You two fill my holes… no. wait.

these boys own me

So, let’s talk Heated Rivalry because I cannot get it out of my head.

I have been so good about not watching the show on repeat because whenever I have watched it, it gets my full attention. Kind of hard to put it on in the background and do stuff… I’m also kind of annoyed with it. I found my original Drarry plot / sketch notebook and it’s like Tierney and Reid went through it page by page. There are just too many hockey tropes that writers - me included - lean on, but they did it better. Yeah. I’ve been fighting with the Drarry hockey disaster for years so now I’m on draft three. I’m trying to get away from the tropes, yet still fit in the framework that people find familiar.

Honestly, as annoying as it is to start fresh, the writing is better this time around. Or, at least, I like it better.

I finished all the books and I’m also very annoyed at the people on Facebook who are asking stupid questions about things that happen in the books, but say that they refuse to read them. OR they only read the two books that center on Hollanov, and miss the subtle things woven throughout the six books. Like Ilya colllecting gay people… It’s this whole thing that you don’t really catch on to, but it’s there. REALLY subtle and nicely done.

I’m also annoyed by the Skip haters who, well, skip their episode because they ‘don’t like it’. My siblings in Christ, if it wasn’t for Skip, WE WOULD NEVER GO TO THE COTTAGE. I think the show did the book dirty because the relationship was weird and angsty and kind of beautiful in it’s own way. I have to say that during every reheat I yell “SKIPPY” every time I see them on screen, I like them that much.

The cats are starting to worry about my mental health.

They don’t even know the amount of crazy I can bring to the party.

I could go on, but let’s talk about the title of this entry. Which, oddly enough, has nothing to do with the two hockey players.

I’ve been in a weird place lately. Not quite depressed, not quite manic, but definitely not normal. I’d say I’m cycling but it doesn’t feel like that, either. I’m stuck in this weird off-center bipolar limbo. Even my shrink picked up on it when we met this week. I don’t know. It is what it is and nothing is fixing it. I’m just going to ride it out and hope I come out the other side soon. I thought I’ve experienced everything the bipolar could possibly throw at me, but this is new. And I don’t like it.

This weird little place my brain is residing in led to me to texting Mr. First Guy and telling him I wish we were watching the BOS-MTL game together. We’re both huge Bruins fans and our favourite player is Andy Moog, a goalie. He shares a birthday with Moog and I share a birthday with Bobby Orr, so it’s like we were meant to be. We have, however, in the years since high school become friends. Good friends. Besties. It’s not outside the realm of possibility for us to go to a game together, or even watch a game on TV. More importantly, it’s a completely valid emotional response to watching the biggest rivalry in hockey. (Which, OK. Fine. The rivalry in Heated Rivalry is also BOS-MTL, which lead a bunch of fangirls to watch that game. Whatever. It’s weird, but, you do you, boo.)

During this conversation, I brought up Mr. FNFTF and said how the two of them have really helped me survive through the years. Like they filled two holes in me. Which, thankfully, didn’t go anywhere further than ‘shared trauma’ being the glue keeping them in my life. They were both around when my mother died and they were there when my dad died, too. I know my dad’s death affected Mr. FNFTF because they used to hang out without me. Which is weird, but gives me the warm fuzzies. I’m just fortunate that I still have people around from that time period because I don’t have a lot of people left who were there. A lot of people only saw the fallout from my mother’s death or they saw me hit rock bottom after my dad died. The people that came in and out of my life in the 10 years between just don’t get me. Neither do the ones that came in after my dad. I don’t know how to describe it. I mean, those are life changing events and they really form the basis of who I am. To not see the whole picture…

When Mr. First Time told me he loved me in that text conversation, I broke down and bawled. Ugly cried. It was so good to hear it - unprovoked and knowing exactly where it was coming from. I didn’t realise how alone I’d been feeling until he reminded me that I still have some worth to people. (Depression lies. Period.)

Everybody is fascinated by how easily I walked away from a relationship of 30 years, married for 26, but after all those years of riding the bipolar roller coaster with me, he still didn’t understand what I needed. And I wanted to move back to New England. Neither was something we could compromise on and I’d go so far as to state that keeping that relationship going was a compromise, but I wasn’t willing to continue doing it any more. We haven’t spoken in any way, shape, or form since his text asking how the drive to Maine was. I certainly didn’t go out of my way to text him on his birthday - I didn’t feel the need to. Unlike the other two, I don’t need him in my life and more importantly, I don’t want him there, either.

So. Yeah. It’s nice to be understood. It’s nice to be wanted. It’s nice to have, um, holes filled.

And on a completely random note, the breeder we got G-Man from has a new litter of puppies. I’ve wanted a dog, but I’ve been flip flopping over what breed to get. For $3,800 I can get an amazing German Shepherd. Good temperament, breed to be gorgeous, and smart as fuck. BUT that is a lot of cash I don’t really have unless I dig into my savings and my house really needs to have the vinyl siding replaced. Decisions, decisions. I think I’d rather spend the money on a dog, tbh. Not sure the cats will agree, though. The breeder hasn’t asked for a deposit, so I’m just going to wait and see if I make it to the reservation list or the wait list. I haven’t heard back.

Even more random, Fandom Running Club is doing it’s first Rumble of the year. I’m on a team (Razoom’s Back!) that’s fundraising for Razom for Ukraine. The race has three different groups with different caps (5K, 10K, 10 miles) to make it more competitive. My dumb ass has consistently been doing 10 miles since we started 16 days ago. I could drop to a lower level. I want to drop to a lower level, but I also want to win and doing 10 a day will keep us competitive. I mean, I can’t bitch about my teammates. We all have things going on and it’s easier to do lower miles. I’m not that busy. I can spend 4 hours on a treadmill, no problem. My feet don’t want me to - I have blisters EVERYWHERE. My toes are killing me and since 10 different blisters in that area wasn’t enough, they’ve moved onto my heel.  I don’t care. I can live with the pain. Ukrainians are dealing with a lot worse than blistered feet.

Even even more random, I have FINALLY moved into the kitchen. I ended up ripping out one of the lazy susans and finding some pull out drawers on clearance at Home Depot. The cabinets are much more functional now. Every thing I can’t fit is in the dining room. That was on my agenda to clean this weekend, but I tore the living room apart instead. I needed more light and I needed more space between the couch, pellet stove, and treadmill. The good news is that the living room is spotless and the kitchen is finally livable. I’ll get to the dining room soon. I do need the house as clean as possible ASAP. I’m tired of living like this. It just sucks that my time is so limited. (Also, the puppies will be ready to go home in March, so I have extra motivation.)

Speaking of things to do… I should probably get to my to-do list. I’m hopping on the treadmill for the Stupid Bowl if only because I want to see how Green Day and Bad Bunny comment on the current state of the union…. which only leaves me 5 hours to try to do eleventy gazillion things.

I’m coming to the cottage

This fucking scene broke me in all the right ways…

Jesus fucking Christ. Do you people even know me?

I love hockey.

I love MM relationships.

I love porn.

So, OF COURSE, I will absolutely lose my mind for MM hockey porn.

I had no idea that was a secret.

It’s not like I’ve hidden my love for MM fiction nor talk about writing it (including the absolutely frustrating Drarry Hockey Disaster. I swear to fucking god, if I ever finish it that will be the title because it is fighting me every step of the way. )

I’m published on AO3 for fuck’s sake and all of them are focused on MM relationships.

Imagine my surprise when my phone, email, and DMs started BLOWING THE FUCK UP with people asking me if I’d heard of Heated Rivalry and if I’ve read the book or watched the show.

The Game Changers series has been on my TBR forever; I was a little burned out on hockey but I decided to start reading them if only to get everyone to shut the fuck up.

Holy. Mother. Of. Fucking. Fuckity. Fuck.

I really enjoyed the first two and then I stopped to watch the show since it only covered the first two books.

Did I say Holy. Mother. Of. Fucking. Fuckity. Fuck. already?

How about Motherfucking Jumping Jesus Fucking Christ on a Motherfucking Pogo Stick.?

Fuck.

That show really needs to come with a warning because it took everything that was amazing in the book and…

Fuck.

“Will you come to my cottage this summer? Don’t go to Russia. Come to my house. We’ll have so much fun. It’s so private. No one will know.” absolutely shattered me.

SHATTERED.

I AM BROKEN.

I AM IN PIECES.

 

I swear, MM hockey porn is going to be the fucking death of me.

What a way to go.

EDIT: I had to change the title because I kept getting shit for “misquoting” the line. No. I wasn’t quoting it…but whatever. Ya’ll are some psychos.

Stop the ride! I want to get off!

I have no idea how this was downloaded and placed on my desktop, I swear! #dopey2027

Holy shit, has it been a crazy few months.

The day job was sold on the 30th of September, but the high level conversations started back in July.

In my role as Controller, I was called on constantly to provide financial statements, proofread legal documents, and literally carry the weight of the world on my shoulders. I had scared coworkers calling me non-stop, some crying, some digging for details I wanted to provide, but couldn’t. The stress got so bad that the owner freaked out on me during a meeting with the CPAs and basically told me I didn’t know what I was talking about.

I threatened to quit. And I meant it. Even though I didn’t have a backup plan.

I’d given the owner so much grace and let so much roll off my back, but to be talked to like that in front of my peers… It literally took two people to talk me into staying.

And through all of this, I’d been terrified that I was getting fired, too. The purchasers don’t need another accountant; they already have a huge staff (although one did quit just as the sale was going through.)

Apparently, I’m keeping my job - for now - because they think I’m ‘capable’. What a glowing commentary on my 20 years of experience.

I’m also being micromanaged. A meeting every Friday that can LITERALLY be emails.

I fucking hate meetings.

So yeah, there’s been a lot and putting it into writing like that definitely downplays the amount of stress and the absolute mess that the sale was.

In happier news, I finally moved into my home office. I still have a box of two in here that needs to be sorted. I’m so happy I pulled the carpet in here. Yeah, the floor is damaged in some spots to the point where I was ready to grab my sander and refinish it myself. I decided to wait until I pull the remaining carpet in the house. 

My living room is set up (including a honking huge treadmill to replace the one that got STOLEN BY THE MOVERS.) The bathroom is a bathroom. The kitchen / dining room is a shitshow because I emptied out all the cabinets and drawers and still can’t figure out where everything should live. The room that was supposed to be my craft room is still full of boxes and needs to be painted. My bedroom is finally emptied of all the shit, I have curtains, and a closet!

And what a fucking adventure that closet was.

It absolutely stunk like smoke and the shelf / closet rod were sticky with nicotine. There was wood paneling on the walls that seem to absorb it all, too. 

I ended up covering all the seams in the paneling and giving it SEVERAL coats of a shellac based primer. Then, once I finally couldn’t smell smoke and the nicotine stopped bleeding through, I gave it several coats of a boring white paint. I even installed a closet kit. I mostly did it right. The one rod wasn’t cut short enough, so it’s really wedged in there. The other one is a little slanted, despite being measured three different times. I also checked that it was level. It’s a later problem. I just needed the closet to be functional.

All of my appliances have finally been installed, which was also an adventure. Despite measuring the fridge several times, the damn door kept getting stuck on the wall trim. If we pulled the fridge out, it blocked the doorway. I decided that I needed a smaller, back ordered fridge. (Because, of course, it’s back ordered.) The kitchen was installed in June. The fridge came after Labor Day. I *barely* got my rebate because of the delay and the fact that I screwed up the rebate form because I already filled out the form with the old fridge’s information, with the exception of the fridge serial number. The new serial number didn’t match the old fridge’s model number, so there were a couple of conversations with the rebate support team.

I had to replace the garage door and opener, which was $2,500 I wasn’t expecting to pay out of pocket. The one-size-fits-all door opener I picked up is not one-size-fits-all and I really wanted an opener. Once I started using the garage door more frequently, I realised that the door was popping out of the track and was really damaged. Like backed into it several times and possibly dropped on the hood of a car damaged. With winter coming, there was no way I was leaving the car on the driveway. So… yeah. Merry fucking Christmas, Wendell.

All this to say, HOLY FUCK DO I LOVE TECHNOLOGY.

My fridge beeps at me if I leave the door open too long. The microwave tells me when it’s done. The stove tells me when it’s preheated. The washer and dryer alert me when the cycles end. And the coolest thing of all? I can open the garage door from my phone!!! (Now if only I could get a remote car starter… the one downside of driving a stick shift.)

Speaking of Christmas, my house is half ass decorated. I put up a nekkid tree BEFORE THANKSGIVING and I’ve putting shit around the house as it comes from Amazon and Etsy. (The tree will continue to be nekkid until the cats stop climbing it… so probably until I take it down. At least it’s a cheap ass fake tree.)

This is noteworthy because

1) I’ve never liked Christmas. The whole gift giving thing makes me uncomfortable - like, here! I barely know you, but society says I have to buy you something. Or, thanks for the scarf. I’ve only knitted fourteen thousand of them for myself. 

2) Empty chairs at empty tables.

So yeah, no Christmas music, no Christmas decorations, until long after Thanksgiving. And that only happened because of the ex.

However, we used to go to Universal for Grinchmas and the Christmas parade every year - and the fucking story resonated with me so much that now, my first Non-Grinchmas Christmas, I have Grinch shit EVERYWHERE.

And the Grinch, with his Grinch-feet ice cold in the snow,
stood puzzling and puzzling, how could it be so?
It came without ribbons. It came without tags.
It came without packages, boxes or bags.
And he puzzled and puzzled ‘till his puzzler was sore.
Then the Grinch thought of something he hadn’t before.
What if Christmas, he thought, doesn’t come from a store.
What if Christmas, perhaps, means a little bit more.

So yeah. Happy Turkey Day - or if you’re like me, happy first day of a much needed four day vacation where some turkey may or may not be consumed.

The Amazing Adventures of BeFri and StEnds

for the longest time there were two of us and we were inseparable

Ya’ll know I hold on to shit.

So, let’s visit some ancient history, shall we?

Back in preschool, I met this girl. We stayed friends all the way through until a stupid argument in our freshman year of college. I didn’t like her girlfriend and didn’t want to hang out with her (and the girlfriend) the one night we were able to hang out. She thought it was because I didn’t like that she was gay. Me? Have a problem with gay people? Haaaaaaave you met me? Thanks, T, for the 30-ish year disruption in our bestie-ness.

Asshole.

We reconnected over MySpace and moved it over to FB but we don’t live in each other’s orbits any more and well… we just never made an effort to see each other after we cleared the air.

Why am I friends with so many introverts who never want to hang out?

That’s rhetorical. Like calls to like.

N’s mother died after a long illness. I was so far out of the loop that I didn’t even know she’d been sick. When I saw the obit, I gave it a day or two before I popped into her DMs and was like, I know we haven’t been friends since college, but if you need to talk about losing a parent, I’m here.

The floodgates didn’t open. It wasn’t like we started partying like it was 1993. But it opened a line of conversation we hadn’t had in years.

The wake and service were three hours south, but this is a woman I would have flown back to honour. No matter what cost.

Yeah.

I decided to go to the wake and the service and the burial.

It was amazing to see N again, even if the situation was uncomfortable. We made plans to hang out, but who knows. It was enough just to see her and be there for her.

Plus, the wife? I want someone to love me as much as E loves N. No shovel talk necessary. She’s good people. I approve.

I was talking to one of our mutual friends and we were talking about how we had distilled our high school clique into two long lasting friendships. N had S and Soulmate Boy (!), I have two ex-boyfriends as my high school era besties.

God, that is soooo weird to say.

My First Boy (that means exactly what you think it means) and Mr. We’re Better As Friends With Benefits Than We Are Boyfriend and Girlfriend.

But, I still love both dearly. Although not with that heart eyed teenage love nonsense. More like the we have lived through hell and survived, I couldn’t do it without you, sort of love. Platonic-ish? I have no idea… Gratitude + respect + familiarity. Whatever that equals. Platonic love is probably the best description, but there is something more to how I feel about them.

And I’m definitely not interested in falling back into bed with either of them.

Everyone tells me how weird it is that I’m friends with both of them. I don’t know why everyone thinks it’s so strange. Friends are friends are friends. It doesn’t matter how they enter your life, only that they stay around when the shit hits the fan. Both of them stayed.

Mr. FNFTF and I got together a bazillion years ago at our old stomping grounds and it WAS weird to think that we were able to get past our rough breakup and then screw around and then remain friends when it fizzled out. (That’s a sentence I never want an English teacher to see.)

I think some people are really meant to fulfill a certain purpose in your life… and sometimes, that purpose changes. FNFTF was a halfway decent boyfriend and then scratched an itch when it needed to be scratched and then he became someone to lean on. 

The First Boy was a great boyfriend the first time. Kind of OK the second time. Friendzoned since before my father died.

It’s my understanding that I’m the reason he reconnected with his father and that side of the family.

Yup.

Besties for life.

My ride or dies.

But I don’t describe them as ex-boyfriends often. It’s just that S and I were in the same clique as the two boys and she knew both of them. She knew I slept with both of them… it wasn’t like I could reshape the narrative.

Anywhoo…

It’s a thousand fucking degrees up in northern Maine and it’s impossible to find fans any where. I could get a window unit (Air Con), but those are a pain in the ass.

It’s even humid enough that I had to buy a dehumidifier.

I even slept on the couch last night so I didn’t have to try and hit the fan into my over crowded bedroom.

Side note: that cheap little couch is comfy as fuck.

Definitely doing that again tonight.

It’s too hot to think and it’s definitely too hot to sit in front of the computer… I have more to say (don’t I always?) but that’s a post for a later date.

The war on… Choose Your Own Adventure

At this rate, I’ve cared about more people that I can count…

I’ve struggled with the idea that I’m running out of time on this Earth. I’ve outlived my mother by four years, and in six, I will have outlived my father.

So, hearing the news that Chicken Taco (is that redundant?) decided to bomb Iran put that fear into overtime.

We can’t help Ukraine, but we can get involved in the Middle East? Wait, the orange turd has business deals over there so this will probably help his business prospects. You know, using his public office for personal gain. Which is, of course, illegal. But when you’re surrounded by psychopaths and sycophants it’s a lot easier to do whatever the hell you want. God, the amount of lies he and his staff have told alone would have gotten a Democrat removed from office in their first week… but the people who voted for him fell for every single lie on the campaign trail and every lie since then. It honestly makes me sick that people are that fucking stupid.

I didn’t like Harris, but I voted for her (and would have voted for Biden who I liked even less) because I didn’t want the tangerine twatwaffle’s Project 2025 plans to come into fruition.

And we’re watching them cross off every single item on that list.

But, he didn’t know anything about P2025.

BULLSHIT.

And then there’s the war on women - pick your flavour: trans, cis, masc facing cis, pregnant, infertile, dead.

Let’s talk about that last one, shall we?

ADRIANA SMITH

The story goes that this woman was having headaches and went to the hospital. She sought care and instead she was sent home with meds. That’s it.

No CT scans, no overnight observations.

I don’t know about you, but I wouldn’t run to the hospital for just a headache. They had to be pretty severe, no?

The next morning, she was finally admitted to the hospital, got her CT scans, got her diagnosis, and died. She was declared brain dead. In FEBRUARY.

And this is where the story goes all Handmaid’s Tale.

Apparently, there was some “confusion” in interpreting Georgia’s anti-abortion laws.

So… The family says that doctors told them they had to keep Smith on life support until the fetus was viable. The family did not have a choice in that matter. They won’t say what they would have chosen as a family, but the end result is that the hospital kept this dead woman on life support so that she could serve as an incubator. They just performed a C-Section (abortion, autopsy… it’s been described a dozen ways.) to remove the baby from her. It is June 22nd. Do you know why they had to remove the baby?  Because after four months and three days on life support, her body was starting to decompose. Supposedly, but I wouldn’t doubt it. Also… how can that be good for the baby? It’s getting pumped full of chemicals and shit.

The reason the doctors kept the corpse as an incubator: Georgia abortion law. Specifically the LIFE Act. You cannot have an abortion after the heartbeats become detectable. That’s around six weeks. She was eight or nine weeks pregnant when she died. There’s also the small matter of 2007’s law that doctors can’t remove life support from a pregnant woman unless the child isn’t viable or there was the pregnancy equivalent of a DNR…

We need to get rid of the fetal personhood laws at a fucking minimum. A fetus is a fucking parasite. (Vocab lesson: Parasites are organisms that depend on a host to survive.) Until that baby comes out it has absolutely zero fucking rights. I’m sorry. Taking her off of life support would not have been an abortion… like, what would have happened if she didn’t make it to the hospital and died at home? If the host dies, the parasite dies, too. That’s the way it should be. That’s the way nature works.

But no.

Now we have a one pound baby in the NICU who may or may not make it. And if they make it, what’s that going to look like in terms of care required? You can’t tell me that this kid is going to be 100% OK. There has to be some sort of issues. They already thought the kid might have fluid on the brain and might be blind, assuming that the baby was even viable.

In the meantime, do you know who’s paying all these hospital bills? Not the state. Not the hospital. The fucking family. Again, nobody knows what they would have done, given the choice. Especially them, but they deserved the right to choose.

It’s absolutely ridiculous how the hospital and the state handled this. It’s cruel. It’s unfathomable. It’s immoral. It’s a law written by men for men.

Nobody fucking cares about the women involved.

And the kicker in all of this?

She was black. Black women already have less access to health care… if she were white, would the hospital have taken her concerns seriously during her first trip? Honestly? I think so.

The end result out of all of this:

Who would have thought you need to declare that you don’t want to be kept alive as an incubator if you should die while pregnant? (Apparently, that was the way out of this mess. Again, it had to be declared ahead of time, like a DNR or organ donation.) WHO THE FUCK WOULD THINK ABOUT THAT?

(Also, this exact situation was an episode of the Handmaid’s Tale. If you really want to understand how little women are valued in the US today, just watch that. It’s on Hulu. I’ll gift you a subscription.)

So yeah. I’m all worked up and pissed off. It’s also pouring so I can’t take all my trash outside… I can’t even go to the garage and get the ceiling fan without getting soaked. I guess I’ll tear up the carpet and worry about the electrical later? I have to call someone in about the closet in that room anyway. Since I’m hiring a handy man, maybe they can finish swapping out the fixtures, switches, and outlets???

Well, I’m starving and I still haven’t found a pizza place, so I guess the frozen one in the fridge will have to do.