I praise God. He is my savior and my higher power. I’m not a bible thumper by no means, but I truly believe that he was by my side when I should have been dead, not once, but twice.

The first rescue was on April 25th, 2007, when I was in a bad car crash where I was ejected, then thrown from my vehicle. I should have died and I didn’t.

The second rescue was on June 1st, 2014, while I was in the midst of my addiction. I bought a pain pill, so I thought it was a pain pill, but it was an anti-anxiety pill instead. I consumed it and it had an adverse effect due to the other medications I was taking at the time. Consequently, I overdosed and nearly died as a result, but I didn’t. It wasn’t until then I realized that something or someone had my back the entire time, both situations, both times.

Today, I’m lucky to be alive and I’m thankful. I pray each night and I thank him for all the blessings he’s given to me and this is where ‘praise and pray’ play a major role in this story. Praise the Lord, give thanks and pray!

Built solidly,

Upon a foundation of love,

Nourished with years of compassion,

I quickly grew

My walls expanded,

Until I was no longer so little

My exterior, normal, unassuming,

Hid the flawed interior within

I suffered losses here and there,

Shed the innocence of childhood,

As I viewed the ways of the world

It was what most adolescents go through

It was only the last few years

That wrecked my interior so

Familial issues, stemming from addiction,

Took root

My mind, my heart, my soul

All battered from the ensuing struggle

Days of depression,

Feelings of hopelessness,

A sense of being lost,

With no stars to point home

This temple of mine

Has undoubtedly weathered some,

But just like any sturdy house,

It continues to stand tall

A smaller place, a vintage home

Her fascia showing age

Designed after her mother

Feminine, eaves braced

Foundation, brick, for strength to bear

All the weight; her structure

Along her roofline, rain gutters

For tears of joy and laughter

All-weather, lifetime coating

To brave the elements

Siding dates her ’mong the rest

And her gabled vent

A vent that’s there to circulate

The attic air, but more

In case her fire spreads atop

Burning, uncontrolled

Her steps lead up toward her porch

Wooden, with a swing

Just steps away from her front door

Closed, yet still inviting

Inside, her ceiling, crafted

Intricate with time

In extra steps of detail

Fancy cornice mold design

Center, sits tiled hearth and stove

Her warmth; kindled and burning

Her guests enter from winter’s chill

To find it welcoming

Her family room for gathering

Informal, leading toward

Her kitchen’s open living space

Sharing of her love

And rooms, several, of smaller size

Suiting each, her dear ones

Larger, though, the master

Where she rests, undone

Not everyone is welcome there

The room set furthest back

The antique door kept closed the most

Where wooden floor meets tack

Her windows, French and double-pane

To keep world’s cold air out

With shutters, screens, crank openings

To let her warmth about

Marbled are her window sills

For function and for taste

Preserving of her fragile frame

Careful care ’did take

When craftsman in her mother’s womb

Did measure, build, create

Inside, outside - plans drawn up

A house, by love, was made

Improvement: Under the Hood

We’ve made a lot of changes under the hood to improve the performance and reliability of the website. The site will now be much smarter about remembering and saving the pages you’ve recently viewed. In the short term, there may be a few bugs, so please let us know if you run into anything.

Improvement: Cacheing

Everything you view will now be locally cached. For example, after publishing a post, you won’t have to wait for the post to load to view it. If you click a challenge in the challenge feed, it’ll load instantly. You should notice these effects across the site.

Improvement: Messaging

Clicking different messaging conversations and messaging multiple users at once should now be much faster and more responsive. A bug has also been fixed that prevented the messaging window from automatically scrolling as you send and receive messages.

Improvement: Feed Loading

When visiting new pages or new post feeds, the previous feed will no longer linger while the new feed loads. This caused some confusion when loading a new feed failed or took longer than usual.

Bug Fix: Facebook Share

The Facebook Share button now works as intended.

Bug Fix: Read Count

The read count indicator will no longer increment when editing a post.

Are there any other bugs, difficulties, or inconsistencies you’d like to see fixed? Let us know in the comments below.

My future self is watching me right now through a memory.

I wonder if she's laughing her heads off

Or

Still crying for my stupidity.

I hope it's the former.

A damp cloth

Wrinkled wet

To dry, not yet

A dying moth

Stuck between

Pane and screen

Foamy froth

Into mouth, pills

Pretend pain stills

Too hot broth

Wait and sit

Can't rush it

Red at night, sailors delight. Red in the morning, sailors take warning.

This had been true ever since chickens first invented the dirt sailing ships, and it was still true today. And, as long as there has been ships, there have been pirates, but pirates were sailors too. The red tinted sky boded ill for the fiercest and cleverest pirate ever to sail the brown dirt seas, Black Wattle. A worried frown creased his beak as he considered this omen.

He thought about his ship, the Dirt Rider. It was the fastest ship to ever sail the potato fields, and it plowed through the furrows like a beak cutting through a plump grub. No, he needn’t worry about this ship.

He then turned his thoughts to his crew. They were hearty lads, with unparalleled experience. Blue beak was a master navigator, and could cross the road with his eyes closed, without even knowing the reason why. Rhode Island Red Beard was the best gunnery sergeant in the entire fleet. There wasn’t a gun or munitions that Red Beard hadn’t been able to master. No, he needn’t worry there either. Even his stores were in good shape. Sure, they had to tap the biscuits to get the weevils out, but every sailor learned to avoid thinking about the biscuit, but instead focused on the tasty weevil.

He was probably worrying about nothing. They had been successful day after day raiding the potato fields for the lucrative wire worm, the delectable Colorado potato beetle, and the delicacy of all delicacies, the tuber flea beetle. Even the minute pirate bugs futilely fled in fear whenever his ship came into view [1]. But maybe that was the problem, it had been almost too easy.

His reverie was broken when he heard the squawking of the alarm, and the dreaded call “Weasel Ho”!

“All wings to the braces!” he clucked instantly. “Hard-a lee!” Maybe he could turn and run before the weasel noticed him. And for a second, he thought he might get away with it. But the sky was not red this morning for nothing, the weasel caught a glimpse of them and the chase was on.

Weasels were the worst fear of every sailing bird. They were natural born killing machines, and the weasels had never lost a battle in a head to head fight. Black Wattle’s only chance was to out- run or out-wit him, and even that was long shot. He would have to pull out every stop, use every trick, and coax every last bit of speed from old Dirt Rider, if he hoped to live to see tomorrow. He sent Hawk Eye up to the crow’s nest to keep him informed on the weasel’s progress.

“Weasel two points off the starboard quarter. Range 10 furrows and closing fast!”, shouted Hawk eye, Over the next hour, Black Wattle tried every trick he knew. He tacked, he jibed, and he put up more sail and tried to out run him. Perhaps with the wind behind him the weasel would lose his scent.

“Weasel dead astern , range 3 furrows and closing!” shouted Hawk eye.

Black Wattle was beginning to lose hope. He urged his crew on even harder .

“Put your backs to it, you gizzard goobers!” he shouted to his crew. “No slacking off or you’ll get a taste of the cat!”

The crew was now straining at its limit. No one wanted to be tasted by a cat. But it appeared to be too little, too late.

“Weasel dead astern, distance one furrow! He’s doing his war dance!”

The crew slumped in defeat, they knew that weasel only did his war dance when he had his prey hopelessly cornered. He was twisting, darting and dancing, all the time with the evil weasel grin showing off his razor sharp teeth [2]. The crew began to despair, and several of his mates fainted from fight. The Fryer went from crew to crew offering last rites. Even Black Wattle began to think he would never make it home to see his hen again.

Just then Red Beard approached tentatively.

“Captain, I may have an idea”, he said. “It sounds kind of crazy, but the mates have been catching the rats on board and feeding them, keeping them as pets”. Red Beard continued to explain his idea, and after more back-and-forth discussion Black Wattle decided they didn’t have anything to lose.

“Hurry and bring up the rats.” Black Wattle shouted. He then loaded the rats into the cannons and aimed them at the weasel. “Don’t fire until I give the signal or I will fricassee your giblets!” he squawked at his crew.

When the crew saw what the captain planned, they despaired even more.

“We’ll be stew meat!” they cried. “Shooting rats at the weasel won’t stop it! We’re only succeeding in giving it an appetizer!”

Time seemed to slow as the weasel began his final charge.

“Fire!” Black wattle bellowed.

The rats shot through the air with a rat-a-tat-tat , and hurtled toward the weasel. All eyes watched as the rats sailed majestically though the air right towards the weasel’s head, and the crew held its breath.

And then, the rats missed, and sailed harmlessly past the weasel’s head. The crew let out a collective moan of despair as their last gamut failed. But there was a grim smile on Captain Wattles beak. He kept watching as the weasel’s eyes tracked the rats as they sailed past. He knew that weasels often attacked any movement by shear instinct [3], and as the rats sailed past, the weasel forgot about the Dirt Rider, and pounced on the rats. He darted right, then left, trying to catch them all before they escaped. In the confusion, the Dirt Rider was able to sneak away to safety.

That night as they feasted on wire worms, and they retold the story over and over again of Captain Black Wattle, and the battle of the weasel. They extolled the wisdom of Rhode Island Red Beard, and his invention of rat chaff, which has been used ever since by friend and fowl alike to evade the fierce weasels.

Now it would be nice if the heroic chickens [4] lived happily ever after. But unfortunately, the law of unintended consequences reared its ugly head, and the weasels soon learned that they could get a free meal of rats by chasing the chicken pirates, and it only increased the weasels attacks, until eventually the chickens ran out of rats. Then the weasels turned on the chicken pirates and ate them all up. That is why you don’t see the chicken pirates and their dirt riding ships any longer.

Footnotes:

[1] Those are all real potato pest names.

[2] Weasels really do perform a war dance when they have their prey cornered, although no one really knows why. There have been observances of the prey dying of fright when this happens, but sometimes the weasel does the war dance by himself for no apparent reason

[3] Also true

[4] A phrase you don’t hear very often

Crying,

tears like razors

shred my anger to ribbons.

I am undone

and she has won this battle.

Clever girl,

pretending to be fragile.

you need characters

and a plot

______

| ✽ ⚘ ⚘|

|✿ ⚘✾ |

| ❀＿_|

aha,

a plot of land

made of characters.

Walking around the store

You see the dress you want

You love

You desire

But

It’s a fucking size

Too small

You sigh

You didn’t have

The money anyway

But it’s so cute

You continue

Through the store

But you can’t escape

From the clutches

Of that outfit

It was everything

It was you

And you make

The terrible decision

To take it

To try it on

Ignoring the little voice in your head

Dumbass

You give in

You slip it over your head

And it’s tight

Just as you expected

But it’s so cute

And just so you

And you can’t say no

That bill that’s due in a few days

Will just have to wait

This could work

But now comes the hardest part

Parting with the dress

No, of course you’re going to buy it

But you have to get it off

In order to pay for it

You didn’t think about that

Did you?

There’s two ways

That this plays out in the movies

A mother helping her child

In a heartwarming scene

As she slips the shirt off the child

Readying him for bed

A sweet bonding moment

As she whispers

I’ll always be here for you

The other

A sexy frame in time

As you give in

Allowing him to see you

In the moonlight for the first time

Revealing your naked beauty

Because for some reason

Women in these movies

Don’t wear a bra

And you can’t tell…

He leans in for a kiss

And it warms your everything

Sadly,

You’re in neither of these situations

You’re alone

In a dressing room

Because you never

Really liked the idea of shopping

With other people

Let alone shopping at all

You can’t call for help

Because that’d be embarrassing

You should have never

Tried on the damn dress in the first place

I told you that

So you begin the

Tumultuous journey

Of wriggling out of it

And it’s over your head

Your hands stretched out

Almost there…

There’s a knock on the door

And you’re terrified

Stuck in one of the most

Compromising positions you’ve been in

Since your mother caught you

With your boyfriend at 16

Are you alright in there??

How are you supposed to

Answer that question?

You mumble a soft yes

Through the cloth of the one dress

That warmed your heart

Moments before

It’s the same feeling

You get when the waiter

Asks how your food is

While you’re still chewing

And it’s off

Finally.

You’re never going to do that again

Well… at least until next time

And before you ask,

No, I’m not sure why’d you think

I’ve ever been in that situation