Joy List

Joy List

Thank you to @longbobmckenzie for bringing me Henrik-ian joy, Northern bullying, and this tag 💖

making deviled eggs

writing scenes that make people cry

black fingernail polish

wholesome eras tour tiktoks

having a bathtub

glitter eyeshadow

@throughthejunobush

crunchy fall leaves

Mary Potter Crab Apple Tree outside my office

corn on the cob

bh&g lemon balm & cedar candles

white fairy/twinkle lights

playing words with friends with my husband

making mood boards and book covers

Tea lattes

rainbow prisms

my houseplant edgar allen pothos

husband's havarti & breadcrumb topped baked tomatoes

lubalin's ep "whose love"

my neighbor's little brown shih-tzu that looks exactly like a Ewok

Tagging @luckyqueenreign, @becangle @mrsbsmooth, @kikithegr8, @thatwheelchairchick, @bypine @aislinnstanaka, @throughthejunobush and whoever else wants to do it!

Bobby would 100% do this. Probably right after telling you he loves you for the first time 🤣 "I love ya, lass." RIIIIIIIIP! TADAAAA!

Maybe I should edit my new chapter...

I need him so bad it’s unreal

TSIME: The Casa Girls

While I was preparing to write Casa Amor from the boys' point of view for The Sun in My Eyes, I realized I'd have to create the girls, because we only really know Shannon. Even Blake is a bit of a mystery as we learn almost nothing about her, other than she's seems thin-skinned. So I spent some time sorting out the main personality trait of each original islander, and then made each CA girl a combo of 2 of them.

Marisol + Priya

Amber is a huge snob and decided as soon as she met Emily that she was stupid and low class, and needed to be put in her place. Amber is a bitch. It was really fun to write two women who were both WAY too good for Jakub, get so caught up in competing with each other that they forgot that what they were fighting over wasn't actually a prize.

Just Hope

Originally Siobhan was Hope + Lottie. A self-important troublemaker, but she just didn't flow that way when I started writing her. I didn't want to write yet another brittle black woman (Fusebox has that on lock). It was more fun to make her have all of Hope's best traits (playful, direct, ambitious) yet none of her worst. Siobhan is who Hope could be if she weren't so insecure. A self-actualized Zen badass. Basically she's S3 Yasmin before S3 came out.

Hope + Marisol

What's there to say about Shannon? I love this manipulative, savvy bitch. And she deserved better than Rahim's triflin' ass dithering between multiple girls.

Lili + Lottie

Yuna was an accidental villain. It was supposed to be Siobhan telling everyone about what Emily did, but once I started writing, it just felt right for this spoiled, chronic talker to thoughtlessly spill Emily's business to anyone who'd listen. And for her to lie to Bobby in order to manipulate him into choosing her. Love Yuna or hate her, you gotta respect the audacity.

Lili + Priya

You know, I really wanted to redeem Blake. I always thought she took a lot of heat for simply being a little thin-skinned, and I wanted to give context for her behavior when she came to the villa. But I underestimated just how much she was hated and no amount of context was gonna make anyone empathize with her 😆 Oh well. I tried.

Chelsea + Lottie

Oh, Emily. Girl. I love her tragic, bad decision making ass. And her wise, resigned kitchen conversation with Bobby is my favorite thing I wrote for Casa. I head canon, but never explicitly wrote into the story, that she DMed Lili the moment she left the show to apologize. Because that's just how she is. Emily is a fuck up, but she's an honest one.

Just an aside, but I gave her my mom's most endearing skill, the ability to cross one eye and keep the other straight. Something that never fails to make me laugh 🤣

Stay tuned, my post about Bobby's OC family is coming... eventually.

Thanks @longbobmckenzie for pointing out that my original post is missing for some reason.

A Victorian Quilt and the Power of Words

TW: Very brief mentions of SA and attempted un-aliving

This is kind of random, but it's 2am and I have no one to talk to about it, so here we are 😆 I really enjoy watching J. Draper's YouTube videos. She presents all these fascinating little historical tidbits about London and while I'm not traveled nor from the UK, I like interesting tidbits.

Tonight, I stumbled on one of her longer videos. I'm only halfway through it, but it's a deep dive into what it was like to be a Victorian in-home servant. They worked 6am to 10pm every day and had no days off and very little time for themselves. On their days off they had to be quiet so as to not disturb the family. And they were highly discouraged from reading anything but the Bible, because a maid who wanted to better herself or rise above her station was not considered desirable. So for many, all their downtime was spent sewing. Quilts and samplers. And in the Victoria & Albert Museum in Kensington, there's an interesting little bit of history. A sampler, 30x34 inches (84x74 cm). The height of two bowling pins, or six cans of Coke-a-Cola. And it's a bit plain as there is nothing on it but words. At first, I thought it was full of Bible verses. It's not.

It was a diary or autobiography if you wish to call it that, written by a house maid named Elizabeth Parker in 1830. Believing herself to be illiterate simply because she didn't know how to write with a pen, she told the story of her life, not in ink, but in tiny, precise red stitches. It tells of her family, her jobs, and her pain. Of how she was SA-ed by an employer and then thrown down the stairs for objecting to it. Of how she was so ashamed what happened that she never told anyone, not even her closest friends. That she attempted to end her life, because she didn't know how to cope with it. And her worries about the fate of her soul.

The sampler ends mid-sentence, though her life went on for many years, as a historian has since discovered. Elizabeth eventually became a school teacher and raised her sister's daughter after she died.

The story really threw me. I had to sit with it for a few minutes. We take so much for granted now. Not just things like laundry detergent and spreadable butter, which do make our lives much, much easier. But we really take for granted the way we can so easily communicate and experience communication. It gave me a chill, a shiver of appreciation for all that we have. Not just quick laundry and butter that easily glides over toast. But the way in which we can express ourselves, explore who we and others are. Talk to friends night and day. We can read books, and scribble quick notes on paper or phones, and tell stories to each other. Real ones. Fictional ones. Pixel ones.

Words have power. Our stories have power. The ability to share experiences and lessen the burden of pain with others, has an immense power. And it wasn't always something we had. It's something many people still don't have.

Whenever I complain about how hard it is to write, I am going to try to remember Elizabeth Parker. A woman who was so driven to tell her story, to leave a mark of her existence, that she spent the precious few available hours of her day pricking her fingers and sewing the details of her life into cloth, because it was her only means of satisfying the very human and real need to be seen and heard. And our ability to so easily do that now, isn't something I want to take for granted.

A tiny gift for @luckyqueenreign.

May your thoughts be impure and your route messy AF.

They're the real double trouble, I can already tell.

By any chance can you put man bun next to Roberto? I’m tryna see something…

Making images isn't a thing I usually do, but... this is for science, right?

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Ahem. Yes. Science.

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Dear god, thank you for the ask.