Premise

C.G. Macington brings us a gripping apocalyptic romance set during a devastating global pandemic threatening to end the world as we know it. I signed up to read this ARC, knowing the apocalyptic themes could trigger me. I think a reading about an extremely deadly global pandemic could trigger the whole world, as we have lived through, and somewhat still are living through, a global pandemic of our own. The virus in Outbreak Protocol, however, makes COVID-19 look like the common cold. So our pandemic was much less virulent but people still have trauma from events that happened there. Especially if you lost loved ones from Covid.

Apocalyptic… Romance?

The combination of a romance and a medical thriller drew me in initially. It seemed an interesting place to set a romance. But let me tell you, it delivered on what I anticipated: a gut-clenching journey of discovery and survival for the two main characters and also for the world at large. 

Hook

Within the first few chapters, readers will be hooked. The pacing is just right to set the tone of impending world breakdown. The apocalyptic situation is laid out within a few short chapters. The lonely scientist, driven by numbers, is tracking outbreaks of infectious disease. The on-the-ground emergency room physician who starts to notice disturbing trends. Hospital administration would much rather bury its head in the sand than proactively deal with a growing situation. 

This setup is both hand-wrenching and exciting, setting up the action. And my expectations were met: events start to feel like they are cascading out of control quickly and in brutal fashion.

Blurb 

One doctor saves lives from behind a screen. The other saves them with his hands. When the world ends, they are each other’s only hope.

Dr. Felix Müller trusts his gut, and his gut tells him the horrifying new illness tearing through his Hamburg ER is no ordinary flu. When his superiors ignore the mounting body count, Felix risks his career on a single, desperate email to a reclusive, brilliant epidemiologist who is his last resort.

Dr. Erik Lindqvist trusts in data, not gut feelings. For the reclusive scientist, emotions are a liability. He arrives in Hamburg expecting to correct a flawed analysis, but instead finds a city on the brink of collapse and a frontline doctor whose fiery compassion threatens to shatter the walls around his heart.

Forced into an uneasy alliance, the two men are the city’s first and last line of defense. But as the virus consumes Hamburg and military law is declared, their professional friction ignites into a desperate and dangerous intimacy. In the quiet moments between disasters, they find a connection that could be their only comfort—or a fatal distraction.

As the death toll climbs and the city is sealed from the world, they are in a desperate race for a cure. But the greatest threat might not be the evolving pathogen—it could be the terrifying choices they are forced to make about how much they are willing to sacrifice… and who.

Outbreak Protocol is a gut-wrenching, epic MM romance set against the backdrop of an apocalyptic medical thriller. A perfect story of opposites attract, hurt/comfort, and the found family that can rise from the ashes of the world. Prepare to have your heart seized.

220 pages, Kindle Edition
Published September 5, 2025
Genres: medical romance, medical thriller, apocalyptic romance, pandemic romance

The Pandemic Rundown: Plot Summary

Emergency Room doctor, Felix Müller, worked in pathology before he moved to the ER, driven by a need to connect directly with patients, to remember the humanity of practicing medicine, and not get mired in statistics. He has his finger, literally, on the pulse of Hamburg, Germany. He starts to see the concerning patterns of a growing novel pathogen running unchecked and undiscovered through ER patients presenting with concerning symptoms.

Patients have the sorts of fevers that are more common in warm, humid areas of the world. Fevers that come with haemorrhaging and complete organ shutdown. Viral hemorrhagic fevers are terrifying, honestly. Think: Ebola.

Felix’s gut tells him to start tracking data, so he does. Meticulously. His boss, though, largely wants to ignore the trends, dismissing them as a normal flu season. Felix knows instinctively that more is going on than a normal flu, especially as people continue to die.

He Risks His Career

After being dismissed over and over, and with mounting concern, he risks his career. He’s compelled to do the right thing. He breaks the chain of command and sends his findings to an ECDC scientist, Dr. Erik Lindqvist, who arrives on scene and quickly takes stock of the growing disaster.

Working together to mitigate the disaster, the two forge a bond that’s fast, fiery, and deep: the type of bond that happens because of trauma and seals the two together into a cohesive unit. They’re stronger together, and they absolutely need to be strong if they are both going to survive.

Character Growth Is Key

Dr. Lindqvist, a Swedish last name that I have little grasp on how to actually pronounce, is like a princess in a closed-off tower at first. He doesn’t see the numbers in his data as people. He set his life up purposely like this, after the death of his sister when he was young, which mentally destroyed him. Data is safe, even if the numbers represent real human lives at stake.

Dr. Müller, on the other hand, forcibly changed his life so he would see each patient as a rich human life worth saving. As the novel progresses, Felix’s perspective helps Erik to reshape his understanding of his role: he wants to stop the pandemic to save these real human lives, and his empathy grows beyond the numbers on his spreadsheet. He thaws, in a way, to better understand the urgency to save the world, as the virus causes society to come tumbling down.

Relationship Rings True

Relationships in times like this, apocalyptic times of strife, they develop quickly and without pretext. The two men are drawn to each other because each recognizes the strength within the other. They admire how they operate; they see things they want to emulate in the other.

Their partnership is perfect for an apocalyptic romance, and comes together in what would otherwise be a rush, but it works here. It’s not a romance that’s forcibly wedged into a medical thriller about a global apocalypse. Their developing feelings feel authentic and real. Full of determination to save each other and those important to them, the strong feelings they develop are hot and fast and steadfast. There’s no time to waste in terms of saving humanity or their growing feelings.

World-Building & Atmosphere

As the virus takes hold, the military takes over and works determinedly to keep the virus from spreading beyond Hamburg. What was once a normal hospital ER quickly becomes an apocalyptic hellscape. People are dying all over, bleeding from their eyes and mouths, medical staff are being infected, it’s a traumatic picture that will have readers remembering the early days of Covid and the panic that overtook hospitals as they became overburdened by the number of sick. 

This element is a potential trigger for some people, and readers should monitor their own feelings. We just got through the COVID pandemic not so long ago, and reliving the feelings with a fictional virus that is MUCH worse might cause some dark thoughts to resurface, especially because it’s done well in this book. Readers will remember the fear and uncertainty, the tractor-trailers of bodies, the general breakdown of systems, all too well. In fact, COVID is mentioned. This book is set in a world where COVID happened sometime in the recent past.

Medical Realism

I can’t fully speak to the medical realism in this story; I am not a doctor. But as a nonprofessional, it seems mostly implausible that a novel pathogen would have that high a Ro factor, or that high a fatality rate. But for the sake of the story, it’s an apocalyptic romance; it increases the urgency and works well. I also don’t put it past biology to evolve into such a virulent strain. Who knows what could happen, really. 

Grows

One area I had questions about after reading is what happened to the rest of the response team. Before the final chapters, readers spend much page time with important side characters. Sarah, with her fiery Irish tenacity. Yuki and her eidetic memory analyze model after model of pandemic data. Aleksandr’s military precision sets the containment protocols.

Late in the book, after a lot of last-resort, horrible things happen in an attempt to contain the disastrous virus that will end humanity as we know it, the very tight-knit team that works together tirelessly for the rest of the book is just poof, gone.

Last Mentions

Yuki and Aleksandr are last mentioned at 90% completion. Sarah is last mentioned at 92%. As I read, I feared that meant they had died, but I wasn’t sure.

If someone’s death isn’t described on the page or mentioned, the reader doesn’t know. Mentally, I would like at least one line to know they’re alive and well at the end, because it’s a fairly bleak ending, even with our central characters HFN. I can’t say it’s a HEA because, well… Pandemic, ya know.

Recommendation

I enjoyed this story, but it is something entirely different from a lot of other MM romance subgenres. I tend to like unique things, and a lot of readers of MM romance do, so I recommend this book. However, watch your mental health on this one. We all carry hidden triggers from Covid times, whether it’s something we talk about these days or not.

Review Paragraph

I received a free copy of this apocalyptic romance via BookSirens and am voluntarily leaving a review. I write reviews on my blog, Goodreads, Bookbub, Amazon, and more. If you want me to read and review your upcoming novel read my review policy and submit a contact form.

The post Apocalyptic Romance Review: Outbreak Protocol  appeared first on Fae’s Journal.

Last Time

Last term I looked at DJT with derision, and rolled my eyes at everything he did. Because it seemed like he came in after the inauguration completely inept, and unprepared to fulfill the duties of his position, and everyone around him seemed like they were equally scrambled as they made the transition from private business to public governmental officials. He had blunder after blunder and they were horrible, and rage-inducing, but there was an overall feel in my social circles of “look at that buffoon he really has no clue, does he?”

All That Has Changed

That’s not what’s happened this time around. No. He and his people have had time to prepare. They published it all for anyone to see in Project 2025. And now? The moment he was sworn in they came in and began implementing all those horrible initiatives at breakneck speed.

Illegal and Dangerous

Not that he has any legality to be doing all that he’s doing. There’s nothing the government likes more than procedures and standards. There’s a way to do things. that DJT seems to think he’s entirely exempt from. But he’s steamrolling through and no one in his camp is willing to stop him. And there’s seemingly little anyone can do with a president who’s determined he doesn’t have to follow the laws that are there for a fucking reason.

Terrifying

It’s frankly terrifying. I feel sick about their attacks on immigrants. I’m scared shitless about their attacks on equality. And the funding freezes, the firing of all the inspector generals, the attempts to drive out thousands of career federal workers. It’s all terrifying. And the speed at which it’s happening is flat-out astonishing. There are no procedures in place to do any of the horrible things he’s announcing will happen. But he keeps pumping out order after order. And nothing is more in DJT’s sights than Wokeness and DEI.

Woke

I am so, so sick of the word woke. WOKE IS NOT AN INSULT. And it boggles my mind how the word has been twisted into something that IS an insult, something that a conservative magahead is completely repulsed by. Woke is used derisively as if it’s maybe the worst thing ever.

What if we…

Let’s do a little thought exercise. In your mind, I want you to replace the word woke with the word empathy. Automatically, the concepts surrounding the term woke are framed completely differently. Where woke is used as an insult, having empathy is a trait that a logical person wants to embody.

Empathy and Kindness

Someone who is ‘woke’ has empathy for others, and cares about the obstacles another person might face in their lives. A person with empathy can imagine a world where things are made easier for everyone, not just themselves.

It’s honestly as simple as that. Woke means caring about the lives of others. It’s being able to look at things from a different perspective. Woke means you worry about the barriers others might face to get to the same goals that might be easier for you. Woke means that even if something wrong in the world doesn’t affect you, you still want to fix it for those who it does. If something can be done to facilitate a better life, someone who is “woke” wants that. It’s so freaking simple, and I don’t understand how it’s been so skewed and vilified. Well, I do understand how. It was a whole campaign on conservative socials. But it still honestly boggles my mind.

Possible Retribution for BLM Protests?

There is no one pettier than DJT. I wonder if this campaign against DEI is in part a petty punishment for the protests that happened under his tenure as president. It would take a lot to convince me otherwise. And it was a campaign. The rhetoric spun around all the maga circles until the language was thoroughly streamlined. Now, everyone says the same old lines. So predictable.

Let’s Talk About DEI

DEI is the new thing the maga heads are attacking. DEI stands for diversity, equity, and inclusion. Never in a million years would I expect that it’s the new ghost in the room, that they’ve spun and now all of a sudden a DEI hire means that person was hired in an inequitable manner.

DEI is a lot of things. It’s about breaking down barriers people of color might experience, and so so much more. It’s about women, it’s about people with disabilities, it’s about people with mental health struggles, it’s about poor people! It’s about LGBTQ people (And as an aside, another whole rant will be dedicated to the trepidation I feel for my fellow rainbow associates.

DEI is ADA, folks. And that’s frankly terrifying on another whole level. I don’t understand why someone would be against all of these things that I was raised to believe were good things. Equity? Inclusivity? Diversity? These are now bad things?

What would an ideal world look like to these people?

No wait. I already know. Cis-white males in charge and everyone else subjugated and oppressed. It took him 9 days to open his first concentration camp. We’re so far down the slippery slope and I hope everyone understands that.

Mr. Rogers and Sesame Street

Deep into a discussion about current events with a friend, I pointed out that a lot of these people need a good preschool lesson on kindness. And it suddenly occurred to me just how backward this all is. We’re upside down, folks. The world they want to make is not the world I was taught, from a very young age, that we as a society should aspire to have.

I was born in 1980 and that means that my early years were peak Mr. Rogers and Sesame Street years. I watched those shows every day. And the messages and morals of these shows became deeply foundational to me. And I know I am not alone. People of my generation were taught about a different world from all this dystopian nightmare that we’re seeing with DJT.

Sesame Street

Let’s remember the world that Sesame Street taught us about. Who lived on Sesame Street? We had a diverse cast of human characters and Muppets. The characters were women, Latino and Hispanic, Black, White, immigrants. There were people of all color, and there were people who had a disability. The Muppets were also diverse and had their own quirks, their own origins, etc.

Sesame Street taught us that this was the world that we wanted to embrace. That diversity is a good thing. That we as a society are working to build a world in which we can listen to the voices of people from all walks of life. Sesame Street helped to give young people of my generation a well-rounded perspective on how things are, and how things should be to allow everyone to live their best life.

Wikipedia points out that:

During Sesame Street’s first season, some critics felt that it should address more overtly such affective goals as social competence, tolerance of diversity, and nonaggressive ways of resolving conflict. The show’s creators and producers responded by featuring these themes in interpersonal disputes between its Street characters.[59] During the 1980s, the show incorporated real-life experiences of its cast and crew, including the death of Will Lee (Mr. Hooper) and the pregnancy of Sonia Manzano

From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sesame_Street

Mr. Rogers

Mr. Rogers, too. He talked to us and helped us to learn about our emotions, how to regulate them, how to feel about ourselves and others. His life lessons came from a place of deep empathy for all people. He wanted us to be able to understand the perspectives of others and how our lives might shape our beliefs and identities. He wanted to teach a generation how to live together.

They Shaped a Generation

Both of these shows taught us, the generation that I belong to, that we want everyone to live a life that is fulfilling, even if they have a disability, even if they are coming into the country from another country. And I embraced that lesson. Deeply. A whole generation of kids did.

The people who think that because I strongly support equality, diversity, and inclusion in my life means that I am some woke liberal who has been brainwashed should remember the worlds that we grew up watching and the morals of the shows we watched as children.

Our Voices

It’s critical at this point we stop doom-scrolling and do SOMETHING, ANYTHING to fight back. We have got to do something. Someone has to do something. Our country is being dismantled. We will be rounded up, and people are going to die. And I cannot stand by and let that happen while I do nothing.

The post Woke Is Not An Insult and We Must Fight Back appeared first on Fae’s Journal.

53% of White Women Voted Against THEMSELVES

Let that sink in. I get that the people who voted for Dump Truck Drumph voted to uphold white patriarchal values in which rich white men are the pinnacle and no one else matters. But white women, really. What the fuck?

Never associate me with one of those women

Everything that man stands for appalls me. He disgusts me. And the people who voted for him, well, I don’t even want to share a country with them.

Thanks to…

Thank you Black men and women who voted against the hate. Thank you Latina women who voted against hate. The cognitive dissonance of Latino men voting for Tr*ump baffles me. Absolutely confusing how that’s happened.

Fuck you to…

Everyone who voted for him. Don’t care if you’re family, “friends”, colleagues, or people I don’t know at all. You disgust me and I don’t want anything to do with you.

What now?

What happens to his criminal cases now? The man is a rapist, a felon, a grifter, a rasict, a fraud. He’ll throw out those cases as fast as he can.

What about the insurrectionists who should be in jail? They’ll be free.

What about LGBTQ+ protections? I’m legit afraid.

What about women’s rights? Fuck.

What about student loan repayment forgiveness? Ugh, fuck.

What about the country I grew up in? Done. Gone.

I am glad Athens is a liberal bubble. Sometimes I need to shelter myself from reality.

The post Election 2024: Disappointed and Disillusioned appeared first on Fae’s Journal.

The Emotional Repercussions of Perpetual Threats at School

A journal post

So, a different sort of post is once again coming at you, my readers, this one about school safety. And I know that most people come here to read a certain type of thing. I have my romance review readers, my crochet and knitting fiber friends, and gaming people who peruse my journal on any given day. So when I post about something off-topic, it’s hard to find a place to stick posts like these. But this is still my personal blog so I will from time to time post about something that’s just on my mind.

School Safety and School Threats

Readers who have been with me a while know that I am a teacher in my day job and also that I live in Georgia, pretty close to Winder-Barrow and Apalachee High School. Since the school shooting there on the 4th of September everyone in my district has been on edge.

Schools should be a safe place. But the reality, one that students know, is that schools are not always safe. Because of the threats, many students at my school stayed home on Friday, be it out of fear or just to be safe. Completely valid reasons, to me. In other counties, I’m sure it was the same.

What’s sick about the aftermath of what happened in Winder-Barrow is that other threats poured in all over the place. Especially on Thursday and Friday of that week, threats were peppering social media. News sites reported students being arrested and charged with making threats all over the Southeast. The high school in Gwinnett County I attended was named. Another threat specifically mentioned the middle school where I teach. In Franklin County, an hour north of us even closed the high school on Friday the 6th because of threats and photos circulating around. Scary, too close to home, shit. Pardon my language.

School Safety Drills

Everyone knows that having drills prepares people for actual emergencies. The goal is to keep school safety at the forefront of everyone’s minds. We have regular, monthly fire drills and severe weather drills throughout the school year. The era of active shooters though, has necessitated the introduction of lockdown drills that happen to prepare students and teachers for the horrible possibility of something happening at their school.

When a lockdown drill happens at a school, the community and stakeholders are told in advance so that everyone, and I mean everyone, knows that it is a DRILL and not a real emergency. This is to assuage students, parents, and community members completely viable panic when we simulate the events that we’ve seen play out again and again and again in schools across the country.

Just going through the motions, it’s impossible to stop yourself from imagining how it would feel to be in that school if something were actually happening. It’s horrible. Thoughts going full steam, heart pounding, adrenaline pumping, it’s a horrible event to even conceptually prepare for.

So, Friday the 13th

Getting to the point here. Yesterday was Friday the 13th and for some people that’s a day of ill omen. Inauspicious. Bad luck. It was a normal, if not a bit squirrely day at school. Middle school students are at the best of times chaotic little beings barely self-aware enough to focus for a lesson. At the worst of times, well, chaotic is their starting point.

It was 7th period. After a chaotic class of an end-of-unit test, begging my class to finish the work sessions I will be grading in the next few days, and to do SOMETHING academic in the last few minutes of class to further their development into articulate humans at some point in their future, it finally it was time for dismissal. Friday antsy is a different type of antsiness.

Then, right at dismissal the red strobe light goes off, and a voice comes over the speakers that we are going into lockdown. The voice instructs us to turn off the lights, lock the door (already locked) and get into hiding. Most chilling, the statements finishes with the words ‘prepare to defend’. Yikes.

We never, ever go into hard lockdown without a warning. Unless it’s like, the real deal. Like I said, when we have a lockdown drill it is always with lots of advance warning to us, students and parents so everyone knows it is a drill.

No Warning This Time

But there was none of that. So, I motion my class to the corner of the classroom where there is a little alcove. We scuttle over, turn off the lights, and get silent. Most of us get silent. Some kids’ natural reaction is to giggle and laugh, but there was an honest undercurrent of fear, nervousness, and anxiety fueling those little laughs. I might have muttered a curse word at them to be freaking quiet because I didn’t know what the hell was going on.

When I say the school got silent I mean woah it was silent. A few students had been in the bathroom and the bang of the stall doors was loud enough to make me jump. My heart was

So we huddle in the corner and stay as silent as 7th graders can be. And then we wait. And wait. It might have just been a few minutes but it felt like an actual eternity. I was checking my phone for texts, and emails. Just checking for anything. Kids were understandably texting their parents. I was afraid that something was happening in the front office because there wasn’t any announcement over the intercom.

School Safety Means… An Accidental Lockdown

The thing is, it was an accident. You know that because there was not another news story about another shooting happening at another school. And that’s the best outcome, of course. But even though it was only an accidental lockdown, it was so fucking traumatic for everyone.

Finally, when someone came on the intercom, their response was so nonchalant and blasé. “Oopsie everything good, let’s dismiss.” Another announcement was made later by our mighty principal (who I love!) to further explain what happened. Something also went out to parents. But I know teachers were also reeling.

I deeply appreciate my assistant principal sending a feedback request to teachers so we could unpack some of our feelings following the events. She’s new this year but I love her as AP. On a side note, good admin is so very important for schools, and that includes issues of school safety.

How Could an Accidental Lockdown Happen?

The thing is, the system worked like it was supposed to. We have the same Centigix badges that Apalachee High School has. In fact, I heard that Barrow County saw that Clarke was using them so that’s one of the reasons they got a contract with the company.

So every employee in the school has a badge with an emergency button on it. Which means every employee is capable of triggering that hard lockdown. School safety is in everyone’s hands. They’re not super easy to push, and to trigger a lockdown the button has to be pushed a lot of times for a hard lockdown to be triggered. But people, in the heat of the moment, are not infallible.

If something happens in our classroom, we push the button. Three times gets admin running. If the button gets pushed a certain number of times though, the system automatically trips over to some auto process where it calls the police and switches the hard lockdown alarm.

Honestly, when we first got the badges a few years ago, I was concerned it was going to be me who accidentally triggered the lockdown. But the buttons are not super easy to push, you have to intend to push them. And I am happy to have the badges. They’ve been proven effective. But I guess people are freaking out in the moment and it can be easy to push the button too many times.

Traumatizing

It was really too much for that to have happened at the end of the school day on Friday afternoon. Like my adrenaline was pumping. It honestly took me a few hours before my heartbeat and breathing felt normal again. School safety should be a baseline condition. It’s tragic it’s not. There’s no way to describe what it feels like to consider that whatever is happening might be an actual emergent event, and I hope to everything in the universe that I never have to experience that happening in a school I work in for real.

Normal Posts

I have a few normal posts in the pipeline. I’ve finished most of the ARCs I was reading this week and have reviews drafted for them. I’ll be posting them through this coming week, so look forward to that, my MM Romance readers.

The post School Safety: appeared first on Fae’s Journal.

Tragedy at Apalachee High School

The shooting that happened at Apalachee High School yesterday is beyond horrific. Every school shooting is horrible. As a teacher, I freeze with fear when I think about it happening again. And every time, I think about what would happen if it happened in my school, in my community.

Well, Winder is a mere 30 minutes from my house. I am a teacher in Georgia in Athens-Clarke County. Barrow is a neighboring county. So the horrible shooting that happened yesterday at Apalachee High School did happen in a community directly adjacent to my community. And that makes it hit different. It makes it more real. I’m rattled, shocked, and so very sad that it happened here. It really, really can happen anywhere now.

Politics

I am a lifelong Democrat and have lived in Georgia for the majority of my life, currently in a blue sea surrounded by an ocean of red. I’m a proud liberal and have only gotten more progressively liberal over the years. I remember my father used to always insist that I would become more conservative as I learned how the world works and well, jokes on him I guess. The opposite has happened.

Not interested

I don’t mind that this journal is an echo chamber. Nor do I invite voices from the other side of the aisle to any debate. I am not interested in talking to anyone who wants to spout right-wing talking points to me about how guns don’t kill people, people kill people.

Because I don’t want to hear it. Something has to change.

It’s a gun issue. I don’t care what anyone has to say. Less access to guns, in a way that makes sense, is the only path forward.

Distanced Myself

I used to be a political blogger. I am appalled at the atmosphere of the current political sphere and have largely distanced myself from it, for my own mental health. But I stand strong here, on this issue. Guns are the issue. Mental health is the issue. Too much access to guns and not enough access to mental healthcare. Guess who votes for more access to guns and actively votes against making it easier to access mental health care?

Change

Yeah, it’s time to change. I hope that if there’s any one good thing that can come out of this horrible situation in Georgia it will be that more voters in Georgia will see that change has to happen, now. No one else needs to go to school or work and not come home at the end of the day because of mass school shooting events. Please. the only way it will stop is if voters vote the gun-loving, only-offer-prayers politicians out of office.

This is two posts in a row of more serious content, but usually, I post much lighter fare. I hope my readers will understand why the last few posts were necessary.

The post Apalachee High School, My Thoughts are With You appeared first on Fae’s Journal.

Old Shale is a classic knitting pattern and comes from the lace and eyelet family of knit stitches. Its origin can be traced to the Shetland Islands where the word “shell” is pronounced more like “shael”. Following along logically, ‘shell’ became ‘shale’, and that’s how Old Shale got its name.

Sometimes, the term Old Shale is used interchangeably with the Feather and Fan pattern, but once you look at them side by side, they are different.

Northern Lace has a fascinating side-by-side comparison of the two patterns and once you read over it, the differences between the two patterns cannot be denied. They are not interchangeable and produce vastly different fabrics.

Basic Old Shale Pattern

Let’s get down to it. The basic pattern is as follows:

The pattern is knit over a multiple of 18 stitches. A sample could be 18, 36, 54, 72, 90 stitches or more, depending on what you want to make. This long repeat is perfect for blankets or sweaters, which you often see the Old Shale motif used in garments and afghans.

Stitches Required:

knit
purl
k2tog – knit 2 stitches together
yo – yarn over, bringing the yarn to the front of the work

Basic Pattern:

Row 1: Knit

Row 2: Purl

Row 3: *K2tog 3 times, (yo knit 1) 6 times, k2tog 3 times, repeat from *

Row 4: Knit

These 4 rows are the complete pattern repeat.

Old Shale Variations

There are many Old Shale motif variations. Because it’s a really versatile pattern. A few years ago, a knitting group called the Greater Birmingham Fiber Guild completed a thorough examination of the Old Shale and its variations.

They collaborated on a project to knit over 40 variations of the Old Shale motif and document the different fabrics small changes to the pattern repeat produces. Resulting was an incredible array of Old Shale variations, really cool stuff. What’s more, it’s available as a free ebook download on Ravelry, something I highly recommend you download and enjoy. I think a sampler blanket of all the variations would be stunning.

Not surprisingly, the pattern I figured out after watching Taehyung is one such variation. To figure the pattern out I played around, modifying the number of rows of knit and purl in between the one row of eyelet stitches. But the general pattern is the same as the classic Old Shale knitting pattern.

It’s pretty cool how slight changes in a pattern can make such different fabrics. That’s why knitting and crochet can have almost endless possibilities! If you are looking for your next knitting adventure you could find one on Hobbii! See the Knitting Patterns on Hobbii.com

The post Old Shale Knitting Pattern appeared first on Fae’s Journal.

ARC Reviewing

Y’all know I love to read. A few books I’ve read lately have been stellar and I’ve posted my reviews of them. One book I’ve enjoyed very much that I posted a review as an ARC (Advanced Reader Copy) is The Unlikely Pair by Jax Calder, which is now live on Amazon so you can go pick it up. It’s available on Kindle Unlimited and for purchase. I also adored The Alien Scientist by Eryn Ivers which will be published August 14th!

But…

What to do when I agree to read an ARC of a book and it’s not very good? I want to help authors and give constructive feedback. One day I want to join their ranks and publish my own story. So being honest but forthright is helpful, in my opinion. But what if an author sees my review and gets offended?

But when a book is not very good, I am not sure what to do other than be honest. It’s the neurodivergence in me that is nearly able to override all other social norms, honesty taking precedence over making another person feel right.

This is incidentally how I Know I’m most likely auDHD and not just ADHD. The neuro spicy in me is spicy.

I’m trying to get through one right now that I think needs work. It’s been a struggle to get to where I am in the book but I need to finish it in the next few days. A review will be forthcoming and the Southern moral compass in me and the neurodivergent need to be honest are currently at war with one another on how to tactfully review it.

Plans for the site

You might notice that I have updated the theme once again, now I am using the Kadence theme. I am really liking this theme a lot. It’s modern looking and clean, but not overly simplistic. Each post is displayed with a featured image too, which ups the professional look in my opinion.

I have several things I am planning for the blog. I’ve been working hard to diversify the things I have offered here so people will find value in the posts I make. It’s still a personal blog, that’s why I am writing this post, but I want people to come to my site and say hey, that’s a good site to look around on.

Fanfiction Page

I write fanfiction, and I am working on a page to compile my various stories that I have written. Linking them from my blog seems like a logical thing to do. The work I have created makes me proud and I love the fandom I write in, BTS, almost exclusively Sope (Yoongi and Hoseok).

So, I have a draft page that I’m working on to link my ao3 titles here so people can read their descriptions and click over to ao3 from this site to read my stories. I will not be hosting my stories here, they will remain on ao3.

More shopping centered posts

I shop a lot on Amazon so I will continue to post reviews and links to the products I buy on Amazon here in hopes of generating some commission income. My push to improve the image of my site does have to do with the fact that I am a teacher and would like to earn money from my site, after all.

Google Ads? Not any time soon

Speaking of earning income, Google thinks my site has low value content so I will not be having Google Ads on my site any time soon. Which is so unfortunate, but everything on the Internet is so polished and refined now that a personal blog where I post about various things just doesn’t quite fit in with the sites that Google wants to advertise on. I am disappointed in that, but it is what it is. For certain, I am not going to change my content. Personally I don’t think it is ‘low value’. What I post is authentic, I post what I feel like posting. Sometimes that is a free Google presentation theme I made, while other days it’s a book review. And then some days it’s a plain, old-fashioned blog post.

Work

The first full week of school is about to wrap up for us. That is, if I get off my butt and get ready for work. So I guess I should do that! Happy Friday to all!

The post General Update Week of August 9 appeared first on Fae’s Journal.

I remember when I was a child starting school much later. The date for start of school has been marched back until we are landing on August 1 as the start of school for most districts in the area.

Back to School is a BUSY TIME

I teach middle school, and have a high school aged student of my own. It goes without saying that the days leading up to the start of the new school year is an incredibly busy time. Lots of things to buy, to get organized and to prepare for. However, older students need fewer supplies than younger students. We are down to the bare basics now that he’s in high school. Being well beyond elementary school age, I can reflect from an objective place. Believe me, I do not miss the back to school circus families with elementary age children have to go through. And the cost! It’s sort of ridiculous.

School checklists oh my

The endless supply lists, the uniforms, the classroom supplies for teachers both classroom and specials, it can all get a little overwhelming for elementary age students. And yes it’s very, very expensive. If you’re brave, I dare you to peek into the Back to School section of most big-box stores like Target or Walmart. These days you will probably see all of the following: You’ll see harried parents trying to stay within their dwindling budget and get all the things they “need” for school. Next to them you will find students searching for the perfect supplies with a mix of excitement and dread on their faces. All around will be shelves completely out of order from the hordes of parents and students rifling through them and you’ll likely see loads of school provided lists piled everywhere for all the various schools in the area.

Expensive doesn’t quite describe it

Parents, believe me, I get it. Money isn’t spreading as far these days and it’s more important than ever to choose wisely with your purchasing decisions. Amazon has a ton of low-cost options for back to school. If I were still needing to buy a ton of things for an elementary aged student I would for sure go there first to find deals before I piled in the car to go to a local store.

As a teacher, I am nearly ready for the school year. This weekend I’ve been tackling my required training and getting as much relaxation time as I can. Before I know it, it will be nose to the ground and full tilt madness until Labor Day, our first break. The school year is exhausting and I’m savoring my last minutes of relaxing time.

Best of luck out there, whether you are a parent shopping for back to school things, a teacher preparing for the coming school year, or are a student both looking forward to and dreading the return to academics. You can do it!

The post Back to School – The School Year is Upon Us appeared first on Fae’s Journal.

One of the main reasons I enjoy MM romance more is the way I identify. I am asexual leaning towards majorly demisexual so if I don’t have to picture myself involved in the steamier side of a relationship I really quite like that more. So once I shifted to MM romance the amount of books I read ramped up enormously.

2019 Romance Reading

In 2019 I only read 27 books, but it did mark the first time I subscribed to Kindle Unlimited, a service I have grown to love since so many thousands of books are available on KU and I can read them as I want. Before that I was still buying some books in old school ways but years ago I realized I enjoyed reading books on my phone more than actually holding a physical book so a Kindle Unlimited subscription is really such a good value for me.

In 2019 I read through the Ice Planet Barbarian series that had been published to date, though I bet there are lot more now that I have missed out on. But they are straight and since I shifted to MM Romance it’s very, very hard for me to read straight romance. I have read a few successfully but it’s not easy for me.

2020 and 2021 Are Lies

The graphs on Goodreads would have you believe that from 2020-2021 I didn’t read anything at all. Shock, gasp, what happened, right? Well, that’s not true at all. I wish there was a quantifying tool for ArchiveofOurOwn because I read a ton in 2020, but I didn’t read published books. I read fanfiction voraciously. That’s when I also started writing my own fanfiction under then name faeriebell! I have written over 30 stories within the BTS fandom to varying success. Sope forever! But that’s why my 2020 and my 2021 are pretty empty.

2022 Marked a Shift Toward MM Romance Books

In 2022 I began the shift over from fanfiction. I love fanfiction, really, and my fandom of choice has an almost unending supply of stories. But with all the members going into their compulsory military service I started to distance myself. I did this for emotional reasons. I miss them incredibly much and want to shelter myself from the hurt of reading stories with them doing fun things when I know that they’re possibly doing unpleasant things.

Thus, I started late in the year but I read the whole Captive Prince series including all the short novels by CS Pacat which I love dearly and have reread several times since.

2023 Opened the Floodgates on MM Romance

I read 228 book in 2023, a huge number for me.

Jumping into the MM Romance genre turned out to be great for me. I enjoy romance books, in fact have read them since I was quite young. I was unaware that there was such a prolific world of MM Romance out there for me to enjoy though. After a recommendation to read a few books by Alessandra Hazzard, that’s all it took.

Those books were my true gateway into the mm romance genre. I’d read Captive Prince and a few books by Cat Sebastian but I actually devoured all of the Wrong Alpha series that had been published at the time and then drove straight through the Calluvia’s Royalty series and finally the Straight Guys series.

Then it the floodgates were truly open and I was out of control reading as many mm romance books as I could. I got Covid in early 2023 and during the week or so I was in bed I read nearly 20 MM Romance books. I didn’t really slow down after that.

My friends must have wondered where I went, I stopped writing, disappeared from online places I used to frequent, and sort of went low-contact with a lot of people. But I was just so involved with reading as much mm romance as I could. I also started review MM Romance books on Goodreads and here so I could point out the good and the bad.

How Much MM Romance Am I Reading in 2024?

I’ve posted already that I’m already finished with 120 MM Romance books in 2024. On Goodreads my goal is fairly low goal at 150 books. I already know I’ll surpass that. I’m hoping for something more like 250 but I am a perfectionist and hate to not achieve goals I set for myself so I set my goal pretty low so I would be sure to achieve it.

The post MM Romance Reading Rundown 2019 – 2023 appeared first on Fae’s Journal.

So from the title you can surmise that we had a health scare where my dog eats rat poison. Let’s have a story time, folks.

We drove down to Jacksonville Beach for a week long vacation on Friday, me, my son, one of his friends and our dog Sunny, a rat terrier mix of some sort. She’s too small to be full rat terrier, I think, as she’s just at 6.5 lbs, but she’s definitely mostly rat terrier.

The drive to Jacksonville Beach from Athens is not a bad drive and we made really good time. Yesterday was our first full day here and we got going early. I just got my dog in May, and am so in love with her. Sunny was awake at 6:00 and ready to go out on her first walk of the day. She likes to have at least three or four walks a day, the more the better with her, really. We watched the sunrise. When we got back I drank some tea and then went to take a shower.

Terrier Behavior

My dog is really a good girl but she has a propensity to get into things. She’s a terrier of some concoction, mostly Rat Terrier but probably some other things too. Her behavior is all rat terrier. She’s very curious and likes to get under things to sniff out potential vermin. It’s what the breed was bred to do, so it makes sense that she naturally gets into things. But sometimes that can be really bad.

When I got out of the shower she was so happy to present me with a green block that she’d found and subsequently eaten the corner off of. My first instinct was that it was rat poison, not that I have great familiarity with the stuff but it looked like the color of rat poison I’d seen before. It was big, though, like a block.

I asked my parents if they had rat poison traps out in the house. They didn’t know of any rat poison in their house. They had a rodent problem several years ago, but the company who came out had set traps instead of using rodenticide. They’ve had this house for more than a decade, so it might have fallen from the attic, or been under a piece of furniture that hasn’t moved since they moved it. Who knows really.

Normal Day

We went about our day. Sunny acted normal all day. Around 5:00 my son took Sunny on a walk. Just a few minutes into their walk he called me because Sunny had vomited twice. I circled back to worrying that the mysterious green thing she’d munched on and google image searched it and the worst scenario came true because it was indeed rat poison that she had ingested.

So what happens when your dog eats rat poison?

Someone who lives in my parent’s neighborhood works at First Coast Veterinary Specialists, a 24 hour Vet ER in Jacksonville Beach, FL and our first thought was to go to her house for a quick word and to see if she recommended we take Sunny in. I was already wanting to take Sunny to be seen but it was our first reaction to see what someone would say informally like that. She was very nice and highly encouraged us to take her regardless of the situation. We don’t know how much Sunny ate or how old the poison is, but it didn’t really matter.

So we got in the car and rushed to the vet. Luckily the Vet ER is right close to my parents house, like 0.6 miles close! We went inside and they suggested that I call the ASPCA Poison Control care line and complete a consultation with them. So I got on the phone right there in their waiting room and went through the consultation. They walked me through information about the three main types of rodenticide that are most common on the market and what potential decontamination protocols might look like for each of them.

Which kind of rat poison did your dog eat?

Since we do not have the packaging for the rat poison we cannot know for sure which sort of poison it is. It’s important to have the packaging so they can eliminate guess work, but in our case we don’t have it. The poison itself might have been a decade old!

Rodenticide is bad news, folks

So the vet errs on the side of caution and treats for all three major types. They are all pretty horrible, and I don’t agree with poison as a method of rodent control, personally. Quick death if any death is needed, is my point of view, so when a place has a rodent infestation I am all for quick trap death over slow poisoning because they all sound pretty horrible and inhumane.

Especially when one thinks about the same things happening to their beloved pets, I think it becomes easier to see how gruesome poisons are. Almost as bad a glue traps, which are incredibly inhumane and I am fully against as someone who has seen innocent snakes trapped in glue traps and painstakingly removed. Don’t use those, folks, really.

Dog Eats Rat Poison? Go to the vet

Anyway, Sunny got a full blood panel done, some anti-nausea medicine injected (the same that she was given after her spay only 11 days ago!), had activated charcoal administered and had subcutaneous fluids injected to make up for the dehydration from vomiting. We are monitoring her closely and taking her back to the vet for the next four days to recheck her bloodwork to monitor the levels of certain things in her blood. The vet was fairly sure that if by day 5 the levels are okay still we will be out of the woods.

This is terrifying as a new dog owner, but I am thankful the vets and the techs and everyone at First Coast Veterinary Specialists were so amazing and caring with us. Sunny came back after her bloodwork and injections with a spiffy new bandana that makes her look somehow even cuter than before and we are just watching her carefully for any symptoms of toxicity. We will take her back at 4pm today to get her second round of bloodwork done to monitor levels.

Keep us in your thoughts, she’s my baby!

The post Sunny’s Health Scare appeared first on Fae’s Journal.

I love journaling. I also love notebooks, and when I am writing, I almost always start the writing process on paper. If I see a blank journal, I will probably buy it. There’s just something about all that fresh, blank paper that lends itself to creativity and brainstorming. For me, writing with pen on paper makes the words flow differently. Outlining and character development comes easiest in this medium when I am in the early stages of writing.

Keeping a Journal

I also like to keep a journal. It’s something I’ve just always done. I don’t know how many blank journals I’ve filled throughout my life, but the number would be substantial. I love to look back and see what was going on in my life, how I was doing and what was on my mind while I was writing in my journal. Sometimes it was maybe that I wasn’t doing so great, and other times things were going well. Regardless of whether I was in a good headspace or not, keeping a journal has been an important part of my life.

Do you keep a journal? Do you like to collect blank journals to use for future projects, or do you only shop for a new blank journal when you completely fill up your current notebook?

I tend to collect blank journals, myself. I like different weights of paper, different line styles, different covers, sizes, and binding types. If it’s cute, unique or eye catching, it’s really hard for me to resist picking up a new journal, even if I don’t need a new one.

Blank Journal for Daily Journaling

Sometimes you just need a blank journal to get you in the mood for cataloging your thoughts. Maybe I have just the thing for you!

Keeping that in mind I designed this cute journal that you use for daily journaling, writing, note taking or whatever you might think of and you can buy it from Amazon!

The post Blank Journal for Daily Journaling appeared first on Fae’s Journal.

Dog Ownership is Different

Dogs are intense. Dogs are harder to own than cats, which I have had since college. Cats meshed with my chill laissez-faire lifestyle. Had Sunny not arrived on my doorstep the last day of school in May, I wouldn’t have made the plunge to dog ownership at all.

I officially adopted her after exhausting all efforts to finding her previous owners. She wasn’t microchipped, but I posted on my personal Facebook and made a post on Nextdoor via Pawboost and PetFBI. I posted signs all over the neighborhood, went door to door to ask if they had seen this dog or knew where she belonged, and asked everyone I saw on walks if she was a familiar face among the dog owners in the neighborhood but she had seemingly appeared out of nowhere.

She has settled in well here and me and my son are over the moon in love with her. She’s brought a joy to our lives that we needed and I just cannot believe how much a dog can change your life for the better.

There are mysteries I’ll never get answered about her life before she came to me, like why she didn’t know how to walk on a leash but was definitely cared for because she’s so gentle and sweet. She wasn’t spayed or microchipped but had been housetrained.

I do think someone dropped her off in my neighborhood the morning I found her, and it was a serendipitous moment that I ended up finding her!

Story time!

It was the last day of school, and my team had made end of the schoolyear t-shirts that we were all going to wear. I was so excited about the shirt, so much so that I laid it out the night before on a chair to sort of display it.

But being neurodivergent the next morning I completely forgot to put the shirt on and went to school in a different shirt! Upon arriving I saw everyone in their shirts and was so upset that I had forgotten mine.

My assistant principal is awesome though (now she’ll be my principal this coming school year!) and she told me I could run home and get it. The last day of school is really chill for the most part, and I live close to my school so I ran home. Funny enough, I almost decided to not bother going but a few teachers talked me into it. It was really cool that not only my team were wearing these shirts, a lot of other teams had ended up buying them and almost the whole school had them on!

An Amazing Confluence of Events

Honestly, there was an amazing confluence of events at play here because to this day I keep thinking about what would have happened had I a) not forgotten to wear the shirt and b) decided not to go home and change into it.

Because none of this would have happened! It really is sometimes a tiny, inconsequential decision that ends up making big changes in your life.

I had called my mom to chat and I’ll never forget the moment. Because once I came home, ran inside and threw on the shirt, I turned back around to leave and there on my porch is this dog! She was looking hopefully at me, like she’d seen me come home and ran up to greet me. And I said, “Oh who are you?” This lost, scared, and nervous dog grabbed onto my heart and held on tight. I was immediately in crisis mode and grabbed some ribbon from inside to slip through the collar she had on. She had a collar, but later we found that she was not microchipped, and didn’t have a rabies vaccination tag. Hoping to find someone looking for her, took her back outside. She looked like she’d just slipped out of someone’s house. There was no one looking for her.

Had to get back to work

I knew I had to get back to school quickly so I led this poor scared dog down the street and noticed right away that she didn’t know how to walk on a lead. Strange. So I scooped her up and ran down the street to a neighbor’s house. I had seen her with a dog vaguely the same size/shape as Sunny so I wondered if she belonged to her.

However, upon knocking I heard a dog barking from inside her house, so I knew the dog in my hands wasn’t her dog. I almost turned around and left because I’d never even spoken to this neighbor! She opened the door and we talked. Upon hearing that I was a teacher and needed to get back to work she agreed to watch the dog for the day. I promised her that I would come back after work and pick her up. Meeting her has also turned out to be an incredible boon as she is the best!

So having secured the dog for the day I went off to work. Throughout the day, I posted on Facebook and the lost pets sites. That afternoon, I returned prepared to pick her up. It was surreal, to be honest. My neighbor took her to a vet and checked for a microchip and did not find one and Sunny accompanied her to her volunteer bookstore job with her dog Rusty.

She’s Mine Now

That afternoon I took Sunny back to my house and we started our journey together. Again, if any of the small decisions made that morning had gone differently, I might not have found Sunny at all. That makes me so incredibly sad to imagine, and so thankful that everything came together the way it did to put her into my life when I needed her so much and didn’t even know it.

She is spayed and microchipped now, took care of that! I got her this doggie onesie to wear after her spay but it was too big, she looked like she had a dumpy diaper in it and it didn’t keep her from licking. But had I gotten the right size it would have been good!

Anyway, long post but once you become a dog owner you find yourself really involved in your dog! Update: While we were on vacation my dog ate rat poison! Read about that here!

The post Dog Things appeared first on Fae’s Journal.

But I gave the tarot deck away and it’s almost impossible to find now. I have searched for Tarot Deck directories and found one but it doesn’t have the artwork that was on the back of the cards, just samples of the various cards. My memories are quite vague of the artwork on the cards, and even the artwork on the back of the deck is unclear in my mind. I just remember that I really, really liked it.

It’s sad, honestly. I am not super into tarot or anything now but I wish I could find that deck of cards out there on like eBay or Etsy. There are an actual million types of tarot now though, so the market is even more saturated. I didn’t even get them at some place special I think I got them at a MediaPlay store or something like that. Been a long time since you heard that store name, I bet. Those were the 90s.

The post The Search for the Lost Tarot Deck appeared first on Fae’s Journal.

I’ve struggled through several duds and reviews are linked below. I plan to write more here on Fae’s Journal because, full transparency: I am broke and have had a summer of massive expenses, most of them unexpected.

Summer MM Romance Reviews

Book ReviewsReading

Review of Rest Ashored by BJ Irons & Will Freshwater

July 10, 2024 / faebell

Book ReviewsReadingWriting

Review of Fighting the Flames Within by Casey Morales

July 10, 2024 / faebell

Book ReviewsReading

Review of Savage Grace by Spencer Spears

July 11, 2024 / faebell

Affiliate Links

So with that, I plan to blog and shamelessly put affiliate links in the posts when applicable. I don’t know if it will help or if anything at all will come from it but it’s worth a shot, and what’s the worst that could happen?

The links won’t be obtrusive and it’ll always be about something I’m actually interested in. I have enough varied interests that I can link a lot of different types of things and potentially get some clicks.

I’m also designing a blank journal or two to Amazon to try and sell. Things are just hella expensive these days and I need to try and side hustle a bit.

MM Romance Reading

So first things first. I’ve been reading so much and I read exclusively on the Kindle app on my phone, it’s just so much easier for me. I subscribe to Kindle Unlimited. It’s one of the best investments a heavy reader such as myself could make. There are so many books to choose from, especially within the genre I read, MM Romance.

Reading Nicknacks

With Kindle Unlimited, I have nearly unlimited access to reading material. I have been in the market to buy a remote scroller for my phone (and there is the link I talked about before)! It’s annoying when when I think I click to the next page and my phone doesn’t turn the page.

A remote scroller could be the answer to this, and using it might make for a more fluid reading experience. I use one of these neck pillows (don’t judge, it’s awesome) to hold the phone in front of my face while I am lying down to read. The only drawback is constantly having to turn the page. Finding a remote scroller that worked would be a game-changer.

Dud from Target

I say that because I bought one last week at Target from the dollar spot and it didn’t work to scroll in the Kindle App, it took pictures remotely just fine which resulted in some funny candid pictures being taken while I was trying to turn the page on my book. I am not sharing those, lol.

Anyway, I have a few books to review in the coming days: the Murphy Brothers series by Spencer Spears, and an ARC I am reading of Fighting the Flames Within by Casey Morales. I have read so many more I’ll have to go back and post some reviews for.

Happy Reading, friends! I write book reviews!

The post MM Romance Reading Progress appeared first on Fae’s Journal.

But first I wanted to post an old poem I found that I wrote in my senior year of high school, probably in 1997. I’ve lost and re-found it so many times throughout the years, through different computers and it’s a work I’ve always been proud of. So I post it here to preserve it forever, hopefully!

Jingle and Jangle by faebell

Somebody made their keys

jingle

and jangle their way down the hall,

and I cringe at that jarring interval between time 

and space 

a new place to live 

and I sit on my windowsill and 

blame the world for my feelings. 

My ceilings getting lower

and the walls are closing in

so go ahead

try the door,

it doesn’t work anymore,

I’ll just sit on my windowsill and

hate

the things outside me,

the things within

something,

somebody made them scream out

and get bold, 

flung out into the cold

and the house we’ve sold means

nothing

is left, but the key

attached to that jingle and jangle of a key chain, slipping

from the warmth of a pocket

and crashing to the linoleum floor with a

clang,

and then is silent. 

The post Poetry appeared first on Fae’s Journal.

Working Every Day

Work is still work and I am still me, but that fluid progression of self has marched on and I have new facets to my identity. I find myself less attached to my job and more interested in other things for the first time since I finished grad school. I think we are taught in the US especially that our whole identity is found in our careers and that’s sad to me and I am distancing myself from that cultural norm.

Social Distancing

Lastly we are socially distancing from the COVID-19 pandemic and I find myself with more time to post because I am working from home among the world-wide pandemic scare. It’s much different than facing the students for six classes a day and it thrusts the responsibility of learning on the students in a way that they’re unaccustomed to.

BTS

Life has been a whirlwind lately and the year since I have posted has been a whirlwind of good stuff. I will make a separate post about BTS in a minute because I plan on posting a series about learning Hangul to help out ARMY who might be struggling.

The post Where I have been… appeared first on Fae’s Journal.

Yardwork is Hard Work

Yardwork is hard work and that’s why I hate yardwork! It’s too loud, it’s too icky outside in the Georgia summers, there are bugs, etc. I just really, really hate yardwork.

Too Busy

Plus I had plans. I saw Avengers: Endgame, finished Kingdom Hearts 3 and watched the Battle of Winterfell. That was a lot! If not action, it was an emotionally draining weekend. Sunday should have been my preparation day for the week. But tired is an understatement. THe battle towards the end of the school year has me super drained so mustering the energy didn’t happen.

Someone Has to do Yardwork

But yardwork doesn’t wait. It must be done and no one else does it. There’s no one else to do the yardwork.

Lots of Yardwork Tasks

I need to cut the grass, in both the front and the back, and put deer netting over my flowerbed if I want my garden to survive the deer salad buffet. While I am at it, I’ll trim the hedges, too. My parents cut back a truly evil Holly bush a few weeks ago and those limbs have thorns that will slice me up. I need to figure out a way to clear the branches without shredding my arms in the process. That bush must die, so my plan is to pour boiling water on the stump to kill it off. I also need to tie a rope up so my vining plant has somewhere to climb.

All of this yardwork is a full weekend of work. That didn’t get done! And frankly I don’t have the energy.

Fae’s Journal

I post about my life and interests here on Fae’s Journal. You might like some other posts, click on to the homepage and see.

The post Yardwork appeared first on Fae’s Journal.

Things around the house

1. Put together second shelf for the basement. (It’s been sitting in a box for 6 months waiting)
2. Get the bird’s nest out of the laundry room after I’ve made sure the clutch has flown.
3. Pressure wash the area rugs
4. Pressure wash eaves, driveway, path
5. Finish staining the deck
6. Make a stepping stone path for the backyard, making the stones recessed a bit so I can mow right over them
7. Organize the basement storage (a huge problem right now because of all the new stuff down there from my parent’s office)
8. Get the pegboard organization set up in my craft room
9. Fix the tile in the basement

This seems like a lot and I am pretty sure not all of it will get done. But I will try.

The post Summer To Do List appeared first on Fae’s Journal.

I hope that if you’re seeing family this holiday it’s stress-free and fun. Family gatherings can be stressful. Don’t talk about things that you don’t agree on. Oh and eat pie, salad is not safe to eat.

The post Turkey Day! appeared first on Fae’s Journal.

Once I got real freedom after moving away from home for college, even though I was actually farther away from Atlanta, I’d go to parties at the Pyramid and later the Church. To big warehouse parties and big raves in parking garages, at the Tabernacle and in places I don’t even remember the names to. It’s a blur. To me, those times were unreal, and at first I was scared to let loose and have fun. But boy once I did. Those years were wild and crazy. I discovered that to me, being a little dangerous and edgy turned into being too dangerous and too edgy.

I almost failed out of college. Things with my parents turned cold and dark. I moved in with a generally abusive guy. I began to morph into something else. In addition to having flown too high and burnt my wings off my first year of college, my French classes were a disappointment and I wasn’t focused on what I needed to in order to major in French. I changed my major from French to Business Administration. A few semesters I just went to class on auto-pilot. I took Spanish. I drudged through my core classes. I hung out with friends, edged into scenes on campus and forgot about the mysterious and cool person I wanted to be in high school. I got a job at a sandwich shop. My boyfriend dropped out of college, too focused on other things to make it to class on time. He spiraled into manic behavior. I let my boyfriend talk down to me and destroy my property and be generally abusive. He hit me and pointed his assault rifle at me. He took me out in the woods the day after to go shooting and I was almost sure he was going to kill me. He didn’t. I met new people and hid that part of my life from them. He wasn’t a good person. But I let myself get swallowed up by him and his hatefulness, his mean spirit. The psyche of an abused person is damaged. And I blamed myself and tried to do anything to please him.

I met my now ex-husband in class, in Economics while I was living with the abusive ex-boyfriend. I found out that F was a part of a larger network of international students at my college, and that a few of my other friends were also hanging out with the international kids so I started to edge into that group. My ex-husband was dynamic and charismatic and darkly handsome. He was also damaged enough that I wanted to comfort and fix his sadness. We tumbled into a relationship and it was a whirlwind of romance. I also let myself get swallowed up by his personality and lost who I was. He was also a roller coaster of manic/depressive cycles and I was along for the ride. He talked about Islam to me and business ideas and his culture and country and fucked up family. Everything was fascinating to me. We got married before I finished college.

You see what’s happened when I start to describe my life? It’s what happened in real life. My life. My self. My world.. got sucked up into whoever I was seeing at the time. And it continued, relationship after relationship.

But who am I now? Today I’m far away from the edgy and dangerous person I envisioned myself becoming. I am an almost 40 French teacher with an almost 10 year old daughter, living a quiet life in Athens, Georgia. Atlanta, where I once thought one had to be in order to be “cool”, is one of my least favorite places in the world. I have sworn off all relationships because they are toxic for me. My favorite things to do are to play video games and knit.

I guess everyone is a progression, morphing from one person to another in a fluid way. No one knows anyone else’s journey, the continuum from where they started to where they are now. Or why or how they got to be how they are. We are all mysterious and complex. Who were you when you were young? Who are you now?

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