a well-attempted ‘serving-mum-breakfast-in-bed’ style treat from my 10-year-old daughter B. Never mind fairy cake for breakfast, I got buttered toasts made by B herself with no help from daddy, plus some nice chocolate flower buds and a lovely heart-shaped balloon with a bear mum and a bear kid! Only my 4-year-old son M was too eager to ‘try’ the flower buds, that he forgot to leave one for his big sister… ‘all tried and they taste good’ he told B!!!(I was trying very hard not to laugh out loud…)

How’s your Mother’s Day Sunday? Would love to hear about your treat! Please leave your comments below.

Mother’s day treat

  That’s it from me now, hopefully I will be back here soon to tell you all about my Easter!

Dreamwidth Update: Stress Dream - Manic Pixie Jerk Friend

I just had a stress dream about some non-local friends. They had bet and been befriended by this person who was just completely taking advantage of their kindness and generosity in ways that seemed subtle but were really glaring from the outside, and I just didn't know what to do. I have no idea were this dream came from! So first of all, I think this dream started as more of a fantasy thing, because there was definitely magic in part of t - I remember that less clearly now, but we kept encountering/fighting these people who had secial powers and could used these magic items (best term I can think of) that were headbands and bookbags. But we couldn't. I am not 100% sure who 'we' all were at that point - I think myself, my sister, and my friend Vess? Or maybe Vess was running the 'game' we wee in at this point. We managed to capture one of these people, and they greed to join us so that they could use this stuff for us, or maybe show us how to use it - I'm not really sure. We had been following along a trail, and even eventually we got to the place where my friends lived. I my dream it was like a big, open, airy version of my mom's family house that she grew up in, that was next door to where my grandparents lived. In real life, when I was a kid my great aunts and great-grandmother lived there, and when they all died, my aunt moved inn to the place. It was kind of a borderline hoarder home when they moved in, just from people having lived there for so long, but they didn't really help that. In the dream though, it was both bigger (the rooms themselves) and more empty - to start. The person, whose name I forget, was a very crafty ad creative person, who had great and grand plans for things. She might have been this person we captured? I'm not sure how exactly that ties in. I think we felt like we'd 'won' after we made it to their place, anyway, and we made some loose plans for...? Something? doing stuff to figure out who these people were? I've really lost to cool adventurery part of the dream, anyway. Anyway, after all that, I guess we left. I started hearing more and more about this person, and at first she seemed to be 'helping' - contributing supplies and ideas to various projects that my friends needed help doing. I remember talking to one of them about how hard a time she was having finding out how to do certain things she wanted to set up parts of her farm, how local people wouldn't come out, or wouldn't explain things, how she couldn't' find supplies and such that she needed. This other girl seemed to have ideas, they just never seemed to materialize into action. Instead she got my friend to help with her own projects which were large, unfeasible, steampunky projects. They took up space. This woman had a lot of art/project clutter, and a lot of straight up junk (dusty boxes and cabinets knicknacks and old mouldering almanacs and just *stuff*). I think at first I was wasn't overly concerned because... I think this person in theory had access to that magic or whatever that let the stuff we had encounter earlier work, and that I just didn't understand it. But no. The longer it went on the longer it seemed like she was just using my friend as someone to mooch off of - she lived there, either just in essence or in actuality I'm not sure. She kept her stuff there - her huge projects, her junk - she used my to 'help her work on these things, which never seemed to materialize, and while they talked to her about working on her own things, they never actually *did* anything, and everything stayed in the planning stage. My friend enjoyed this person's company. I think in my dream she was lonely for someone to hang out with in person, and this other girl was cute nd fun and creative, and would encourage her in her ambitious dreaming but not in the actual accomplishing of things. The almanacs were there to help provide 'advice' and such. It was just really all about her - but my friend was enjoying herself, enjoying having a friend, enjoying indulging her creative side, enjoying not having to face all the things she didn't feel capable of doing. It was so clearly a destructive relationship, and I had no idea what to do. I went to visit with my sister and some other people - I think ostensibly I was invited, but in a 'drop by anytime' kind of way that was both sincere - their house was open to any friends, really - but also did not guarantee me any kind of attention from them. I arrives and the house was just cluttered, there was a big dining table that was ful of boxes, The second floor landing - which was very open and air, as I said before, with a large skylight. There were three tall clear cylindrical tanks - like, as large as a person, with clear tubes coming out of them. It was very mad science - they were all filled with different thing. The two further away had different coloured liquids in them, and the one closest was filled with fireflies. This was part of one of the projects which was incomplete, and was now just taking up space, and also was potentially dangerous. I have no idea what it was supposed to be for if it ever were completed. Meanwhile, my other friend, the husband of the pair, was there, and I was able to talk to him some. It just made me more anxious to hear all the stuff that was happening - how much time this girl was spending here, the ways in which it was clear to me that she was alienating my friends from other local people who could have helped them. Lke, undermining the advice and authority of other people they could have asked for help with things that needed doing. And he was happy to see his wife have a friend, and generally is the sort of person who doesn't like to see bad things about people or do things that will cause conflict. So he just didn't really *see* it, or of he did he didn't see the depth of it, and plus, he was distracted. There were these guys who were 'friends' with this woman, and they'd taken to including him in stuff that they were doing . For example, when I showed up, he was waiting for them to go kayaking! Which I thought sounded really fun, and was initially glad that he was going to have a chance to get out and do some active stuff that I thought he would enjoy. He said (and meant) that he would have liked to invite me, but it wasn't his place to do so, and when these guys did show up it was clear they were not interested in having anyone else, especially a woman, come along. But again it was all subtle like 'oh, no room, not enough kayaks, we wouldn't want you to be bored, so sorry'. Which sounds reasonable, but I knew that it wasn't, it was more than that. There was other exclusionary stuff going on, body language wise, and how they just pulled (not physically, but with the press of Obligation) my friend away, the kinds of stories they were telling (not to me, but while ignoring me). They were ex-military types, and while that is not automatically a strike against them, it was clear that they held a lot of macho values that can come out of those kinds of experiences. I knew that my friend was not the type to tolerate misogyny and racism, but I also knew that they were going to wear him down, that he wasn't going to really have an option to stop hanging out with them because they weren't interested in letting that happen. It was another way to isolate my friends, both from the communities they already belonged to, as well as from each other. And it was so clear to me that this was something they were *trying* to do, that the longer this went on the less accessible my friends would be to outsiders, that we were losing them, because I couldn't figure out how to expose the pattern and make them see. It was upsetting and sinister, and I don't know what the end goal was at all. When they left to go kayaking, anyway, he told me where to find his wife, and this other woman. They were in a side room, surrounded by junk, talking and giggling about plans for imaginary things. The sort of conversation about conceptual worldbuilding that I would usually love - except it was clear that they had so many in jokes that I could never really participate no matter how much my friend (always her) tried to explain, and that taken as part of the larger patter I could see that it was just a time waste, another delaying tactic from facing reality, another way of isolating my friend and creating this place of intimacy from which she would be easier to manipulate. It was heartbreaking. When I found them, my friend was like "Oh, you've been here enough time to have been able to guess where we were!" and it was sort of true - I had been there a few times before this started, and was fairly familiar with the house. But it was one of those things that should have come off as 'you're an old friend, you're welcome, like one of the family, make yourself at home', but in fact just came off as rude - like she didn't needs to pay more attention to me, it was okay to continue in this little cocoon of conspiracy and in jokes with this person who was actively feeding all of her worst impulses when it came to responsibility and self control. It was just a step away from her being resentful of my interruption. Not there yet, but inevitable in the future, when this other woman had time to plan and nurture those seeds. Like I said, it was heartbreaking, because my friends are such warm, friendly, caring, hospitable people, and these other people were just slowly turning them into something else, and they couldn't see it, and I didn't know how to stop it. And that's when I woke up :/ Despite saying I have no idea where this dream came from, I can probably piece together a few things. My friends have been dealing with family health stuff and not around much, so I am concerned about them being isolated. I'm worried about my own ability to fit in to new communities and make friends. And of course I've just been reading a lot about, basically, radicalization of young white dudes into the alt-right. Apparently these things are not a good mix for my imagination. comments Comment? http://ift.tt/2lCqIkx