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padfootagain · 4 years

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Girl Crush (XXIV)

Chapter 24: Thanking You With Bellflowers

Here we go again for a brand new chapter!! I hope you like it! It's very cute, nothing to worry about in this one.

The next chapter is already written, so next update on Sunday!

Tell me what you think!

Word Count: 3519

"Y/N! SHUT DOWN THE WATER!"

"SHUT IT DOWN!"

You heard a squeal coming from Harry, and hurried to close the tap. You peered inside the backroom again, where Jasmine and Harry were struggling to repair the leaking sink. For now, they had only made the leak worse.

They were both drenched, and both getting grumpier by the minute, but they were also both too stubborn to admit their defeat.

So, they just got more irritated and wet instead of putting down their tools and calling for the help of a professional.

"This is getting ridiculous, guys," you attempted to put some sense into their thick skulls. "I am extremely grateful for the two of you helping me out with the renovation for my shop, but none of you seem to be able to repair that particular issue. We should just call a plumber."

Both your friends turned to you and shot you a glare.

"We are not calling anyone!" Jasmine protested. "We can do this."

"You're both drenched, you're gonna catch a cold."

"Shut up and hand me that wrench," Harry replied, ignoring your protests and making you roll your eyes.

"Do you even know what you're doing?"

Both of your friends looked up at you again from their spot on the wet ground, this time with an offended look on their faces.

"We can do this! Right, Jas?" Harry replied.

"Damn right, we can!"

It took them over an hour more to manage to repair the leak. You didn't tell them that a plumber would have probably been done in 20 minutes where they had spent almost three hours. You were too grateful for their help for that, and you were also struggling to avert your eyes elsewhere while Harry was walking into your garden and taking off his wet white T-shirt to get rid of some of the water impregnated in the cotton.

Indeed, you were too busy trying to look away from the butterfly tattooed on his abdomen…

"I'm starving, let's go find something to eat. I think we deserve it," Jasmine decided. "I'm gonna change into some dry clothes, and we can go."

"Harry, when is your appointment with Gucci?"

Your friend checked the time.

"In a little less than two hours, I can stay for lunch."

"What are you preparing for with Gucci?"

He shrugged, grabbing one of the towels you had fetched for your two friends.

"We'll start working on the style for the new album soon, but it's a bit early for that for now. I just want to buy some new stuff."

Jasmine heaved a loud sigh from the corner of the room she was hiding into while she changed.

"Ha… being rich and buying Gucci…"

"Do you want to come? I… could use some advices, actually."

"Really?" you asked, surprised.

"I reckon you know more about fashion than her, she won't be very useful," Jasmine teased you.

"Well, I won't deny it," you replied, crossing your arms before your chest. "Still, it could be fun."

"Nice! We'll all go together then. But first, lunch. I'm famished."

That was how, after eating some Indian food in the tiny restaurant up the street, you and Jasmine found yourself staring at Gucci suits and shirts and trousers. Silk and cotton and glitter, and a lot of expensive pieces of clothing…

Some clothes had been prepared for him in advance, and he went through them, picking up a few of them. He examined a green jacket, that he seemed to like.

"I like this one," he nodded.

"It's nice," you agreed.

"Too bold?"

You raised an eyebrow, shaking your head.

"You? Too bold?"

He shrugged, looking a little shy all of sudden, blushing.

"I mean… too much is… too much…"

You laughed at him, picking up the jacket and placing it before him to judge what he would look like wearing it.

"It looks great on you," you agreed.

"You sure?"

"I'm absolutely certain."

He considered the piece of clothing again, putting it on and checking his reflection in a mirror, but nodded with a content smile on his lips.

"It looks great, indeed!"

Most of the afternoon was spent staring at pretty clothes and helping Harry choose some new outfits. You and Jasmine had some fun trying some clothes too, until your friend spotted a dress that took her breath away.

A dark, silky dress that fitted her so well, she felt like she had never in her life tried any clothes that fitted her before. It felt like a second skin, and both you and Harry were left speechless.

"Wow," he let out, his eyes growing round. "Jas, you look breathtaking!"

"You do," you nodded in agreement, the same astonished look on your face. "Like… you're always pretty but this is… wow…"

"Wow." Both you and Harry repeated in unison from your seats before the fitting room.

She had a huge grin on her face, and she seemed to be seeing stars all around the room.

"It's so pretty," she breathed, tracing the outlines of the fabric with her fingertips.

"You should take it," Harry nodded. "You should definitely take it."

Her smile faltered, and she let out a small laugh, clearly saddened although she tried to brush it off.

"There's no tag with the prize for a reason, Harry," she replied, taking one last look at herself in the mirror.

"I meant to…"

"I know what you meant, that's alright, though," she gave him a half-smile, before disappearing behind the curtain of the fitting room again.

Harry heaved a sigh next to you, but you nudged him to brush his disappointment away.

"It's alright Harry. It's still fun to try on some nice clothes."

"You still haven't tried on this suit you've been eyeing for half-an-hour, though," he replied, nodding towards the burgundy clothes that you had been admiring for a while.

You grew a little shy, shrugging.

"I won't be able to pay for it, anyway."

"I can."

"Harry…"

"Why are you always so uptight about that. I have a lot of money, I can buy you a nice suit. My bank account will not even notice."

You shifted in your seat, quite torn apart by your want for the nice clothes, and the fact that you couldn't possibly accept something that expensive without feeling guilty.

"Can you please do something for me?" he asked with pleading eyes. "Just for once, forget the price, and try this suit on. Don't buy it. But just for a moment, do something nice for yourself, and wear something you've always wanted to wear. Can you do this for me?"

You heaved a sigh, but nodded, giving up while Jasmine was reappearing with her casual clothes on.

You asked to try this burgundy suit, already adoring the clothes as your fingers ran across the soft fabric.

As you disappeared in the fitting room and out of earshot, Harry asked the saleswoman a little favour.

"Can you make sure to take her measurements and make the suit fit perfectly, please?" he asked in a secretive whisper.

The employee merely nodded in response, and went off to get all she would need to make the suit perfect for you. If you asked questions, he would say that he had asked just to make you feel even better about yourself. The truth wasn't that innocent though.

After a few minutes, you finally walked before your friends again.

Jasmine let out a gasp, pressing her palm against her mouth to refrain the shout that was sure to come out otherwise.

"Oh my God, you're so beautiful, Y/N!" she squealed excitedly, getting up to her feet to take a closer look at your outfit.

You shied away, nervously playing with your fingers in response.

"It is very pretty."

"The suit is just perfect for you! You're so gorgeous!"

"Thanks, Jas," you mumbled under your breath.

You looked at Harry, who had remained quiet and still sat motionless on his chair.

And if you had been able to read his thoughts, his reaction wouldn't have taken you aback then. Because he had none. His brain seemed to have been frozen, and all he could do was stare at you and memorize the sight before his eyes. There was not even a beginning of a thought crossing his mind, it was all just a blank canvas before which your image stood, unforgettable and almost ethereal.

He seemed to have forgotten how to breathe, but he didn't even notice. He reckoned that he had never felt this smitten by anyone before.

And now, he had always found you astonishingly beautiful, but he couldn't deny the fact that your outfit just enhanced how gorgeous you were to him.

You looked like a goddess he wished he could spend his life worshipping…

"Harry? What do you think? Do you like it?"

His name spoken in your voice seemed to shake him out of his torpor, at least enough so for him to clear his throat and clumsily stand up to join Jasmine by your side. He was still staring at you with his mouth agape and his eyes a bit too wide.

You frowned a little, but found no other explanation for his dazzled expression.

Was he… gawking at you…?

He blushed fiercely as his eyes met yours again.

"You…" he let out in a shaky breath, his mouth dry and struggling to summon his voice again. "You look…"

His eyes travelled across your frame one more time, drinking you in, before finally letting out in a breath the only word he judged worthy to describe you as your gazes met for good.

"… Perfect."

He gave you a shy smile.

"You look… perfect," he repeated, his voice a little more confident.

"Thanks," you grinned.

Meanwhile, Jasmine was pretending she didn't exist and was wondering if Harry would do what was obvious that he longed for, which was crossing the distance between the two of you and snog you senseless in the middle of the Gucci shop.

But he didn't. Instead, he let you turn to the mirror again, taking the chance as you turned around to study the way your vest hugged your back perfectly.

"Well, even I have to admit that it looks good on me," you half-joked. "You were right, Harry. It was a nice dream to have."

You walked away to change back into your own clothes while Harry went off to pay for the clothes he had selected for himself.

"Will you also take the suit for your girlfriend, sir?"

And Harry almost corrected the saleswoman.

No, we're not together. Just friends.

But what was the point? The truth, he guessed. But then again, it would hurt so much to correct her. He reckoned that it was a rather innocent lie he would be telling himself for just a few seconds if he didn't say anything.

So, he let it slide, and for a moment, he bathed in the illusion that you were recognised as his girlfriend, instead of his friend.

"I will," he nodded, taking out his credit card and exchanging a knowing smile with the Gucci employee before him.

You would be mad at him for that, but he also knew that you would get over it. If he didn't spoil the woman he loved, even if you weren't his, then who could he spend his money for at all?

You were packing, putting your books in cardboard boxes. You were due to move to your new flat with Gareth the next week. He was helping you pack, and you were having quite a laugh, your boyfriend being silly next to you to make sure that you would keep on smiling.

It was a rather nice evening, actually. Warm like California was used to, and the sunset bathing the sky with pink and gold.

You were interrupted by your phone ringing, and picked up to hear Jasmine's voice.

"Y/N!" she shouted in the phone, and you had to bring the device a little further away from your ear. "I CAN'T BELIEVE WHAT HARRY DID!"

"Well, hello to you too, Jas," you chuckled. "What did Harry do?"

"I'VE JUST RECEIVED THE DRESS!"

You frowned, putting down a book in the box before you, while Gareth threw you a questioning look.

"What dress? What are you talking about?"

"THE DRESS! The Gucci dress! The one from last week! You remember? The one that was so pretty! It's just been delivered to my flat! He also bought me a new drill! I was complaining about mine being old and not working properly when we tried to pierce your wall to add the shelves for your plants, but I didn't think that he would buy me one!"

"Harry… did that?"

"YES! He left a cute card with them too! I mean… a part of me doesn't want to accept cause the dress must have cost… way too much to even think about it, but… I've just put it on again and… IT'S SO BEAUTIFUL!"

You laughed, shaking your head. Now, actually, it was pure Harry to do something like this.

"Anyway, sorry… I'm so EXCITED!" Jasmine went on, and you could imagine her jumping up and down in her new dress, with the largest grin on her face. "I called you to warn you because… if he bought the dress for me, then I'm pretty sure that he has probably bought your suits too."

You froze, a book almost set in the box, but held by just your fingertips instead.

"What… do you… do you think so?"

"I mean, mine was delivered just a bit ago, yours will probably soon arrive as well."

"But I… I told him not to…"

"Well, I didn't ask for it either, and yet he did it!"

"I mean… he loves doing this kind of things."

Just as you were listening to your friend's answer, someone knocked on your front door.

Gareth moved towards the door, but you stopped him and went to open the door instead.

And sure enough, Jasmine was right. There was a delivery for you.

You got the package, tipped the delivery guy, and hurried back to the living room to open the box. Your heart was pounding in your chest, although you knew already what was enclosed in the large white box.

You put down your phone, placing your friend on speaker.

"So? Is it the suit?" she eagerly asked.

You lifted the lid, revealing the beautiful burgundy fabric you expected. Still, you couldn't refrain a gasp.

"Yeah… yeah, it's the suit…"

"What suit? Who sent you that? Did you buy it?" Gareth asked, walking across the room to stand beside you to take a better look at the inside of the package.

"Harry bought it for me."

At your words, Gareth froze, turning fully to you, his eyes travelling back and forth between you and your gift.

You let out a breathy chuckle, your nerves getting the best of you while you struggled not to cry.

"I can't believe he did this…"

You reached for the note he had left, placed neatly on top of the clothes.

Don't even start telling me I shouldn't have, because I'm right about this.

All my love, always,

H xx

You laughed at his note, before pressing it to your heart.

"Girl, this man is something else…" Jasmine said, and you could hear that she was shaking her head, before she gasped. "MY DRILL IS CHARGED I HAVE TO TRY IT! SEE YOU TOMORROW AT THE SHOP, BYE!"

And before you could reply, she had hung up, making you laugh.

"So… he buys you nice clothes now?" Gareth asked, struggling to hide the jealousy that oozed from his tone.

"I mean… he always buys nice things to everyone," you countered, a tender smile on your lips that Gareth didn't like at all. "He also bought me many scarves, and this," you added, your fingers coming up to brush against your necklace.

This necklace… how could Gareth forget about it? He had bought you one as well, but you never wore it. It was always Harry's peony that shone softly around your neck with the sun.

"I'll call him and thank him."

Gareth cleared his throat, summoning his most innocent tone.

"Isn't it a bit weird that he buys you clothes like this?"

"What do you mean?"

"I mean… I don't buy Gucci suits to my friends…"

"Well, maybe you should start to," you joked. "It's not weird. He just loves making gifts. He also bought Jasmine the dress she loved."

"I see. That's nice of him."

"Yeah… I'll call him now."

Before he could say anything else, you were pressing your phone against your ear, your fingers still tracing the edges of the folded vest.

"Hello, Y/N! How are you?" Harry's voice formed through the phone, warm and merry, and making you smile so easily.

"Hey, Harry! I'm… speechless… I've just received your package. I… I don't know what to say."

"Well, don't tell me that it was madness or anything of the kind, that's all I'm asking for."

"This is… so beautiful, Harry. Thank you."

"You deserve it. You only deserve the best. Besides, it suited you too well, I couldn't let you walk away from it. Would have been too much of a shame. Are you wearing it now?"

"No," you laughed. "I'm making my boxes for next week. Besides, I reckon that I should keep it for a special occasion. Like… when my shop opens."

"That would be amazing. Everyone will come to your shop, just to see you in that suit, not even any need for flowers then."

"Oh, shut up!" you chuckled, shaking your head, but Gareth didn't miss how your lips turned into a grin.

"I'm serious!"

"Anyways… thank you, Harry. For everything."

"You know… you've always made me feel like I could be myself. Like I… could wear whatever I wanted, and be whoever I wanted… You've made me feel better in my own skin. I thought… it was just a small thing compared to what you've done for me, but… I thought maybe it would help you feel a little bit more like your best self too, the same way you make me feel."

You weren't sure what to answer, and Harry was suddenly worried that he might have gotten too far with his confession.

But he was soon reassured.

"You make me feel like that too. I know I'm accepted when I'm with you."

A proud smile settled across his lips.

"That's all that matters to me."

"Are you in the studio still?"

"Yeah, we're finishing up a song."

"What's it called?"

"I won't tell you."

"Please!"

"Nope! That would be cheating!"

"Tell me something at least!"

He heaved a sigh, running his hand through his messy hair. He really never could resist you, could he?

"I wrote it a while back, when I was on the road. I'm finishing up with the instrumentation."

"What is it about?"

You.

It should have been his answer, but he couldn't admit that out loud. Especially when he knew that Gareth was probably in your apartment too, helping you pack up your things.

It's about you. I wrote it that night after our dinner in L.A, when you talked about Gareth and how you weren't sure about him. It's about how I wish you'd given me a chance. It's all I wish I had told you that evening, instead of waiting for your couple to become stronger. It's me begging you to let me adore you the way you deserve. Do you remember that walk we took under the stars that night? I put my coat over your shoulders because you were cold. Do you remember that?

"It's about… asking someone to let you love them. It's about… the beginning of being in love."

"What's it called?"

"So far, the title's Adore You."

"Awww! I love it already!"

"It's the cheesiness in you."

"You're even more of a romantic than I am!"

"Maybe so."

"Well, you should go back to writing your next hit, then! I'll leave you to it. I'll see you tomorrow at the shop?"

"Sure. Good night, Y/N."

"Good night, Harry. Oh, and by the way… Jasmine loved her gifts too."

He chuckled, and you could imagine him blushing and balancing his weight from one foot to the other.

"I'm glad she did."

"Good luck with your song."

"Sleep tight."

He hung up before he could let out the words that he almost let slip more and more often these days. It was worrying, really, the way the words seemed to get closer to the tip of his tongue and to his treacherous lips every day. With every call, actually, it would seem. What if he let them slip out? Would you hate him then?

Love you…

"Harry! You're done, yet? Bring your arse back here!" Mitch's voice rang through the studio.

"I'm coming! Jesus! You're impatient today!" Harry laughed, walking down the corridor to record his song again.

Yet another song about you…

*******************

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#harry styles #harry styles x reader #harry styles fanfiction #harry styles fanfic #harry styles imagine #harry styles series #series #fanfic #fanfiction #imagine #writing

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madisonhentosh · 3 years

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A Day In The Life Of An Endicott Student-Athlete

Ever wonder what it’s like to be a student athlete at Endicott College? I caught up with Catherine Miles, a member of the women’s ice hockey team, this past week to get a glimpse into her busy schedule.

Miles is a 20 year old Sophomore on the Beverly campus hailing from Northfield, Vermont, home also to Norwich University. Although the town of Northfield and its people are considered her family, Miles has found, and been welcomed into, a new family on the Endicott campus.

The Northfield Pharmacy is the only pharmacy in town. It is in the center of the downtown area which only consists of a handful of stores adding to the homey feel of Northfield.

With hopes of being a physicians assistant when she graduates, Miles is currently studying Exercise Science. A popular major among athletes, she finds herself in classes surrounded by other athletes from various sports teams.

Miles checks her class Canvas page prior to the start of class.

After waking up and preparing herself for the day, a typical Wednesday morning involves Miles walking from Stoneridge Hall all the way to the Arts Center, or better known as the VPAC. From 9:00-9:50a.m. she sits attentively in a class labeled philosophy and sport. As the clock strikes ten to the hour, the rose gold Mac laptop gets placed back in her backpack and she prepares to walk back to her dorm as her next class begins.

Being a college student during a pandemic means hybrid learning, and today, Miles’ 10 o'clock class, exercise physiology, happened to be occurring on Zoom. She did admit that, “keeping up with when, where, and what days you are actually in the classroom seems to be the hardest part of hybrid learning.”

Welcome to Zoom University! Miles completes her last two classes of the day in the comfort of her own room.

The academic day comes to an end with sport and exercise nutrition from 11:00-11:50a.m., also on Zoom. But, with the academic day coming to an end, the athletics part of the day is just beginning.

All teams on campus participate in strength and conditioning with Coach Dustin. The women’s hockey team mostly all lift on Monday and Wednesday mid morning to afternoon. Miles was placed in the 12:30pm lift group with a few other members of the team along with a couple members of the women’s lacrosse team.

The Endicott facilities are second to none. It is a rare occasion to see this gym empty of athletes and their hardworking, get-better, attitudes.

Due to the pandemic, regulations and precautions allow for 10 people in a lift group at a time, so team lifts are off the table. Team lifts were always a good way to build team chemistry and build a positive atmosphere as your teammates attempted max weights on exercises such as back squats, hang cleans, and bench presses. Miles stated that, “[a]s long as everyone does what they need to do in the weight room, time usually spent together at lift can be made up in other ways.”

As lift concludes, Miles now finally has the time to eat lunch. When asked about Callahan or the new market in the Wax, she responded with a smile, “I think the new options in the Wax could be one of the better things to happen on campus.”

The Callahan Dining Hall is usually the most popular choice for meals on campus. Other options include Einstein’s, the Lodge, and the new market located within the Wax Academic Center.

With the academics and lift now complete, Miles now has some two hours of down time as practice starts at 3:40p.m.

We happened to catch Miles on a good day, well good day to be a reporter, as the women’s ice hockey team happened to be having their team media day. As the team picked time slots to go and take pictures, Miles picked the 2:00 slot, and we can understand why with her busy day leading up to this point.

Photographer David Le, who runs all of the media days for the athletic teams, was at the Raymond J. Bourque Ice Arena on campus from 11:00-3:00p.m. snapping shots of the 35 members of the team. Miles got herself dolled up and headed over to the rink for both her headshot and on ice posed photos. She completes her temperature check and CoVerified check at the door and gets cleared to enter.

Miles awaits practice as media day concludes. The pre-game practice fuel of choice is a handful of Baked Lays chips with an Honest iced tea.

Now that the fun and games of media day had wrapped up, it was time for business as the team is preparing for their two upcoming games against Nichols College. “Practice is valued just as much as games this year because in reality, there is no guarantee our games will go as planned this weekend”, Miles added. COVID has made athletes everywhere value their sport even more than usual because one positive test can impact the whole, shortened season.

Quarantine took away the opportunity to step on the ice everyday. It took away the opportunity for fans to hear the ringing of the post, blades cutting into the ice, and the cheers of temmarts when a goal was scored. Miles added, “... having hockey taken away made me realize how big of a blessing hockey has been for me in my life. Each time I step on the ice now it’s a breath of fresh air, an escape from the outside chaos of the world.”

Ever since a young age playing for the Northfield Stars, Miles fell in love with the game of hockey unaware of how big of a role it would play in her later years.

Miles, a center, is a tenacious, hard-working player that might go unnoticed. Today’s practice at the Raymond J. Bourque Arena was defensive and neutral zone focused featuring a lot of regrouping and down low coverage. Being put in the center position of recent, Miles can be seen on the ice asking questions not only to the coach, but to upperclassmen who excel in the same position. Having played defense before and having experience, Miles understands the importance of staying low and supporting the puck on the breakout, which she is applauded for on many occasions by Coach McPhee.

As a freshman, Miles only logged minutes in 2 out of the 26 games played. But now, as a sophomore, she has 3 points in the past 3 games with a +4 rating, scoring her first goal in the Nichols series.

Miles (#28) looks to angle a Suffolk defender through transition.

“Every year is a tryout and an opportunity to prove yourself, and to others, that you deserve a spot on the lineup”, she explained. With 35 members on the team, practice is high-tempo and competitive as Coach McPhee looks to reward the hardest workers. Miles’ offseason efforts in the gym and on the ice, training with ELEV 802 in Vermont has seemed to pay off this year. There is always something to work on and when asked what that was, she quickly responded, “faceoffs, no doubt”, with a laugh.

5:10p.m.: Practice is wrapped up and Miles heads for the shower.

Following a shower, Miles, along with her teammates, head to the Callahan Dining Hall. On the menu tonight was a grilled chicken taco bowl, roasted vegetables, and of course, the Miles classic, a blue Powerade. “There’s just something about a blue Powerade from the Callahan. It’s almost like a Sprite from McDonald’s”, she discussed.

Surrounded by teammates, Miles finishes her meal at the Callahan before getting ready to head to work.

Although you may be expecting a typical end of the night with homework and Netflix in bed, our star of the show had other plans.

From 6:30-10:00p.m. Miles can be found working at the Post Center checking people into the gym, cleaning gym equipment, and monitoring open rec. Here she can work on homework, which she usually gets most of it done, watch Netflix, and today she even got the chance to watch her boyfriend play in his season opener soccer game for Elmira College.

7:05p.m.: Miles watches the Elmira men’s soccer game as she awaits the next gym cleaning.

At this point in the day, rest is much needed. Miles can go to bed knowing that she successfully made it through another day as a student-athlete on the Endicott campus.

As the clock strikes 11:00p.m., Miles finally hits the sheets and prepares to do the same thing the following day.

“I wouldn't want it any other way”, Miles concluded.

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hadestownmodern · 4 years

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Thrift Shop Birthday

It’s Reeve Carney’s birthday so this came out of me today instead of my actual adult work, whoops -Danielle ------ On the first birthday Eurydice spends with Orpheus, she wakes up with a nervous energy. She hasn’t known him long, but feels the strange complexity of their relationship called for some kind of celebration on her end. It isn’t simple; what do you get the person who’d confessed his love to you the night you’d met-who’d convinced you to stay?

She’d settled on an idea-one little inkling. He’d mentioned a jacket she wears-oversized, warm, comforting. She’d told him she’d thrifted it and he’d nearly jumped with excitement, asking question after question about her favorite places to go and what it’d been like. This man, with his completely eclectic style, had only been once or twice. Eurydice vowed to change that.

They’d started out their morning at a smaller shop settled awkwardly between a bank and a chiropractor with walls of little trinkets, coffee cups and vases and statuettes with seemingly no purpose at all. He’d taken his time, looking through each of them with quizzical interest.

“Who do you think was the last person that had this?” He’d asked her, holding up a figurine of a porcelain duck wearing a sailor’s hat. Eurydice laughs, taking the figure from his hand to examine it further. It’s sturdily made, with some sort of etching on the bottom to claim its ownership-Dottie written in expansive cursive.

“This woman definitely collected these; had a big shelf of them,”

“Oh!” He lights up at the notion, “She spent hours looking for them. ”

“She was very rich-she definitely paid someone to make them because she couldn’t find any more.”

“And her family used to try and make them, too, but those didn’t end up like this one-those were Play-Doh, but the good thing about her is that those were her favorite. I think she has this whole collection of Play-Doh ducks somewhere because she wouldn’t give them away.”

She hands the duck back to him and he turns it over, tracing the etching on the bottom with a warm smile before putting it back on the shelf. They continue this game, a back-and-forth storytelling of ordinary people living their ordinary lives. Somehow, still, the stories are laced with a fantastical mystery, a beautiful what if that lies within the effortless pace of his narration.

Eurydice stops them to buy two pretzels, to slow their pace as they walk from block to block. The weather’s turned quickly into its first signs of winter; grey sky, bitter air, crowds thinning in a way that only a city native’s eye can take notice of. She laughs to herself as he dangles his hand in the space between them, fingers flexing and retracting, nervously brushing against hers.

“You can hold my hand, Orpheus.” He fits her hand in his and she can feel the hesitation, as if he’s afraid she’s going to change her mind. She does-taking her hand away for only a moment. She loops her arm around his instead, presses against his side.

They walk for a while, filling the space between them with snippets of conversation. Orpheus and Eurydice lingered on the line of polite, we just started dating conversation and talking like they’d known each other for years, volleying between stories of movies they’d seen and how they felt about the world as a whole, then back to which colors were the most aesthetically pleasing. The pauses within are filled with Eurydice against his side, pointing out places with rude storeowners or cats on their windowsills. Then, she stops at a narrow door, brings him up a flight of old wooden stairs to an ornate looking door with a bell that rings when she opens it.

The room is a sprawling mass of clothing racks, of hats and scarves hung on the walls. She turns to him, hands him a simply made greeting card with twenty dollars stuck inside. Orpheus attempts to give it back, shaking his head. She pulls an identical bill from her own pocket and shoves his back toward him.

“This is all part of the birthday, Orpheus. This is the best thrift store you’ll find, my favorite place in the whole city. You’re lucky, I don’t usually want people to know about this place. But you seem like you’ll keep my secret.” She holds his hand, squeezes it once before stepping back from him.

“Buy me an outfit, and I’ll buy one for you. It can be anything you want, but it has to stay within the twenty dollar limit.”

“Okay,” He’d laughed at her chaotic spirit, pocketing the $20 bill.

“Orpheus? The only catch is that when we’re done, we have to wear these out to dinner later. Choose wisely.”

He nods, taking his job very seriously as they part ways at the entrance. Moving through the women’s section he can barely find anything, peeking over the racks to search for the top of her head bopping along, wandering between aisles with a calculated grin. He wonders what her angle is as he holds a few choices out in his hands. This section doesn’t seem to suit her, with its prom dresses and old work blouses. He breezes into the men’s section, hoping to find a hint of inspiration.

“Hey, no peeking!” He hears her voice from two aisles over, where Eurydice hides her choices behind a rack of coats.

“Not peeking, just…looking for you!” He stammers through his words, flipping through the rack of tacky Hawaiian shirts with a smirk.

Eurydice holds a finger in the air, looks at him through teasingly narrowed eyes before turning her back to him, thumbing through a rack of clothes he can not see. His hands catch on strange fabric-thick, imposing-and he takes a moment to hold the garment in question up to the sky before grinning and draping it over his arm. Different, unique. He can’t wait to see the look on her face when she’s presented with it.

They go back to his apartment immediately afterward, their garments wrapped up in the canvas bags they’d brought to the store. They sit on the floor with their legs crossed,

“Orpheus…what the fuck is this?” The garment is heavy on her lap and she’s laughing as she holds it up, watches it unfurl. She shakes her head, holding the firefighter’s jacket against her body. It dwarfs her small frame, hits slightly past her knees.

“I only had three dollars left afterward” He shrugs. “You can put whatever you want on to go with it, I just felt like this was the best idea.”

“Oh no,” She drapes the jacket over her shoulders. “This is perfect.”

“Open yours,” She urges, pushing the bag toward him. He picks it up from the bottom, weighing it in his hands. It seems far heavier than hers had, even with the weight of the jacket. He pulls a pair of pants out first-jeans, seeming normal until he unfurls them. There are small patches of scrap fabric handily sewn in random places, tiny enough to draw notice only when looking close enough. The back pockets are also covered, but in a more blatant fashion. The cross-hatched fabric that had been chosen is slightly bold, creating a style all their own. He nods appreciatively as Eurydice shifts in her seat, brimming with anticipation.

There is an old band tee next, a graphic of a cowboy hat and text reading Thift Shop Cowboys. They’d toured, according to the three dates on the back of the shirt, all in Nebraska. Then, a button from the same band-it was a combo deal, we got lucky. There is a flannel, green and yellow and impossibly warm, fabric that feels invitingly soft between his fingers. A complete outfit; Eurydice grins in triumph when he points this out, shrugging.

“I had money leftover too, but you’ll have to wait to see how I spent it. Come on, get dressed, I’m starving!”

They’re quite the pair as they walk hand in hand down the street, Orpheus in his charmingly off-beat alternative outfit and Eurydice in her big jacket. Before they can enter the little diner she’d chosen Eurydice pulls an old, worn looking camera from the middle of her bag.

“Hold on,” She instructs, pulling him to the edge of the sidewalk closest to the building. “Take a picture with me.”

She fiddles with the old camera-another thrift shop treasure she’d fussed over until it worked just good enough to take a picture after jiggling the buttons a few times. The photo prints out instantly, and Eurydice waves it around as it develops, looking at it only briefly before laughing. They both sport confused faces, quirked eyebrows and half-opened mouths as they figure out how to work the vintage machine. They take one more, this one a different moment frozen in time. Shoulder to shoulder, their cheeks are pressed close together, Eruydice’s eyes closed as Orpheus has his eyes turned toward her. Both pictures make a return to her backpack, treasured.

The diner is full of eclectic decoration-old postcards, framed photos with seemingly no purpose…as if a thrift shop had come to life in the place. They sit on the same side of a big corner booth by the window, watch the foot traffic go by as they order milkshakes and fries. They keep the food between them, taking sips from each other’s drinks and dipping their fries in. Eurydice can’t help but keep herself close to him, feet tucked under her knees, head on his shoulder. Occasionally his head falls onto hers, stays there as he keeps his arm around her, reminds himself of the hefty fireman’s jacket with a laugh.

She only removes herself from his side to rifle through her backpack, taking out one of the photographs and a pin. Her tongue darts gently, quickly between her lips in concentration before she becomes animated once more, looking around before sticking their photograph to the wall.

“Eurydice!” He squeaks. She shakes her head while admiring her handiwork.

“Nobody will even notice, Orpheus. And then when we come back? This is our booth.”

They walk home in contented silence, full of comfort food and bliss, shielding each other from the biting cold as their pace quickens. The warmth of his apartment is a welcome thing, Eurydice hanging the fireman’s jacket on the coat hook and making her way briskly to the kitchen counter, where she pulls a small bundle from the front pocket.

“Ok, last thing.” She instructs him to sit on the couch. “Hold out your hands.” He feels the small weight drop and looks up at her in question, wondering what the newspaper-wrapped bundle could be. Eurydice watches with a tightness in her chest, an inner voice wondering if this is something stupid-silly. As his eyes widen, his grin reaches from ear to ear, her doubts are instantly quelled.

“No way.” He laughs as he holds the gift in his hands, looking up at her in disbelief. “This is incredible.”

“I thought he might need a new home.”

“Eurydice,” He rises from the couch, wraps her in a tight hug and kisses her gently. “Wait.”

He bounds over to the small shelf holding his record player, with the most narrow little shelf at the top. He puts the gift on the little lip, just above the record player, a near-perfect display.

“There’s something missing.” He gestures to her backpack, a silent request, and then delves in. When his handiwork is finished they stand in front of it together, Orpheus kissing the top of Eurydice’s head. Each time he chooses a record for years to come, Orpheus feels his heart warm at the photograph of their confused faces and the porcelain duck with a sailor’s hat.

#hadestown #hadestownmodern #orpheus #eurydice #young orphydice #every day pre-baby is going to be written because there's not many and they're my favorite #danielle writes

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whiskynottea · 5 years

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An Interruption in the 1st Law of Thermodynamics.

Chapter 1, Chapter 2, Chapter 3, Chapter 4, Chapter 5, Chapter 6, Chapter 7, Chapter 8, Chapter 9, Chapter 10, Chapter 11, Chapter 12, Chapter 13, Chapter 14, Chapter 15, Chapter 16, Chapter 17, Chapter 18, Chapter 19, Chapter 20, Chapter 21, Chapter 22, Chapter 23, Chapter 24, Chapter 25, Chapter 26, Chapter 27, Chapter 28, Chapter 29, Chapter 30, Chapter 31, Chapter 32, Chapter 33, Chapter 34, Chapter 35, Chapter 36, Chapter 37, Chapter 38, Chapter 39, Chapter 40, Chapter 41, Chapter 42, Chapter 43, Chapter 44, Chapter 45, Chapter 46, Chapter 47, Chapter 48

AO3

This chapter is co-written with @theministerskat, who has also made the banner, knows every little corner of Ann Arbor and has been on this ride as my beta almost from the very beginning! Love you, Kat! ❤️

Also, I want to say a huge thank you to all of you for still being here, loving these two goobers and their story!

Chapter 49. Midnight

Michigan. Jamie’s dorm. His new life.

I drew a heart into the condensation that had accumulated on the window overnight. Through the bold, clear lines of my doodle, I could see the fresh layer of snow that had fallen in the early hours of the morning, blanketing the city in white. It was like a clean canvas, impatiently awaiting an artist to make the first stroke.

Like our lives. Everything felt new, and yet familiar at the same time. I didn’t know this place, or the future that awaited us; but I knew him, and myself, and I felt that was enough.

Jamie began stirring in the small bed across the room, and I turned to see him reach a hand out from under the covers, searching for me. I felt my heart constrict at the amount of love that instantaneously engulfed me.

My sweet, ridiculous Scot.

The floor was cold under my feet as I padded back over to the bed and crawled in next to him. I wedged myself into the crook of his arm, trying to steal as much body heat from him as possible.

“Good morning, Sassenach,” he whispered when I finally settled in. He kissed my forehead without opening his eyes, and I could feel the smile playing on his lips as they lingered between my brows.

“Good morning, yourself. I’m cold,” I purred. “Warm me?”

A sigh of contentment escaped him as his other arm came around my waist, pulling me impossibly closer to his body, my living furnace. I felt my own body relax and melt into his, and allowed myself to enjoy a quiet moment with him after so many months apart.

To just be, together.

“What are our plans for today?” I mumbled into his chest after a few minutes.

He didn’t answer right away, and I looked up to make sure he hadn’t fallen back asleep.

As if he were answering my unspoken question, his hand roamed up from my waist and back down, fingertips gracefully gliding over the bare skin of my back. When he reached the swell of my buttocks, he took a firm grip and pulled my hips tight against his.

He was most definitely awake.

His head tilted down slowly towards mine, placing a lingering kiss on my lips before moving to the spot behind my ear.

“Plans?” he whispered between light bites on my ear lobe and kisses just beneath there. “My only plan is to keep ye locked in this room for the rest of yer visit.”

I moaned in response to that suggestion, and felt his reaction to my noises, but just a bit further down.

Trying to not to let him distract me too much, I pushed him a bit more for an answer. “Knowing you, Jamie Fraser, you most certainly have plans for us.”

“Aye, ye’re right. I do.” Another kiss, and then a lick across my collar bone that sent a shiver through me. “But for right now, my only plan is to make ye whimper.” And before I could process what was happening, he dove beneath the covers.

It would never be enough.

We eventually untangled ourselves from the sheets of Jamie’s bed around noon, realizing that if we didn’t actually put some effort into getting up, we would stay there forever.

I wanted to see Ann Arbor; it was the city that had enchanted Jamie from the moment he had arrived. I longed to see the things that were a part of his every day, and spend time in his favorite spots.

It was a selfish desire on my part. I wanted to create memories with him so he would still be able to feel my presence wherever he went when I couldn’t be there. I wanted to talk to him on the phone and know exactly what he was seeing, not just imagine the place as a vague picture with fuzzy lines. I wanted Jamie to walk down a street and think of me, how we strolled there together, how he laughed at my jokes.

Stupid, egocentric, overwhelming love. I didn’t want him to forget me.

“Where to first?” I asked as we pushed our way through the front doors of his dorm.

“This way,” he said as he took my mittened hand in his, “I have something special I want to show ye, Sassenach.”

It took us 15 minutes to reach the iron gates of the Nichols Arboretum.

“The locals simply call it The Arb, but I’ve only come here a few times,” Jamie said, letting go of my hand for a moment to pull his beanie back down over his ears. The red curls falling across his forehead were speckled with little snowflakes. “But every time I’m here, I think of you.”

“Only when you’re here?” I asked with a sly smile.

“Always,” he hastened to remedy, “Always! But even more when I’m here. It may sound dumb, but it reminds me of our walks through the parks back in the Edinburgh. Reminds me of home.”

He dropped my hand again and moved a few, wide strides ahead.

I didn’t follow immediately, but turned and took in the bit of wilderness around me, in awe that such a place could exist within a city. It was gorgeous, and the snow covered trees and paths glittered as the sun poked its way through a break in the clouds.

As I completed my circle, a white bomb hit me square in the chest and exploded. I gasped through the cold wetness and wiped at my face.

“But there is never so much snow in Edinburgh!” he said, laughing. He actually dared to laugh.

“You’ll pay for that, Jamie Fraser.” I sneered and ran to him, ready to inflict my revenge on him in any way I could. I tried, with no success, to pull him down into the snow. Before I could realize how, he managed to wrestle me into the air and I ended up with my head against his back, while he fondled my ass, conveniently set upon his shoulder.

“Put me down!” I exclaimed, pounding my fists against his back. He carried me as if I were as light as a feather.

My response released another fit of laughter from him. “Oh I did miss you, my Sassenach,” he murmured, his hand still groping at my butt.

“Me or my arse?” I asked, actually curious.

“Both. I didna ken I could have one and not the other.” He pinched me lightly, then advised me to stop moving before we both fell.

I stopped, and he let me slide down him, slowly, never losing control. His eyes were glinting with happiness and a few unshed tears of joy when I looked at him, standing flush to his body.

When we resumed our walk a few minutes later, I noticed the wooden edges of flowerbeds left to hibernate over the winter. “I guess it will be heavenly here in the spring,” I said, trying to imagine all the colours dancing around me.

“Ah, was it a bad idea to come here?” Jamie asked self-consciously, looking at me with a frown. “It’s only bare trees and snow now, would ye like to go somewhere else, Sassenach?”

I gave him my warmest smile, squeezing his hand. “It’s wonderful, Jamie. It’s so quiet and calm. Everything white, so pure.” I pulled him to me and placed a kiss on his cheek. “I love it.”

Jamie let out a breath, content with himself. “I thought ye would. And there is a river further down!”

He walked in silence, as we had done countless times before, in a life miles away, in a time that felt like years ago.

We neared a lonely wooden bench that was situated under a tree, with thick bark and wide branches.

“I was thinking…” Jamie started, then trailed off. He glanced at the bench, then back to me. “We had our bench on Calton Hill.” He tipped his head in the direction he thought Edinburgh was, although I had no idea which way east was either. “I thought we could have our bench here, as well. Since I’ll be here for--”

I didn’t let him finish his thought. My lips accepted all the love he offered, all the little ways he cherished what we had. I strained to keep the tears from falling, thinking of all the means by which he had already linked this place with me, even before I had set foot here. I showed him my giddy smile though, realizing how stupid I had been, thinking that he’d come to forget me.

He sat down and pulled me onto his lap, and we watched stray snowflakes fall, looking at each other every few moments, trying to take in our new way of life. When I started shivering, Jamie motioned for me to stand, and we resumed our walk.

“Cold already,” he said and shook his head disapprovingly. “I had told ye that first day,” he stopped, and gave me a small smile, “That ye’re a blue-nosed Sassenach.”

I laughed, thinking of the day I discovered how warm Jamie’s hands always were. “Mmmm, you did.”

“I had gone back home and spent the rest of the night thinking if you might have taken offense. But then, you’d given me yer number, so it couldna been that bad.”

“No, not that bad,” I agreed, feeling the warmth of his hand through my gloves. “Not bad at all.”

We followed a path along the river, and when my limbs became sufficiently cold to complain about, Jamie agreed to go to a coffee shop for a little break.

He suggested at least ten different options with great coffee and tea, but we settled for the one closest to central campus, that he frequented every morning before class. On our way there, Jamie greeted several students that passed by us, and I started wondering just how popular he had become here, and in such a small amount of time. It seemed that the tall, redheaded Scot had made quite an impression.

Jamie told me all about the swim team as we neared our destination. He went on about their training, the new coach and the facilities at the university. Everything had surpassed his expectations. He was enraptured, and I felt my heart swell for him. He had made the best choice, and I took a little pride in the fact that I had helped him do so.

“When will I meet John?” I asked when he finally stopped to take a breath from his rambling.

Jamie hesitated for a moment as he held the door open to corner coffee shop for me, but finally continued once we took our spot in line.

“He texted me this morning, Sassenach. Hector is having a party at his place tonight, and John asked if we wanted to go.” He looked at me, uncharacteristically indecisive. “I would rather have ye all to myself, but I don’t think I’ll be able to, now.”

“We could go,” I shrugged. “We’ve had all day to ourselves, and it’s not like I’m leaving tomorrow.” Jamie made a sad face, and I pulled him down to me for a kiss. “We still have plenty of time! Plus, I want to meet John.”

“Aye, he wants to meet ye, too. Even though I dinna ken whether the combination of the two of ye will turn out well for me.”

I snorted and looked at him cunningly. “Maybe I’ll make him tell me your secrets.” I wiggled my eyebrows and he laughed.

“I think ye already ken all my secrets, mo chridhe,” he whispered in my ear and pulled me closer. The older women behind us coughed loudly just as our lips met again, and we apologized, stepping up to the counter to order.

We sat at a table near the wide glass windows, looking out at the street. I felt warmth finally seeping into my body, and with the hot coffee between my hands, the tall Scot sitting across from me, I couldn’t hold my smile back.

We talked about Edinburgh, about Jenny and Ian who were trying to persuade Brian into producing cider as well, and of Rupert and Angus, who had returned to Edinburgh and started a shop fixing bikes, in a forgotten basement close to the city centre. We talked about Oxford, and about my next visit before more obligations would start on my part. It felt wonderful, talking to him again, feeling his hand holding mine, reaching out and touching him. So simple. So perfect.

After several refills we were ready to face the cold again, and left the small cafe. Jamie had a whole list of things we could do, but our late start to the day severely limited our options now.

“We could browse the art museum for a bit. It’d be warm in there,” he suggested as he tightened the scarf around my neck.

“I’d like that,” I told him and we set off.

The museum itself was small in comparison to others, but still held a number of intriguing installations that we found ourselves discussing quietly. Belatedly, we realized that we’d never perused a museum together, and agreed on visiting more of the collections in the following days. On our way out, I noticed a display advertising the museum’s African art gallery and made a mental note to make sure we made it to that one.

The sun had already set when we left the museum and both of our stomachs had begun rumbling for food. After grabbing a quick bite to eat at the student union, Jamie texted John asking for Hector’s address.

“What kind of party will this be, exactly?” I asked while we waited for John’s reply.

“What d’ye mean, Sassenach?”

“Do we need to dress up?” I raised an eyebrow, then raised my arms, indicating that my huge, puffy coat may not be proper party attire.

“Och, no.” Jamie shrugged. “I dinna think it will be anything fancy.” In an instant his arm was around my waist, pulling me to him. “Ye’re beautiful, babe,” his said in a most sincere, mellow voice. “So beautiful that I’m thinking of texting John we willna make it.”

I smiled against his lips and took them in mine.

Later that night, nestled between Jamie’s body and the arm of Hector’s sofa, I closed my eyes, listening to the soft notes of the guitar. It was dreamy.

“D’ye like it, Sassenach?” I heard Jamie’s whisper, his arm pulling me closer to him.

“Mmmm… I envy John.”

That startled him, and he moved back to look at me. “Why on earth would you envy John?”

“Well…” I chuckled. “Hector is tall, handsome, kind, clever, with his own apartment, and he plays the guitar. Isn’t that obvious?” Jamie made a sound I couldn’t characterize, but I was sure it wasn’t amusement. “What?”

“Nothing,” he murmured, turning his eyes away.

“Hey,” I crooned and pinched his side. “Are you really jealous of Hector?”

“I’m not jealous!” he exclaimed a bit louder than he meant to be, and John scowled at us, his gaze leaving Hector for the first time since his boyfriend had started playing.

“Oh, come here, you…” I paused, grinning, but Jamie didn’t look at me. “Chippy Scot!” I finished, bringing my hand around his neck, and lowering his face to me until I could capture his lips in mine.

I didn’t pay attention to the rest of the song. When Jamie pulled back to look at me again, he had a crooked smile on his face.

“So, ye like me more?” he asked, and I rolled my eyes.

“I love you, stupid--” I didn’t get to finish my sentence, his teeth taking hold of my bottom lip.

Hector continued strumming soft tunes on his guitar, now with John sitting next to him, when Jamie’s eyes went wide with panic.

“Where is your coat?” he asked, springing from the couch.

“In a room, somewhere.” I looked at him puzzled, unable to understand what had gotten into him all of a sudden.

A minute later he was back, with our coats, scarves and gloves in his arms. We said a hasty goodnight to the rest of the group and took our leave, Jamie practically dragging me out onto the street.

“Jamie, what’s going on? What’s the matter?” The cold felt like an attack on my body, and I struggled as I tried to put on my gloves, while fixing my scarf tighter around my neck.

“What time is it, Sassenach?”

“What? What does it-”

“Claire! The time!”

Giving up hope of getting words out of him that made any sense, I dug into the pocket of my coat for my phone. I held it up to my face and the screen lit immediately.

“It’s 11:48. Why does it matter? Will your carriage turn into a pumpkin come midnight?” He chuckled at my stupid joke, but took my free hand in his and led me down the snowy walkway.

“Aye, I’ll make sure I leave my glass slipper behind.” I looked down at his long feet, laughing at the notion of Jamie in slippers. “Come on,” he said, tugging at my hand. “It’s a ten-minute walk in the best conditions. We have to hurry.”

And with no more explanation than that, he began walking, pulling me along behind him as I nearly ran to keep up with his long strides.

Even properly secured against the wind the night air was cold against my cheeks, and I knew they’d be a deep pink by the time we got to where we were going.Jamie didn’t slow his pace, but he kept glancing back to me to make sure I was alright, a large sly smile spreading wide across his face.

After what seemed like the longest street block in history, Jamie turned and I saw the coffee shop from that afternoon on the corner. He kept moving towards an archway ahead of us, and I knew it led into the diagonal yard he had shown me on my tour of the campus earlier in the day.

Unsure where exactly we were going, I was surprised when Jamie suddenly stopped in the middle of the archway. Not expecting such a sudden halt, I crashed into the back of him and felt my feet go out from underneath me on a rogue patch of ice.

I braced myself for impact with the pavement, but Jamie caught me before I went down. He held tight to my arms as I steadied myself and I glared up at him.

“What in God’s name is going on, Jamie Fraser? Why the sudden rush out into the cold?”

“What time is it?”

I glowered at him, but didn’t protest this time and looked to my phone once again.

“11:57.” The smile I had seen on his face during our walk reappeared, this time even bigger.

“This is the West Hall Engineering Arch.” He raised his hands and gestured to the brick archway all around us. “It was built in 1904. A long time ago, the female students lived way up in that direction,” he pointed towards one end of the arch, “And the men lived down here on central campus.”

He closed the distance between us, hands coming to a rest on my hips.

“After a date, the lasses and laddies,” I giggled at his put on heavy Scots accent, but he ignored me and continued, “Would part ways for the night right here and say their goodbyes. Legend has it, that if ye kiss someone at midnight under this arch, ye’ll marry ‘em. So, Sassenach, I’ll ask ye once more, what time is it?”

My brained stopped. My pulse quickened and I felt my heart flutter as I looked down to my phone a final time.

“Midnight,” I whispered, but his lips were on mine before I could get the entire word out.

Chapter 50

#thermodynamics #the first law of thermodynamics #jamie x claire #high school AU #college AU #outlander fanfiction #outlander fanfic #well look at all this fluffy fluff

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aggresivelyfriendly · 6 years

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Hi all! I’m back with new fic!!

This one is a doozy and deals with some complicated issues- such as a relationship between a man and woman separated by 20 years but connected by the woman’s son. Fair warning! If I haven’t scared you off- let’s see where these peeps take us!!!

Also-This piece wouldn’t have been without @bleedinglove4h, @nocontrolforlouis, and @dirtystyles who made all the amazing art!! They are amazing!!

Prologue-The Creation of Adam

"What in the bloody fuck?" Jo asked herself whilst stress eating a chocolate bar in her pantry. It had been a shit show of a day.

She'd woken up in the morning with a giant grin on her face. Her boy, her Ethan, was coming home today and she hadn't seen him in three months. Their school schedules should have lined up perfectly, the theoretical perk of having a child at university when you yourself were a professor. But her upstanding young man had taken it upon himself to get a work study job straight off in his first semester.

"Mum, I know you will help me, but I want to help you as much as I can, too. Plus, you have the baby, so there are lots of extra expenses right now," he'd told her on his first actual phone call home. Ethan was right about some things. There were new expenses. Those had more to do with the divorce lawyers than the baby, though. Truth was, other than diapers, the first couple of years were as expensive as you chose to make them. With Ethan, she had been completely on her own. Jo's parents had been livid that she was even considering keeping the baby, especially without a man. She had tried to explain that the man who had got Ethan on her was better off gone, but her mum just couldn't see how she was going to make it on her own. The lack of confidence hurt, but she'd done it. Still was doing it.

She had taken her certification tests and found a school near a housing estate. Those were always turning over teachers. And she loved it, and the students. They had shitty choices to make, but they made rational choices, whether the government saw that or not. Every couple of years, she was able to spot an artistic spirit like her own - someone with an eye. She'd take those ones under her wing and together they would find their medium and Jo would enter them in as many art competitions as she could find. She even got a few to uni that way. It also let her flex her artistic muscles, which were atrophying while she taught general courses

When Ethan got a little older, and they could afford it, she moved out a little farther, to a nice little village. Jo still worked in the city, where she could do the most good, but the apartment she could afford there wasn't a place where she could send Ethan out to play. He needed a garden and space to grow.

He'd brought Harry home when he was 12 years old. They had both been gangly boys, their feet growing faster than they were able to manage. Ethan seemed to use his size well, though. He excelled at soccer, where he had met Harry. And Ethan continued to play long after Harry quit and joined her on the sidelines instead.

Harry was a lovely, fluffy boy. He was all curly hair and teeth and dimples. His pants seemed two sizes too big and his jumpers perhaps a size too small. But he was so well-mannered, helped with the dishes and nudged Ethan when he was giving her a hard time. And he had that spark.

Harry would come 'round sometimes and find his schoolmate was not about the house. Jo would still invite him in lots of times and serve him tea and biscuits while she subtly fished for information on what her son was like at school. Harry was sweet and polite, but astute - she never got anything out of him.

One day, he came in the middle of a painting frenzy. Jo had spoken to her mother and left the conversation simultaneously riddled with guilt and full of resentment. Her mother was a pleasant person, but a dreadful mum. She seemed to like Ethan, but still loathed the idea of him. Jo was angsty and angry, and taking it out on the canvas.

"Oh, hi Harry," she answered the door breathlessly with green and blue fingertips and a speckled tee shirt. "Ethan isn't here. Think I saw him dribbling a ball towards the fields." She gestured with her head.

Harry looked her up and down. Jo hated when Ethan's friends did that, but this wasn't the same obvious ogle she had shut down so many times. His was a look of avid interest for what was on her clothes, not under them.

"What're you doing?" He sounded like she was going to read his tarot cards. A bit of his future in her answer.

"I'm painting." she had answered honestly and wanted to be abrupt and leave the door swinging, even if it hit his sweet face. Jo had some feelings she needed to splash out in bold hues.

"Can I watch?" Harry asked with eyes as wide as the Montana sky.

"Yeah, come on in." Her Englishness asserted itself. "Cuppa?" She wanted to curse politeness.

"Nah, you seem busy. I'm just..." He looked sheepish. "I can tell you're wanting to get back to it, but I just like, want to watch. Ok Miss Joanne?" She hated that too.

"Just Jo, Harry." And she led him back to her tiny sunroom-cum-studio.

He was quiet the entire time he watched her - three full hours - until she started cleaning up the paints.

"Miss Joanne." She gave him an eye roll. "Jo," he showed her a tube with licorice written on it. "Who names the colors?"

"I'm not sure Harry, but I think when you're the painter, you do."

He had looked awed, and that was how she always saw him in her mind's eye. Wide eyed and full cheeked with a silly scarf around his thin neck. Standing in the sunlight watching her paint, getting brave enough to ask questions, and eventually painting alongside her. She was aware that over the three years he spent popping in and out of her studio he had changed, in that way only a very young person can, like going from a raw egg to a cooked one. But she always thought of him as that kid who came to the studio the first time, eyes full of wonder.

That was not how Harry looked when he walked into her kitchen two hours after Ethan. Jo had been rubbing at the spattering of baby puke Zoe had left on her shoulder, the dribble almost making it to her nipple. The screen had been unlatched on the kitchen door, and the smack of it had made her look up.

"Hey Miss Joanne," she hadn't even had time, or tongue to correct him, before he said. "Miss Jo, I mean. Is Ethan about?" He'd rocked up onto his toes and then back to his heels and it was similar to the motion her neck wanted to do in order to follow his form as he made his way into the house and up to Ethan's room.

"Whoa!" Jo found herself saying out loud. That was a fucking butterfly, she thought.

Harry was not the chubby-cheeked awkward boy she remembered. He had been adorable, but that was not the right word to describe him now.

He was wearing jeans two sizes to tight, which he had coupled with a very thin, soft looking green t shirt that clung to him better than any plastic wrap she'd ever found.

"Damn," she muttered. Do not have impure thoughts about your son's best mate. His changes had come over time when she saw him weekly, and she knew they hadn't happened overnight, but they were grander now. Like he'd crawled into a little cocoon and sat there for the three months he'd been at school. He had come out with wings.

Where had all that muscle come from? Jo could clearly see abs and chest and even v lines under that clingy top.

She shook her head blowing out a big breath and released her surprise attraction. She checked the video monitor to find Zoe still sleeping. So she snuck to the pantry to break into her hidden chocolate stash.

Had Harry been looking like that for a while and she had missed it? It must be nearly four months since she saw him last, but she didn't remember his nipples looking like that before. He looked so good, so grown. What was he doing at university to change like that? Had he exchanged time in the library for time at the gym?

The chocolates lowly melted over her tongue and Jo found herself thinking about peeling his shirt off like opening a belgian chocolate, slow and reverently. Her eyes closed involuntarily and she was startled to find her fingers at her own nipple.

Her eyes opened abruptly when she heard the whine from the tiny monitor speaker. Zoe was ramping up, finishing her cat nap earlier that Jo needed her to, she hadn't even gotten the washing done yet. That may have been because she was too busy thinking about getting off with her son's mate in the pantry. She scoffed and pushed her hands down to her sides.

The baby was wiggling, but hadn't flipped yet, so she knew her six month old wasn't entirely awake. She had about five minutes to get up there before the screaming started in earnest.

Jo was throwing in the wash and hitting the button, thinking about how it's been ages since she felt anything sexual. First because Colin's increasing detachment from the pregnancy killed the mood, and then because she was sad about Ethan leaving for school, and then because she was as big as a house. Her dry spell had continued as she found herself once again a single mum of an infant. It was hard to feel sexy on such little sleep. Maybe her thoughts were inappropriate, but Jo was glad to find that part of her wasn't dead, just dormant.

Realization dawned that Zoe wasn't screaming and it had been more than five minutes. A momentary panic seized Jo and she rushed out, smearing melted chocolate on her black yoga pants and throwing the wrapper just outside the bin. She'd have to pick that up later.

On the monitor was a sight that had her covering her mouth. The baby was back to sleep, on Harry's shoulder and her big brother was rubbing her back. Her little arms were bound up under her body and she was almost safe to put down. Just a few more minutes and she'd be back into deep sleep, well, deep for an infant. She saw Ethan motion to the crib and cringed, too soon. She exhaled relief when Harry shook his head 'no' and pointed Ethan out of the room.

Jo watched Harry rock her and felt Ethan come up behind her, he hugged her from behind. Her sweet affectionate boy. She felt bad that he had to be her partner so often as they grew up together, but they were close. Despite their dynamic and because of it.

"She got so big? Do all babies grow like that?" Ethan asked and she could hear him rummaging in the pantry. Her smile was one she couldn't fight. She'd got the shop in and picked up his favorite things on purpose. "Oh mum!" She heard him find his biscuits, the expensive ones she used to buy when he did well on exams. The ones she could only afford once a month, when she got paid.

"Yes, all babies change rapidly. Change almost before your eyes. I imagine it's a shock after a few months." She tried not to layer a guilt trip into her voice, but she missed him. She heard him sigh, so Ethan could hear it too. Jo needed to knock that off, he should have a great time at uni, not worry about his lonely, sad mum struggling at home. And she wanted him to want to come home. She looked from her son who was rapidly eating biscuits to her daughter being gently laid in her crib. Harry's back muscles strained against the green cloth of his shirt.

Speaking of rapid changes.

Jo may not have noticed Harry's entrance into manhood before. The last year the boys were in college, she was falling in love. Colin had seemed ideal, they both worked at the university, and he was an adult male who seemed to have it together. He was her first real relationship since Ethan's twat of a father, not counting a few bad dates and a fuck buddy or two. Since they were both of a certain age, they had rushed things. Jo had rushed to the altar and the maternity ward. By the time she hit six months along in her pregnancy, she knew her marriage wasn't going to last. She could not imagine Colin as a loving father, let alone devoted. She'd had to beg him to come to the appointment where they learned the baby's sex. He had chosen to attend a lecture on horse bridles in Arthurian tales instead. That's when she knew, but she ignored it and tried harder. Until he left when she was right near the end and then couldn't even be bothered to show up for the birth until Jo needed a ride home. Colin had the car seat. Which he left when he dropped them off. New baby and new divorce, all in one go, she was an efficient lass.

But she couldn't help but notice now. Harry was looking full grown and the sight of him with her baby...well, it was doing uncomfortable things to her. Feelings and sensations dormant for the last year were roaring back to life. She barely had time to eat, let alone seek arousal.

"Did Harry's mum have a new baby?" Jo found herself asking after watching him with her own new one before she could rein herself in. Nothing about her felt bridled, let alone her horses.

Ethan came over and slung a cookie filled hand attached to a strong arm around her. "Nah, you would think so though, right? Just has a touch with kids. Only boy I knew who had three regular babysitting gigs!" Ethan sounded proud of his mate and Jo smiled at his sweetness.

"You missed him?" She nudged Ethan's ribs.

"Yeah! Was happy he would be about."

"Why's he home this weekend anyway?" Jo tried to ask plainly, with less interest than she was feeling, obviously.

"Harry lives at home. He goes to your university, Mum! Studies in your department!" Ethan laughed at her fish face.

"Well, I've not had him in any of my classes, I guess. And you'll excuse me love, but I have been a wee bit busy." She poked him in his tickle spot, the one he'd had since he was two and a half and that she fondly remembered prodding when they played tickle monster.

While she was so fucking tired trying to do this again, alone and much older to boot, she couldn't wait to find Zoe's tickle spots.

"Mum, stop looking at me like that." Ethan rolled his eyes affectionately.

"Like what?" Jo hit him upside his cheeky head with the burp cloth and hoped a little spit up made contact.

"Ew, mum! That's wet! Is that wee?" Ethan was frantically wiping his face with a paper cloth.

"Calm down, just spit up!" She guffawed. It felt so good to have her kids under one roof and to be giving Ethan what for.

"What the bloody... that's throw up!"

"Of a sort, it's just breast milk!" She said just to see his face. He paled as Harry walked into the kitchen.

Jo was bent double with laughter and she was aware of just how tight her lounge pants were.

"Mate." He pointed at Ethan. "You see a ghost?"

Jo laughed harder and couldn't even explain why. It was a release she didn't even know she needed. Tears were leaking and she was glad they were happy.

"I wish! Got baptized with my mum's regurgitated breast milk, yech!" Ethan complained while still wiping furiously at his face.

"Mate, the breast milk is better for your skin than what you are doing now. Actually really good for skin." Harry walked over to the fruit bowl and plucked a banana and ate it like he lived there. Jo loved the picture he made.

"How the hell do you know that?" Jo was thinking it, but her son was the one who said it.

"Dunno, think I read it on a flyer at a nurse in or something at school." He shrugged and ate his last bite, tossing the peel and missing the trash can.

Jo picked it up and put it in the bin, with only a small groan. She didn't remember being this sore after long nights with Ethan. "Ethan said you go to Manchester?"

She looked up at Harry then and caught him with his eyes glued to her cleavage. It was the one body part she wished she could take with her post pregnancy and nursing. Her nipples responded to his gaze, and she was right back to feeling that unfamiliar lust he had brought up in her earlier. It felt like a caress, like he'd extended his fingers, not just his gaze, and used the tips to pluck at her. Harry brought his eyes up and for a second he looked like that pink cheeked boy she taught to paint. It was a moment's expression, before his skin tone evened out and he smirked. Those pink cheeks turned out to be contagious.

"MUM!" Ethan said a little too loud and Jo jerked her eyes to him.

"What?" She sniped back. It wasn't nice to be yelled at in your own home, or caught out. Her face soured and she wished for another chocolate when she heard a wail start from upstairs. She looked up to give Ethan a tongue lashing and found him looking sorry, so she let it go and turned with a sigh.

"Do you want me to get her?" Both boys asked in chorus.

That sparked a smile. "No, lovely boys, she needs to nurse." She chuckled under her breath at the look on Ethan's face. "But, you could start dinner, that would be a massive help." Ethan looked like a nineteen year old tasked with a chore, but Harry nodded and shouldered his friend out of the way of the fridge.

They were both good boys, nearly men, and they needed to know how to cook a meal, for themselves, And any lady, or gentleman, lucky enough to catch either. Jo would come shore up the damage later.

The cries were piercing by the time she reached crib side, but when she reached down, Zoe quieted nicely in her arms. She kept eye contact while she emptied Jo's tingling breasts.

Jo was tired, covered in spit up half the time, and hated to be doing this alone again. But these years were short, and she had wished them away with Ethan. She wanted to do better this time.

Jo carried her cooing baby down stairs and set her up in her walker while she helped the boys finish some salad and mash and sausages. It was a curious mix, but nice to not have to cook for a change. She looked around her table and smiled. It was also nice to watch them laugh.

Harry was making Zoe scream with baby giggles by making a popping noise with his cheek, and Ethan was filming it for his insta story. She'd have to ask him if anyone at school was at all interested in his baby sister. The sounds at her table woke her up a little.

By the time she got Zoe down hours later, her feet and head were heavy again. The boys had tossed her about once Jo had declared they were a safe distance from her nursing and mushy peas. At least they were likely to avoid an exorcist-like scene. They'd tickled her and cuddled her and found a tender spot exactly where Ethan's was. Harry had located it and looked at Ethan, "Exactly where yours is!" Which Jo found curious.

Zoe had been riled up, and while Jo wouldn't erase the hours of watching Ethan play with his little sister, she was a little miffed at dealing with the fallout. It took her 10 minutes to get Zoe to latch on, and she was raw from the baby pulling off at every small sound looking for her playmates. As she finally nursed to sleep, Jo kept thinking about her curious interaction with Harry. They had spent lots of time together, usually over tins of paint and canvases, and she had never once seen him look down her shirt.

He was a respectful boy, or gay, and Jo never really thought about him like that at all. He was always handsome, but a baby.

He did not look like a baby anymore and her reaction to him was troubling, to say the least. Jo was sure it was horrible to feel any sort of sexual interest in her son's best mate. But it was just the one time. She'd let it go and focus on and enjoying the long weekend with Ethan. And maybe she'd see Harry around at school.

There was one positive side effect. Her desire that had been buried six feet under with her marriage was back. Jo hadn't even thought about her lady parts since the doctor declared them good as new. Colin had rebuffed her advances as soon as her bump made itself apparent; he found it off-putting. She'd put her interest away as best she could to avoid rejection. It was worrisome to think about what her body may look like after a pregnancy at 40, and if her husband was not into a pregnant body, she had a feeling he would not be able to ignore the stretch marks. Jo had once been flattered by his repeated compliment that she had the face and body of a 25 year old. Now she was just irritated. But her body was back, albeit with better boobs for the term of her breast feeding and some extra tiger stripes where Zoe had made her mark. And everything seemed to be working. It was confusing that Harry was the one to rouse her sleeping libido. Those were thoughts she wanted to avoid. So she left them where they lie and stood gently and square on her toes.

Zoe didn't stir as Jo padded over to the crib. A kiss on the head and deep inhalation of that baby smell before putting her down softly, and Jo was ready to float down to her own bed. She wished there was somebody to carry her to her mattress as she had just done for her baby.

Jo was blearily rubbing her eyes when the bathroom door opened and steam started to pour out. She was just about to admonition Ethan about opening windows unless he wanted to repaint the bathroom when Harry walked right into her. Slick and tan and confusingly covered in tattoos. She wasn't able to make out the shape on his torso before he was pressed up against her, but it was big. So was he, tall. Her nose was at his collarbone and there were swallows on either side. When had he gotten all these tattoos?

"Sorry Miss Joanne." He caught her by the arms and she could smell that body wash she bought Ethan, it smelled different right now.

"You're really wet!" She said stupidly, and looked up to his amused face.

Harry looked cheeky and there were words on the tip of his tongue, poised to spring off like an Olympic diver. Instead he bit his lip and Jo could feel her eyes widen and her nipples contract. "You have a lot of tattoos," she said, and she was surprised by the breathiness suddenly present in her voice.

His arms moved from her elbows to circle around her waist and Harry nodded, "I do, wanna see them?"

He was flirting with her! Was he flirting with her? And she was still pressed up against him. His arms were tighter around her than the corset she wore on her wedding day, at least she assumed so because she was breathless.

"Um, I've, no, not right now." She started to squirm and he grinned and let her go.

She hurried down the stairs and looked back from the middle landing. Harry had a hand on the knot of his towel and a firm shape was just below the tips of his fingers. That made a mental impression, but it didn't press into her mind as much as his face. Harry's eyes looked emerald green and his lip was beneath his teeth.

Jo averted her gaze from his skin and rushed to her room. Rather than straight to bed like she hoped 20 minutes ago, she found herself in her bathroom, doing the skincare routine she had forgotten about 7 months ago at least. Her color was high in her cheeks and she couldn't help but admire it, and herself for a moment before brushing her teeth and shaking herself. Awoken libido indeed, she thought with a glance at her tits.

Jo stripped down to a t-shirt and put shorts by the bed for Zoe's 3am feeding. She needed to get some sleep.

An hour later, she was still shifting around and rubbing her thighs together to alleviate the knot of tension there. Jo finally gave in, and dug through her bedside drawer for the vibrator she resorted to in her second trimester after one too many rebuffs.

It didn't take long, she was so pent up. That wasn't surprising. What was surprising was the pink lipped face she pictured between her thighs as she finished.

This was trouble.

#harry styles #harry Styles fanfiction #harry Styles fanfic #who names the colors #wntc #one direction #one direction fanfiction

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rantingstories · 6 years

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I woke up at 5am, drove to a local hill and read my book. How did it affect my day?

I use to wake up at 7am, eat straight away, sleep for half an hour and be late for work

Hellewwww. So, I would like to discuss a concept probably foreign to a lot of us, and that is productivity in the mornings. I think the general consensus for mornings is; wake up, turn the alarm off, lay there being miserable about our inevitable rise from the bed, literally fall back asleep like you don’t even need wages because you got the rent fairy to help you out, turn the alarm off, after laughing at the wage fairy thing become miserable again, tiny ‘lil pep talk, and rise. Usually, the mornings are for being sluggish, letting your body adjust and rest at the same time. You would eat your food and watch some TV or look on your phone, until it’s time to get ready for work or school. I feel this is the default morning of most people. My mornings have always been a little lazier and more shameful then that!

Typically, I would give myself an hour and 9 minutes. I’d have to leave at 8:15 so I would get up at 7:06 because sleep minutes are more like hours when you feel you’re losing them and 6 more minutes in bed felt like a lot to me. Then I would sluggishly walk to the kitchen and feed my two cats who would be bountiful balls of energy, making me a mere shell of a person in their presence. I would then make any cereal I can find and sit on the couch watching TV or looking through my phone as I ate. I wouldn’t really have time for a cooked breakfast or tea because here comes the important bit; I lay sleep, on the couch, for half an hour, as my partner lays in bed. Why? Glad you asked J I have no clueL. For me, being awake whilst in bed is fantastic because I can actually feel the pleasure of just lying there and letting my mind drift. I’m conscious to know I’m snuggly in bed and that’s a great feeling. So for me, I actually like my body being awake. That’s the reason I lay on the couch, much to my fiancés dismay that I would rather lay alone on the couch where the cats walk all over me and crush my ribs, their wet noses tapping my skin as they examine what the hell I think I’m doing with my life, then in her arms in our warm bed. I lay there merrily, thinking about nice happy things, body at rest, mind adrift, milk getting sneakily licked from my cereal bowl by those assholes as I lay careless and oblivious in my own warm bubble of rest and contentment. This is also subliminally stressful as I have to remember to get up at eight and each morning, my drifting mind lives in secret fear and sheer panic that I’ll properly fall asleep and be awoken at like 8:15 by my ashamed partner. Nonetheless, I always get up because I don’t actually sleep, I just lay there, pointlessly. Let’s think about what can be done in half an hour?

ü A workout session

ü Reading a book

ü Applying for jobs

ü Answering emails

ü A walk with fresh air

ü A shower

ü Putting effort into your make up, hair and outfit

ü Chores that you now don’t have to come home to

ü Making your partner breakfast

ü Watching EastEnders whilst washing up

You can get a lot done in that space of time so why was I just lying there, not even sleeping? It was pointless and I decided to change it, to explore the enigmatic world that rapidly progresses as we lie half dead asleep. The World of the Larks. The Larks are strange beings, they do the equivalent of half a day’s work a night owl does, in the two or three hours you’re still asleep. They are powerful and their motivation and strength should be feared or stolen from them when you get the chance. I decided this morning, I would try it. I spent a week, a few years ago, jogging at 6am. It was winter, dark, everyone at the bus stop looked like lonely orphans in any film designed to tug on your heart strings, and it didn’t appeal to me. However it’s the penultimate month of summer now, so I thought it would be different.

The hardest part already was the night before. Using my valuable, precious, beautiful time in evenings to actually be asleep by 10pm. I was devastated. I typically have so much damn fun in the evening, writing ideas for my 27 open novels, being too devoted to Bored Panda, Facebooking drama watching, TV, shouting “CUTENESS” at my cats, then I’ll go to bed at the ridiculous hour of about half 11, 12 or even 1! I’d fall asleep straight away and then repeat the aforementioned cycle of the 7:06 start. It sounds dreadfully unproductive and like a stereotypical uni student really. Like I would have lived when I was working till 10pm then at uni at like 10 or 2am. But this isn’t fun times anymore, I have a big girl job with a big girl flat and a big girl life and car insurance. It’s time to behave like a big productive girl who organises her life in diaries and budgets. So now we’re in the morning and I sort of woke up at 4:48am, my brain obviously pre-empting its doom. Then 5am hit. I took some advice from videos I had watched to prepare for this and I charged my phone in the hallway outside my door. That way, to shut off the noise, I had to get up, walk out to the hall and crouch down, giving my knees a workout already to switch it off. My partner decided to do this experiment with me, but left her phone on the nightstand, showing clear signs that her heart wasn’t in this, but she came with me and I feel so very proud. Her names Ashleigh by the way. Anyway, so I used the time to respond to some messages, they had built up because I didn’t use my phone half an hour before bed the previous night, another tip I picked up. The break from the screens will really do me good. It will help my eyes and my concentration levels. My eye lids won’t be lower, looking down at the phone, which helps with the eyes feeling lighter and me feeling more awake.

I was also surprised with how awake I actually felt. I find this happens every time I wake up before 7am, I always feel more awake then when I wake up after 7am. It’s odd but it’s true. Your body feels a bit weaker rather than just sluggish, but your eyes and mind are awake, like this is the time they are meant to be up all along and you’ve been over sleeping them. I don’t know if it’s the same for everyone else, but always been like this for me. So we woke up and had some grapes and water. I’m the type of person who could honestly eat KFC and drink coke, 5 minutes after waking up. Ashleigh could barely look at the grapes. 2 hours before their breakfast time, and the cats thought we were tired enough to forget and feed them early. Suckers! So then we left in her car and we drove to these hills near our flat, you climb them in a twisting motion and they overlook a beautiful canvas under the blue skies’ light of cars racing down the motorway, dull brown house roofs and Greater London pollution. Once we reached the precipice, we found our journey up had consisted of talks of the mind, how it copes with waking up early, how being productive actually boosts our serotonin levels and how we feel happier and more alive. So smarter conversation was happening. In our normal routine, the only conversation we’d get in the morning is what’s happening on Facebook or… nothing. It felt great to have an in depth conversation with nothing but the breeze around us, no screens no third party media to influence our conversations, just us, our minds and the world. It was lovely.

At the top, it took a minor toll on our legs. Let me tell you by the way, your legs at 5am are the equivalent to the little devil on your shoulder who tells you, you won’t get a degree because you’re useless at life or you won’t ever find a career you love just lower your standards or you won’t feel in the slightest horrible if you spend over £20 on a pizza delivery at 11pm on a week night. They don’t like 5am and they will remind you you’re a sadist and to have mercy and send them to bed. Ignore them, they are the over dramatic one in the family. Nonetheless, we sat down at the top and began to read our respective books. Mine was “The Good Guy” (Susan Beale), set in 1964, a realistic view on marriage, its ups and downs, the pressures on the typical masculine and feminine roles, motherhood and adultery, and hers was “I Let You Go” (Claire Mackintosh), how one mistake, brought on by pressurising and damaging events, can turn life upside down, with thrills and chases and emotions tugged hard. We only read a chapter each, but as everyone knows, books nourish your eyes better than a screen will, they nourish your imagination, forcing it to work to picture what you read rather than it being given to you, they nourish your vocabulary and extend it and they nourish your mood for the day with the journey you take when reading it, leaving you picturing your own world and story with more passion and thoughtfulness.

We descended the hill (and I ran up another, sorry legs L I am a bit heartless) and made our way home. She cooked us an omelettes and I washed up meaning, we will come home to a clean and tidy flat with no chores after a long day at work. We had tea and coffee, ate our food, shouted “CUTENESS” at the cats for a 37th time, and watched the YouTube Video that inspired this. I will link it down below. When we looked at the time it was 5 minutes to 8. I still had 5 minutes and I felt like I’d done my whole usual morning up until lunch time.

This experiment really did change my day, I feel brighter and more awake at work, driving to work made me feel more conscious and thus, safer. My morning was accomplished and productive, I felt like I had a much better handle on my life. We saw people jogging, people exercising, couples doing yoga at the top of the hill, and the enigmatic world of morning larks turned out to be a nice peaceful group of people exercising, nourishing their minds and bodies, leaving them free to relax in the evening. My partner and I both feel rejuvenated, in control, happier, fresher, lighter, healthier and less stressed immediately. I even got a text about something that had been stressing me and I swear it felt so much lighter on my shoulders, in fact it went straight over my head because I felt happy and in control of life, not down trodden and rushing to get to work. I suggest you all spend at least one day waking up at 5am, I promise you, you will not feel as over tired as you think you will, you’ll even feel more awake than usual, or your money back! It’s still, sort of summer, so leave the house, and go on a small walk or read a book, climb a hill and kiss the rising sun, do anything as long as it’s doing something productive. Then cook a hot breakfast and feel proud of your strength and your beautiful, accomplished morning. I do not miss my beautifully pointless naps and my hobby of running red lights because I’m late for work.

Mentioned YouTube video - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eGWrGFlYtAQ

Thank you

Siobhan

#blogging #writing #writersblog #tumblr blog #productivity #earlymornings #5am #5amclub #thought #opinions #inspiration #youtubeinspo #happy #motivated #motivationalpost

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bec0z-i-c4n · 3 years

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OUTCOME ONE - Painting develop

For my first outcome I began by trying to make some smaller pieces that were meant to incorporate inspiration form all three artists looked at in in hopes of creating a base style to work from. These pieces were done using a mix of acrylic paint (both conventional and paint pen), permanent marker and water colour on canvas I had spare.

First piece - Housing

Context - Housing is not a barrier I mentions in its own right as it is encapsulated with in finance however this does not mean that it is not an issue. This is because if you can afford to buy a house in your 20s by the time you are in your 50s you will have both bought your home and in many cases payed out less over the 25-30 year period than the average renter. Meaning that lack of financial capital or property effects the more disadvantaged the most, and is a barrier often passed to their children. This is because if they can not afford to buy property and there for can not pass it down to their children. At the start of this project this subject was often at the front of my mind due to the amount of time people had been spending in their homes during lock down. It was because of this that I thought it would be a good subject for a piece. I hope to respond by combing visuals of housing in my area with text referring to this issue (possibly adding in post codes and average costs of housing etc.). I decided I wanted to incorporate the layering and text technique from Stoko, Culver’s use of the white back ground with a some what cantered image and same kind of style as Emin’s pieces ‘I am the last of my kind’ with in my work however I do still hope to maintain an feel of my self with in the piece. I wanted to try and stick mainly to primary colours as not to make the piece to busy and allow the various layers to blend together nicer.

This piece was done in quick layers how ever unfortunately due to technological issues I do not have photographs of the frost few layers. After peeping the canvas with either blue and yellow acrylic I began this piece by using blue and red water colour to write various things such as ‘renting costs more in the long run’ and ‘bought out right’ as well as adding the post code ‘NE346QF ’ and ‘NE332RP’ (if searched these will show my home and my boyfriends homes respectively) one is of a Council house while the other is bought, in attempts to indicate difference in advantage. Once that had dried I began using my orange paint pen to add in flat structure like shapes in and yellow, blue and red water colour to add chunks of colour to the piece. For the third layer I used blue and red paint pens to pic out some of the text showing through and tried to bring it to the foreground and used kitchen wipe to remove exes paint so that it appeared more opaque. After this I used black permanent marker to pick out both the flat building and added in the section of the houses above. I also used this to outline various shapes and text through out the piece as well as add in average cost of renting and homes out right bought. I them when my in and added a few more sections in attempt to add a little more depth to the background. Once that was dry I added my final touches of paint pen, dabs as bricks in the house long streaks on the flat building and smaller lines in blue for the balcony’s.

I decided to leave it at this stage as I thought it was both aesthetically pleasing as well as hitting the mark contextually for what I had set out to do. I even tried to add in visual aid of my home to match the postcode however it is only a small section of mine and my neighbours house front. Over all I think this piece came out rather well especially for the short amount of time planning and execution (around 6 hours). Still, there are definitely a few things I would change if I were to do it again or go back to it for example make the marker numbers a little faded or at least not as readable; added a section of the ‘NE33’ house as a visual reference to the difference in housing rather than only having examples of council houses; added slightly more text linked to the idea of because I can and finally made it at least 4 times bigger (than a3).

Second piece - Education

Context - I wanted to do a piece responding to education acting as a barrier but also as a way to over come it.

I decided to try and paint a school hall way with chunks of text building up the colour. Before I began the actual piece I sketched out how I thought it should look. As I didn’t have a reference I thought it would be best to do something generic though it is inspired by the halls in harton academy, my old secondary school.

Once I had my initial sketch done I began to draw it on to the canvas. After this I began to add in water colour sections to make the background less white. I then began adding in text in both water colour and and acrylic paint pen. Below is an image of the piece at this stage.

I then went in with black permanent marker and added both definition to the piece and more text through out mainly on the floor and above the doors on the right hand side. To try and blend everything together I added more water colour and a white washing areas.

Above is a photo of the finished piece. Over all I am happy with the out come though I feel it could be more visually representative of the barriers one needs to over come. Personally I think the use of text in this piece went a lot better that the first as it seems more like the layers of graffiti you see in the street that buildup. I also think they blend in to the image better than in the first piece, this could be due to it being a smaller size however.

Weekly Review

Week 6 - over the weekend and this 6th week I have produce two painting each taking around 6 hours. The proses in which these paintings were made is mentioned above. I think this time was well spent as it allowed me to get a sense of the style and type of thing I am looking to do. I also utilised this time to think about what I might do next in terms of paintings. I have settled on consulting my tutor before moving ahead.

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rinnnyxr · 3 years

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Appearance: am tall am in between am short am a blonde am redheaded am a brunette have black hair have blue eyes have brown eyes have green eyes have hazel eyes have grey eyes and wear glasses and wear contacts have braces have freckles have piercings have a tattoo have long hair have short hair have mid-length hair

My nationality includes: chinese indian taiwanese japanese hispanic nicoya puerto rican chicana italian scottish filipino dutch english french german irish greek portuguese polish korean jamaican canadian lithuanian native american russian british danish african hungarian scandanavian armenian finnish other I don’t know

My favorite color(s) is(are): red pink yellow black green blue white silver purple brown orange

Some things I’ve done/played include: soccer cheerleading dancing lacrosse field hockey hockey football softball wrestling gymnastics track/cross country basketball baseball golf minigolf playing in the mud playing music hiking kayaking camping horseback riding

I am sometimes: annoying talkative shy funny serious bubbly spazzy fun-loving laid back strict hyper weird

I like _____ music: rap rock pop country hip hop r&b slow jams Christian classical techno oldies the 80s punk metal reggae Goth Latin 90’s grunge musicals

The pet(s) I have is (are) a: cat dog lizard rat ferret rabbit fish bird tortoise/turtle snakes other

Clothes I like to wear are: plain t-shirts sweatshirts stockings high heels boots sneakers jeans pj pants dresses mini skirts long skirts watches necklace hoop earrings toe socks flip flops halter tops stilettos shorts sleeveless shirts

I like to wear my hair (in a): down ponytail pigtails messy bun half ponytail scrunched/curly bun crimped with a bandana French braids lots of little braids Gel hat messy hot guy hair fauxhawk

I am mostly labeled as: goth emo prep punk surfer athletic hippie nerd gangster ditzy hyper happy I have no idea

I eat/drink: dessert every night no meat diet stuff healthy foods junk foods a lot of carbs lots of meat salad seafood

A typical friday night: mall with your friends partying at a show/venue watching movies going to the club staying home babysitting hanging out with your friends hanging out with your boyfriend/girlfriend working while your friends are out having fun i don’t plan out my weekends

Currently I am: in a relationship single and loving it crushing single and looking for someone single and whatever happens, happens

Online, I use: lol sup =D lmao stfu ty jk ttyl g2g ^^ T_T x_x ^_^ o.o <3 “LOLZOHEMGEE” knai omg

I have: lied to my best friend dyed my hair dressed punk kissed a girl on the cheek lied to my parents cried in front of lots of people went barefoot in the snow played hockey made my own clothes

In the last 24 hours, I: got in a fight took a shower gave a dirty look to someone cried went to school shopped danced got sick did something I regret ate something gross discovered something new

At school I: run to class because I’m always late hide in the bathroom am smart am hyper am a nerd am somewhat popular don’t know

Right now I am: in my pjs drinking listening to music watching a movie IMing someone talking on the phone eating

Have you ever…. Ridden a skateboard? Played a piano? Been to New York? Seen the movie “Thirteen”? Ridden in an ambulance? Broken a bone? Broken somebody else’s bone? Been to sleepaway camp? Gone to another state without your parents? Babysat? Cried for no apparent reason? Laughed for no apparent reason? Shoplifted? Heard “The Tide” by The Spill Canvas? Been nothing for Halloween? Killed a bug with your bare hand? Met a celebrity? Moved? Played on a soccer team? Made a MySpace? Talked on the phone for over an hour? Got detention? Got suspended? Played pool?

LGBTQ+ Out of the closet She/her Owns an LGBTQ+ account Cisgender Other sexuality Pansexual Has tons of gay ships Transgender Has been to a pride parade

They/them Asexual Homosexual Has family members in the LGBTQ+ community Nonbinary Has friends in the LGBTQ+ community In the closet Demisexual Bisexual Polyamorous Heterosexual Questioning Genderfluid He/him

Favorite Childhood Tv Shows Bob the Builder The Suite Life of Zach&Cody Wizards of Waverly Place Sesame street Blue’s Clues Kim Possible My Little Pony Go Diego Go iCarly The Backyardigans The Wonder Pets SpongeBob SquarePants The Powerpuff Girls Caillou Barney & Friends Hannah Montana Dore the Explorer Teletubbies Zoboomafoo Peppa Pig Pingu The Magic School Bus Phineas and Ferb Lizzie McGuire

Favorite Disney Movies Moana Lilo & Stitch Cinderella Brave One Hundred and One Dalmatians The Lion King Alice in Wonderland Pocahontas Lady and the Tramp The Fox and the Hound Sleeping Beauty Finding Nemo Mulan Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs The Jungle Book Frozen Aladdin The Princess and the Frog Tangled The Little Mermaid Peter Pan The Aristocats Bambi

1- I can do Australian accents 2- I know where Madagascar is 3- Je peux parler français 4- I can’t speak French 5- I am partially Russian 6- I like Swiss cheese 7- I have lived/am living outside the States 8- I have tasted REAL Chinese food 9- I have attempted to learn Japanese 10- I know what the South African word ‘Tskudu’ means 11- I know someone who speaks fluent Norwegian 12- I can say ‘I love you’ in more than five languages besides English 13- I have in the past fallen for the story, “Haggis is a three-legged rodent” 14- I have always been aware that Haggis is actually sheep gut 15- I can read the Cyrillic alphabet 16- I understand slang from other countries 17- I have tasted Belgian chocolate 18- I have a penpal who doesn’t speak English 19- I have songs on my iPod/MP3 that aren’t in English 20- I know what ‘croque-monsieur’ is 21- I know where Helsinki is 22- Minä puhun suomi 23- I don’t have a clue what language that’s in 24- I have been lost in a foreign country 25- French wine is the best 26- I can cuss in multiple languages 27- I understand the Greek alphabet 28- I think Swedish is a pretty language 29- I have never heard spoken Swedish 30- I can play bagpipes 31- I think Scottish accents are cute 32- I have been to Hong Kong 33- I think anime would be better if it was in Japanese with English subtitles 34- The majority of my friends are not from my home country 35- I often think it would be cool to speak Polish 36- I don’t have a clue where Thailand is 37- I understand the term, “fucking British weather” 38- People speaking in foreign languages unnerve me 39- I can speak other languages besides English fluently 40- English is not my first language

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agermanbetweenscots · 3 years

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Summer 2019 Part II

The summer post-interview and pre-acceptance was spent in three countries, and in a constant state of sweat.

I went to the fair with my oldest friend Michaela and her parents. Her dad kept asking me why I would wanna study medicine in Vilnius, her mum kept offering me drinks and Michaela and me kept riding the Kraken. My stomach told me off afterwards and reminded me that I got too old – because after riding the Kraken twice, I was so nauseous. But this is tradition. The fair, the Michaela and the Kraken.

After a couple days in Goslar and buying new summer dresses, I travelled to Sacramento for the first time. This was the time where Chris had decided to grow out his beard (terrible decision, if you ask me). So, most of our Sacramento pictures are me in my wonderful, newly bought dresses and him in a questionable long beard. I am clearly the more fashionable in this relationship haha.

Sacramento is a wonderful city, very green, very hipster, very capital.

Unfortunately, it is also very American in the sense that walking around is hardly do-able. What it is with America and highways in the middle of the city. (They are probably not highways, and it is probably also not the middle of the city – but still. How am I supposed to discover a city if you cannot walk around?) Sometimes thinking back on this (it has also already annoyed me in OK) I wonder how Chris sticks around – the European girlfriend makes him park so much out his way just so she can walk around at 35°C, along pavements in little shade to get to the capitol building. By the way – did you know that a capitol building gets to have a golden roof if it produced a president? Inside the capitol there were different windows, showing what the different counties of California are famous for. I loved seeing that from Hollywood to farming, to wood production. I also tried to learn about the politics (we were in the capitol after all and once again I was reminded at the fact that Chris is very unpolitical. I quizzed him on his current senators. And he did not know. Tsk, tsk, tsk.

In case I told you (and you remember) I had signed up for my first half marathon while writing my bachelor thesis (and roped Jon into it). So, on a random evening, we drove to Davis to attempt a 13.2 mile run. And even though it was an evening run (I think it started around 6PM) it was so HOT. But we made it and I succeeded. Succeeded in running faster than Jon (goal #1) and succeeded in finishing (goal #2).

Downton Sacramento is so cute – they refurbished it to look like the old settler town, so you are constantly looking over your shoulder to not get shot by rogue cowboys or in a standoff between sheriff and thieves. It made me wanna see more of these Western Towns.

The highlight of my trip, however was and is still our trip to San Francisco. I managed to get Chris to see his first Musical: Hamilton! And it was great. Even though I must have spent so much money – first I bought the tickets on some weird reseller website (and paid 150$ each) and then I wanted to treat Chris to a beer and some M&S and paid another 40$. But the music, the vibe, the stage. I love theatre. And that play is just awesome. If you get a chance and have not seen it yet – go! The Disney+ version does not even come close.

The highlight of my life however also seemed to happen on that trip: I got an email from Adam. Who is Adam, I hear you asking? Adam, my lovelies is the guy telling me that I freaking got accepted to Kassel! I remember it being the early morning, Chris more or less gently snoring next to me, when I saw the email on my home screen of my phone. I opened it. Read it. Opened it again and then tried to call my parents. I forgot about the time difference however, so no one answered my call. I tried to wake up Chris. He woke up, squinted at me, mumbled something along the lines of congratulations and turned back around. Those were my celebrations.

(He did wake up a tiny bit later, gave me a kiss and was very happy for me. Plus this was very much reminiscing of the time when I got accepted to Vilnius)

After 12 days my time came to a close (for now) as I had to jet set to another country – me and my parents where planning on hiking through the Tatra for a week. My sister did not come with us for some reason that probably was very plausible when she told me, but I do not remember what it was. But it did mean one on one time with my parents. I am not complaining. The week in the Tatra was great, lots of wonderful hikes, nice hotels, good food. The Tatra was very green, difficult to hike up (one hike was literally 70° up, I was almost worried for mum and dad climbing up) but the closer we were to the polish site, the busier it got. The people hiking up the hills confused us a lot, few people looked prepared, most wore sandals, and all ages were present (babies, grandmas and people who looked like they never hiked before.

28th August Chris came to visit me (I did not have to go long without him this summer) and we should him the Harz and went swimming in the Kuttelbacher Teich. Chris was moaning about not having an AC and we had to make do with open windows and an old fashion fan, gently moving the hot air back and forth in the room. I introduced Chris to most of my family when my cousin celebrated his birthday and put on a garden party. He was even asked to put a colourful handprint on a blank canvas ‘like leaves on a tree’, so he is now put on there forever and cannot leave anymore. Most of my cousins spoke to him (thankfully most speak really good English) and even my oldest Uncle got out his school English and managed to get Chris involved in a monologue about his choir concert coming up. (We actually went as Chris promised him *rolls eyes*)

On the first of September, I had another half marathon in Eichstätt in Bavaria while visiting Biggy. It was less hot but instead it was two 11k loops and of course that is way harder on the mind. I would always run one loop of 20 k then running 20K in multiple smaller loops.

Chris absolutely loved Bavaria, he loved the beer, the meat, the people. We went to visit Thea in Munich and Chris loved the Beer Garden Culture.

One the way back from the deep, deep Bavaria in the sturdy Volvo, the front wheel of the car just exploded near Fulda. I drove to the side of the motor way and the conversation went something like this:

C: Don’t you worry. I am a man and from Oklahoma so I can change a wheel for you, my lady in distress.

H: *doubts but in German* but opens the boot anyways. There is no wheel.

C: Why is there no wheel? What backwards country is this? What is Europe? How do Europeans survive?

I called ADAC, called Volvo on Call (should have only covered the latter – but dad told me to call both) and we were picked up from a lovely chap that tried to sell me an ADAC membership but also tried to make smalltalk with Chris. In German.

So I had to multitask speaking about cars (I have no clue), trying to not get sold a membership with lots of fine print (and I cannot say No) while simultaneously trying to make Chris feel like I still translate for him (something I can actually do).

After a couple of hours we were back on the road – but I continued sneaking along the motorway terrified of the new wheel exploding on me to.

For the 9th of September, I had to back in Kassel for an induction day – where I got to see who made it through. Guess who made it. Guess…

PAULINE! (and Suveni and Nora)

While I was getting a tour through the hospital and got to know people on my course – I remember speaking to Thalia on the hallway, speaking to Nico on the lunch break (he had no hobbies and was wearing a suit – strange dude. Over time he got less strange and way cooler.) and chatting to Martha in the tram, Chris was at home. Mum and Dad wanted to do things with him – or at least they had offered, instead they both said they hardly seen him. He must have just hidden in my room. Awkward boy. But then I guess I would have done the same. As part of our induction day, we had to line up based on the towns we are from, based on our birthdays and last names. Basem was always in the front – last name starts with A, from Hamburg and born in early January. The older years came and said hi, told us to get bikes to get around (and an helmet for Dale Road) and told us how to best study. Which I do not remember. They also told us not to get a British phone number or bank account – I had both already. (Which would come back to bite me in the behind, more to that later)

Back in Goslar we climbed up the Broken in the morning to see the sunrise, Hanna joined us. It was cold and early in the morning and Chris never hated me more.

On the 18th of September, Chris was leaving Europe from Berlin, so me and him spent a night in Berlin and I invited him for a dinner in the Film Tower with the rotating restaurant. And it made me dizzy. Also, fancy restaurants just feel weird. They feel weird for students. And I am too much of a picky eater. And broke. I am grateful for the experience but let’s wait another 10 years for that, shall we?

After a tearful goodbye Chris got into the plane towards Sweden, while I remained behind.

I always wonder how the heart can actually feel like its breaking and the more I learn about the human body – the more I want to know: Is it anxiety? What physiological mechanism underlies the heartbreak – that does feel like that.

On 19th September, me and my parents flew to Southampton. We flew from Düsseldorf to Southampton directly with an airline that quickly stopped this connection and then went broke (probably missing out on all these students flying back and forth).

We stayed in the Jury’s Inn, walked around and mostly were surprised at how much it is a shithole if compared to Edinburgh and constantly tried to find a place to drink a coffee at. Sometimes we got lucky, sometimes we did not. Mum and I went to see the Downton Abbey Film in the cinema and were positively surprised by the reclining seats – both of us used to the Cineplex back home had never really seen something like this before. Dad stayed in the pub. He stayed in the pub when we went to see the castle of Southampton (It is a ruin. Not an actual castle). But he left the pub to go to Argos to pick up a clothes drying rack that I ordered. And then he promptly returned to my bed in Romero Halls and had a nap. Weekend well spent.

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pathwayfp2020 · 3 years

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Magazine Evaluation

Overview

Over the past several weeks, creating a magazine has been a particularly challenging task, not knowing what theme to pick or where I’d find the things needed for building out my content given our current restrictions. I think my biggest challenge was organizing my work and learning to use InDesign. How often have I scratched my head wishing I could seek advice at the whim of raising my hand. YouTube is great and all but nothing beats the in personal one on one interaction with teachers. None the less I completed my project and happy to present:

Foto Magazine's - The Deja Vu Issue, a Contemporary-Fine Art magazine aimed at women aged 25 -40 in the industry. The ethos behind my magazine issue is repetition and recollection. It’s all about seeing things again in a different light, from a new pair of lenses, creating a Deja vu effect.

Having been stuck on the theme for days I struggled with tying the content into the theme. I didn’t know where I’d get my content from either. Obviously, I needed to make it but I need models, clothes, things I didn’t have. Would using stock images be ok? Am I allowed to use other people's work and make it my own? Not knowing what direction to go in I looked at my past work to see how I could reuse things in a new way and in that moment, I was hit with Déjà vu the eerie impression of familiarity, a moment where I felt I had been in that moment before, a mysterious phenomenon that we all have experienced… and that was that, on that -Déjà vu it was.

Once I had settled on the theme everything just came together and fell into place. My plan was to salvage past pieces and create new ones bringing them together in a magazine-like manner. I aimed for about 20-30 pages and was pleasantly surprised I'd managed to get a whopping 50-page magazine by the end.

The process

I used some old variations of my work that my assessors would have been familiar with to invoke that “wait a minute, I’ve seen this before – I think…” reaction. I also had loads of variations from the designs I had made for the tasks set out for this project and decided to use those in various places throughout. Essentially you see the same elements being placed throughout in different ways, some being videos, other still shots, patterns or some form of replication - where there is one you are bound to find another version somewhere buried throughout. Additionally, to add to the theme, I preyed on the emotions of my magazine’s intended audience (women aged 25 - 40) by taking them back to their childhood for some good old déjà vu with a Barbie and Friends fashion show.

This was by far my favourite part of this project and the most tedious. A lot of sleepless nights and tears went into the making. I thoroughly enjoyed revisiting my childhood and stirring nostalgia something I hope to stir in my readers especially through the fashion story where old meets new in every way. We had been tasked with creating 1) a mini shoot, 2) a selfie shoot that told a story. My intention behind the Barbie Fashion show was to combine both into one to create a miniature, selfie, photoshoot that told a story around fashion and styling. I didn’t initially intend for it to be a comic strip but in the end, it all came together quite nicely.

The initial storyline was Barbie is at home getting ready to meet Elsa at a Fashion Show where they have a good time. As things progressed I beefed up the script and it evolved into a really funny story, one that I was able to then link back into the theme as well as the cover of the magazine in a really creative way as my cover story.

Lessons Learned

I was very pleased with the overall outcome; however, it was a very tedious task that came with a lot of great lessons learned. The biggest one being: Never take your installation down immediately after because when you think you’re done, I promise you are not. There will always be something that needs to be reshot or something new you want to try. When I got to editing my photos the next day I started noticing little things that were off balance or had new ideas of things I wanted to do. At this point, I hadn't considered speech bubbles but the more I looked at the storyboard the more I found myself acting out the scenes in my head as to what was being said and decided it had to be a comic strip for my art magazine. Because my original storyline was so basic initially I hadn't considered using multiple outfits/models so I had glued my model to the box and ended up with only shots of her in that one pose and one outfit for the entire fashion show. The story needed more so I decided to extend the fashion show with other models wearing different styles. This proved challenging because I only had three barbies, 1 dark Vader and a teenage doll, and very limited clothes on hand so I got creative and made it work. I managed to make 6 characters and 4 different styles/outfits. Now this is where I wish I had left the is installation because it would have been so much easier to just go back and take a few more shots but given the tight deadline and fear of not being able to recreate, I decided to improvise as best I could, and attempted to crop the other models in. It was no easy task and photoshop is a b*tch but I persevered and I'm proud of the final results.

I also learned the pains of repairing links in InDesign and the value of keeping all my files/worked organized in one place. Before this, my design skills were as good as Canva gets so naturally I gravitated to that for my initial designs. However, when moving my stuff over to InDesign - something I had zero experience with - it was a challenge, to say the least. I quickly discovered... that Indesign was a beast that was going to take some time to tame but was very impressed with its capabilities so was determined to get my project published there. After many youtube videos, 48 hours of no sleep, a week of recreating resizing, rethinking of my original layout, and relinking files I kept moving around (that one took me a while to figure out) I came to know the basics of InDesign quite well and wish I had just started there originally to save so much time in the end. The lesson here is nothing grows in the comfort zone. Don’t be afraid to step outside and try new things.

Record-keeping was also another valuable lesson. You see the way my life is set up right now there is very little structure - between the kids and my work schedule and everything else I do school when and where I can. This will often mean starting and stoping things and having to revisit them when I can so I don’t get the privilege of sitting down and knocking out a tod do list uninterrupted. As a result, I’d find I’d create but would have the opportunity to reflect immediately after but later that night in the shower I may find my self reflecting then and jot a few notes in my phone, or if I'm cooking or cleaning I’ll grab the nearest pen and paper and write down whatever comes to me at the time. This resulted in lots of bits and pieces of paper and notes all over the place. So when it came to putting them all n Tumblr I spent a significant amount of time trying to recall where I put my notes or whether I even made a note or did I just think about it and not get to jot it down. NOTE TO SELF - we not doing that anymore. Some type of streamlined note-taking process needs to happen cause this was hella frustrating and I can't work like this for the FMP.

Lastly, I can’t stress this to myself enough but keeping it simple is key. Far too often I waste a lot of time experimenting with a lot of different ideas that I eventually do not use. When working with deadlines I don’t have the luxury to do this so I need to work better at managing my time and setting limits/boundaries for myself.

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lo-and-behold-ocelittle · 3 years

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“Horror Vacui” or the fear of the blank page [for amateur artists]

[A really long post]

If you fit this description, this post is for you:

I’m a hobby artist/writer/creator with a broad interest and I don’t have enough to time to practice any of my interests beyond the amateur level. Creating is something I commit to about 10 to 15 times a year - when I need help, I don’t want to take an online course, just give it to me quick and dirty and I’ll see to the turnover.

This post contains:

mandatory motivation delineation

step-by-step drawing guide for amateur artists by an amateur artist

all reference pictures for the above

tracing - a technique shunned by my Grade 8 art teacher and the last time I attended art class

cross-hatching and contours

a tiny bit of perspective

a bit of shading

tools

tips for shaky hands

Why this post, when the internet has countless of tips to overcoming writers’/artists’/creators’ block already?

I mean, Google churns out some 20 million search results in under 0.55 seconds! That’s like 10 search results you are might look at tops - 20 if you’re desperate enough to go to page 2 - and realize most of the tips a lot of work, not worth the trouble, things you’ve tried before, or too abstract to be applicable to the thing.

One thing most of these guides get right: getting started is the most crippling step of the creative process.

The most common advice to overcoming your block - so I have read countless times - is establishing a routine until you “instinctively” know how to achieve your goal. Are they wrong? No, definitely not. Is it good advice though? Depends; at least not for me - and if you’ve read this far, then not for you either.

What are my other options?

Planning. And being aware of all the tools at your disposal. I documented the process of this drawing as an example. This process has limited applicability to paintings.

You will need:

an idea

drawing utensils

paper (some scraps to start with)

patience

Step 1: Rough Sketching

Take scrap paper. Unless your documenting this (hi, mom) you’ll throw this away asap. Get down the rough shape. This may a while and will involve you questioning your sanity - barge through the doubt, don’t erase what you’ve made, use the best parts and try again.

Example:

I would like to draw a cat. I take a pencil and...

Lol, no. Cats are not pizza with ears.

Let’s try that again. Maybe a reference picture will help.

Much better. Start with some crude shapes but sketch out the entire body with shapes like they do in some drawing guides - only draw what you need. In this case about two and a half ovals are enough. Now make a better copy beside that initial sketch - I hate doing them on top of the first because that gets messy real quick. Draw some helping lines from the reference image. Don’t bother too much with proportions or posture, or going big; all these sketches are about 6 by 4 cm.

I want to draw a companion for this steampunk cat, about the same shape and posture with a head tilted one way and the torso another. She’ll need a proper headdress too - I went through three options visually and added some notes for other ideas I had in case neither of these worked out.

Step 2: Break it down

Break down the drawing into smaller bits and pieces and look up reference images if you need them.

I broke down my sketch into:

Head/Face

Torso/Clothes

Hat

Fan

The head

I want my cat to look slightly to the left and this is what I found online:

Not quite

Almost

Perfect

The torso

I found this image, which contained most of the parts I needed. I didn’t like the hat, head, fan, and all the mice scampering about ‘er so I just took the torso - the corset is really neat. Unfortunately, her posture is not quite what I need so that will be the biggest challenge for this body part.

The hat

I considered a few options such as this 1920s flapper’s headpiece and a couple of Victorian hats before settling on this one.

The fan

I own two so no reference image necessary.

You can keep a couple of tabs (or books, if you have some at hand) open in case you change your mind while drafting.

Step 3: Fine Sketching

This is the hardest part but if you’ve made it this far, you might as well go all the way, right? Understand how your brain operates and beat it at its own mind-game: create a sunk-cost-fallacy and drive yourself forward.

There three ways to get your fine sketch onto paper:

Cool, if you can pull it off go for it, usually takes the longest if you lack the practice (like I do)

Generally a good approach, especially when scaling up

Use a ruler to measure and plot key points of your outline

Print it and hold it against a window.

If it’s dark outside unhinge that glass cabinet door, duct tape it between two tables and put a lamp beneath.

Pull it up on your screen and adjust your zoom. Be careful with the pressure of your pen!

Use sticky tape to prevent it from slipping

(Below) Using a reference grid (the dots) on a canvas for another project.

(Below) Tracing the head. Slight rotation of the page to achieve the desired orientation of the head.

I also traced the torso and the head first. Then I added some rough shapes for the arms and the fan - this was also when I realized I can use the fan to hide parts of the face I don’t want to draw. Everything ended up a little twisted and short so I dashed lines where I want these limbs to go. The fabric of the corset also needs to be pulled up on the right and pushed down on the left, hence the arrow there. The neck is way too long too. Add some more notes of things you want to change - like adding a fuck-ton of flowers to the hat.

To judge whether the proportions make sense take a look at yourself in the mirror or ask random people in the hallway to pose for you - afterwards exchange a friendly, confused smile and move on.

(Below) First fine draft after about 5 hours of intermittent work - just take breaks when you’re bored, but leave it prominently lying in your way so you don’t forget about it. I reconstructed the arms’ outlines and added some bold comments.

Once you have everything you need, clean up your first draft as much as possible by erasing help lines and drawing strong borders. Next, open something bright on your screen (or whatever your tracing equipment happens to be), tape a blank paper to your first sketch and take down all the details you want to keep. You can move the paper around to shorten or elongate distances.

Add borders if you want to frame the drawing later.

Now change all the things you don’t like. I changed the cat lady’s hat to be less round because I didn’t want her to wear a wide-brimmed bowler and added a fuck-ton of flowers and - for good measure - a feather. If you can’t draw the feather flicking back up like me, hide it behind the brim of the hat.

Think about any fur you want interacting with the fabric (hat or collar). I added one curl to flow down the left side of her collar - didn’t really work out but A for effort.

Add any major decorative elements like the fish on her corset or the patterns on her fan.

Add major textures like the lines on the brim of her straw hat. The dotted texture on her sleeve was way too fine and didn’t carry over to the next tracing. The same goes for the shading from the last draft, which didn’t carry over well and I ended up bundling all the fur together in larger bundles.

Save the puffy shoulders for last (because I had no idea what to do there and eventually opted for “brains”).

(Below) About 90 minutes on the face to compartmentalize all strands of fur into proper bundles. Note six key bushels that define her expression: on both side of her nose, her “eyebrows” and the trailing of her eyes. Look up cartoon cats for help. 2 hours on her torso and another hour on her shoulders.

Clean it up again and judge your work. If you are still unhappy with the positioning, do another tracing. Don’t forget to embolden all important features

Step 4: Inking the outline!

You’re patience is paying off! Next up is inking! Inking is fun!

Oh shit-

Don’t ink your final draft!

Step 4a: Screw up

I never get my inking right on the first try and it’s hard to hide mistakes you made with ink. I ran my draft through the photocopier once (because I didn’t want to trace it) so my mistake here wasn’t that big a deal - I lost five minutes and this paper went into the my scrap tray. Always start inking the most difficult part so you don’t regret screwing up after being almost done.

At this point I realized I couldn’t erase the pencil lines anymore and went back to tracing paper on paper on screen. Be aware of the ink you use and how thick your paper is or you might end up leaving marks on the draft below.

(Below) The pattern on her brow is off in two places.

Step 4b: Finish inking the outline

As before focus on borders and major textures; about now you’ll notice which parts of your draft are to fine to trace well and which ones need some extra weight. Drop any lines you don’t like.

By now you probably have a couple of pages with sketches and bad inkings lying around - make sure you label them or find some other method to remove them from your line of work (like throwing them in the bin).

(Below) About 45 minutes, 5 of which were spent on the feather, 5 on the flowers, 10 on the fan, 10 on the face, and 15 on the torso including arms.

At this point you could scan and stick it into a colouring book.

Step 5: Textures!

This is the best part. Texturing a drawing is so satisfying it makes up for all the hardship up to this point.

Make a couple of copies this time to practice your texturing. Afterwards, feel free to continue the page you traced or run it through the photocopier once again.

(Below) Two versions with different types of shading.

It’s very easy to get carried away when shading; always go for a little less than you think you need. You can always add more later, but you can’t take it away.

Fur

Use lines that flow parallel to the outlines you’ve already drawn. Make the strands flow apart at the beginning and back together at the end. Try to keep the numbers of strands that begin and end constant. This will result in a larger spacing and thus a lighter centre of your bushel.

I like shading an entire area, in this case the entire head uniformly but very lightly, then I start thinking about accents and where light could come from. Wherever fur bundles together (usually at the end of a bushel) I add some more of the same texture to make it darker. You can lift some of the shading from your reference pictures and just copy it. But don’t limit yourself to what your references provide.

To be honest, I only roughly take notice of where I place my imaginary source of light and just emphasize parts of a bushel that were darker to begin with. Usually turns out okay.

Fabric

Generally, keep your texturing parallel, perpendicular or at a fixed angle to the next leading edge. The lines don’t have to be - and most of the time shouldn’t be - straight. Allow them to trace out wrinkles in your fabric or reinforce the fabric’s rigidity by copying the leading edge at short intervals.

The same formula of repeat the leading edge applies to other parts of the clothing - just vary the line separation and how strictly you follow the leading edges.

In other places lines placed at constant angles make a good texture.

Know your tools: my pens stop drawing at an angle of about 30-45° and drawing lines at this angle will make them lighter and discontinuous. This is a good approach to lightly shading a large area like most of the corset.

Cross-hatching gives the sleeve a wrinkle and two light-spots. Two layers at roughly 70-90° gives a good hatch, only add a third layer if you need it really dark - careful: this will make any contours established with two layers disappear.

Shadows

Some places just ought to be darker though, like the spot I marked behind the ear or below the chin. This gives your drawing some depth. Just reiterate the same local texture over and over again until it’s dark enough.

Without my annoying comments, the final result will look like this:

Is it perfect? Fuck no. Is it pretty good? Aye, meets my standards.

By the way, this is what we started with:

Tips for shaky hands

Sugar, caffeine, medical condition? Hands come in all degrees of shaky but don’t let that discourage you. Here’s how I approach the most important elements in my art.

Long lines

Long lines are hard to draw, if you don’t have practice sliding your hand across the page. I can do it sometimes but not reliably. Instead I place my wrist firmly on the page and draw the part of the line that is within my mobile range. The more of my wrist rests on the page, the less I shake. Then I lift my pen and move on to the next bit - sounds trivial?

Wrong.

Whenever you start or end a line you go from rest to drawing speed or vice versa. During these moments the constant flow of ink is spread over a shorter distance, resulting in a thicker line. Appending a new segment causes a brief overlap and results in a blotch, especially when you need longer than an instant to correctly put down your pen.

Coming in at an angle prevents the ink from flowing prematurely and gives you more control of your line.

Curved lines

Place your wrist on the inside of the curve (segment) - drawing towards yourself is easier than away. Rotate the page to make it happen or rotate yourself if the page is stationary (like a large canvas). Additionally, I like to keep my fingers stiff and only rotate around my wrist.

Textures

For very fine textures I keep the tip of my pen above the page and start repeating the pattern. About two thirds of the strokes will go into thin air but the shaking will make one third hit the page - a statistical approach to texturing.

Conclusion

My longest post so far - I starting making this almost 8 hours ago. A blank page is a scary thing, so many possibilities, so many ways to screw up. The most important advice to take from this post is plan, save, trace, repeat. You don’t have to be ashamed for tracing art; just don’t parade an exact copy as your own work and always keep your references at hand.

Why does this feel like academic writing 101...

I invite anyone to contribute their own quick and dirty drawing tips for amateurs to this post. DM me, if you have any questions or would like to use this a last-minute-Christmas gift - I’ll send you a free high-res. I don’t judge, not this year nor any other.

Best, Ocelittle

#tutorial #art tutorial #artists on tumblr #ink #ink drawing #drawing #art #amateur art #christmas gifts #horror vacui

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christsoupas · 4 years

Text

Week 10 - Activate the collection

Project 1

This week I spent my time frantically trying to finish a visual edit for Shaun Wilson to view by Wednesday - as per Darrin Verhagen’s instructions in my presentation. It seems that I will have fallen 6-7 days over that deadline as I will have a full visual edit by Tues/Wednesday day/night 100% for sure (i wouldve had something to send to Shaun by tonight/tomorrow but i have to halt progress very briefly/temporarily as ive neglected all other classes/assignments/tasks this last week and have to now complete/submit some work in next 24-48hrs). The reasons for my inability to hit that deadline center mainly on the sheer magnitude of workload of the many facets of a project such as the one I’ve undertaken and how to pull something like this together due to lack of experience (the fight scene alone, although far from finished has thus far been very time intensive in itself), then the render times, and then my decision to shift my initial approach of finishing a visual edit before doing sound design and music as I felt a visual edit without sound could perhaps make the work seem lack luster in places where I was envisaging sound or music to “carry the shot” – which then becomes a slippery slope in terms of becoming completely immersed into that role and keeping the balance between the many differing roles and tasks that are required, and then grappling with committing things that will inevitably be changed as the visual edit, which although is “complete” in terms of delivering the plot, isn’t final. Making these beginning forays into the sound was largely fruitful as I’ve now begun to collate a library of sounds and foley for the project and begun writing new music and incorporating existing original music. Although I have put a bit of work into the sound/music the main intention here is to bring the visual edit to life as it were - I consider this area of sound design/composition to be 20% complete and am aiming to have a full audiovisual edit in around 7-8 days. On one hand I am disappointed in myself for not hitting last Wednesdays deadline but on the other hand its exhilarating in comparison beginning to pull the project largely together now and will help to springboard me ultimately in that the product speaks for itself – quite literally, in terms of dialogue etc. and then feeding off the energy of an edit vs random sequences and still having to sell the idea verbally/where too much imagination is required by the viewer to buy/envisage the idea, but most importantly put myself in a more progressed position to achieve more progressed advice that i am in dire need of (for eg. like technical help surrounding Gradings/advanced editing techniques etc) in that a lot of what needed to be done was obvious/achievable and only lacking due to there being so many hours in a day.

I spent 2 days or so effectively doing a crash course into the universe of titles and therefore graphic design. I discovered the graphic artist genius who is Saul Bass, who created the opening title sequences and film posters for around 50 classic films such as Vertigo (1958) Psycho (1960), Spartacus (1960), The War of the Roses (1989) Goodfellas (1990) and Cape Fear (1991). There are so many techniques and examples to explore here.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saul_Bass

After going down a rabbit hole exploring and studying a series of famous films and their titles (making note of all details including layout of fine print etc.) I then dived into Vegas tutorials surrounding lower thirds, title animation etc and also went exploring online for fonts (another universe in itself) and then experimented with designs and discovered a whole series of design and technical problems associated with executing titles over film after trial and error and many drafts. There is also the aspect now of additional rendering times. Although I have achieved some good results thus far I believe I will need to continue to develop ideas over the duration of time I have left and then finalize titles as the last task to be completed. I am also now considering using after effects to do titles as I can then place them in 3D space – which would finally compromise one of my underlying intentions of staying within the 2D realm and exhausting possibilities in the 2D video editing/production realm. I am having problems with effects on titles to achieve “weathering and/ or bleed”, affecting the brightness etc of the footage that it’s placed over. I think the solution to this may be rendering out titles to transparencies – something I know nothing about as yet, but it may not, and I could encounter the same problems.

I also explored and developed ideas in terms of split screens/compositing two or more shots within the one frame. There are many different ways to achieve these ends with varying results. This is another aspect where I am finding that after effects or premiere might be more effective but have nonetheless begun to achieve some good results in Vegas and at the risk of progress being halted due to my lack of knowledge of these apps I have proceeded in Vegas/2D alone.

In terms of solely the visual aspect, my workflow has evolved as I’ve discovered that due to processing limitations one needs to commit to sequences and treat each Vegas session as a “comp” is used in After Effects – which is very different to audio as you can hold off on committing to ideas without your system completely choking – but then it can become tedious and confusing tracing sequences back to their source when edits need to be made.

Additionally, another area I’ve been dealing with is Colorings Grading etc. I’ve been doing a lot of work and experimentation with this and have discovered that it is something that is so fundamental yet I know so little about. I have encountered a lot of problems with the process of running plugins on master channel vs. on the channel vs. on the clip itself – this becomes massively problematic once edits to colorings and exposure etc. are made and then tracing sequences back to their source etc. I then discovered all of the wealth of information made available to us in the week 9 modules on Canvas which I haven’t had the chance to fully explore yet but am looking forward to bunkering down for the next 24 hours and doing a crash course in all of this great material and with the intention of before my feedback session with Shaun as it will put me in a position to be asking more educated questions.

Another thing to note here is my monitors. One is a 40” Sony TV and the other an old plasma with different resolutions and completely different looks. Suffice to say it’s all very unorthodox and is probably compounding my problems here in terms of colours and saturations etc.

My approach to the visual work has also changed, due to trying to speed up the process of delivering a visual edit, in terms of how deeply work has gone into outright reimagining/reworking footage and into selecting great photography and footage to carry the idea in the meantime which has produced interesting result after all. However its evident that some scenes are looking much more developed than others… but some of these shots work.. and are starting to grow on me.. and especially in terms of how they all juxtapose.

Ultimately, there is still a lot of work to be done before the visual aspect is fully complete and I am feeling hugely overwhelmed with workload and not sleeping much but I’m still very confident and pleased with results so far.

Project 2 with Bobo:

Although I have made some way into this new score this week I haven’t had time to work on this project as much as I wanted to but once I have sent this visual edit to Shaun of my other project I will then develop this edit much further the aim was to have something by Wednesday morning.

This week’s theory covering Malcolm Gladwell’s “10 Rules of Success” was extremely beneficial and very practical/usable advice. I particularly like the fact that he contradicts/balances some points with others. Namely his anecdote regarding the creator of IKEA going against the grain and building his business behind the Iron Curtain in Rule #1 and then Rule #4 whereby he counters this with “constantly revising ones conclusions” this perfectly the encompasses the idea of remaining humble enough to self-examine whilst being headstrong enough to believe in and see through your idea in the face of doubts of others. So too beneficial and practically usable were the “21st Century Skills” that lecturers Darrin and Shaun explored. It’s very helpful to have these concepts outlined, distilled, expanded upon and explored. They are basically failsafes to ensure success.

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kootenaygoon · 4 years

Photo

So,

Chris was asleep in my passenger seat, wearing a leprechaun dress.

We’d connected on the last day of Kamp Festival, the pair of us haggard and semi-conscious in my fold-out chairs. Chris was monologuing about her festival experience. She told me she jumped off a cliff, she overcame her fear of heights, she was proud of herself. She told me that these grown-ups playing in the colour games had legitimately reverted to their childhood bullying ways, making things all ultra-competitive instead of fun. Of course.

“But I’ve met some amazing people here,” she said. “Like I think I’m going to remember these people for a long time.”

I could tell by how long-winded and earnest Chris was being that she was on something strong, maybe acid. She was about to crash hard, and everyone was packing up camp to leave. Becca had left for the coast with a Victoria DJ she knew, so I was all by my lonesome when it came to paying for gas. Chris offered to pay $40 for a ride home, but I didn’t accept it. I just wanted to make sure she got home safe, because she wasn’t going to be sober any time soon. I couldn’t imagine leaving her with a stranger.

Once we pulled out of the Kamp venue on to the highway, we were pretty much immediately stuck in a line-up. Chris put down the window and stuck her bare feet out into the wind. A minute or two later she’d slumped into herself, snoring gently, her head lolling slightly from side to side. I knew it wasn’t a big deal, that people did drugs like this all the time and woke up fine, that she wasn’t necessarily going to overdose in my passenger seat. My legs vibrated along with the music as I ground my teeth in concern. What if she had taken fentanyl or something? What if I arrived backed in Nelson with a corpse for a passenger?

“Hey,” I said, taking her arm. “You’re feeling okay? You’ll let me know if you need to puke or anything?”

She nodded. “I’m good. I’ve got some water here. I think I’m just going to sleep, if that’s all right. You can keep the music up, if you want. I like it when there’s music playing while I sleep. It fucks with my dreams.”

Did she she say that, I asked myself, or did I?

Aussie Chris lived with Chelsea up in Rosemont, and knew Blayne from before. She was a server at Vienna Cafe, a night club kid in her early 20s. She was biracial, half-asian, with a smattering of freckles under her eyes and shoulder-length brown mermaid hair. She was on a one-year visa and was looking to hit every music festival she could while she was in the country. When it came to partying, she was a professional. I liked her style a lot. She had a busy intellect.

As we sat idle during the ferry crossing, I reflected on the last few days. The thing with Becca had ended on a bad note. We’d never spent this many days together in a row, and she was starting to realize what a drag I was. She was also less than thrilled to hear me talk about Paisley non-stop, whining that I would never get over her or that I was still processing things.

“I don’t mean this to be patronizing, because I do think you’re awesome, but I think you should consider therapy very seriously. It seems like you’re in a dark place, and I don’t know how to help you.”

“I never said I needed help.”

She laughed. “It’s like you have this giant sign over you that reads: NEEDS HELP. In an adorable way, but it’s alarming too. That you’re living in this constant state of desperation. Honestly, I think Nelson might be bad for you.”

While I pulled off the ferry and back on to the highway, I nudged Chris to pull her legs back into the cab. We needed the windows up. I thought about my job at the Star, and how repetitive the work was becoming. We’d hit all the available topics when it came to your typical small town goings-on, but we lacked depth. The real story was all these fucking overdoses, but they seemed to be outside our reach. There was a shroud of silence over these deaths, so they didn’t end up having a public record. I wondered how much was being kept from me, what angle I’d been missing. Why all this secrecy?

I wanted to help.

The reason I named my UBC thesis manuscript “Whatever you’re on, I want some” was because I was despairing about a friend lost to heroin addiction, also named Chris. We had grown up together, gone to the same youth group and camp together, but somehow he’d ended up trapped on the Downtown Eastside, en route to becoming a derelict soul. I gave up on him. That’s what made me feel guiltiest, was that I abandoned him. At a certain point I realized it just wasn’t healthy for me to know him anymore, no matter how close we’d been as teens. Addiction had defined our relationship, had ended it, and I wanted to understand why.

“I’ve been really into the paintings you’ve been posting,” Chris said, stretching out her arms as we slalomed through the woods. Slocan Lake looked just as infinite as ever. I turned down the music. “All the self portraits.”

I nodded, pretended to be embarrassed. “Yeah, I’ve just done a few now. I was inspired by this painter John Cooper, who I interviewed for the Star. He’s this guy in his 70s with like hundreds of students in the Kootenays and he’s a fucking legend. He knows Tom Robbins,” I said.

“His colour choices are really trippy, like lots of purple and crazy bursts of the whole rainbow for mundane things. Like he’ll do a rusted out car but suddenly it’s neon green with purple highlights, you know?”

She nodded, looking out the window. “I like paintings that have psychedelic elements like that. Paintings that take you somewhere beyond natural.”

I lit a joint. “And the guy’s crazy. You can just feel it in his work, this extra electricity. When I interviewed him he kept me on the phone for like 45 minutes talking. He tells all these crazy stories about the 60s and he’s just fucking hilarious. He’s known as the Toad Road painter because he’s painted the same rock like a hundred times.”

“Hilarious.”

“Oh, and naked ladies. He paints lots of naked chicks.”

Chris had heard about my photo shoot with Blayne, and had talked to Chelsea about appearing as a model in one of my shoots. She had experience, so she would be completely comfortable in front of the camera. I’d been amassing subjects over my years in the Kootenays, shooting every kind of woman I met every way that I knew how.

I loved them all.

From there we continued to weave and dip, the RAV humming along like a space ship, as we worked our way through the joint. Chris told me about how she’d watched Joe Nillo live-paint at Kamp and how incredible it was to see him channel the festival’s energy into his canvas. She was roommates with the subject, Kylie, so she could see through all the goddess window dressing.

“It’s hard to tell whether he’s in love with her, or the painting.”

I laughed. “Why can’t it be both? He can channel his love for her into the work, even if they’re not together, right? He can remember the good things about her, the things he fell in love with. Those things don’t become irrelevant the moment you break up. There’s still meaning there.”

Chris looked at me, bemused. She knew I was talking about Paisley. “Listen, man, I’m just saying Joe’s got this way of channeling whole narratives into these images. They’re the sort of paintings you can sit down and read them like a book.”

“Like they have little details you have to look for?”

“Exactly. And that one you’ve seen isn’t his trippiest painting by far. We’ve got a bunch of his pieces still back at our house, I’ll show you. His paintings sing.”

Eventually Chris fell back asleep, as I was passing through Winlaw. From there I hurtled through South Slocan with my music back up, and back on the highway to Nelson. I thought about Joe Nillo and John Cooper, how they each embodied an approach to art that I could try to emulate. Like Joe I could produce work that was spiritually-infused, so that engaging with it feels like a religious experience. And like John I could gleefully go mad, laughing at the ridiculousness of it all while revelling in the universe’s exquisite beauty. I was sick of being just a journalist, of being constrained to reporting facts. I wanted to be a painter, an artist. I wanted to tap into the magic of the Kootenays and shoot it into my veins.

“I’m so full of love I feel like I’m going to paint the walls with my gore,” Chris said, but by then she wasn’t Chris anymore. It was the other Chris, from my childhood. He stared straight ahead from his passenger seat, angry.

“You remember that time we had a contest to see who could stay in that freezing lake longer, up my cabin. Do you remember that?”

“Yeah, I won. But you hogged the warm shower for like half an hour.”

“So who was the real winner?”

“I don’t even know what to feel about you, man. Like at least you’ve found a clean supply so I don’t need to read your headline yet.”

He laughed. “You act like you know how this is going to end, but you don’t.”

“This ends with me punching you in the head as hard as I can.”

“The first rule of fight club is you do not talk about fight club.”

I turned back in my seat, and rubbed my forehead with a knuckle. It was Bob Dylan playing, so I stuck with that for a moment. It was a song I associated with my high school drama teacher, Mr. Van Camp, who sang this drunkenly on the last night of our provincial theatre festival: People are crazy and times are strange. I'm locked in tight, I'm out of range. I used to care, but things have changed.

“If you were a character in The Wire,” I said to Chris. “You would be Wallace.”

“And what would that make you? Poot?”

I smiled and glanced over my shoulder to where Andrew Stevenson was sitting surly, his muscled arms crossed as he looked out the window. Beside him was Ryan Tapp, listening to an iPod with his sunglasses on. If things got bad, these two were always nearby to step in. I had more power than people realized, than even I realized, but I was still figuring out how to harness it properly. If my life was The Wire, I wanted to control which character I was going to be.

“Are you, kidding?” I said, reaching behind my seat to grab my grey shotgun. I felt the cold barrel in my palm as I pulled it into my lap, pointing it in Chris’ direction. I brought the barrel to his lips, and then his chest, and finally to his groin. I snickered with sinister pleasure.

“Bitch, I’m Omar.”

The Kootenay Goon

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yourhelpfulaffiliate · 4 years

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My Pinterest Suspension: A Cautionary Tale

I recently had my Pinterest account suspended and after a few days of back-and-forth with Pinterest Support I’ve come to the conclusion that it’s basically dead. I want to share the story of how I ended up here so that you don’t. Pinterest can be a very powerful tool for getting traffic to your website as well as a fun way for your readers to share and save blog post they like. As I’ve had some time to reflect and except that the suspension was probably the result of my own actions I can see an easy comparison between my story and the story of Icarus.

In the story of Icarus, Icarus escapes a labyrinth using wings constructed for him out of things that were just lying around. The construction of the wings was sound and he was able to fly out of the labyrinth. Unfortunately Icarus becomes drunk on his own accomplishment and flies ever higher and higher. The higher he flies the closer he gets to the sun. The closer he gets to the sun the warmer his wings become and since they’re just held together with beeswax eventually the wings fall apart and Icarus falls into the sea. I know my stories no Greek legend but I think people can still learn from my mistakes. It all started out so simply. If you don’t already know, when you create a new blog website it can take quite a long time for new blog posts to rank on search engines. This can leave your website looking and feeling like a ghost town for months. I had heard that creating a Pinterest account for your blog website was a good way to get traffic to it in this early stage. So I created and set up a Pinterest account for my blog website. When I adopt a new tool I like to create a step-by-step method to follow for posting content. When I first started using Pinterest this method was quite simple but overtime evolved to be my downfall. My method stage 1 Write a blog postDesign a basic pin for itPin that image linked to the blog post At the end of stage 1 my Pinterest monthly views were 7500.

Growing My Pinterest Account

After creating my account and posting a few pins I became very interested in how I could grow my account. I started doing a bunch of research on Google and YouTube to see how other people had grown their accounts. I have a blog post about these strategies which you can check out by clicking on the link below. https://yourhelpfulaffiliate.com/how-i-grew-my-pinterest-monthly-views-from-7-5k-to-20k-in-less-than-two-weeks/ I was proud up myself. I had done the research and then I done the work. After adding a few more steps to my method which I learned in this research I started seeing more visitors to my website from Pinterest. I want to point out this wasn’t a huge change in traffic. But when you have a new website in your traffic is zero and you’re able to make it go from 0 to 10 that can be pretty exciting. It can also lead you to try and amplify those results. It was this want to amplify my traffic that I think caused the most problems for me. My method stage 2 Write a blog postDesign a pin image using CanvaAdd image to blog postPin that image linked to the blog post Fill the whole DescriptionAdd 3 related hashtagsShare on 3 Tailwind Tribes I also experimented with a few $5 Pinterest ad campaigns during this stage. At the end of stage 2 my Pinterest monthly views were 20,000. This growth only took 2 weeks. I did post about 20 blogs in that time.

Flying Too High

This is where I think the trouble started. I had been so successful in such a short time at growing my Pinterest account. I wanted to see if I could grow it more and faster. This lead me to make some dumb mistakes. I think if I had just stuck with the method in stage 2 I would not have lost my account. Unfortunately I had to push it and when you push things to far they break. My method stage 3 Write blog post Design 3 pin images using CanvaAdd the 3 images to the blog postPin those images linked to the blog post Fill the whole DescriptionAdd 3 related hashtagsShared on 7 Tailwind TribesShare pins on Facebook group Repin threadsShare pins to multiple boards Follow 50 people in my niche a day Adding this many steps makes it difficult to judge which of them is effecting your results the most. On top of that it is just more work. I was focused on the wrong metric, monthly views. I was able to grow this from 1500 to 85,000 but in the end it wasn’t worth it. I should have kept my focus on website traffic. As my monthly views grew and grew my click through rate did not. I never got more than 15 views a day from Pinterest even with my huge monthly view numbers.

The End

Well this is how it all fell apart. After taking a break from Pinterest and visiting my family over thanksgiving I got back to it. I was doing my usual daily thing, following a few Pinterest accounts. After following about 15 accounts Pinterest gave me the boot. I was locked out of my account! I got an email saying my account had been suspended because of spam. I was stunned! All those hours of hard work and research wiped away in a single second. I couldn’t believe it.

Dealing With Pinterest Suspension

Almost immediately after reading this Pinterest suspension email I began going through the 5 stages of grief. Denial My first thought was this must be some kind a mistake. I’ll get in contact with Pinterest and they’ll reactivate my account and tell me they’re sorry. I was so sure I would get my Pinterest account reactivated I wrote a blog post on what to do if your Pinterest account gets suspended. You can find that blog post by clicking on the link below. https://yourhelpfulaffiliate.com/what-to-do-if-your-pinterest-account-is-suspended-with-pictures/ After actually getting in touch with Pinterest it didn’t look like it was going to go my way. Pinterest was set on keeping the account suspended and not telling me clearly why. The closest I could get to an explanation was I was participating in spammy behavior. Anger Now I was pissed. They won’t tell me what I did wrong. They won’t give me a way to get my account back. Pinterest had make their decision and their decision was final. And to think I pay Pinterest for ads, I added hundreds of pieces of content to Pinterest platform, and I shared hundreds of other peoples pens as well. It’s been hours sorting pins on the proper boards, creating interesting and descriptive descriptions, and designing eye-catching pins. And now it was all for nothing because Pinterest decided my account should be suspended. Bargaining After I cool down a little bit from being pissed off I decided to try and contact Pinterest again. I asked them if there was anything I could do to try and get my Pinterest account back. I apologize for whatever I have done to be suspended. I asked if they could clarify what that thing was so that I wouldn’t do it again. And then I politely asked to have my account reactivated. I was met with a brief email reply. Basically it said they decided my account should be suspended because some of my actions went against their anti-spam policy. They told me they would no longer be able to look into the issue and that it was resolved. Depression Now I knew there was no turning back. My Pinterest account was gone, Suspended, deleted, removed, and destroyed. Even my URLs on existing pins are now blocked. If you try to click on them you’ll receive a spam warning message and you will not be allowed to visit my website. It was all terrible news. I spent several days feeling very down on myself about it. Acceptance Well, as they say, time heals all wounds. About a week after being suspended from Pinterest I finally accepted that it was my fault. I knew pouting about it would not change anything. So I decided to make lemons into lemonade. If I could stop one person from making the mistakes I had made maybe it would be worth it. So I decided to share this story. It wasn’t easy to share but I think it’s for the best.

Pinterest Behavior To Avoid

I can’t tell you exactly what it was that got my account suspended because Pinterest would not clearly answer that question, but I can guess. Posting Too Much Too Fast If you combine the number of pins I physically posted everyday with the number of pins I had posted using Tailwind’s pins scheduler I was posting somewhere between 65 and 100 times a day. With Pinterest less is more. Don’t flood it with pins, they will notice. Posting The Same Pin On Multiple Boards This is straight up listed in Pinterest spam policy. Don’t do it. Just post your pins to the best possible board. That should keep you out of trouble. Using Pinterest Sharing Facebook Groups I am pretty sure this was a major mistake. Let your pins grow organically. Using this type of repin for repin group is dishonest and I’m pretty sure it is against Pinterest spam policies. Posting Multiple Pins For the Same Blog Keep it simple. One pin per post. Using Too Many Tailwind Tribes Don’t get me wrong, Tailwind is a great tool for growing your Pinterest account. Tailwind tribes can also be very useful but posting the same pin to many tribes is not the best idea. Mostly because if the tribes are in related niches chances are the same people are in those tribes. It is better to pick a few and share different pins instead of the same pin to a ton of tribes. To learn more about Tailwind click the link below. https://yourhelpfulaffiliate.com/new-tailwind-users-get-15-tailwind-plus-credit/ Following Too Many People Too Fast Take this slow. This is the last thing I did on Pinterest. Personally I don’t know what the limit is for this but you should try to stay as far away from it as you can. Putting Promoting Over Content The quality of your contacts should always be you’re number one focus. While promoting your Content is very useful it should not be your primary focus.

Conclusion

While sharing the story wasn’t easy to do I hope at least by sharing it I can help someone avoid the mistakes I’ve made. It really sucks being suspended from Pinterest and if you can avoid it I highly recommend doing so. While being suspended from Pinterest was not my favorite experience, I do think I can walk away with a few valuable lessons. The first one being Patience. Growing up presents online takes time. When you try to force this you’ll probably cause nothing but problems. I’m going to try and let my web presence grow organically from here on out. It won’t be easy but I think it’s for the best. The second lesson I learned was to put content over promotion. Now that I can no longer promote my blog on Pinterest I suddenly have more time to focus on creating content. I’m going to choose to take it vantage of this extra time I found. I hope this blog post was helpful or at least entertaining. Feel free to share your Pinterest story in the comments. Have a great day! Read the full article

#blog #Pinterest #Pinterestaccount #Pinteresthelp #Pinterestmarketing #Pinterestsuspension #Pinteresttips #story

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pixiealtaira · 7 years

Text

My ‘me time’ consists of…

pairing: Kurt and Elliot by the end, mostly Kurt centric slice of life

Authors note: I think I need a new mouse...the whole copy concept is beyond my mouse’s capabilities lately.

Sharing the loft with Rachel ended up to be the ultimate exercise in patience, even when she wasn’t in her ‘queen of the world’ state. She was loud, she was rude, she was bossy, she was nosey, and she was inconsistent. Kurt never knew when she was eating Vegan, or just vegetarian, or when she was going to decide she was eating meat again…thus finding food he’d bought for himself gone. She never asked, either. Whatever was in the place was hers. Now, the same did NOT hold true for him…Rachel’s almond milk was Rachel’s, not his, and no one but Rachel was to touch it. The fit she threw when he used it to mix into his hot chocolate was epic and cost him two lamps and a canvas print he’d paid a fair amount of cash for.

Kurt quickly became very determined to have his ‘me time’. He had his daily ‘me time’ and his weekly ‘me time’. He briefly tried to share a few of his daily ‘me time’ rituals with Blaine over Skype, but that failed completely by day two. Blaine wasn’t into skin care like Kurt was, so had no use what-so-ever with doing a skincare regimen together, especially since Kurt couldn’t listen to him with enough focus if Kurt was focusing on his skin and products. Nor did Blaine want to do daily vocal exercises with Kurt because if Kurt and he were doing vocal exercises Kurt wasn’t listening to Blaine. (Of course Kurt also was supposed to be silent about his own activities, but Kurt didn’t realize that until later. After they broke up and when Blaine complained about it and Kurt realized he had felt like Blaine had been the one talking all the time, not Kurt himself, Kurt went back to see which state was true. Blaine never did realize Kurt taped all the skype sessions so he could play them again and hear Blaine’s voice when he was feeling sad. A review with a watch and a notebook to record speaking amounts made Kurt a very unhappy man when he thought through what Blaine had insisted…Blaine spoke 3x more than Kurt and interrupted Kurt 15x more than Kurt interrupted him. Furthermore, except days when something extremely spectacular happened for Kurt, their conversations mostly revolved around Blaine and McKinley, like 90% was Blaine and McKinley. Kurt was so not ignoring him.)

Thus Kurt’s ‘me time’ was swiftly his alone and he was nearly rabid about having it. For an hour after 10pm every night, or for an hour an hour after they returned home from being out since Rachel had to chatter and talk her social engagements through before she could be normal, Kurt got the bathroom to do his skin care regimen and no one was to talk to him or bug him. He got to shut the door and play his music out loud as loud as needed to block the sound from the rest of the loft. Rachel’s demand that he was disturbing her was met with his taping her morning vocal ‘practice’ and threatening to put it out over the NYADA chat groups…mass share it everywhere. She complained exactly that once.

Every morning Kurt got up at 6am and spent an hour doing yoga. Rachel’s complaint about that was met with Kurt taping Rachel first thing in the morning eating cereal and yelling at the TV in her bathrobe before she’d done any of her morning routines, which she didn’t start until nearly 7am in New York because she didn’t have class until 11am and didn’t work. The same threat about the chatrooms applied to that video as well.

Finally, every day, while Rachel was away from the loft, Kurt carved out a half hour for his vocal exercises. He didn’t do half the nutty things Rachel did, which she picked up from reading books and blogs and continued to do even though coaches and professors told her not to. No, Kurt did the same exercises that they had done in school and the ones he heard recommended on the NYADA chatroom when he asked. He also added the exercises the NYADA students recommended to each other for getting ready for auditions. Then he sang. Every day he’d turn on the radio in the house, make it search for a station and sing with whatever song was on when the search stopped. He generally managed 10 minutes of this. It might not have been ‘normal’ and ‘conventional’ but it was certainly educational. He learned what types of music he could and couldn’t sing easily to and expanded his song bank knowledge, which could only help. He found genres of music he wished to expand his knowledge in and languages he was determined to learn well enough to sing in. It made him happy.

His weekly ‘me time’ was also carved out during the times Rachel was at class. Kurt took a yoga class every Tuesday during his Vogue.com lunch hour. He’d read it grounded you and allowed you to release negative energy. He wasn’t sure it completely lived up to that claim, but it certainly calmed him and helped him stay that way. It was very noticeable to him when he missed it. He had less ability to stay reasonable with Rachel and not fall to her levels of irrationalness. It was a life saver after the break-up…he slept Tuesday nights. He continued the practice even after he started NYADA. After Finn, he ended up increasing the days for yoga to twice a week, which helped him a great deal. When Elliot found out he brought Kurt to the yoga studio he went to and convinced Kurt to go daily as soon as school was done for the school year, making sure his daily time was included in his summer schedule. It helped.

When Blaine came to New York, Kurt kept his ‘me time’ routines. It was one of those things that annoyed Blaine. Kurt had ‘me time’ that Blaine couldn’t get him to get rid of. Of course, Blaine had ‘me time’ as well, but Kurt had known since going to school with Blaine at Dalton that Blaine operated under different rules about things like ‘me time’ for him and everyone else. Blaine also had ‘dude time’ which was never to be missed and to be spent with Sam and Artie, or whoever else Blaine was hanging with at the time, and ‘bro time’ which was spent with Sam. Kurt added Yoga classes to his week or took them out depending on how stressed he was. After he was bashed, when he was allowed to go back to things like yoga and combat and dance, Kurt snuck in three weeks of yoga classes every day. Blaine was feeling too sorry for himself to notice. (Blaine didn’t notice the nightmares, even though he slept by Kurt every night. He didn’t notice the OCD like behaviors that made themselves known again, like when his dad was getting results back…the counting and color focus and checking and rechecking everything. He didn’t notice Kurt never went by the alley. He never even noticed the scar.)

Kurt kept his ‘me time’ routine through Rachel’s stupidity and Blaine’s melt down and the explosive break-up and the summer. In fact it was his insistence that he find someplace to take yoga classes and Rachel’s dismissal of it (“Really Kurt, it’s not like you are going to be doing enough with the glee club to get that stressed to need something like Yoga. I will be in charge and taking on that mantle. You will be there to fetch our music and make sure the kids are in their right spots and of course deal with any problems they are having that might distract them from what is really important, the club.”) that made Kurt reconsider staying in Lima and helping Rachel.

He went back to New York after helping start up the club again…one week to Rachel. The Diva fit Rachel tossed when he refused to stay, combined with Blaine’s behavior at the bar and then the rude and nasty comments he got around town reminded Kurt why he had left in the first place. New York was lonely, but only because Kurt hadn’t really made friends who he’d kept in contact with when Blaine and Rachel got possessive…it had just been easier to do it their way and not fuss. However, he didn’t have to live for them anymore. He didn’t have to carve out ‘me time’ just to have a bit of time away from others constant demands for his attention and focus. He had to learn to live for him.

He ditched the therapist he’d been seeing before he left and called the student health center at NYADA for recommends. The new lady was much better. He started talking to others in classes and at work and accepting their invites to go out and do stuff with them.

And he went back to yoga classes at the studio Elliot introduced him to. He was there the day Elliot got back from the yoga retreat where he’d been learning to become a yoga instructor. Elliot came into the studio and was surrounded by cheers and yelling and hugs and kisses and Kurt was sure he wasn’t even seen. However the moment the crowd around Elliot thinned just the tiniest bit, Elliot had pushed through and swept Kurt into a hug, swinging him around until Kurt’s feet swung off the ground and Kurt was laughing.

And Kurt was laughing and surrounded by others joyfulness and Elliot kept Kurt tucked right under his arm the rest of the time they were at the studio. He just tucked Kurt right back into his life…like Kurt had never left, never hid, never backed out of it to keep Blaine from ruining Elliot.

Months later, after the start of a new semester at NYADA and new arrangement to fit in Yoga Lessons at the studio Elliot now taught at, Kurt snuggled up to Elliot on the sofa at Elliot’s place after a night out clubbing with the other man.

“What were you doing at the studio the day I came back?” Elliot said.

“Maintaining my ‘me time’,” Kurt answered.

“Your ‘me time’? I didn’t know you had ‘me time’. I haven’t been messing it up have I?” Elliot said, a slight worried tone in his voice.

Kurt leaned over and kissed his cheek. “You know, my nightly skin care, my daily vocal practice and Yoga routine and my weekly yoga class.”

“But you let me be with you while you do all of those, unless I’m talking too much during vocal practice.” Elliot said.

Kurt smiled. “I do. You want to be there with me…without making any of those times about YOU. Sure, when you first stayed over enough to realize I was very strict with my skin care, you made a comment…but Elliot, your comment was ‘Can you help me set up something like that?’ not ‘You’re not paying attention to me, get over here and join me NOW!’. You wanted included in something important to me. Yoga in the mornings we do together, you don’t boss or order or demand anything about it. You listen and help with vocal practice, and then do your own with me listening and helping. You never stop me from singing without a good reason. I don’t have to carve out ‘me time’ to simply exist. And, that my love, makes all the difference in the world.”

Their kiss was heated and quickly turned into more and Kurt briefly thought while his mind was functioning enough to think deep thoughts that with Elliot every single moment was ‘me time’ and he wouldn’t change a thing.

#glee fanfic #Kurt Hummel #starkurt #kurt/elliot

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