THERE IS A TINYTAN TAMAGOTCHI NOW?????

THERE IS A TINYTAN TAMAGOTCHI NOW?????

It’s $20, but man. The nostalgia. I never had one when they were so popular (we were poor. very poor) but my friends all did and I kinda want it but like—I’m barely keeping these kittens and this big babydog alive 😅

What experiences have you had with spirits?

I saw glowing red eyes in my grandmother’s neighbor’s back yard the day she passed. They never were able to say what exactly she died from but she had left a few voicemails for her kids that were disturbing and didn’t make sense. I always thought maybe something scared her to death.

*blinks*

Well, I have had nothing close to that….and thank God above I haven’t—how are you okay?? Does your grandmother still live there?? Do you visit????

I really only have a few experiences that I remember enough to tell, really. Nothing that really scared me longer than a moment or made me feel unsafe.

The earliest one was from a long time ago—and also the first. My mom was in a flurry of anxious rage because my brother had an appointment and didn’t get off the bus when he was supposed to even though she had reminded him numerous times the night before and morning of. Anyway, I closed and locked the door behind them, took my shoes off right there, and went to my room. Like 2 minutes later I heard the door slam and thought maybe they had forgotten something so I called out. No response. Went to check and no one was in the house. The door was still locked, and no car was in the drive. They wouldn’t have been able to leave that quick but I chalked it up to my imagination. Then I noticed my shoes that I had taken off right at the door and planned to pick up later was moved—exactly like if someone had opened the door all the way. I asked mom later if she had come back after they first left and she said no. So yea.

I had one experience at a friend’s house. They lived up in the mountain forests, and we were in her room I think cleaning? Or looking for something? Anyway, she threw something over her shoulder and it ended up hitting the bedside table where she had a glass of water. We heard it clatter to the floor and she sighed and said she’d go get a mop or towels or something. She got up from where we were, turned, and walked towards the door. She stopped almost at it and said “what the hell?” And when I asked what, she told me to come look. The glass was sitting there on the floor straight up, not a drop spilled, like we had intentionally set it there. This was absolutely not possible, with how much clattering we heard when it fell and with how full the glass was. Nothing else was there that could have made the noises. I remember one of us saying “at least it’s a considerate ghost”. We never told anyone else about it back then.

The next one I remember was from high school I think. We had little things happen that we just shrugged off and jokingly said the ghost did, but nothing significant to remember. Anyway. It was the middle of the night, and I stumbled out of bed to the bathroom. When I went back to my room something was standing in the doorway; by which I mean a thick, vaguely humanoid shadow was in the threshold blocking out any light from inside my room. I stopped, blinked at it a couple times, and said something akin to “I’m too tired for this”. After a couple seconds it just faded away and I could see the light on the cable box across the room and the light peaking through the blinds from the neighbor’s nightlight again. I didn’t feel scared or threatened but honestly was so drop-dead tired it could have literally tried to stab me and I would have just sighed or blinked at it. I did remember it immediately when I woke up and said out loud “what the hell was that?”

A friend of my brother had a somewhat similar experience a few years earlier, but not in the pitch-dark middle of the night. It was back when we had a single desktop computer in the family room behind the couch, and we had two rolling office chairs there. My brother was playing something and his friend was waiting for his turn, when he turned to talk to mom and I. He had started to say something and froze, so I looked over and he was pale. He was looking down the hall on the other side of the family room. I said “what?” And he shook his head. He said “I just saw a fireman in that hall, in his fire suit.” I should note that my dad is a fireman and there was a recurring thing at one of the old stations where a fireman had died in his sleep there. They called him Boo, and no one knew where he came from. Story goes that he came in on a train, applied to be a fireman, and that was his life (this was back when the firefighters practically lived at the station all the time if they didn’t have families). Beds would shake like someone was pushing the foot, a bathroom light would come on randomly, and they heard footsteps. One time a guy was woke in the middle of the night by the foot of his bed being shook and said “alright Boo, cut it out!” and it stopped. My dad even had his own experiences and witnessed things. They ended up building a new station behind the old one and it’s now used for storage and as far as I know Boo hasn’t moved to the new one. So after this friend said it was a fireman in turnout gear I rolled my eyes and said “you told him about Boo, didn’t you?” But my brother hadn’t. We had never talked about it around him either. We told him the stories from the station and about the new station and he said “yeah, I think he followed your dad home instead of moving stations”. That was the only incident like that, so whether or not Boo had followed dad home, he’s not here anymore.

Another experience happened in a church late at night. Me and a couple friends were there, and as we passed a window on the second floor that looks down into the dinning hall/gym, me and one friend happened to glance down into the room and saw a figure. The thing is, we were supposed to be the only 3 people in the building. We both jumped at the same time and then stared at the room then each other before asking “you saw that right?” at the same time. The other friend said “I don’t wanna know” and we left after trying to figure out what had moved. It hadn’t been near any doors, and there was nothing to hide behind or anything, but we confirmed with each other that we thought we saw a man walking very fast for a brief moment before he disappeared.

Other small experiences is smelling men’s cologne randomly when my dad and brother don’t wear it, and no one else is around. My mom experiences this too. We don’t know who it could be, as it happed before the men in the family died since we moved to our current house, and they never wore it or stopped wearing it long before they died.

For years I have also heard a male voice call my name when I’m in my room, and the first few times I thought that my dad was home and go to see what he wants and there’s no grown male in the house at all. This has happened since we moved in, but I spend very little of my waking hours in my room anymore, what with having a dog and all.

I’ve also smelled my grandmother’s perfume in my grandfather’s house, but they separated long before I was born; back when mom was in her late teens so like the early 80s. She did live there, but I highly doubt that is where she would haunt or visit in the afterlife. He also had a business employing women in the house at one time, and he was quite the ladies man (and adulterer) back then. So who knows.

Also…and I’m not sure this counts…two years ago my grandfather died of COVID on Christmas. A couple days after the funeral, I had a dream. We (my family) were all hugging him one by one, saying goodbye. After he hugged me, my late great grandfather (my grandfather’s father-in-law) came up to me and said “don’t worry, I’ll take care of him”. I have pretty vivid dreams already, but this felt so different from normal dreams. I honestly believe it was a message from beyond this world; either from my late grandfather and great grandfather, or God. Maybe it was just something my mind created to comfort me, but it wouldn’t be the first time a dream wasn’t just a dream.

That’s all the “ghost” or whatever experiences I’ve had that I can think of at the moment.

Well. Nothing starts the New Year off with a bang like a freaking tornado before 8:30 am! My people are safe, so far haven’t heard of any casualties. Quite a bit of damage and power outages (thankfully not my house or 88 year old Grandfather’s) but safe.

Happy New Year from the Central Time Zone!

I’m ringing in 2023 with the first ever K-Pop song I heard: GOT7’s Stop, Stop It

I hope to bring new projects to you all in the New Year, and do a lot of healing.

Here’s to 2023!

I’ve been going through old pictures on our external hard drive, and I have noticed 2 things:

1. The Jess of today was being so harshly critical of the Jess of the past. I found myself criticizing everything. EVERYTHING. The unabashed smiles, the open silliness, the mismatched outfits, the fit of the outfits, etc. I absolutely was mentally tearing down this child. This child who was me, once.

2. When I finally looked at little me, and saw how happy her eyes were, how authentic the smiles were, how in the moment and not insecure she was, I realized I was doing exactly what had inevitably had changed those eyes, smiles, and confidence.

Now I wish I was her again, or at least still had her innocence.

TL;DR: I’m sending a gift to a friend (who has been repeatedly hit with darkness) that she loved and jokingly asked for in a post because she didn’t think anyone would actually buy it, and I’m doing it anonymously.

Ok so I am terrible at keeping certain secrets to myself. Tell me your deepest, darkest, shameful secret and I’ll die with it, but tell me about a gift or surprise you’re doing and it eats at me with excitement. I have to tell someone, usually my mom (which should be a given because she’s my best friend).

I’m even worse when it’s me doing the surprise or giving the gift. I just get so excited about how the person will react to it (I put a lot of thought, significance, and love into the gifts/cards/services I give). I have to tell someone (again, usually my mom. It makes it 1,000x harder when the thing is for her and I have to tell someone else or I’ll explode).

I have decided not to tell anyone who personally knows me in my life that I’ve done my latest secret gift. BUT, I’m dying to tell someone. No one on here knows me outside of Tumblr, and few people in my life even know I write fanfiction (let alone what fandom they belong to or that it’s Tumblr). A couple know I’m on Tumblr, but haven’t the slightest idea I actually post anything.

So, here’s my latest random act of…love? Kindness? Honestly giving gifts is my output love language.

A friend I met a few years ago when she started working at the bakery with me posted early last month (December) about a piece of clothing she was in love with and jokingly said “someone please buy this for me 😭😭🤣”. I tracked it down to a shopping website, and took a screenshot of the price and item name and everything for later, because after 2 years of no income I am officially broke. Well, I got a little spending money for Christmas. I bought a couple small things on New Year’s Day I need electronic-accessory wise. Then I was scrolling through my pictures for a particular one and found the screenshot of the top—and smiled.

Now, something you should know about this girl (10 years or more older than me), is that when we met she was in an abusive marriage. It had progressed past manipulation and emotional/mental abuse to physical about two years before I met her. She also has 2 sons from a previous marriage (also not a good one) who love their mother very much, and had reached that point that they were starting to interfere a little with the abuse. One of the first times she opened up to me in regards to this was when she had started to fear that her husband would start hurting her boys, but felt she was stuck. She didn’t make enough, she felt, to support them well enough on her own.

Over the course of the next 6 months, I repeatedly told her that she deserved better, that both she and her boys were in a toxic, unsafe environment. I prayed for and with her, and made sure to always be encouraging and show her that she was worth more than he led her to believe; that she had other people in her corner who were ready and willing to help her and her boys. I had a card in my wallet from way before at school for an organization that helped women in those situations, and had always wondered why I kept it. I gave it to her, which I feel was the reason I had it. She contacted them. She filed for divorce. They got her a divorce attorney. She and her boys moved in with her parents, and me and 4 others I rounded up helped her go get HER stuff from her now-ex’s place while he was under court order not to be there. He had cameras that he let slip he watched, and which rooms they were in, and as the others loaded the last thing into the truck, I said “hey ___, you’ve lost probably the best you’ve ever had, and probably will ever. Oh, and fuck you” as I flipped the room off (never knew exactly where the cams were, just that they were there). The women’s advocacy group helped set her up in an apartment complex that worked with them at a low rate (a nice apartment with more space than she had furniture to fill). They even paid for her rent and utilities while she was in divorce court. We helped her move her stuff again, and even gathered things from within our family and friend circle that was in good shape but not used/wanted anymore. She cried each time, and just kept thanking us and was worried she couldn’t repay us. I finally told her “___, you’re not going to repay us; we don’t want you to. This is what being a Christian, a child of God, is about. If anything, we want you to pay it forward one day, when you come across someone in need.”

The breaking point, when she said realized they were out of the dark, was that Christmas, when my family forwent buying things we didn’t need and instead bought her boys both wants and needs (at first she didn’t know why I was asking so much about her kids, then figured it out and cried). And for her, too. I watched this woman, who had been in 2 bad marriages and just wanted her boys taken care of, go from being timid and unsure to confident, happy, positive, and strong. She is very much the “fuck around and find out” type now that she’s herself again. She will one day be a bridesmaid at my wedding, she’s such an important part of my life now. She’s fallen on hard times again, and is fighting for custody of her kids (a family member of their father’s has legal custody and is doing a shit job and lying through their teeth in court), but she has an amazing guy and his son to keep her grounded. She says I seem to always pop up with cards or gifts or just kind words and encouragement when she needs it most. She doesn’t realize how much she helps me in turn, that she’s helped me in the struggles with my own faith the last 2 years of chronic long-COVID illness.

She’s a forever friend.

So, as I looked at the screenshot of that top she really wanted last night, I decided I was going to give a little more sunshine into her life to start the year on the positive. I ordered it, set the address to hers and put her name on it, and will be anxiously tracking it and waiting to see if she posts about it and/or figures out it was me (haven’t decided if I’ll admit it was me if she strongly suspects or not).

Everyone deserves little things to show that someone cares, that they’re not alone in the dark this world brings. That besides (or in spite of) people expected to care (who may or may not), there are people who have chosen to.