Thirdly

I went on an internet rabbit hole about the benefits of biochar and how no one has been able to replicate Terra Petra yet. 🤔

You keep fighting, @Mikiesboy!!! Not your diet, that you'll have to eat even if you don't want to. What I do (other than drown things in the spices I'm allowed to use) is I listen to music and dance while I eat so I distract myself from the fact that it's probably not what I'd prefer to eat. I was a notoriously terrible eater as a child (no amount of airplanes or threats did anything)...and I'm still suffering the consequences of that in older age. These days, I can eat unseasoned things and even black coffee without sugar if I have to, but that's because I decided to play defensively. "If I don't gently stretch after a long walk, I will pull a muscle or tear a tendon, and it took me 8 months to recover from that, so stretch, I must!" "If I don't eat more fiber-heavy food, I will tear something up, and I had to get a whole operation in which the recovery felt like pooping out a whole child, and hell if I'm going to suffer that pain again." Those are the kinds of things I'm constantly reminding myself about, only because I know what the worst-case scenario feels like already. So, in my head, it's all "prevent, prevent, prevent...and you're not feeling like you were hit by a truck."

*GASP* Let's go!!

Thanks so much, everyone!!

@kbois It’s alright. If there's a hockey fan that happens to read my work and it sounds totally off to them, I can change it then. I had a little too much fun with the one sentence and it's happening either way.

I'm looking for a hockey fan generally familiar enough with hockey terms and slang to let me know if I managed to use said slang correctly (or at least with the right connotation?) in a specific sentence. If you are willing to help me with said sentence, please send me a message.

This was a very touching tribute and a reflection of grief that anyone who's ever cared for someone at their lowest, or lost someone in some way, can relate.

As someone who was a caretaker of sorts (in our Rican family, the youngest tend to take care of the oldest), this destroyed me.😭And I had a severe lack of tissue boxes nearby, so it was a very ugly cry. The skunk shenanigans and family-gossip-hour were much-needed relief. I'm really glad Kenny had Jordy by his side. I don't have a Jordy yet (though in my case it'd be more like a Jolene lmao). I need to find one. Crap. Where was I? Right! I'll save that part for my review. Brb.

Hope you feel better soon, Adi.

I'm almost coming up on half (475,586) and that's still plenty for me. 😂 Plus a bunch of my stories are collaborations, so that's not the correct number (I'd say about half, so maybe I'm actually coming up on 250k 🤔).

Aditus has woven us another tapestry of sentiment, fragility, and the spark of love in all its forms from the steadfast adoration of a family pet, to siblings, parents, and partners long gone.

In the end, he called Matteo, who wrote down the recipe and his phone number in case Dad had questions. It turned out he had a lot of questions. - Go dad! Got himself a chef. 👀 We think he decided it was time to let go and fly away with the fall winds. - 🥺 So bittersweet! The scenery was painted beautifully, as per your usual painterly style. My heart went out to everyone: the brothers, the dad, Matteo, and even the dog Bruno!

You can do it, @Lee Wilson!

You can do it @northie!!

Nothing but all the love for you, Val. 🥰 (Ha! And this turned out to be my official 100th blog post right here 😂)

I'm late because I didn't realize I wasn't following these. Luckily I follow enough intersecting people that I caught this one. Yes, I agree with everyone and I'm glad @chris191070is writing. I've been seeing the consistent uploads like a creepy shadow peek. 😈

These are great!

Come on, everyone! Let's do this. Why am I so fired up?

All of that in one day! Hope you're feeling better now. 🥺

This is less a blog than a straight up rant. As many here on GA, I've been struggling finding my place in the world while trying not to be a complete asshole to everyone around me. I've heard about a few methods of madness from life coaches, inspirational speakers, and psychologists about the importance of gratitude...of being grateful for what you currently have. I've also noticed that the more upset I am, the less I focus on feeling grateful. For example: Yesterday, I was called out and shamed in front of my boss by a frazzled co-worker overwhelmed with work after having returned from vacation for a week (which I helped cover for her). My embarrassment was greater than indignant anger all day long. I thought "Why would she think I have not been trying to help her? Am I not doing enough?" So, I did my best to "fix" her concerns and tried to mitigate things that way. Girl was still stewing in anger hours later. I don't know if she was listening to my suggestions on how to try to get ahead of the work or if she was too busy wallowing in "I'm the only person that does any work around here." And then our boss, which was right there, didn't even bother to pacify her or defend me, having seen me covering for that coworker all week on top of my own duties. It was just the definition of toxic, and wholly unnecessary. All of it could have been resolved with one follow up email asking for an update on the tasks (which I could prove I had done twice over). Considering it was also during the week that we lost 3 staff members (not just one), I prioritized more important things. I did feel some anger long after the fact, on my commute back home. I understood where all the stress was coming from and how overwhelmed both my coworker and boss are and have been. But they are not the only members of the department. Antagonizing me is not to their benefit whatsoever, they will be down yet another team member. Then, she had the audacity to say the words "stay until five to get the work done" when she shows up 2 hours late in the day most days? I get a good chunk of my work done before 9am when I can start making some calls (most places aren't even open until 9am). I've been trying to teach myself how to feel and let go things in the moment rather than let them continue to roll out of hand or to bottle them up. I think I've been doing relatively okay with feelings like despair and sadness. I am still working on figuring out how to manage anger. But to know that embarrassment and shame are stronger than anger or sadness for me is shocking. And then I behaved like my people pleasing self, stopping whatever tasks I was working on to "fix" whatever loose ends they were talking about. Despite knowing that the tasks I was working on were more important. It's like I betrayed myself? But then I think, even if I was prepared with a way to defend myself and showed all of the paper receipts I had (because I did do what was asked, twice), it would not have been enough. The results would have still been the same. I'd have been gaslighted, manipulated, and ignored just the same. I keep forgetting it's not your skills and expertise that promote you in the US, it's who you know and who has your back. Corporate games are always rigged against the low income, non-white. How you present yourself is always more important than your education and talent. There isn't a day I didn't wish I had a best friend or family member in Canada I could move in with.

Jay is a cinnamon roll who can rock a pair of heels and lip gloss better than his own sister. Denied such enjoyment by his parents in his younger years, he finally gets the chance to be himself later on in college. What happens when the steamy Levi approaches him in the midst of his own self-discovery?

It was so nice to read about Jay again and steamy, steamy Levi. You already know how much I adore them.

I've never sensed anything odd in a house. But I did come across a cursed tree at a cemetery and a black fox that my friend swore she didn't see. Some friends with indigenous roots I talked to about it told me the fox was trying to lead me away from the twisted tree. In hindsight, it sounds like that's exactly what it was doing. It was around November because I remember looking forward to thanksgiving. My friend invited me to a dinner with her grandparents at a local Cracker Barrel. We finished eating early and the elderly were talking endlessly, so my friend and I were allowed to walk around. We bought some sugar sticks at the connecting shop and headed outside. The metal fence was broken near the bottom and curled up. The two of us were tiny teens, so we snuck right through it to the park on the other side. Only it wasn't a park, but a cemetery. We walked around taking note of different names and tombstones, stopping at any grave that appeared like no one had visited for a while and leaving behind a pixie stick as a gift to the more "abandoned" ones. We walked past a mausoleum and the further we wandered into the cemetery; we came across the tree. The limbs were twisted and so low to the ground at first, I thought it had been struck by lightning, but there were no scorch marks. You could see where the limbs bent down at the base, none of them damaged. I walked within some seven feet of it and felt the odd throbbing that emanated from the whole thing. To me, it was as if the tree not only had a heartbeat, but a "stay the f*ck away" kind of aura. I remember feeling legit fear when my friend rushed over to climb it. It felt like so much as touching it was beyond disrespectful, but dangerous. I remember telling her I didn't want to go anywhere near that tree. Then, I saw the black fox emerging from the edge of the woods and it stared right at us with golden/amber eyes before moving further away and stopping to look back at us again. It was such a beautiful creature. I took a few steps towards it and pointed it out to my friend (it's not like you can miss a black fox trotting on top of green grass no matter how bad your eyesight is). She claimed she didn't see it, so I continued to follow the fox and motioned towards it again. My friend still said she saw nothing. I asked her years later and she still swears she didn't see any animals at the cemetery that day. She didn't think there was anything wrong with the tree. But I'm glad that whatever distraction the fox brought on, it had kept her from climbing it that day.

Nice variety. Love it.

I'd have hesitated to have bought one labeled that.