*crawls out of Word document covered in blood* 1500 words written today, and…chapter? I have literally written twice as many words for this chapter as are actually in it – I track my word count, so I know exactly how many words I’ve written since the last chapter, and I did some but not that much concept writing this past two months. I will go through this chapter tomorrow; hopefully it can go up tomorrow too so I can move on with my life.
Snippet from Of Home Near chapter 11.
Steve looked around, then spotted the discarded manacles and handed them to Howard. “Here. Present.”
He read Howard’s first thought on his face and had to hide his grin as Howard said, “Uh –” while manfully struggling to control his own response.
Natasha half-turned away, putting a hand over her mouth to cover her knowing smirk.
“It’s some kind of alloy that Dmitri Bukharin cooked up,” Steve explained. “I think vibranium and something else, but I’m not sure; he called it carbonadium. It worked better than the drugs. I snapped the ones on my ankles, but it took a while and the right angle, and I couldn’t get the ones on my wrists with a bum shoulder.”
“You got the other ones?” Howard asked, his gaze sharpening. He ran his fingers over the metal thoughtfully, then held it up to the room’s poor light.
“Here.” Peggy passed the broken cuffs to him.
Howard hummed happily to himself, erotic thoughts apparently forgotten. “Thanks.”
Steve watched him with a frown, rubbing at his chafed wrists. “Howard, what are you doing here?”
Howard blinked and glanced up at him. “What?”
“You don’t go out in the field.”
“It’s London, Steve, not occupied France,” Howard said, trying to make his voice light, then he met Steve’s eyes and went on more seriously, “The last time I stayed home you didn’t come back.”
Natasha sat down on the bed beside him. She smelled of clean, well-washed woman, her body warm against his where they touched at shoulder and thigh. Steve turned his head and kissed her, slow and careful.
After a moment, Natasha pulled back and said, “Did you lose a tooth?”
“I got kicked in the head a bunch,” Steve admitted. “It’ll grow back.”
Borzoi White Mohair with zipper (box for pajamas), glass eyes
It’s so weird that pyjama cases were a thing. They went so abruptly out of fashion, too. The idea was (I think) that it was vaguely indecent to leave your pajamas around, and it definitely spoils the look of your nicely made bed, so lots of people put them under the pillow; but a cuter thing to do was to have a specially made empty stuffed animal or cute purse or pillow thing, with a zipper, and you’d stuff it with your pajamas in the morning and place it cutely on your nicely made bed. Then in the evening, you would unzip and disembowel the soft plump object, and reclaim the pajamas. It wasn’t just a thing for kids; adults did it too. In the kind of pre-1950s novels I like to pick up, authors describe a character’s pyjama case to reveal a bit about the character; but of course they never say why you’d have a pyjama case. “Everyone knows what a horse is.”
I suppose it’s been culturally decided that it’s an unnecessary step in the bedtime process. We’re busy bastards, aren’t we? Who makes their bed every morning, I mean, really?
Perhaps, also, our clothing is no longer of the material and methodology where you have to spend extra time/attention/tools on them. Pyjama cases may have had some benefit - extending the life of the pyjamas, or something. Perhaps it was more common in those days for mice to climb into your silk pyjamas, or they kept them from being attacked by dogs, or something. It’s possible that there are unspoken benefits to keeping your pyjamas in a stuffed toy, which previous generations knew instinctively and we have forgotten. Some people are like that, they maintain rituals and practices that don’t get written down, and so become arcana. My father-in-law owns special clothing maintenance tools such as shoe trees (which you place in your shoes every night at night) and trouser presses (in which you leave your worn-but-not-dirty trousers overnight so they are crisp in the morning). He irons his pocket handkerchiefs - why? so that they fold into a precise pocket shape, with the same fold pattern as plastic-wrapped disposable tissues: the optimised shape for pockets. You are not going to read in the literature about there being a reason for ironing pocket handkerchiefs. It is a habit that is not captured by history. You have to speak to a practitioner to even consider that there is a specific value in pocket handkerchief folding. Maybe we operate at a remove from the people who could have told us why they bothered with the idea and then stopped.
You can buy a selection of pyjama cases online, but with no explanation of why you’d want to, it’s hard to see how this helps. The only real thing i can see is that it’s cute and tidies the pyjamas up, but we’ve all decided that untidy pyjamas are a problem that doesn’t need solving.
Pyjama cases have no Wikipedia article; search engines have nothing to offer. Old books only self-reference them being a normal thing. Someone who knows about pyjama cases or textile history could heroically fill this in. Please do. Otherwise, this tumblr post is going to suddenly become the leading analysis of pyjama cases, and that would be sad.
SCORPIONS IN PYJAMAS. There you go, folks. That is BRILLIANT.
A truly beautiful piece of American history is that the guy who is most responsible for the M1 Carbine, and who is arguably the godfather of modern autoloading rifles due to inventing the short-stroke gas piston, began designing firearms while he was in prison for murdering a cop that rolled up on his moonshining operation in 1921
He got his sentence commuted with the endorsement of the sheriff who arrested him and the widow of the cop he smoked because his guns were cool enough they thought he may “help the country.” In 1927. There wasn’t even a war.
the wife of the cop he shot. agreed that his guns were cool enough for that. his wife. the dead guys wife
ALL (16) THE OLIVIA DUNHAMs played by ANNA TORV Olivia Dunham, John!Livia, Nick!Livia, Detective Dunham, Alt!livia Dunham, Olivia pretending to be Alt!Liv, Alt!Liv pretending to be Olivia, Olivia having Alt!Liv’s memories, BelLivia, Decoy!Livia, Future!Livia, New Timeline Olivia, New Timeline Alt!Liv, New Timeline Alt!Liv pretending to be Olivia, Dream!Livia, New Timeline Olivia having Olivia’s memories
When I was “I want him” about a male character im not saying I wanna fuck him. I want him like a spoiled little girl wants a pony, I want to him so I can put him on my shelf for safekeeping, I want him like a good hearty stew on a winter’s evening, I want to put him in a jar and shake it.
[image description: a printed out flyer with the picture of a sleeping grey tabby cat on it. It has text on it that reads:
Muffin disclaimer
So you’ve ordered a muffin! We hope you’re up for a challenge.
Our wobbly tabby cat Bea REALLY likes muffins so there are a few things to be aware of if you have a muffin in the cat area.
- She WILL climb you to try and get your muffin - She is not very good at climbing so she will claw her way up your body - It WILL hurt - She WILL NOT give up - She may try to eat the muffin right out of your mouth - She is not allowed to eat muffins
You may pick her up / move her away if needed and if you’re really struggling, come and talk to us and we will help. No matter how much she wants to, it is still very important that you don’t let her eat any muffin as it will make her sick.
Good luck and we hope you enjoy your muffin experience!
She may look sweet and innocent but we promise you she’s not
/end image description]
Bea the muffin thief has come upon my timeline again and I am obliged to reblog.
