#spring technically but it’s snowing yikes
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February 9, 2021: Doctor Zhivago (Part 3)
INTERMISSION’S OVER! Hope you got your snacks and popcorn, because we’ve got an hour and 20 to go!
Recap (Part 3/3)
Train’s stopped, but not at its intended location. The reason is because there’s a battle taking place up ahead in Yuriatin, where the train is headed through. See, the Bolsheviks - well, actually, the Communists now, to be accurate - are waging battle against the anti-Communist White Army, and have occupied Yuriatin.
Yuri leaves the train to find out what the deal is, and he’s captured by the Communists under suspicion of being a spy. Leading them, of course, is Pasha, now going by Strelnikov. After a brief round of suspicion, Pasha admits a former admiration of Yuri’s poetry, now viewed as anti-Communist. Yuri reveals his connection to Pasha’s wife, and Pasha reveals that he has not seen her during the war, and she’s living in...Yuriatin.
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JESUS PASHA WHAT THE HELL
Well, after having this friendly discussion with a GODDAMN MONSTER, Pasha lets him go back to his family, luckily for him. He gets back to the train JUST in time, and the family are left at their intended destination, as planned. It almost seems that their struggles are over, as flowers are blooming amidst the previously ubiquitous winter.
Can’t say the same for Yuriatin, as we see it on fire in the distance. However, the Gromeko’s cottage is apparently totally fine, untouched by the Red and the White Armies.
Well, mostly untouched, as it’s been sealed up by the Red Army. Stopping Alexander from breaking in, Yuri and their local friend, Petya (Jack MacGowran) figure out that the cottage of the house is still open, and the family happily settles in there.
During their time there, Tonya becomes pregnant once again. Strelnikov leaves for Manchuria, which seems like good news. But that’s tempered with the very, VERY bad. Czar Nicholas and the Romanovs, exiled for years, have been shot. Sorry, Anastasia.
Spring to summer, summer to winter, and winter once again to spring, and the family is doing well, in relative poverty as they are. By the way, before I forget to mention this, why does Omar Sharif (he plays Yuri) ALWAYS look like he’s been crying? Dude has perpetually red puffy eyes, I swear. Like, look at the GIF below. See? He wasn’t crying, he wasn’t even sad there, but his eyes ALWAYS LOOK THAT WAY. Not his fault, but I just can’t not notice it.
But now, we go to another place, and another set of eyes. Yuri makes his way to Yuriatin on a visit, and there, a reunion takes place at the library in town.
Yuri and Lara catch up, have a good time, and then OH GODDAMN IT
EVERY TIME! WHY IS IT INFIDELITY IN EVERY ONE OF THESE GODDAMN MOVIES??? Yuri’s seemingly happy, he’s got another kid on the way, and I get that he’s loved Lara for a long time at this point, but can we just have a SINGLE. FAITHFUL. RELATIONSHIP in these movies, for the love of CHRIST!!!
And this is just as Tonya’s close to giving birth to their second child. Yuri seems to realize this, and he heads to Yuriatin to officially end it with Lara...and he does, to some credit. It hurts them both pretty grievously, but he does what’s right. But NO GOOD DEED GOES UNPUNISHED I GUESS
Red Partisan Army just kidnapped him! BECAUSE OF COURSE THEY DID. His poetry has finally caught up to him, and he is taken away from his “private life.” After all, like Pasha said, private life is dead in Russia. Fuck me, man.
So, Yuri’s been kidnapped as a field doctor for the Civil War, as the Red Partisans go up against the White Army, at one point killing a unit of literal children. During his stay, allies advocate for his release, but to no avail. Yuri is stuck with the army for TWO GODDAMN YEARS, away from his wife and two children.
He eventually just leaves, in the middle of the winter during a trek. He just...wanders off. Frozen, tired, and probably badly frostbitten, he makes his way back to Yuriatin, where he discovers that his family has left. However, it would appear that Lara may still be in town. Finding a key and letter meant for him, he makes his way into the apartment, where he passes out.
Lara cares for him as he wakes up, and reveals that Tonya and the kids are safe. Later, she gives him a sealed letter from Tonya, which was sent six months prior. It’s revealed that he was a daughter, Anna, and that they have been deported from Russia, and are going to Paris. They don’t know where they’ll be headed, and there’s no telling if Yuri will ever see them again. Which...sucks.
But then, soon after, the two get an unexpected visitor: Victor Fuckin’ Komarovsky! Yeah, thought you’d seen the last of him! he comes from Moscow, and offers the pair his help. See, Tonya and the kids are not in the best of situations down in France, and Yuri’s not only a deserter, but seen as a dangerous man by the government for his poetry, which has officially been labeled anti-Communist propaganda. Fuckin’ YIKES.
The two refuse their help at first, but Lara realizes the real danger that Yuri’s in. Turns out that Victor knows so much because he’s been appointed the Minister of Justice, and offers the two an out from the country. They continue to refuse him, and it’s revealed that Lara’s ALSO in trouble, as her husband is still technically Strelnikov. But, after Victor is ONCE AGAIN a DICK, they kick him out.
Realiing that they’re in trouble, the two escape to Varykino, which is gorgeous, by the way. Although the whole place appears to be dusty and a bit snowed in, the two and Lara’s daughter, Katya (Lucy Westmore) settle in. There, Yuri does something we’ve never actually seen him do: write poetry. To be specific, he writes a set of poems that he is famous for, by the time we get to the time period from the beginning of the film, all of which are themed around Lara.
It’s also at this point that the two begin their love affair in earnest, and...I weirdly am OK with this. Look, they’ve loved each other for a long time, and the likelihood that either of them will see their spouses again is EXTREMELY low. The two embrace their love, and begin to imagine what life would’ve been like if they’d met each other before.
But Victor, surprisingly, returns. He makes them an offer once again, and it’s revealed that Strelnikov is dead. Turns out that he was sought by the government, as they wished Strelnikov dead all along. He was headed to Lara when he was caught, and comitted suicide while in custody, returning to his true identity of Pasha at the end. Fuckin’ WHOOF.
But there’s the problem: with Lara’s usefulness as a lure gone, she’s now set to be executed, along with Katya. Given this information, Yuri agrees to go with Victor, and Lara and Katya come along. But guess what! THERE ISN’T ENOUGH ROOM ON THE CARRIAGE OUT OF THERE. BECAUSE OF COURSE THERE ISN’T.
And in case you weren’t sure, Zhivago is indeed left behind, as he actually never intended to go with Victor, due to his dislike for the man. But Lara’s now safe, which is what he wanted all along. Not to mention the fact that Lara is now pregnant with Yuri’s daughter. Which is when we cut back to the present day.
Tanya, from the very beginning, is almost certainly Lara and Yuri’s daughter. Born the same year, in the China or Mongolia (where Lara was headed with Katya and Victor), and with similar eyes and complexion, it’s a near certainty. She denies it, but Yevgraf continues. See, he eventually did find Yuri, malnourished, and cared for him.
Stalin’s now in charge, and Yuri is practicing Dr. Zhivago once more. Years later, he boards a trolley in the city, suffering from a heart disease at this point. On the trolley, he sees Lara walking on the street, and tries to get off to see her. But, once he finally gets off the trolley, the strain is too much for him.
At Yuri’s funeral, Lara and Yuri meet. There, she asks for Yevgraf’s help to find her child, but they never do. And after that, at some point...she’s taken to one of Stalin’s labor camps, where she most certainly died. Jesus, man.
And now, we learn of Tanya’s fate. Komarovsky, whom she believed to be her father, abandoned her on the streets when running from the chaos of the Russian Civil War. BECAUSE HE IS A GODDAMN DICK. She does not want to believe that this is the truth, but she says that she’ll consider it. As she and her partner, David, leave the interview, it’s revealed that she can play the balalaika, which her departed father could never do. But the fact that she’s a self-taught master of it speaks to her ancestry, as Zhivago and Lara’s daughter.
And uh...I’m gonna be honest, that didn’t even feel like 3 hours and 20 minutes. Really! That was Doctor Zhivago! I really liked this one! But more on that in the Review. Stay tuned for that!
#doctor zhivago#david lean#omar sharif#julie christie#geraldine chaplin#tom courtenay#alec guinness#rod steiger#romance february#user365#365 movie challenge#365 movies 365 days#365 Days 365 Movies#365 movies a year#useramby#mygifs#my gifs
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Help, I am freaking out about rent i need a distraction from his hell month, what new things did you love (any fandom), fic rent is due, give me some power!
oh, GOD, yes, I’m happy to help! I sat on this ask for a couple of days so I could include anything that came in up to the wire, so here’s hoping nobody releases anything today!! This would be the stuff I read/loved in March, and it’s surreal to compare the beginning of the month to today, yikes a yikes. Come on, April, pull through for us, jesus christ:
First of all, you know I gotta rec each and every single one of the pubefest fics because they're outstanding in terms of characterization and writing, they're all so short and great, and this fest got some real star power. SWOON!
Reconnected, @star55, G, 1.5k, 1d, louis/harry. One of the very best girl direction fic writers out there, and how is this one possible, so much emotion, an ot5 reunion, zouis angst, an upbeat ending in less than 2k words, unrushed???
from winter sun to summer snow, objectlesson/ @alienfuckeronmain, E, 2k, the witcher, geralt/jaskier. SPEAKING OF PEOPLE WHO DO A LOT IN A LITTLE, this one, yeah, WOW, absolutely nails Jaskier's voice and character (Geralt, too, but his mouth is occupied).
No Control, thegirlwthekittentattoo, E, 2.6, 1d, louis/harry. I follow the ao3 tag for a laff, but every once in a while, an absolute GEM pops up and makes it all worth it, and this made my entire month!! It's all about the hids and how Harry uses them to tease Louis and some self-discovery comes in along the way (as well as some amazingly described bras and other looks). LOVED IT
Pregernante, Blake/ @newleafover, E, 2.8k, Star Wars, finn/poe (stormpilot??). I tell you what, without fail, my very fave birthday presents for the last three years have been fic gifts from Phoenix and Blake. In this one, Blake managed to squeeze an mpreg kink into the least-mpreg-kink-seeming pairing possible? THEIR POWER!
Next Exit, Jaerie, E, 2.9k, 1d, louis/harry. Someone sent me an ask for pregnant girl direction pee kink fics recently, but sadly, they do not exist...enter Jaerie, going for at least part of that brief, and it's the combo I never knew I needed.
Every Drop of Rain, haemophilus/ @h-influenzae, E, 3.3k, 1d, harry/taylor. The amount of gender exploration and dynamics (and Taylor's inner monologue) are simply stunning, I wish I could shake the shoulders of people who can't quit 2013 because the modern era is amazing, and it looks like there’s more to come in this one? GOOD!
Mon Petit, coffinofachimera, E, 3.5k, 1d, louis/harry. I love the entire concept of Harry wearing his fuzzy chick sweater while Louis films him mid-bj on their private jet. The kind of canon I deserve!
revolution, SunshineandLou, E, 3.8k, 1d, louis/harry. I am already prepared to love every single fishnet!harry fic that comes my way, and this one's no exception.
No Light of Day, objectlesson/ @alienfuckeronmain, E, 4.2k, Man from UNCLE, illya/napoleon. FUCK ME UPPPPPPPPP, this entire Tom of Finland series is so goddamned good, and this was a birthday surprise for me that blew my mind (partially because I randomly sent Phoenix a link to a Tom of Finland exhibition that morning), but yeah! In general! Very much yeah!!
into joy i'm sailing, @hereforlou, E, 4.6k, 1d, louis/harry. This was on tumblr as a drabble, and i am SO GLAD it's here now, too, archived! The setup of Harry wearing a dress at home and Louis accidentally seeing him and the aftermath of all that, simply gorgeous, soft.
Steaks High (Bitch I'm a Cow), objectlesson/ @alienfuckeronmain, E, 4.7k, 1d, orville/harry. I thought about this fic about 30 times during the recent Orville youtube living room concert (I’ll think about it in tonight’s, too), it's so tremendously on point with all the dirty talk, I legit hope they've read and loved it.
Will We Talk, gayumbrella/ @hypersoniclesbian, E, 5.1k, 1d, louis/sam. I don't know Sam Fender too well, so I don't know if this is perfect characterization or not, but wowwowowowow, is Louis well done here! And it's such a treat to see him outside of the bbc1 radio dj squad, too, ha.
Have a Nice Trip, @kingsofeverything, E, 6.3k, 1d, louis/harry. I swear to god, this should be in the pubefest rec pile, Harry's OBSESSION with Louis's pubes here is everything.
like sweat dripping down your dirty laundry, objectlesson, E, 8.6k, cars universe, doc/lightning. Best use of a Niall Horan song title outside of a 1d fic? MAYBE SO. But honestly this fic, with all the scent kink throughout, you practically live it.
canon-ish series, by @moonshinelouis-archive, E/M, 8.8k, 1d, louis/harry. MAnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn, this is some great kink discovery (BDSM in the first one, body worship in the second, 10 for 10, would recommend 'em both, can’t wait for more).
Whoever, However, Brooklyn_Babylon/ @twopoppies, E, 8.9, 1d, louis/harry. JESUS CHRIST, the dirty talk in this is so fucking good (the way Harry reacts to Louis talking about H's pussy, chef's kiss). I loveeee all these fics related to current photoshoots, bring 'em on!
(And if you’re into the dynamics of sexy sweet camboy/very interested filmer/more angst/any fandom, As Sweet as Blood Red Jam (cars universe) updated this month, too, god, this story kills me, I wanna hug Doc tight!)
Tangled Up Again, QuickedWeen/ @becomeawendybird, E, 14k, 1d, louis/harry. Technically, I read the third chapter in this specific story, but it feels like a new installment in a series? That's a fine line, I guess, but this is a GREAT girl direction series, and the descriptions of this outfit and the entire tennis competition/aftermath are so visual, gotta love pillow princess harry!
Second Spring, vondrostes, E, 88k, 1d, louis/harry. I tend to read all of Terran's amazing fics through patreon, but meanwhile, my fave is slowly drawing closer to her end on ao3. This is a thorough look into a transition and how it affects multiple people (the way all the characters change and grow, niceeeeee).
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What a year
2020 was..
The last time I wrote anything it was April, and now it is the 23rd of December and I’m about to go spend Christmas with my family. My last failed attempt at christmas bread is in the oven (for some reason it didn’t proof at all, I guess I put too much flour in..) and I’m cooking up some Christmas porridge on the stove. Watch me burn that in a moment too.. For some reason this whole autumn has been a very stressful disaster. I am still working from home and just logged myself off of work until the 7th of January 2021. Maybe because I’ve been working from home it feels difficult to get into holiday mode. At least we got some snow today so it looks beautiful.
Spring and summer 2020 were an absolute dream! With no responsibilities and the possibility to work from anywhere I got to spend so much time with my family and at our summer house away from the stress of the real world. I could not have dreamt of a better summer, and apart from strawberry picking (at an actual farm, not just from my own strawberry plants) I got to finish off my summer’s to-do list. I even made a cute little summer video with my old Canon EOS 100D (yes - I have a new Canon EOS 90D now!). Endless days of exploration, swimming, biking, sauna, gardening, having lunch with the midsummer roses, baking rhubarb galettes with my own rhubarb from the garden, biking to the ice cream van, SUP-boarding with dad and spending so much time outdoors made me happier than I could ever be. I cannot believe how many beautiful things COVID has given me despite it’s awful impact on the world.
The start of the autumn semester was chaotic to say the least. Practically all of our system integrations are behind one developer, and he happened to be on vacation when everything went down, and study rights did not transfer correctly. This lead to an insane rush of support requests across the board, and lots of extra stress. I was exhausted and scared after last autumn’s disasters and definitely didn’t need another one to start the new semester. I’m starting to seriously fear August... Other universities have tens of people in their technical support, and we have TWO (sometimes 3). In more positive news I was given a permanent job contract starting August, which was amazing, and makes me so grateful especially during a year when many lose their jobs and get laid off. I guess that also contributes to my levels of stress as I cannot hide behind “I just work here for another few months”, but I have to actually take responsibility and ownership as a permanent team member.
Basically a lot of things escalated at work this autumn because our entire staff is way over burdened with COVID changes and the systems not working in an ideal fashion. Because our organisation does not have clear and defined process ownerships many changes come alongside the implementation of new systems, which puts me as a system admin (and not a process expert) in an awkward position. Hopefully our organisation will be able to develop and reconfigure responsibilities with some outside help, but for some reason my hopes aren’t very high.. All in all the anger and frustration of the organisation has been reflecting on the way people treat us and each other and as an empath it has been very exhausting. Luckily my new team is amazing and I’m having so much fun working with them - even though we aren’t physically working together at the office. I cannot imagine how it would be if my previous colleague hadn’t left. I hope she is happy and thriving as well!
All in all what got me through the autumn was the fact that I got to work from home. Being able to take a 10-15 minute nap when things got overwhelming pretty much saved me. Also the fact that I can wear whatever, make tea or snacks whenever I need to and don’t have to spend time moving from one location to the other. My guy got his own computer desk and a proper chair, and we’ve both been working from our very crammed but cozy livingroom. Even though our hobbies have been on and off I’ve gotten a few moments to myself and have also gotten used to doing my thing even though he is always here. No big relationship drama apart from the occasional little argument.
Ballet and body combat got to continue in person for most of the season. The last couple of weeks of ballet classes were on Teams, and the last body combat class was on Facebook with the season ending a couple of weeks early, but other than that having hobbies outside the house definitely helped. I have also loved having my ballet friend stay home instead of studying abroad. Obviously it sucks for her because it has meant a lot of changes to her plans, but I’ve needed her so much, and enjoyed our walks, hanging out together, going to ballet and the hours we spent outside talking on our way back. Ballet classes have been pretty easy as we only go to pointe and adult classes, but at least we are having fun together, and I like to somewhat maintain my skills even though I am not improving by miles. It’s also easier for the body as I’m definitely no longer a teenager. Starting next year we’ll have a fancy new studio!
After the relaxing summer it has definitely felt like I don’t have enough hours in a day or days in a week to do everything I need to. I cannot believe how I used to do all this and so much more pre-COVID but I guess it’s all because Animal Crossing didn’t take anywhere between 30 minutes to 5-8 hours a day. Oops. Needless to say I have been loving ACNH even though the Halloween and Turkey Day events were a bit too easy compared to New Leaf. I have high hopes for Toy Day tomorrow (YIKES! TOMORROW?) even though I haven’t had to go through the usual process of noting down all my villagers’ wishes, which I definitely miss. I am sad the diy recipe RNG has been so bad though. I’ve spent a couple of days spawning balloons on my beach, and never got the big Christmas tree diy in time. Maybe I’ll get it tonight but it’s definitely too late for this year.. Maybe next year then. I didn’t struggle this much with the maple and mush series diys..
So yeah, last summer me and my friend finished our old photography project and I edited the last sets of photos to give the finished book for her as a Christmas present. I love the project a lot because the learning curve is so apparent between photoshoots, and I found my “style” throughout the process. My EOS 100D started to get weird electronical bugs and definitely wasn’t running very well anymore, so after insane amounts of research I decided to get the EOS 90D from a Black Friday sale. I still need a memory card and a new camera bag for it since it’s so much bigger, but I’ve already planned out some future photoshoots and the theme of the new project, which can be described as “Adventure”, “Expedition” or “Discovery”. I just hope my friend will have time to model for me because I’m yearning to go try my new camera out.
My boyfriend and I celebrated our 10 year anniversary with a friend couple who started dating a week after we did. We took an extended weekend trip to a national park, a spa and a rental cabin. It was so much fun and a very special way to celebrate 10 years together. Especially with an exceptional year like this one has been.
Yesterday me and mum went to granny and grandpa’s place to help with the last of their Christmas preparations, take over some food and sing Christmas songs. I took our old piano book with me and mum played the piano while we sang. Grandpa got teary eyed during a special song and it was so incredibly bittersweet. I don’t want to lose my grandparents but I know it won’t be long since they are both approaching 100 years. I am so thankful for them, and for the time I’ve gotten to spend with them. I just wish I could remember more of it. It seems so unfair that we never have enough time with all our loved ones, and there are so many childhood memories other people remember that I don’t. I wish I could go back in time and observe myself spending time with my grandparents to memorise everything. If I ever have children I’m going to take so many photos and videos to preserve as much as I can for them.
In my post from April I wrote that I had been looking at houses and vacant lots. Well, the house of a childhood friend of mine is listed and I’ve gotten to the point where I’ve arranged my mortgage and left an offer. The sellers didn’t accept my first offer so now I’m going to see the house again on the 30th to see if it’s wort raising my offer. I like the house but it’s definitely a bit inconvenient as it is a 3 storey house and way too big and expensive for our current needs. I just really like the area and it is one of the best houses in that neighborhood. I’m going to let things progress naturally though, and if I end up with the house then it was meant to be. If someone else makes a higher offer I won’t be upset either since we have no immediate need to move. It’s just a bit crammed in our current apartment and I would definitely like to have an actual office for my photography equipment, and a sewing machine/crafting space.
Looks like my christmas bread cracked pretty badly but at least it rose a little in the oven.. Hopefully it is edible. At least the one I made for granny and grandpa turned out better.. Time to go scarf down the last of my porridge (which I didn’t burn by the way!) and then try to get all my stuff over to mum and dad’s place. Christmas preparations this year have been crazy busy and I definitely regret not being able to enjoy the season enough but hopefully I’ll get more in the spirit tonight. I’m really happy with the gifts I got mum, dad and my guy this year (online and early in October/November to avoid the rush).
I’m hoping to make a new year’s post on here as well either before 2021 or during the first week. I just like writing things down so that I can look back on where I’ve been. :)
Happy holidays whether you’re spending them with your loved ones (in real life or through a video call) or alone.
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Get to Know Me Tag
I was tagged by @professorhotchkissesta ! Thanks Maddy!! :)
Name: Cambria
nickname: Sometimes I get called Cam or Cambie (that second one is by my family), Bones by my brother, and rarely I get a Bri. I mostly go by Cambria, but if you wanna call me a nickname that’s fine! :)
zodiac sign: Pisces
height: 5′ 7′’
nationality: american
languages spoken: english, a spot of Latin from when I took it for two semesters lol
what time is it?: 1:24 am oof ( 2am at the end now big yikes)
celebrity crush: Chris Evans, (also a lot of marvel actors loool) Timothee Chalamet, Jensen Ackles, and Justin Min (probably others but I don’t follow celebs craaazy close so)
favorite fictional character: *get ready this be long* Nancy Drew, Hardy Boys, the Doctor, Merlin, Percy Jackson, Batman (and co.), DEAN and Sam Winchester, Steve Rogers, Peggy Carter, Natasha Romanov, Matt Murdock, Aragorn (and Legolas and a basically the whole fellowship) Spiderman Peter Parker but a lil bit more Miles Morales, Gansey from the Raven Cycle, them lovely peoples from the many Star Wars movies (ok tbh kinda enjoyed Ben Solo. But the others are cool too including of COURSE og trio and prequel trio) and you don’t know him but Jason Whittiker. There’s a whole heckin lot more but this is me keeping a minimum lol.
favorite musician: Adam Young or Taylor Swift
favorite sports team: Sports?? What is this thing you speak of
favorite season: ummm...late summer? Spring too maybe. Fall is dope. Only thing I like about winter is the first snow, Christmas, and the clothes ha
favorite flower: unlike francis I do not have favorite flowers to put on my favorites, because I don’t know enough about flowers. Maybe sunflowers, those make me happy.
favorite scent: Cherry blossoms, lavender, lakeside, the lakehouse I go to every summer, the smell of someone grilling, that buffy body butter from LUSH, a new book’s pages, that new spring smell
favorite color: lots of shades of blue, like a very rich, purple blue maybe? idk the name lol. I like purple too!!!
favorite animal: *prepare for another list* Dinosaurs, ducks, lots of birds (owls), dolphins, whales, horses, deer, cheetahs, elephants, lions, penguins, polar bears, bears, hedgehogs, probably more I can’t think of rn
favorite food: I love a ton of food, but the first thing that comes to mind is these bacon wrapped dates I had one time and I have never been the same since
dream car: ‘67 Chevy Impala, because I know nothing about cars and it looks cool
dream trip: I wanna go a lot of places, but I’d like to go to Japan, Korea, Australia, the United Kingdom, and Italy to name a few. One trip I spent a day in Iceland and then three days in France, and I’d like to go back to both!
instruments: Learned like 7 songs on the piano and forgot them all. I have an old hand-me-down guitar that I need to learn to play but haven’t yet.
coffee, tea, or hot chocolate: aLL ! Seriously though, love hot chocolate, coffee is good but it heightens anxiety so I gotta watch it. Tea is awesome too!
dog or cat person: boTH but technically who knows cause I’ve never owned either
following: 61
followers: 60
other blogs: @justa-smalltown-gargoyle and @spot-the-three-heads
blog established: March of this year :0
do you have a tumblr crush?: nope, but I wanna be friends with everyone on here, ya’ll are pretty rad and I love ya!!!
do you get asks?: sooooometimes not often tho
what is your lucky number?: not really a lucky number....but 11 seems common for me.
what are you wearing rn?: a MAssive Marvel t-shirt and blue sweatpants + llama socks. I’m wearin’ pjs
drink of choice: any kind of good juice
number of blankets you sleep with: four....? If it’s summer though probably none or like one. However I am a cold person and lots of blankets are cozy
average # of sleep hours: Dunno. I have a really bad sleeping pattern haha. Maybe six or seven hours??? idk
random fact: I took a Karate class in highschool and I had to make my own black belt kata (a kata is an organized performance/dance/acting out? of moves all put together) to pass the test, and I created it with inspiration from the four different forms of bending from Avatar: the Last Airbender XD
Thanks for the tag!! This was super fun!!
@thejoeisthejoe @hardyfrank @nancydrew428 @irinyaclockworker I tag ya’ll unless I missed the fact that you were already tagged for some reason- also I tag anyone who sees this and wants to do it!!!
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3-5, 7, 9, 10, 13, 17, 21, 26, 27, and 38, please?
3. Favourite character from Prequals?
*shifts awkwardly* I think y’all know the answer to that one, right?
it’s obes kenobes
4. Favourite character from original trilogy?
Han Solo! I read quite a few fics focused on him before I got around to watching the prequels and getting obsessed with Obi-Wan.
5. Favourite character from sequal trilogy?
Hm...it’s hard to say, I think it’s a tie between Rey and Finn.
7. If you could choose any profession to have in the GFFA, what would you be?
Hmmm......I’d like to be away from all the drama and death and stuff, so maybe I’d be a farmer or something? But knowing me, I’d probably not like that very much. *shrugs*
9. What food from Star Wars would you want to try?
Blue milk sounds really cool, ngl.
10. Which character do you feel is most like you?
Oh jeez, I have no idea. I feel like I can identify with quite a few of the characters, and also exactly none of them. Does that make sense?
13. Would you want to be a force user?
Oooh that would be really cool - but I’d have to be really careful about it. Definitely don’t want Palpacreep getting on my trail.
17. How were you introduced to the fandom?
Hm...So let’s backtrack to my very first semester of college, circa October 2015. I was studying for a chem exam with people in my dorm, my friend walked up to my table and asked us if we wanted to see the midnight show for TFA in December. Despite not really wanting to see it, I agreed because I basically had no social life and I was desperate for friends (yikes).
Keep in mind, at the time, I’d watched the OT maybe once when I was really little (and remembered very little of it) and ROTS when it came out in theaters (which I remembered more of because of Mustafar and the realization that Luke and Leia were siblings).
So yeah, I got to see TFA right when it got released, and I loved it. Then, over the winter break that followed, I told myself I’d (re)watch all of the previous Star Wars movies so I can fill in all the gaps and refresh my memory.
I watched the OT in January 2016, liked it, and found myself really liking Han’s character! Then, I tried to start TPM, got stuck on a scene that jarred me a bit, and decided I’d get back to it. I ended up giving up on it because I had to go back to school for the spring 2016 semester.
Throughout that semester, I kept thinking that I couldn’t call myself a Star Wars fan without even watching the prequels. So as soon as the spring 2016 semester finished, in May 2016, I watched TPM on one night, and then AOTC and ROTS back to back two nights later. By the time I finished, it was really late so I just fell asleep and that was it.
And then, two days later, it hit me - Obi-Wan Kenobi.
And yep, that’s it. I started reading a bunch of fics, realized that there was a whole bunch of Obi-Wan content in TCW (including Maul returning?? which intrigued me to no end when I first learned about it), and binged TCW that summer.
And the rest is history! :)
21. Which heroine is your favourite?
Ahsoka!!!! I love her!
26. What type of job would you want?
I feel like this question is really similar to #7? But I guess it would be cool to do something math-y or technical, since there’s a lot of technological advancements in Star Wars, especially in the PT era.
27. Top 3 planets to visit?
Naboo, Coruscant, and Alderaan!
38. Fic recommendations?
Oh, jeez, I mean I made a post a few weeks ago here. But here are a few that I’ve read recently and enjoyed:
somebody to someone by katierosefun
Asleep In The Morning Snow by UnderABlueSky
And Now They Walk Alone by LazarusII
Unexpected Kindness by wr0ngsideofreality (slothlover42)
And there’s a whole bunch more I’m definitely forgetting, but yeah!
(star wars asks)
#texasdreamer01#ask me stuff#so like the story of how i got into star wars isn't even the /full/ story#if i get into the whole thing it'll be another post and a half#but yeah that's the quick version#there's more about how i reacted to ROTS the very first time i watched it because you literally see anakin burning alive?#that's not something you forget easily#especially when you didn't know it was going to happen until it DID#and more
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The Great Dirt-Moving Effort!
Every year it’s the same: I spend all winter being sad about the cold, and then spring and summer hit and I’m all like HOLD UP because that means I have to pick up where I left off with exterior work. The earlier I get to it the better because summers here are hot and muggy, but of course there are a finite number of hours in the day so the interior work slows way down. Which is sad, because the interior of my house is still…well, a work in progress, let’s say. A work in progress that’s occasionally frustrating to live in, that I have to force myself to de-prioritize during these warmer months because otherwise the exterior might, I dunno, get overtaken by weeds and die of neglect. Houses, man. Yards. They keep you busy. I do not recommend them if you value free time.
With so much work constantly happening both on the interior and exterior of the house, the backyard in particular has inched along veryyyy slowly. I’ve probably put more effort into the street-facing front and side gardens, primarily in the hope that a few decent-looking plants might distract from the…less charming aspects of my perpetually-being-renovated house. But the back? It’s basically a blank slate. I have a fence. I have some patchy grass. In terms of other amenities, my yard also offers a pile of chimney bricks, a steady supply of dog shit and toys laying around, a ton of irregular bluestone pieces, and a few scraggly plants I’ve stuck in the ground.
It’s not like I have acreage or anything, but I do have a really large yard for Kingston! It’s part of what I love about the house, but it’s also a lot to take care of. And a lot to figure out, because I want it to be a beautiful lush amazing (much more private!!!) paradise but I also find it kind of discouraging because of how much time and money I’ve already dumped into it.
Yes, you read that right. Those two pictures above are the products of thousands of dollars and hundreds of hours of hard work. CAN’T YOU TELL? DO YOU FEEL MOTIVATED YET?!?
I guess I know it could be worse, because oh boy has it been worse! Sometimes when I’m out here feeling so sad and dejected about my barren landscape, I have to remind myself of how the majority of the yard was asphalt when I bought this place! The whole yard was covered in snow the first time I saw the house, so this actually came as a surprise at the first or second walk-through, but at that point I was too in love with the house for a little blacktop to scare me off.
“We’ll just get it removed!” I proclaimed with confidence.
And it did get removed…to the tune of about $2,000, if memory serves, because I have refused to think about it since. YIKES. It took 5 full days and multiple backhoes and excavators to get it done. The thing I didn’t totally realize at the time is that under the asphalt would be a layer of large gravel (item #4, if you wanna get all technical about it), so you have to remove a lot of material to get back down to something resembling clean-ish dirt.
Like, a lot a lot. About TWENTY dump trucks worth.
At the end, they did what they could to flatten everything out and left this attractive scene, which soon started to fill in with weeds. Sure, I’ll take it!
Then it rained. And rained a few more times. And that area that had been covered with asphalt? Turned into a very large, shallow pond. Which, in the winter, turned into a sheet of ice. It’s a shame that depth gets so lost in photos because it really doesn’t portray how bad this was!
The lumpy piles of dirt behind Mekko is all the grass I excavated out of the front garden by hand and then rolled back here in a wheelbarrow. I adorably thought this would solve the problem or at least improve things, but the dent it made was…negligible.
A little while later, I transported a couple pick-up truck loads of dirt from Bluestone Cottage’s front yard, since that yard needed to be graded down and this one needed to be graded up. “This’ll fix it!” I thought to myself again.
Not remotely.
At this point, the availability of free solutions had seemed to run out, and with the new fence in place I really wanted to start getting the backyard in shape! So I stuck the plastic stakes from Lowe’s into the ground and attached a long length of neon pink nylon twine between them, pulling VERY taught. This helped me see where the lowest points were and build up as needed. I considered getting a delivery of soil, but the delivery was kind of expensive, and even with a soil calculator (like this one!), I didn’t feel confident that I had any idea how much I actually needed. I also liked the idea of bringing it into the yard in manageable chunks rather than having the landscaping place deposit a mountain-sized pile that I’d have to just chip away at, blocking my driveway until it was all gone. Hauling it myself seemed, at the time, to make a lot of practical sense.
Not that long before, I got a new car—a practical Subaru SUV. I kept saying that perhaps a pick-up truck would be a better investment at least for this period in my life when hauling large and heavy things is such a regular occurrence, but everyone in my life seemed to think this was patently ridiculous. So instead I got this utility trailer, the bed of which is slightly over 4×8 feet, meaning it’s perfect for drywall and plywood and lumber. I subsequently learned that the trailer is a complete pain in the ass, and difficult to steer in reverse, and in short order I managed to crunch both front corners of my bumper and a rearview mirror while trying to maneuver it. More recently the trailer became unhitched on a job site and smashed the trunk in, too. I hate that thing with the fire of a thousand suns. But also I need it. Because I didn’t buy the pick-up.
SO ANYWAY, now my still-new-ish car is super fucked and the trailer is not holding up annnnddddddd next time maybe I should listen less to those around me when it comes to my driving/hauling needs. It’s all very stupid. That’s not what we’re here to talk about though. We’re talking about the much more exciting topic of dirt.
I took my jacked up car with my jacked up utility trailer to a local landscaping place, where they sell fill dirt. Things like this (mulch, gravel, etc) are usually sold by the “yard,” which you can think of as a 3′ x 3′ x 3′ cube. There are different types of dirt—topsoil is higher quality and full of nutrients and shit like that, and lesser soils are cheaper and good for fill but not great for growing gardens and stuff. I decided to start with cheaper fill, and then finish off with a layer of better topsoil.
About 1 yard of fill fits in that trailer, or around 2,000 pounds, so thus commenced my new weekend tradition of getting as many loads into the yard as I could before it became either completely unbearable or the place closed. Because my trailer doesn’t have a hydraulic lift or anything fancy like that, I had to drive the trailer into the yard, climb in, unload the soil a shovel-full at a time, and then rake it out and level it.
Each time it seemed like SO MUCH DIRT and each time all that dirt barely made a dent.
So I kept having to go back to get more dirt.
Bring in the trailer, shovel it all out, spread, and go back for more. Did I mention how hot and muggy summers are here? This is the worst game I’ve ever played.
This was also getting expensive. A yard of fill from the landscaping place was about $45, so all of a sudden I’m spending literal hundreds of dollars and an obscene amount of effort to bring a bunch of crappy soil into my yard. THE JOYS OF HOMEOWNERSHIP!
After a couple weekends of this, I was bringing demolition debris of some variety to the dump, as I do. And then I saw something over yonder, in the distance.
Mounds. Mounds of dirt. JOE! TELL ME ABOUT THAT DIRT!
Joe is my friend at the dump. I like to bring him a milkshake if I go. Joe likes milkshakes.
Turns out, it’s county compost! From the county! Made at the dump! Literal garbage dirt! This is the dirt for meeeeeee!
It’s actually kind of cool—if you look closely at those mounds, on the far right there’s a pile of newly deposited branches and leaves and stuff. This is where the county’s yard waste bags end up, food scraps from the restaurant composting program, etc. There, they fester for a while, until enough of it has broken down to go into pile #2, and so on. Once it’s gone through this sequence, it goes into that red machine you see on the far left, which essentially grinds it up, breaking down any remaining branches or things that decompose slowly. Then it goes into another pile and continues to brew until somebody who might be me buys it. Cool. Gross. I like it.
Because it��s all compost, I assume this soil is actually much better than the soil I’d been getting, AND it was $35/ton (which is about a yard), so $10 cheaper than the landscaping place.
So I got a load.
Drive it home. Deposit the dirt. Spread the dirt. Go back again.
And again.
And again.
Also, again.
All told, I repeated this procedure THIRTY TIMES. Which means I moved, out of the trailer and into the yard by hand, roughly SIXTY THOUSAND POUNDS of dirt. Just dirt. It was SO much more than I anticipated.
This has to be the least satisfying way I have ever managed to blow through more than a thousand dollars. I stopped keeping track because it was just too depressing.
BUT HARD WORK PAYS OFF! JUST LOOK AT THIS OASIS I CREATED! It just feels like such a SANCTUARY from the outside world and…oh wait, sorry wrong slide. That’s Bunny William’s garden.
LOOK AT THIS OASIS I CREATED! LUSH! VERDANT! A TRUE OUTDOOR LIVING SPACE FIT FOR THE WHOLE FAMILY!
Fortunately this is not a current picture, and things have improved somewhat steadily since that time. I’ve been terrible about sharing backyard progress, I think because I keep waiting for some part of it to look great. And what am I going to do, write a whole post about…moving 30 tons of dirt?
Then I decided that’s exactly what I’ll do, because progress is progress. No lie, it BLOWS that it took this much time and effort and money to get to this very barren depressing square 1, but a lot of landscaping work (hell, renovation work!) is a very long slog that only starts to feel good when all that slow progress accumulates to something that finally feels worthwhile. We have a couple of summers worth of work to catch up on, though, so in lieu of stunning After! images that are realistically probably a decade away, let’s just try to enjoy this whole process for the grueling and occasionally exciting operation that it is! I guess.
The Great Dirt-Moving Effort! published first on https://carpetgurus.tumblr.com/
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The Great Dirt-Moving Effort!
Every year it’s the same: I spend all winter being sad about the cold, and then spring and summer hit and I’m all like HOLD UP because that means I have to pick up where I left off with exterior work. The earlier I get to it the better because summers here are hot and muggy, but of course there are a finite number of hours in the day so the interior work slows way down. Which is sad, because the interior of my house is still…well, a work in progress, let’s say. A work in progress that’s occasionally frustrating to live in, that I have to force myself to de-prioritize during these warmer months because otherwise the exterior might, I dunno, get overtaken by weeds and die of neglect. Houses, man. Yards. They keep you busy. I do not recommend them if you value free time.
With so much work constantly happening both on the interior and exterior of the house, the backyard in particular has inched along veryyyy slowly. I’ve probably put more effort into the street-facing front and side gardens, primarily in the hope that a few decent-looking plants might distract from the…less charming aspects of my perpetually-being-renovated house. But the back? It’s basically a blank slate. I have a fence. I have some patchy grass. In terms of other amenities, my yard also offers a pile of chimney bricks, a steady supply of dog shit and toys laying around, a ton of irregular bluestone pieces, and a few scraggly plants I’ve stuck in the ground.
It’s not like I have acreage or anything, but I do have a really large yard for Kingston! It’s part of what I love about the house, but it’s also a lot to take care of. And a lot to figure out, because I want it to be a beautiful lush amazing (much more private!!!) paradise but I also find it kind of discouraging because of how much time and money I’ve already dumped into it.
Yes, you read that right. Those two pictures above are the products of thousands of dollars and hundreds of hours of hard work. CAN’T YOU TELL? DO YOU FEEL MOTIVATED YET?!?
I guess I know it could be worse, because oh boy has it been worse! Sometimes when I’m out here feeling so sad and dejected about my barren landscape, I have to remind myself of how the majority of the yard was asphalt when I bought this place! The whole yard was covered in snow the first time I saw the house, so this actually came as a surprise at the first or second walk-through, but at that point I was too in love with the house for a little blacktop to scare me off.
“We’ll just get it removed!” I proclaimed with confidence.
And it did get removed…to the tune of about $2,000, if memory serves, because I have refused to think about it since. YIKES. It took 5 full days and multiple backhoes and excavators to get it done. The thing I didn’t totally realize at the time is that under the asphalt would be a layer of large gravel (item #4, if you wanna get all technical about it), so you have to remove a lot of material to get back down to something resembling clean-ish dirt.
Like, a lot a lot. About TWENTY dump trucks worth.
At the end, they did what they could to flatten everything out and left this attractive scene, which soon started to fill in with weeds. Sure, I’ll take it!
Then it rained. And rained a few more times. And that area that had been covered with asphalt? Turned into a very large, shallow pond. Which, in the winter, turned into a sheet of ice. It’s a shame that depth gets so lost in photos because it really doesn’t portray how bad this was!
The lumpy piles of dirt behind Mekko is all the grass I excavated out of the front garden by hand and then rolled back here in a wheelbarrow. I adorably thought this would solve the problem or at least improve things, but the dent it made was…negligible.
A little while later, I transported a couple pick-up truck loads of dirt from Bluestone Cottage’s front yard, since that yard needed to be graded down and this one needed to be graded up. “This’ll fix it!” I thought to myself again.
Not remotely.
At this point, the availability of free solutions had seemed to run out, and with the new fence in place I really wanted to start getting the backyard in shape! So I stuck the plastic stakes from Lowe’s into the ground and attached a long length of neon pink nylon twine between them, pulling VERY taught. This helped me see where the lowest points were and build up as needed. I considered getting a delivery of soil, but the delivery was kind of expensive, and even with a soil calculator (like this one!), I didn’t feel confident that I had any idea how much I actually needed. I also liked the idea of bringing it into the yard in manageable chunks rather than having the landscaping place deposit a mountain-sized pile that I’d have to just chip away at, blocking my driveway until it was all gone. Hauling it myself seemed, at the time, to make a lot of practical sense.
Not that long before, I got a new car—a practical Subaru SUV. I kept saying that perhaps a pick-up truck would be a better investment at least for this period in my life when hauling large and heavy things is such a regular occurrence, but everyone in my life seemed to think this was patently ridiculous. So instead I got this utility trailer, the bed of which is slightly over 4×8 feet, meaning it’s perfect for drywall and plywood and lumber. I subsequently learned that the trailer is a complete pain in the ass, and difficult to steer in reverse, and in short order I managed to crunch both front corners of my bumper and a rearview mirror while trying to maneuver it. More recently the trailer became unhitched on a job site and smashed the trunk in, too. I hate that thing with the fire of a thousand suns. But also I need it. Because I didn’t buy the pick-up.
SO ANYWAY, now my still-new-ish car is super fucked and the trailer is not holding up annnnddddddd next time maybe I should listen less to those around me when it comes to my driving/hauling needs. It’s all very stupid. That’s not what we’re here to talk about though. We’re talking about the much more exciting topic of dirt.
I took my jacked up car with my jacked up utility trailer to a local landscaping place, where they sell fill dirt. Things like this (mulch, gravel, etc) are usually sold by the “yard,” which you can think of as a 3′ x 3′ x 3′ cube. There are different types of dirt—topsoil is higher quality and full of nutrients and shit like that, and lesser soils are cheaper and good for fill but not great for growing gardens and stuff. I decided to start with cheaper fill, and then finish off with a layer of better topsoil.
About 1 yard of fill fits in that trailer, or around 2,000 pounds, so thus commenced my new weekend tradition of getting as many loads into the yard as I could before it became either completely unbearable or the place closed. Because my trailer doesn’t have a hydraulic lift or anything fancy like that, I had to drive the trailer into the yard, climb in, unload the soil a shovel-full at a time, and then rake it out and level it.
Each time it seemed like SO MUCH DIRT and each time all that dirt barely made a dent.
So I kept having to go back to get more dirt.
Bring in the trailer, shovel it all out, spread, and go back for more. Did I mention how hot and muggy summers are here? This is the worst game I’ve ever played.
This was also getting expensive. A yard of fill from the landscaping place was about $45, so all of a sudden I’m spending literal hundreds of dollars and an obscene amount of effort to bring a bunch of crappy soil into my yard. THE JOYS OF HOMEOWNERSHIP!
After a couple weekends of this, I was bringing demolition debris of some variety to the dump, as I do. And then I saw something over yonder, in the distance.
Mounds. Mounds of dirt. JOE! TELL ME ABOUT THAT DIRT!
Joe is my friend at the dump. I like to bring him a milkshake if I go. Joe likes milkshakes.
Turns out, it’s county compost! From the county! Made at the dump! Literal garbage dirt! This is the dirt for meeeeeee!
It’s actually kind of cool—if you look closely at those mounds, on the far right there’s a pile of newly deposited branches and leaves and stuff. This is where the county’s yard waste bags end up, food scraps from the restaurant composting program, etc. There, they fester for a while, until enough of it has broken down to go into pile #2, and so on. Once it’s gone through this sequence, it goes into that red machine you see on the far left, which essentially grinds it up, breaking down any remaining branches or things that decompose slowly. Then it goes into another pile and continues to brew until somebody who might be me buys it. Cool. Gross. I like it.
Because it’s all compost, I assume this soil is actually much better than the soil I’d been getting, AND it was $35/ton (which is about a yard), so $10 cheaper than the landscaping place.
So I got a load.
Drive it home. Deposit the dirt. Spread the dirt. Go back again.
And again.
And again.
Also, again.
All told, I repeated this procedure THIRTY TIMES. Which means I moved, out of the trailer and into the yard by hand, roughly SIXTY THOUSAND POUNDS of dirt. Just dirt. It was SO much more than I anticipated.
This has to be the least satisfying way I have ever managed to blow through more than a thousand dollars. I stopped keeping track because it was just too depressing.
BUT HARD WORK PAYS OFF! JUST LOOK AT THIS OASIS I CREATED! It just feels like such a SANCTUARY from the outside world and…oh wait, sorry wrong slide. That’s Bunny William’s garden.
LOOK AT THIS OASIS I CREATED! LUSH! VERDANT! A TRUE OUTDOOR LIVING SPACE FIT FOR THE WHOLE FAMILY!
Fortunately this is not a current picture, and things have improved somewhat steadily since that time. I’ve been terrible about sharing backyard progress, I think because I keep waiting for some part of it to look great. And what am I going to do, write a whole post about…moving 30 tons of dirt?
Then I decided that’s exactly what I’ll do, because progress is progress. No lie, it BLOWS that it took this much time and effort and money to get to this very barren depressing square 1, but a lot of landscaping work (hell, renovation work!) is a very long slog that only starts to feel good when all that slow progress accumulates to something that finally feels worthwhile. We have a couple of summers worth of work to catch up on, though, so in lieu of stunning After! images that are realistically probably a decade away, let’s just try to enjoy this whole process for the grueling and occasionally exciting operation that it is! I guess.
The Great Dirt-Moving Effort! published first on https://novaformmattressreview.tumblr.com/
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Odds (70 question ask)
Wow this is a lot, ok.
01: Do you have a good relationship with your parents?
I would say yes. Better with my mom then my dad lately.
03: Do you regret anything?
A lot of things. Too many things to list. Most of them are mistakes I’ve made because I was very emotional.
05: What is your relationship status?
Single as fuck. Literally never been in a relationship.
07: What did you last eat?
Like at 6? I had Whataburger for dinner because I was depressed.
09: Do you bite your nails?
Yeah. Its a really bad habit I have never been able to break.
11: Do you like someone?
Yikes. For a while the answer was no but recently I’ve been crushing on 2 people, one of them is in a relationship and the other one doesn’t like girls. So i’m fucked.
13: Do you hate anyone at the moment?
Yes. I’ve had a lot of hatred in my heart recently.
15: Have any pets?
Yes! At my apartment I have a ball python named Asami, 4 neon tetras, and back home i have 4 dogs and a cat names Ginger, who is the love of my life.
17: Ever made out in the bathroom?
Hmmm never in a bathroom
19: Would you go back in time if you were given the chance?
Oh God. Literally every day i want to go back in time and change so many things that I’ve done.
21: What are your plans for this weekend?
Going home for Spring Break, celebrating my sister’s birthday.
23: Do you have piercings? How many?
I actually have 9 piercings, but technically 10 holes. each ear has 3 lobe piercings, my right ear has 2 cartilage and my left has an industrial. I think i’m going to get my nose done next. and i REALLY want to get my nipples pierced.
25: Do you miss anyone from your past?
Yes and no. I miss the feeling of being wanted and cared for that he gave me, but I don’t miss being a love sick fool and doing whatever he wanted me to.
27: Have you ever broken someone’s heart?
Romantically? no. As for friend wise i have no idea. But I’ve done some awful things to people I loved.
29: Have you made a boyfriend/girlfriend cry?
never had a bf/gf
31: Does somebody love you?
romantically no. i know my family does, and my sisters. There are people who say they love me but don’t really show it, and idk if its true.
33: Do you have trust issues?
i have “trust too easily” issues
35: Who was the last person you cried in front of?
My sister and her girlfriend
37: Is it easier to forgive or forget?
i never forget, but i forgive too easily
39: How old were you when you had your first kiss?
19
51: Favourite food?
This is a hard question for a fatty like me to answer, but right now I would say its Whataburger
53: What is the last thing you did before you went to bed last night?
I ate a pizza and fell asleep on the couch while watching Pretty Little Liars at 5 in the morning.
55: Are you mean?
I can be
57: Do you believe in true love?
I am a hopeless romantic, but I haven’t ever felt true love
59: Do you like the snow?
Love it
61: Is it cute when a boy/girl calls you baby?
I prefer babe
63: Would you change your name?
Well my name is super common and I hate that, but idk what I would change it to
65: Your best friend of the opposite sex likes you, what do you do?
Go out with them
67: Who was the last person of the opposite sex you talked to?
Someone I’ve known for a long time
69: Do you believe in soulmates?
Definitely.
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The Great Dirt-Moving Effort!
Every year it’s the same: I spend all winter being sad about the cold, and then spring and summer hit and I’m all like HOLD UP because that means I have to pick up where I left off with exterior work. The earlier I get to it the better because summers here are hot and muggy, but of course there are a finite number of hours in the day so the interior work slows way down. Which is sad, because the interior of my house is still…well, a work in progress, let’s say. A work in progress that’s occasionally frustrating to live in, that I have to force myself to de-prioritize during these warmer months because otherwise the exterior might, I dunno, get overtaken by weeds and die of neglect. Houses, man. Yards. They keep you busy. I do not recommend them if you value free time.
With so much work constantly happening both on the interior and exterior of the house, the backyard in particular has inched along veryyyy slowly. I’ve probably put more effort into the street-facing front and side gardens, primarily in the hope that a few decent-looking plants might distract from the…less charming aspects of my perpetually-being-renovated house. But the back? It’s basically a blank slate. I have a fence. I have some patchy grass. In terms of other amenities, my yard also offers a pile of chimney bricks, a steady supply of dog shit and toys laying around, a ton of irregular bluestone pieces, and a few scraggly plants I’ve stuck in the ground.
It’s not like I have acreage or anything, but I do have a really large yard for Kingston! It’s part of what I love about the house, but it’s also a lot to take care of. And a lot to figure out, because I want it to be a beautiful lush amazing (much more private!!!) paradise but I also find it kind of discouraging because of how much time and money I’ve already dumped into it.
Yes, you read that right. Those two pictures above are the products of thousands of dollars and hundreds of hours of hard work. CAN’T YOU TELL? DO YOU FEEL MOTIVATED YET?!?
I guess I know it could be worse, because oh boy has it been worse! Sometimes when I’m out here feeling so sad and dejected about my barren landscape, I have to remind myself of how the majority of the yard was asphalt when I bought this place! The whole yard was covered in snow the first time I saw the house, so this actually came as a surprise at the first or second walk-through, but at that point I was too in love with the house for a little blacktop to scare me off.
“We’ll just get it removed!” I proclaimed with confidence.
And it did get removed…to the tune of about $2,000, if memory serves, because I have refused to think about it since. YIKES. It took 5 full days and multiple backhoes and excavators to get it done. The thing I didn’t totally realize at the time is that under the asphalt would be a layer of large gravel (item #4, if you wanna get all technical about it), so you have to remove a lot of material to get back down to something resembling clean-ish dirt.
Like, a lot a lot. About TWENTY dump trucks worth.
At the end, they did what they could to flatten everything out and left this attractive scene, which soon started to fill in with weeds. Sure, I’ll take it!
Then it rained. And rained a few more times. And that area that had been covered with asphalt? Turned into a very large, shallow pond. Which, in the winter, turned into a sheet of ice. It’s a shame that depth gets so lost in photos because it really doesn’t portray how bad this was!
The lumpy piles of dirt behind Mekko is all the grass I excavated out of the front garden by hand and then rolled back here in a wheelbarrow. I adorably thought this would solve the problem or at least improve things, but the dent it made was…negligible.
A little while later, I transported a couple pick-up truck loads of dirt from Bluestone Cottage’s front yard, since that yard needed to be graded down and this one needed to be graded up. “This’ll fix it!” I thought to myself again.
Not remotely.
At this point, the availability of free solutions had seemed to run out, and with the new fence in place I really wanted to start getting the backyard in shape! So I stuck the plastic stakes from Lowe’s into the ground and attached a long length of neon pink nylon twine between them, pulling VERY taught. This helped me see where the lowest points were and build up as needed. I considered getting a delivery of soil, but the delivery was kind of expensive, and even with a soil calculator (like this one!), I didn’t feel confident that I had any idea how much I actually needed. I also liked the idea of bringing it into the yard in manageable chunks rather than having the landscaping place deposit a mountain-sized pile that I’d have to just chip away at, blocking my driveway until it was all gone. Hauling it myself seemed, at the time, to make a lot of practical sense.
Not that long before, I got a new car—a practical Subaru SUV. I kept saying that perhaps a pick-up truck would be a better investment at least for this period in my life when hauling large and heavy things is such a regular occurrence, but everyone in my life seemed to think this was patently ridiculous. So instead I got this utility trailer, the bed of which is slightly over 4×8 feet, meaning it’s perfect for drywall and plywood and lumber. I subsequently learned that the trailer is a complete pain in the ass, and difficult to steer in reverse, and in short order I managed to crunch both front corners of my bumper and a rearview mirror while trying to maneuver it. More recently the trailer became unhitched on a job site and smashed the trunk in, too. I hate that thing with the fire of a thousand suns. But also I need it. Because I didn’t buy the pick-up.
SO ANYWAY, now my still-new-ish car is super fucked and the trailer is not holding up annnnddddddd next time maybe I should listen less to those around me when it comes to my driving/hauling needs. It’s all very stupid. That’s not what we’re here to talk about though. We’re talking about the much more exciting topic of dirt.
I took my jacked up car with my jacked up utility trailer to a local landscaping place, where they sell fill dirt. Things like this (mulch, gravel, etc) are usually sold by the “yard,” which you can think of as a 3′ x 3′ x 3′ cube. There are different types of dirt—topsoil is higher quality and full of nutrients and shit like that, and lesser soils are cheaper and good for fill but not great for growing gardens and stuff. I decided to start with cheaper fill, and then finish off with a layer of better topsoil.
About 1 yard of fill fits in that trailer, or around 2,000 pounds, so thus commenced my new weekend tradition of getting as many loads into the yard as I could before it became either completely unbearable or the place closed. Because my trailer doesn’t have a hydraulic lift or anything fancy like that, I had to drive the trailer into the yard, climb in, unload the soil a shovel-full at a time, and then rake it out and level it.
Each time it seemed like SO MUCH DIRT and each time all that dirt barely made a dent.
So I kept having to go back to get more dirt.
Bring in the trailer, shovel it all out, spread, and go back for more. Did I mention how hot and muggy summers are here? This is the worst game I’ve ever played.
This was also getting expensive. A yard of fill from the landscaping place was about $45, so all of a sudden I’m spending literal hundreds of dollars and an obscene amount of effort to bring a bunch of crappy soil into my yard. THE JOYS OF HOMEOWNERSHIP!
After a couple weekends of this, I was bringing demolition debris of some variety to the dump, as I do. And then I saw something over yonder, in the distance.
Mounds. Mounds of dirt. JOE! TELL ME ABOUT THAT DIRT!
Joe is my friend at the dump. I like to bring him a milkshake if I go. Joe likes milkshakes.
Turns out, it’s county compost! From the county! Made at the dump! Literal garbage dirt! This is the dirt for meeeeeee!
It’s actually kind of cool—if you look closely at those mounds, on the far right there’s a pile of newly deposited branches and leaves and stuff. This is where the county’s yard waste bags end up, food scraps from the restaurant composting program, etc. There, they fester for a while, until enough of it has broken down to go into pile #2, and so on. Once it’s gone through this sequence, it goes into that red machine you see on the far left, which essentially grinds it up, breaking down any remaining branches or things that decompose slowly. Then it goes into another pile and continues to brew until somebody who might be me buys it. Cool. Gross. I like it.
Because it’s all compost, I assume this soil is actually much better than the soil I’d been getting, AND it was $35/ton (which is about a yard), so $10 cheaper than the landscaping place.
So I got a load.
Drive it home. Deposit the dirt. Spread the dirt. Go back again.
And again.
And again.
Also, again.
All told, I repeated this procedure THIRTY TIMES. Which means I moved, out of the trailer and into the yard by hand, roughly SIXTY THOUSAND POUNDS of dirt. Just dirt. It was SO much more than I anticipated.
This has to be the least satisfying way I have ever managed to blow through more than a thousand dollars. I stopped keeping track because it was just too depressing.
BUT HARD WORK PAYS OFF! JUST LOOK AT THIS OASIS I CREATED! It just feels like such a SANCTUARY from the outside world and…oh wait, sorry wrong slide. That’s Bunny William’s garden.
LOOK AT THIS OASIS I CREATED! LUSH! VERDANT! A TRUE OUTDOOR LIVING SPACE FIT FOR THE WHOLE FAMILY!
Fortunately this is not a current picture, and things have improved somewhat steadily since that time. I’ve been terrible about sharing backyard progress, I think because I keep waiting for some part of it to look great. And what am I going to do, write a whole post about…moving 30 tons of dirt?
Then I decided that’s exactly what I’ll do, because progress is progress. No lie, it BLOWS that it took this much time and effort and money to get to this very barren depressing square 1, but a lot of landscaping work (hell, renovation work!) is a very long slog that only starts to feel good when all that slow progress accumulates to something that finally feels worthwhile. We have a couple of summers worth of work to catch up on, though, so in lieu of stunning After! images that are realistically probably a decade away, let’s just try to enjoy this whole process for the grueling and occasionally exciting operation that it is! I guess.
The Great Dirt-Moving Effort! published first on https://carpetgurus.tumblr.com/
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Text
The Great Dirt-Moving Effort!
Every year it’s the same: I spend all winter being sad about the cold, and then spring and summer hit and I’m all like HOLD UP because that means I have to pick up where I left off with exterior work. The earlier I get to it the better because summers here are hot and muggy, but of course there are a finite number of hours in the day so the interior work slows way down. Which is sad, because the interior of my house is still…well, a work in progress, let’s say. A work in progress that’s occasionally frustrating to live in, that I have to force myself to de-prioritize during these warmer months because otherwise the exterior might, I dunno, get overtaken by weeds and die of neglect. Houses, man. Yards. They keep you busy. I do not recommend them if you value free time.
With so much work constantly happening both on the interior and exterior of the house, the backyard in particular has inched along veryyyy slowly. I’ve probably put more effort into the street-facing front and side gardens, primarily in the hope that a few decent-looking plants might distract from the…less charming aspects of my perpetually-being-renovated house. But the back? It’s basically a blank slate. I have a fence. I have some patchy grass. In terms of other amenities, my yard also offers a pile of chimney bricks, a steady supply of dog shit and toys laying around, a ton of irregular bluestone pieces, and a few scraggly plants I’ve stuck in the ground.
It’s not like I have acreage or anything, but I do have a really large yard for Kingston! It’s part of what I love about the house, but it’s also a lot to take care of. And a lot to figure out, because I want it to be a beautiful lush amazing (much more private!!!) paradise but I also find it kind of discouraging because of how much time and money I’ve already dumped into it.
Yes, you read that right. Those two pictures above are the products of thousands of dollars and hundreds of hours of hard work. CAN’T YOU TELL? DO YOU FEEL MOTIVATED YET?!?
I guess I know it could be worse, because oh boy has it been worse! Sometimes when I’m out here feeling so sad and dejected about my barren landscape, I have to remind myself of how the majority of the yard was asphalt when I bought this place! The whole yard was covered in snow the first time I saw the house, so this actually came as a surprise at the first or second walk-through, but at that point I was too in love with the house for a little blacktop to scare me off.
“We’ll just get it removed!” I proclaimed with confidence.
And it did get removed…to the tune of about $2,000, if memory serves, because I have refused to think about it since. YIKES. It took 5 full days and multiple backhoes and excavators to get it done. The thing I didn’t totally realize at the time is that under the asphalt would be a layer of large gravel (item #4, if you wanna get all technical about it), so you have to remove a lot of material to get back down to something resembling clean-ish dirt.
Like, a lot a lot. About TWENTY dump trucks worth.
At the end, they did what they could to flatten everything out and left this attractive scene, which soon started to fill in with weeds. Sure, I’ll take it!
Then it rained. And rained a few more times. And that area that had been covered with asphalt? Turned into a very large, shallow pond. Which, in the winter, turned into a sheet of ice. It’s a shame that depth gets so lost in photos because it really doesn’t portray how bad this was!
The lumpy piles of dirt behind Mekko is all the grass I excavated out of the front garden by hand and then rolled back here in a wheelbarrow. I adorably thought this would solve the problem or at least improve things, but the dent it made was…negligible.
A little while later, I transported a couple pick-up truck loads of dirt from Bluestone Cottage’s front yard, since that yard needed to be graded down and this one needed to be graded up. “This’ll fix it!” I thought to myself again.
Not remotely.
At this point, the availability of free solutions had seemed to run out, and with the new fence in place I really wanted to start getting the backyard in shape! So I stuck the plastic stakes from Lowe’s into the ground and attached a long length of neon pink nylon twine between them, pulling VERY taught. This helped me see where the lowest points were and build up as needed. I considered getting a delivery of soil, but the delivery was kind of expensive, and even with a soil calculator (like this one!), I didn’t feel confident that I had any idea how much I actually needed. I also liked the idea of bringing it into the yard in manageable chunks rather than having the landscaping place deposit a mountain-sized pile that I’d have to just chip away at, blocking my driveway until it was all gone. Hauling it myself seemed, at the time, to make a lot of practical sense.
Not that long before, I got a new car—a practical Subaru SUV. I kept saying that perhaps a pick-up truck would be a better investment at least for this period in my life when hauling large and heavy things is such a regular occurrence, but everyone in my life seemed to think this was patently ridiculous. So instead I got this utility trailer, the bed of which is slightly over 4×8 feet, meaning it’s perfect for drywall and plywood and lumber. I subsequently learned that the trailer is a complete pain in the ass, and difficult to steer in reverse, and in short order I managed to crunch both front corners of my bumper and a rearview mirror while trying to maneuver it. More recently the trailer became unhitched on a job site and smashed the trunk in, too. I hate that thing with the fire of a thousand suns. But also I need it. Because I didn’t buy the pick-up.
SO ANYWAY, now my still-new-ish car is super fucked and the trailer is not holding up annnnddddddd next time maybe I should listen less to those around me when it comes to my driving/hauling needs. It’s all very stupid. That’s not what we’re here to talk about though. We’re talking about the much more exciting topic of dirt.
I took my jacked up car with my jacked up utility trailer to a local landscaping place, where they sell fill dirt. Things like this (mulch, gravel, etc) are usually sold by the “yard,” which you can think of as a 3′ x 3′ x 3′ cube. There are different types of dirt—topsoil is higher quality and full of nutrients and shit like that, and lesser soils are cheaper and good for fill but not great for growing gardens and stuff. I decided to start with cheaper fill, and then finish off with a layer of better topsoil.
About 1 yard of fill fits in that trailer, or around 2,000 pounds, so thus commenced my new weekend tradition of getting as many loads into the yard as I could before it became either completely unbearable or the place closed. Because my trailer doesn’t have a hydraulic lift or anything fancy like that, I had to drive the trailer into the yard, climb in, unload the soil a shovel-full at a time, and then rake it out and level it.
Each time it seemed like SO MUCH DIRT and each time all that dirt barely made a dent.
So I kept having to go back to get more dirt.
Bring in the trailer, shovel it all out, spread, and go back for more. Did I mention how hot and muggy summers are here? This is the worst game I’ve ever played.
This was also getting expensive. A yard of fill from the landscaping place was about $45, so all of a sudden I’m spending literal hundreds of dollars and an obscene amount of effort to bring a bunch of crappy soil into my yard. THE JOYS OF HOMEOWNERSHIP!
After a couple weekends of this, I was bringing demolition debris of some variety to the dump, as I do. And then I saw something over yonder, in the distance.
Mounds. Mounds of dirt. JOE! TELL ME ABOUT THAT DIRT!
Joe is my friend at the dump. I like to bring him a milkshake if I go. Joe likes milkshakes.
Turns out, it’s county compost! From the county! Made at the dump! Literal garbage dirt! This is the dirt for meeeeeee!
It’s actually kind of cool—if you look closely at those mounds, on the far right there’s a pile of newly deposited branches and leaves and stuff. This is where the county’s yard waste bags end up, food scraps from the restaurant composting program, etc. There, they fester for a while, until enough of it has broken down to go into pile #2, and so on. Once it’s gone through this sequence, it goes into that red machine you see on the far left, which essentially grinds it up, breaking down any remaining branches or things that decompose slowly. Then it goes into another pile and continues to brew until somebody who might be me buys it. Cool. Gross. I like it.
Because it’s all compost, I assume this soil is actually much better than the soil I’d been getting, AND it was $35/ton (which is about a yard), so $10 cheaper than the landscaping place.
So I got a load.
Drive it home. Deposit the dirt. Spread the dirt. Go back again.
And again.
And again.
Also, again.
All told, I repeated this procedure THIRTY TIMES. Which means I moved, out of the trailer and into the yard by hand, roughly SIXTY THOUSAND POUNDS of dirt. Just dirt. It was SO much more than I anticipated.
This has to be the least satisfying way I have ever managed to blow through more than a thousand dollars. I stopped keeping track because it was just too depressing.
BUT HARD WORK PAYS OFF! JUST LOOK AT THIS OASIS I CREATED! It just feels like such a SANCTUARY from the outside world and…oh wait, sorry wrong slide. That’s Bunny William’s garden.
LOOK AT THIS OASIS I CREATED! LUSH! VERDANT! A TRUE OUTDOOR LIVING SPACE FIT FOR THE WHOLE FAMILY!
Fortunately this is not a current picture, and things have improved somewhat steadily since that time. I’ve been terrible about sharing backyard progress, I think because I keep waiting for some part of it to look great. And what am I going to do, write a whole post about…moving 30 tons of dirt?
Then I decided that’s exactly what I’ll do, because progress is progress. No lie, it BLOWS that it took this much time and effort and money to get to this very barren depressing square 1, but a lot of landscaping work (hell, renovation work!) is a very long slog that only starts to feel good when all that slow progress accumulates to something that finally feels worthwhile. We have a couple of summers worth of work to catch up on, though, so in lieu of stunning After! images that are realistically probably a decade away, let’s just try to enjoy this whole process for the grueling and occasionally exciting operation that it is! I guess.
The Great Dirt-Moving Effort! published first on https://carpetgurus.tumblr.com/
0 notes
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