Bedding Sets With Matching Curtains Sale: Beddinginn.com

Colin gets me a job as a janitor. Shortly after that, he's shoving a suppository up my rear-end and saying that the first step towards ripping an everlasting fart is to completely cleanse one's colon. For a long time, Colin Prolaps was my best friend. People never asked, and I assume that they didn't want to know, but Colin was always egging me on to push just a little bit harder when farting even though indulging his wishes usually ended up ruining a pair of drawers. This was quickly shaping up to be one of those times.
A turtle head began pressing upon my clean, white undies- my LAST pair of clean, white undies. "You really won't shit yourself." Colin insisted.
I could feel the castor oil begin to squish out from between my buttcheeks. If you want to truly fart hard without crapping your pants, you have to administer castor oil to both ends for at least 24 hours prior to letting it truly rip. Try to fart any sooner than that, and you're guaranteed to launch a big shiny turd like a high-explosive howitzer shell straight through your drawers and down your pant leg.
"You're thinking of ghost turds. This isn't a ghost turd, Colin."
The mattress we're lying on won't be salvageable in a few minutes. You take 98% pure castor oil and add three-times the amount of refried beans by volume, then wash it all down with a case of PBR and you've got gas that'll melt lacquer from half a mile away.
I know this because Colin knows this.
Add a pot of strong coffee and you've got a nice clip of wet ones that'll choke a pig, but will melt holes in even the thickest pair of drawers. Some folks swear that loading-up on metamucil keeps the farts cleaner for longer, but that's never worked for me or Colin.
So Colin and I are spooning atop a brand-new luxury mattress as the unspeakable contents of my bowels go from asking permission to insisting upon joining the party. Even on a bed this comfy, the sense of what is to come makes it almost impossible to relax. I use the term 'almost' because the one part of my body that IS willing to relax is the one heroically keeping a pandora's box of the unspeakable at bay. I feel like I have to fart. A little voice inside of me- or is it just Colin whispering to me? I can't tell the difference anymore. The voice is telling me that it's just a fart- that I can let just a little bit out.
I begin to relax.
It feels dry.
Push a little bit.
The feeling of relief gives way to one of wet, warm filth. The fleeting warmth and feelings of relief give way to shame and panic as the expensive sheets are surely about to be ruined. The half-dissolved suppository seems to slip out, causing a discomforting sensation like you just tried to stick a chicken wing slathered in hot sauce and blue cheese up your ass, but the dressing does nothing to ease the burn, instead helping the hot sauce get into places you didn't even know existed.
Somewhere in the building, the self-proclaimed Toilet Bowel Cleaners, aka members of Project Plunger, are helping themselves to each and every roll of TP.
There's an old saying, "never trust a fart." Well, maybe this fart shouldn't have trusted ME.
With all sorts of things having been shoved up your ass, you can only guess at what's going on back there. Even the world's toughest bouncer can only do so much when asked to single-handedly keep a world of literal shit at bay.
Ask me how to make stink bombs from garlic and vinegar. These are the things you won't find online or in cookbooks. You can really ruin someone's day by adding a bit of honey to the mix to make it smell rather pleasant until the concoction gets a minute or two of air-time. Add salt and yeast to a batch in a sealed container and you've got a slow fuse that'll eventually blow when least expected.
Fake turds? I'll show you how to make ones that look AND smell like the real thing.
These drawers won't hold up much longer.
Sure, it'll take a while for the devil's hot cocoa to soak through to the mattress, but there's no stopping it. I wonder if my pants are still salvageable.
In just a few minutes, this toxic sludge will begin to soak into my jeans, then the sheets, the comforter, the mattress cover, then finally, the memory foam.
Colin snuggles closer to me and I feel a warm wetness squish against my butt cheeks. Just a few moments outside of the colon manages to let the mess drop just slightly below body temperature. The uncanny valley that exists between body temp and warm pool water sends chills down my spine. I thought of her- I thought of Anita.
Anita Whypmoore and Colin Prolaps seemed to be pulling me in two different directions- jockeying for my attention ever since this all began. Either one on their own is about as big a pain in the ass as I could have ever imagined. Dealing with both of them simultaneously is, well, a problem that I haven't the luxury of fixing at my own leisure.
Having Anita Whypmoore AND this Colin Prolaps in my life at the same time was a problem that had been coming to a head for weeks, but hindsight is about as useful as looking at your own asshole in the mirror. Yes, it's a mess back there, but what exactly do you propose to do about it? Sometimes it's best to leave that mystery unsolved- that's why I prefer black or brown drawers, and why Colin only ever wears white ones. Anita preferred red panties, but she had her own issues.
There's no turning back now. This mattress will be ruined in no time. Why oh why didn't I got for the brown set of sheets? Why didn't I opt for the protective cover? Why did I always let Colin call the shots?
I let go of my bowels as Colin squeezes me even tighter. Colin always told me to let it out even if it would surely ruin my pants. Well, Colin, here's to both of our pants being ruined.
Crapter 2
Hugh Jass' buttcrack peeked out from above the waistband of his off-white drawers. I can only assume that those drawers were originally bright white, but Hugh was the sort of guy to run things into the ground. The small patch of hair atop Hugh's crack reminded me of Wilson from Home Improvement. The more you got to see the very top of what was likely a big, fat, hairy ass, the more you wanted to yank down his pants to have a proper look at it.
"Could you hand me that drain snake? There's something gnarly down here."
I broke eye-contact with Hugh's coin-slot and rifled through the tool bag for the snake. Random metal washers at the bottom of the bag jingled around like loose change and i was once again fantasizing about dropping a shiny new quarter down the crack of Hugh's ass to see if a stale gumball or cheap keychain would roll out his pant leg.
"Quit staring at my ass, Seymour."
Hugh had taken to calling me Seymour. Seymour Butts was my given moniker since no one really needed or wanted to know my government name. I was a plumber's apprentice who spent most of the workday staring at my mentor's ass. If I simply logged enough hours at the precipice of the human grand canyon, I was told I'd make journeyman some day.
I still miss Hugh and his ass. I still can't watch re-runs of Home Improvement without crying like a bitch. Speaking of bitch-crying, that's how I met Anita.
Hugh and i worked for a plumbing company that was contracted to work at this haughty-taughty country club where old fucks paid way too much money to walk around naked in the locker rooms, fart in the saunas, and hang out with other old fucks who hated their spouses.
Hugh was once a private contractor- his own boss. When printed ads and phonebook listings gave way to online directories, scathing tales of his butt crack and beer breath put him at the bottom of the list when searching for plumbers.
Too many Yelp reviews, and you have to work under someone else's company.
It's easy to think of yourself as a piece of shit when you spend your days fixing toilets for people who are just as likely to poop in the shower and use their feet to push it down the drain.
Hugh looks after me because he thinks that my buttcrack and beer breath derailed me from loftier goals, too.
Around us in the ladies' locker room one day, we were about to extract the treasure of the Sierra Madrid from one of the shower drains. Most women yelled at us for doing this sort of work during daylight hours, insisting that their rapidly thinning hair and copious amounts of shit tickets wait until after hours to completely clog the drains and toilets.
The sound of flip-flops echoed through the locker room, terminating at the bathroom stalls. Sounds of straining and grunting were followed by what can only be described as explosive diarrhea. The click of a Bic lighter soon followed as the smells of Virginia Slims and liquid death hit my nose at the exact moment that the sounds of contented relief echoed throughout the tile-clad facility.
"You guys are gonna need more TP!" she announced.
Neither the sound of the toilet flushing nor that of running water from the sink were heard. Instead, the sounds of zippers being pulled and a heap of clothing hitting the tile floor preceded what was soon to become the all-too-familiar sound of flip-flops on tile.
Anita casually strode past Hugh and I in full birthday attire to the shower stall adjacent to the one in which we were working. Hugh whistled audibly and Anita flicked her half-spent cigarette in his direction. By some miracle, the still smoldering butt ricocheted off the wall and landed directly in the crack of Hugh's exposed ass.
Many things changed for me in that moment. For one, Hugh walked off the job making me the de-facto lead plumber on site. Second, I knew true love for perhaps the first time in many, many years. As a mass of hair and turds emerged from the drain that I was working on, Anita let out a grunt and a wet fart. As she stomped the bits of doodoo down the drain and began to lather up be biggest bush I'd ever seen, it occurred to me that she was the reason why the shower drains were always getting clogged.
After cleaning up the additional hair and bits of corn and peas, reality did what reality does and reminded me, via an abrupt kick in the nuts, that I haven't got the luxury to live entirely in my own head- at least not during work hours.
Cleaning up after Anita became part of my daily routine. I figured that it'd be easier to just sweep as much of the shit and hair off of the floor before it went down the drain than to wait for it to build up. Her toilet habits were a completely different and altogether horrifying menace. I know from my time in this business that some women are hesitant to put their bare asses on toilets that, god-forbid, someone else may have touched.
Did I mention something about love with regards to Anita? Let me clear something up- for me, love and the urge to cut a person up into as many pieces as possible are the same. What's more intimate than carefully carving a person into pieces small enough to fit down, let's say, a 2-inch drain? Boy, am I going to miss that woman.
Anita seemed to take standing on the toilet seat to competitive levels. It was as if she tried to simultaneously spread her cheeks AND stand as far above the commode as humanly possible. Imagine giving a sawn-off shotgun to a blind kid, coaching him up a 12' ladder, then having him aim the weapon straight down before pulling the trigger repeatedly and as quickly as possible. Now, imagine that each shotgun shell is filled with the runny shit of a vegan alcoholic woman in her 40s. If you aren't suddenly craving vegetable samosas and Whiteclaws, then metaphors might not be your particular bag. This woman crapped as if every speck of rancid diarrhea that landed OUTSIDE the bowl earned her points towards more booze, cigarettes, and Trader Joe's TV dinners.
I had to admire her, though, as she seemed to harbor just as much if not more hatred towards other women at the club than I did. I went from following her into the shithouse in order to clean up immediately after her, to letting the disaster area sit and stew until someone else saw it and screamed. Anita tended to hang around longer once adopting that policy.
In the following year or so, my contract was expanded to cover a few other facilities in the area. Each gym had it's own all-star in terms of locker room performance artists.
Harry was an older dude who had balls like Pierce Paris. If you're not obsessed with weird shit , you might not know what I'm talking about. All I should have to say is that these were the sort of balls that could so easily fit into one's own asshole, that even the most god-fearing homophobe would be jealous of such a lucky roll of the genetic dice.
When was the last time you tried to shove your own balls up your ass?
Flo had menstrual cycles that precluded any need for me to keep a calendar. I actually got to know Flo a bit. She had grown up in south africa or argentina or new zealand- I couldn't be asked to remember. All of my mental hard drive space was at capacity with the CSI Miami crime scenes that she'd leave for me once per month.
Don't you want to save that tampon? How does it smell?
Mr. Mierdo could predict the future with his fecal matter. You know how some people read fortunes by brewing loose-leaf tea and interpreting the leaves at the bottom of the mug? They call it tasseography. Mr Mierdo practiced ASSeography, and was a bona-fide shaman. He always painted in shades of brown. His canvas was the bathroom divider. He tried to warn me about Colin.
You dumbass! I was warning HIM about YOU!
The sales people at these gyms would hand out vouchers in an attempt to recruit new clients. Thanks to whomever we're currently blaming when life sucks, most of the vouchers ended up being used as currency among local hobos and junkies. Camping out on the side of the highway and getting fucked up every night sounds like a great idea at first, but given enough time on the streets, everyone shits their pants.
Well, maybe not everyone.
I ran into Hugh a bit later using one of these vouchers. It turned out that he had been stockpiling the damn things since before he walked off the job. It turns out that the blow-job :: day-pass exchange-rate was stacked in his favor. When he lost the job, he "forgot" to tell his wife. He had gone on a bit of bender with blackjack and hookers- except he didn't know how to play blackjack.
"You know that you can get twice as many sexual favors if you just do it in your car, right?"
Hugh rubbed his eyes and let out a sigh.
"My wife took the car when she found out."
"Found out what? That you got fired? That you got a handjob from a hobo chick?"
"Seymour," Hugh looked around and lowered his voice to a whisper. "I GET these vouchers in exchange for doing ... various things for THEM! I'm losing the house and will probably be homeless in a few months. I figured it best to get used to this sort of shit."
Bullshit.
Crapter 3
You come out of a blackout hovering over a shit-filled toilet.
Using the wall-mounted handlebar and plunger handle to hold yourself up, you recognize some, but not all, of the diarrhea and vomit staring back at you. Was it Nietzsche who warned about staring into the void? I don't know if it stares back at you, but it certainly farts directly into your face.
You chug a steel reserve, hit the bowl, then pay for your Taco Bell. As you bite into your chalupa with extra fire sauce, bliss washes over you and your brain mercifully goes into a sort of low-power-mode.
Fuck, I didn't wash my hands before leaving work. Am I lucky enough to get a disease that'll kill me sooner rather than later?
You unclog a toilet.
You replace a urinal.
You pull a softball-sized clump of hair up from a shower drain and recognize the hair of at least 3 different women that you've thought about while touching yourself.
In the handicapped stall of the womens' showers, Colin is pulling his pud to a discarded tampon and a lock of red hair. For a split second, he remembers better days when these stalls included soap dispensers that he could jizz into.
I know this because Colin knows this. He's the reason why those soap dispensers were removed in the first place (and why the mens' showers no longer have curtain rods).
You check-in 200 lbs of those public-restroom sized rolls of shit tickets.
Colin uses the last of the TP at another gym, wiping until blood is drawn, then he wipes some more.
You mention to the front desk clerk that someone might be stealing the big rolls of terlit paper .
You wonder why your ass is always so raw.
You wonder why there seems to be blood stains on some of your white drawers.
You switch to black and brown drawers.
Somehow, your crusty old white drawers keep showing up in the laundry. You swear to throw them out after wearing them one more time. You turn on the TV and watch a re-run of Home Improvement.
"I don't think so, TIM."
You fantasize about being maimed on the job by the likes of Tim Allen and spending a month or two knitting and watching fart fetish videos on the internet.
Colin takes a loose, rancid shit. He wipes a single time and doesn't even look at the paper before sticking the wad of TP to the wall. He leaves without flushing or washing his hands, of course.
Colin modifies his home TP dispenser to hold 18" spools of shit tickets. He rounds out the evening by shitting in a scavenged pair of womens panties and letting it dry over night.
Colin is not quite right in the head.
The boss has been hassling you about the uptick in overtime and the ever-growing paper expenses on your route. Someone tore the seat off of a handicapped commode the other day. The supply company sent you an extra toilet seat by accident. It just barely fits on your own porcelain throne, but what seems to be enough room to fit another pair of butt cheeks has you feeling like a king.
Industrial TP dispensers have a mechanism that allows you to load two giant rolls of TP so that, in theory, you've got a buffer before people start wiping with their hands and smearing the shit on the walls. Get to the end of a roll? just slide the lever over and BAM- you've got a whole 'nother round of tickets to the carnival of caca.
The backup roll- no one who uses the public shithouse need worry about asking for another roll.
This is a convenience for the guest who gets to take a shit- on the floor if he wants to- for free.
Ever since rumors began to circulate about another plumber in the company being fired for taking home half-spent rolls, no one's allowed to bring home even the tiniest bit of TP. Since then, stacks of all-but-spent rolls of tickets have been piling up in each facility. I vaguely recall the head office suggesting that we manually roll several-dozen lengths of old TP onto a single cardboard tube as a way to 'recycle'. It shouldn't of been surprising considering that it IS called the HEAD office after all.
Mr. Mierdo predicted this when he used his 'natural' fingerpaint to depict a bunch of circles with arrows pointing to one BIG circle. The other side of the stall depicted a giant anthropomorphic penis with a penis of its own. The effigy seemed to be forcing it's tertiary penis into a stick figure's mouth. An arrow pointed to the stick figure and the word "FAG" was smeared in big, angry, corn-speckled butt mud.
It wasn't until the prophet himself turned to me on my way out the door and said "YOU FAGGOT!" that I realized that this particular premonition was meant for me.
Colin slips Mr. Mierdo a fiver for "the usual" and they trade pants behind a dumpster and take turns farting in each other's faces.
You're a toilet cleaner and you're smelly and horny and you spend all day being intimate with the ugliest parts of the most attractive people. There's a fresh crate of shit tickets waiting to be checked in. You break open the box, drop your pants, and let loose a wet fart down the tube of each stack of TP. When I say wet fart, I'm talking about the sort of fart that would stain your drawers and maybe your pants. But who cares? The inside surface of the tube will never be seen by the bathroom bandits.
Like sticking pennies up your ass for confidence, this was a petty way to get one over on the bougie bastards and make them smell MY ass for a change.
It turned out that plenty of people working at the various gyms got bored enough to wind all the last bits of TP into one big roll. It actually amounted to having 2-3 emergency backup rolls at each facility. Of course, I blessed those rolls with flatus spiritus as well. Some of the lengths of paper even came out with specks of bunghole butter. One guy actually came to the front desk of one of the clubs holding shitty tissue with two tones of brown streaks on it and attempted to convince the manager that some kind of shit bandit was wiping with the TP and putting it back into the dispenser.
Some people just aren't right in the head.
you wake up in a toilet stall in the seediest gym of the route.
It takes me a moment to realize that I'm in the daycare bathroom. Just about every gym had a daycare built-in for moms looking to shed baby weight and shop for new dads for their kids. Each daycare room had its own set of shithouses. One would feature a full-sized toilet and a changing table (6 months was the minimum age to leave a kid in one of these menageries). The other commode was meant for kids who knew how to wipe their own asses (if but poorly) and featured a toilet that was straight out of Honey I Shrunk the Toilet.
The shithouse that I found myself in did not feature a changing table.
They say that the second fasted thing in the world is a butthole clenching shut following a substantial dump.
What's THE fastest thing in the world? Well, some call it Poseidon's Kiss, or Leviathan's lick, but what we're dealing with is simply an ice-cold drop of water mixed with piss that shoots up into your bunghole like Randy Quaid at the end of Independence Day.
You just ruined that movie for anyone who hasn't already seen it.
Fast-forward to break time. I'd taken to eating lunch on the toilet. My bean and cheese burrito dripped a bit from its rear-end onto the seat.
"Hey, do you have an extra roll by you?" A voice echoed from the stall next to me. "There's not TP in here! Both rolls are missing!"
That's odd. I always kept the dispensers topped-off. Maybe I forgot. Maybe someone was messing with me.
I obliged and used my keys to open the dispenser and slip the smaller of the two rolls under the divider.
Colin had gotten a hold of a TP key and had taken to stuffing his gym bag with the smaller of the two rolls any time he used the facilities. By now, hiding shit stains among re-rolled TP was a daily ritual.
You wake up behind the wheel of your van in the parking lot of your next appointment. You haven't taken the spent taco bell wrappers to the trash in about a week, despite having access to a dozen dumpsters containing things far more vile that the fast food wrappers that add to the pile of shame you already carry around along with replacement plumbing parts and boxes of TP and toilet seat covers.
I check my watch and see that I've got time, and gather up as many fast-food bags and wrappers and head to the dumpsters.
"Hey! Do you mind?!" the heap of trash in the dumpster seems to call back as I chuck bag after bag of half-eaten and watered-down fast food offerings.
This is how Colin and I met.
You wake up in the shithouse. Again. This time's it's the ladies room.
Colin's shit-caked shoes, held together with duct tape, are hovering an inch about the tile floor in the stall next to mine.
He drops a log into the swamp.
He drops another, then another.
A thunderous, stinky fart snaps me out of my fixation with the shit-caked shoes that haven't seemed to left a trail of footprints. That's odd.
"Hey, what time is it?"
"It's time to wipe your ass and light a match. Also, it's just a little bit after 4pm."
I had to know if Colin had raided the TP dispensers while I was sleeping one off.
If I could blackout and wake up on a different toilet, could I wake up with a different set of buttcheeks?
I asked if Colin needed any TP.
Colin chuckled and showed me a single square of TP from the gap underneath the divider. I watched as he gathered up the paper in the center of the sheet like we were about to fold a paper airplane. Instead, he tore the tip of the paper and unfurled it, sticking his middle finger through the center of the paper.
"Hold this for a moment." Colin handed me the bit of paper that had been torn from the center of the shit-ticket. "Sometimes, you have to wipe your ass with a single square of TP."
A shit-covered finger appeared near the bottom of the divider. The square of TP was like a ballerina's tutu with various shades of brown and red at the base of Colin's finger. In that moment, Colin gathered up the TP and wrung the poop from his finger.
Somehow, his finger was now immaculate- except for the crust under his fingernail.
"You still got that hole-punch of paper?" I passed it back under the divider and Colin used it to thoroughly clean under his fingernail.
I wiped my own ass, flushed, and headed out to wash my hands. From Colin's stall, it sounded like he was licking his fingers after eating a rack of BBQ ribs.
I pretended to wash my hands and clocked out for the day.
You wake up, and you have to shit. It's an emergency.
Somehow, you're still in the van in the parking lot of your last appointment.
Using one of the dozen or so keys on my jailer's keyring, I unlock the service door with shaky hand and sprint to the men's room. Letting loose a mudslide that no-doubt coated the underside of the seat, I let out a sigh of relief.
"For fuck's sake, light a match!"

I'm probably going to get a lot of backlash and downvotes for this, but this is something I really care about and I want to foster a discussion about it. Please hear me out! I will be breaking down all the issues and problems that plague the entire Surface brand. This is not just here to vent or complain, my goal is to help foster and encourage critical discussion of the products. I apologize for how long this post is, but I'm just so passionate about this topic and I want things to be better. A TL:DR summary will be included at the bottom of the post.

Let me start by saying that I am a huge Surface fanboy. I always wanted more from tablets, and the Surface line piqued my interest when it was first launched. My first Surface was a Pro 3, and it was the perfect college companion. (However, I do NOT miss the molten core that it would become) I think the Surface line of products is one of the few truly innovative line of mobile PC products. Each product brings something brand new to the table. I can not wait for the Surface Neo, what a great innovation in the mini-tablet market!

That said, the more Surface products I buy, the more apprehension I have with buying from the Surface brand. That really pains me to say; I love the sleek brand, the look, the name. As I said, I'm a fanboy! Unfortunately, the brand has been plagued by Microsoft's incompetency: Hardware/software issues, defective units, inconsistency, little improvements with devices, and worst of all, Windows. Lastly, and I never thought I'd ever say this, but the biggest issue with the Surface brand is Apple. Let me break it down…

Part 1: The Surface level

The new iterations of each device feels even more disappointing that the last. Minor improvements, it feels like Microsoft is trying to see how little it can do and still justify releasing a new version every year. I feel so bad for the Surface Book fans waiting for a proper upgrade… Don’t get me wrong, it's got great hardware, but 3 years…. And 0 changes to the design? 3 years and they didn't even move the awful placement for headphone jack??

Speaking of headphone jacks, (or lack thereof…) we all made fun of the iPad Pro for being a 'professional' product without a headphone jack, and the SPX deserves equal treatment. A gorgeous device, incredibly sleek, a screen to die for... It's a shame that Microsoft had to handicap it so badly. I don't hate ARM, I 100% understand the reasoning for going that route. (As I understand it, that's how they're able to achieve the fan-less design. I may be wrong though) It just feels like such a strange decision to create a 'professional' device that can't run 80% of professional apps. At least the iPad Pro has a sizable app library. I understand it's an amazing device if it fits your use case, but I can't see why anyone should pay $1,000 for an iPad with fewer apps and less support. It doesn't help that Microsoft is once again making no effort to get third-parties to make compatible apps. At least the pen has a rechargeable battery, and it only took them 8 years.

To make matters worse, sometimes it feels like the SP7 was held back as to not overshadow the X. How many people would have bought the X if they took the new pen, screen, and (if possible) the body and put it into the SP7? It would be a bold new improvement for the Surface Pro line. It'd be a confident showing for the Pro line, a big reminder that the Surface brand isn't afraid to be different, a huge leap for the device… Instead, we got two split devices, the X and the SP7. (I upgraded to the 7 from my faithful Pro 3, so this is personal) I've got to hand it to Microsoft though, they did make the bold decision to release the Pro 7 with a WORSE battery than the 6!!! Very brave. At least we FINALLY got USB C. (Of course it's not thunderbolt, we'll have to wait a couple of years to have the privilege to make that $1,000+ upgrade)

One thing that all devices do share, however, is the piss-poor QA. Each device has a slew of hardware and software issues that take months to be addressed, if they ever do. Remember when the Surface Book 1 launched and regularly bluescreened and wasn't fixed for months? Call me crazy, but when I purchase a product, I kinda expect it to function at a basic level, especially at this price point. There are still issues in the Surface line that have been unaddressed despite updates and EVEN NEW PRODUCTS. Why is pen jitter STILL a thing?? This is from a few days ago! I'm sorry, you're saying that my $1k+ device can't even draw a straight line if I get too close to the edge of the screen? And this device is for professionals? Are you kidding me?

But you'll only have to deal with those issues if you actually get a device that works in the first place. Raise of hands, how many people have had to return a Surface product? I get it, it's not too big of an issue. Mistakes happen, nothing's perfect, and sometimes you get a bad egg. But for the Surface line, it's like a right of passage. It doesn't take long to browse this sub and see the comment "Sounds like a defective unit, contact Microsoft for a replacement." over and over again. I like to pay the higher prices for higher-end tech so that I DON'T HAVE TO DEAL WITH THIS. I have returned more Surface products than any other product, yet it costs more than all of them. This is the type of stuff you deal with when you buy the cheaper knock-off, NOT the largest tech company's flagship products. I understand that it sounds a bit privileged to complain about having to return products when they do it all for free, but I am SO TIRED of getting a product, setting it up, installing all my programs, logging into all of my syncing my files, etc. And then it has some issue, so I call Microsoft, get a return setup, ship it out, wait a week to get a new one, and then I do it all again! THEN THAT ONE HAS SOME OTHER BS PROBLEM. How is this acceptable? Returning a defective product is no big issue. But doing it regularly is an absolute chore. I am not kidding, while writing this post I discovered that my SP7 has some weird light bleed dots on it. Time to contact Microsoft…

These are premium products and they're charging premium prices. Is it too much to ask for premium service? Generally, you purchase a premium product so you don't have to worry about reliability issues, but for the Surface line, it's the exact opposite. Look anywhere and people will suggest different and cheaper alternatives if you need something reliable. And for the love of all things holy, please make the black coat deeper.

My experience with my Surface Headphones sums up the brand perfectly. I love the design, which is what the Surface line excels at. I love the dials, and the features, the quality. I really did not want to get burned, so I did a lot of research to make sure that these would be good for me. I had never spent so much on headphones, and I didn't want to buy them just because of the Surface brand. After a lot of research and poking around, I decided to get them on sale for $250, $100 off! I purchased them with 100% confidence that this was the product for me.

Honestly, I have a hard time recommending them at $250, much less full-priced. (Note: this is the original model, before the new updated one. I have no experience with the updated model) The quality is great, they're very comfortable, and the battery is pretty good. Honestly, physically, I have no complaints. For the mediocre, the touchpads have a hard time distinguishing between single and double/triple taps. The side dials feel awesome, but they still only increase in increments of 5 or 6. At this point, it's no more precise than a button for volume, and I wish there was more control with them; it'd make the dials much more useful.

It's all downhill from here. Cortana is built-in, which at first I thought was no big deal because I don't NEED to use her…. Right? Well, her voice is what tells you everything like low battery, ready to pair, ect. Again, not a problem in theory. However, her voice commands are SO LONG, and they completely mute all other audio without pausing. So you're watching a movie and invested in the dialog and- "Your battery is very low. They need to recharge." Did they really need her to say all this? It's so easy to miss dialog, favorite parts of your song, people talking in discord calls. Could they not have it be a simple "low battery" or maybe just a little beep? It's so annoying to have to go back just to rehear everything you missed. That's only if you can even get it to connect in the first place. I have had so much trouble getting it to connect to my PCs, including my Surface. Getting my Microsoft Surface Headphones connected to my Microsoft Surface Pro 7 was HARDER than it was to connect to my iPhone. I have no idea what causes this - sometimes it just won't connect. I have to run through the entire on/off, restarting, normally resetting it to factory settings works - but I have to do this CONSTANTLY. That means I'm constantly having to reset all my settings and connect them back to my devices - so annoying. Also, when switching between devices, there's this strange audio conflict where the audio will cut out for a split-second, like it very briefly switches to the other device for some reason. You can fix this by turning the headphones on and off again, but then what's the point of the whole seamless audio switching in the first place? Before you say that I have a defective unit, it's not. I had this issue with BOTH pairs of Surface Headphones I've owned. The first pair just suddenly broke while using them, and I needed to replace them. For $250/$350 headphones, I expect them to last at least 3 years, but I’m not crossing my fingers here. If I have any more issues, I will be returning them and getting a pair of Sony's, I've heard good things about them.

Part 2: Closing the curtains on Windows

Windows is the worst part of the Surface line, making an embarrassing display of the hardware. It's a mismatched outdated mess, and that's never more apparent when using a Windows 10 tablet. As well-made as it is, a keyboard attachment should not be a required purchase for a tablet. Leave it to Microsoft to create the wonderfully beautiful Fluent Design System….. Only to rarely adhere to it themselves. Why do I regularly stumbled across visual elements from 2001 on my TABLET I bought in 2019??

They keep saying that they’re going to be doing visual overhauls, but it never amounts to anything. They constantly say that they’re going to be adding or changing things, but then nothing ever changes. Remember when they promised that tabs would come to Explorer? Still waiting on that. A majority of people believe that the release of Windows 10X will be the visual overhaul that everyone has been waiting for, but it’s hard to believe that anything will change significantly when we’ve been burned time and time again.

Regarding Windows 10X, I am very interested in it, it definitely looks like a more tablet-focused UI. But it’s already been said that it’s purely for duel-screen devices, so is regular Windows tablet mode going to continue to suck? And how surface-level (ha) will the ‘overhaul’ be? Since VISTA, each visual overhaul has just simply been a coat of paint over the existing UI. It doesn’t tale long before the paint chips and all the previous elements start to pop up, making an incredibly ugly and disjointed experience. It’s the exact same OS but with a different looking start menu. They need to overhaul so much more, meanwhile they spend months just to update random icons, so that everything matches even less.. I do not care what they say or tease, I will believe the OS will be visually updated when I see it.

But let’s talk about the functionality of the OS itself, as a tablet OS. It sucks. First of all, there is no benefit in the OS with touch. The entire system is just poking tiny icons. Poke. Poke. Poke and hold. These are slapped-on touch integrations, making it a piss-poor experience. If you were lucky enough to use Windows 8 on a tablet, it had great integration. (Though it still had room to improve) I remember feeling so free being able to swipe around, access things, gestures, it felt like a TRUE tablet system!! Somehow, Microsoft decided to do away with all these for 10. Now everything is poke and hold, which is an ARCHAIC system that makes it a pain to use!! Why is using a MOUSE on a TABLET more comfortable?? Why does the TOUCHPAD have more gesture support than the screen itself?! And for the love of Panos, when I click a link, please bring up the page I clicked. In tablet mode, the link will open to my browser, but it won't bring the browser up to focus. This is basic OS stuff. (Also the on-screen keyboard is awful. Can we maybe download custom keyboards like ever other touch OS?)

Why does everything open in a new window? If I want to manage my sound devices, (without using search) I have to go through 4 different windows!!! (Not to mention that this is something I have to do regularly to get my Surface Headphones to work…) In tablet mode, each of these jumps you into a new screen, making a tiny window full screen, wasting loads of screen real-estate with white space taking up the 13” screen. This is not a good operating system. And why does the taskbar STILL get stuck and not hide? I remember dealing with this issue in XP. I hate having to navigate through menus to restart Explore.exe just so I can add a Photoshop layer. The entire eco-system around Windows hasn't changed since XP, and maybe even before, but I don't have experience before that. You can claim this is to keep program compatibility, but I strongly disagree. They don't have to change the core system, but user interface, the entire window-system, needs a serious rethinking.

If any company should be the one to excel™ at this, it should be Microsoft. They have been an advocate for the progress of tablets and tablet-desktop operating system, something I'm such a big advocate for. They have the money and resources to create a GOD-TIER OS if they put in the R&D for it. They should be looking into what makes a good tablet interface and experience, and then lay that on top of Windows. Seriously, imagine a fully touch integrated OS that is gorgeous and is incredible and user friendly for both tablet and desktop users. Microsoft CAN do this, they just DON’T. It frustrates me beyond belief that the only thing stopping incredible progress is Microsoft's laziness and/or lack of interest. We could absolutely have the best of both worlds, and Microsoft is the one than has the knowledge, money, and resources do it. Instead we just poke the tiny Windows icons and get tossed around into different setting windows that haven’t changed since XP. They could be the king of tablets, they have everything going for them, but they just sit around with their thumbs up their newly added USB-C ports. (Not thunderbolt, of course)

Part 3: Apple - somehow less embarrassing than Microsoft

All this brings me to Apple. They're a shell of their former self, and Apple hasn't done anything innovative in the past decade, that's something almost everyone can agree on. They've instead gone the route of just implementing features other people have come up with years after the fact. The iPad Pro has had a lot of updates over the years - it's definitely come a long way. Of course, it's still nowhere near being as functional as Windows. But it has developed it's own OS, one which has some pretty tablet integration. Again, it's no fully-functional Windows, but it is developing into quite the competent tablet + touch OS. Looking at Apple's page for it, it feels like I'm looking at a wishlist for what I want in a Windows-tablet UI. Now, don't get me wrong, I am NOT saying that the iPad Pro is a comparable PC replacement... yet. I do think that it could be at some point, however. Okay, hear me out.

While still a tablet OS, Apple has made a substantial amount of improvements to iPad OS, regularly updating it and adding new features. They've been listening to people in what they want and implementing changes, all while staying consistent with the UI design and feel. They developed a much more intuitive system for tablets that feels so much better than Window's. Instead of pulling in multiple split views, (which you can do when you need to) you rather slide in tab-like windows that let you access apps quickly, then slide it away when you don't need it.

The iPad file browser is far from being a proper file system, but again, it's a start. Not to mention most of the hard work is done - they have a nice looking tablet file browser all in place, plus they have this wonderful slide-in picture-in-picture system like I mentioned. It feels like a better alternative to Window's massively awkward full-screen apps. Not to mention, they have native picture-in-picture support for video - across the entire OS. Meanwhile, you still can't do a vertical split view in Windows. All that, and I even think iPad OS is far from a modern tablet OS! I have a serious touch-based OS system overhaul idea, but that's for a future post. No one has used a tablet's capability to it's full potential yet, but Apple is much closer than Microsoft.

If you compare the iPad OS to how it was, say, 5 years ago, the differences are immediately evident. If you do the same for Windows 10, I honestly think most people would never notice a difference. Microsoft has also been pushing tablet-pen integration with the Surface line, another thing that I completely agree with. Yet, despite Microsoft having a 6 year head start, Apple has executed pen support extremely eloquently, making it integrated throughout the entire device. You can write in any text boxes, select text, scratch out to erase, etc. Again, this is system-wide, and without even using then pen's button. Outside of drawing, the Windows pen support is basically just having a better pointer, so that you can actually click the UI that is too small for your finger. There's so much opportunity, yet no one wants to experiment. What about a system-wide radial menu for the pen? That could be really cool, like dabbing colored-paint on a painter's palette.

In Apple's most-recent showcase event thingy, (not worth watching, by the way) they announced that future Macbooks will be sporting Apple-made CPUs. They also low-key updated some of the Mac OS's UI, making everything a bit bigger, sleeker, simpler, and more in-line with something you'd see on the iOS line… This alone doesn't mean much, but it could be the first piece of a transition for Apple. Stay with me here, but what if Apple eventually merged the iPad Pro line and Macbook line? If Apple is making both the Macbook chips and the iPad chips, how long will it take for Mac OS applications to become backwards compatible with the iPad? All it would take is Apple moving Mac OS onto the iPad hardware, or rather taking a Mac and compressing it into the iPad. Honestly, they could have done this years ago, but modern Apple is terrified of innovation and change. Of course, even Mac OS doesn't have as much app support as Windows, but I think 90% of the programs people run on their Surfaces will be compatible with Mac.

Let me just state again, because I don't want my words to get twisted, I am not saying that the iPad Pro will eventually be able to replace Windows, not at all. But at what point will the downgrade in OS be worth it for all the benefits? I'm sure that for a lot of you, myself included, there are a good amount of programs that don't have Mac equivalents, not to mention other compromises from switching OS's. However, in my case, it would be worth it if I had a stable product that always worked with a coherent tablet optimized OS, that is also a full proper OS. Something with top-of-the-line drawing experience, ran almost all of the programs I needed, and also feels like I'm using tablet - rather than a laptop with a touchscreen. Obviously, I'm not saying that we should all switch to iPads, not at all. The Surface has a vast array of users. But my point is that, in the future, the iPad Pro could be a much better and safer choice for 80% of the users, and Microsoft has been doing absolutely nothing to prevent that. Let me put it this way:
The Surface Pro's biggest selling point is the full-featured OS. If you take that aspect out of the equation, what else does Surface offer against the iPad Pro? Do these features it outweigh all the massive problems?

TL:DR -

• New iterations of Surface devices do very little to improve the core concept. They have very little interest in improving the design, rather just refreshing the hardware to keep it relatively modern.
• The QA on all devices is shameful, and the amount of issues and problems that are ignored by Microsoft shows how little they care about their customers. Returning and replacing your device should not be a regular thing.
• The more Surface products I buy, the less faith I have in the brand. My experience with the Surface Headphones has been lackluster at best, frustrating at worst.
• Microsoft charges premium prices, yet does not provide a premium experience.
• Windows 10 is failure of a modern operating system. It's ugly, has no identity, the user interface is awful and poorly thought out, there is no consistency, and Microsoft clearly has no intention of actually improving it on any serious level. Things need to be re-thought completely, but Microsoft and thought don't go together very well.
• Windows 10 is not a tablet operating system, it has the bare minimum and nothing else. There is no care put into making the tablet experience enjoyable. If they don't want to make a tablet OS, why are they making tablets?
• Apple continues to improve their OS, slowly making the iPad Pro closer to a proper laptop. They've still got a lot of work to do, but they are clearly putting in the effort.
• Apple is making the processors for their Macbooks now - how much longer until they consolidate the iPad Pro and Macbook? If they weren't so scared of change they could already have iPads running full Mac OS.
• The Surface is a compelling offering because of it's full operating system, but what happens when the iPad Pro also has a full operating system? How many people will put up with Microsoft's BS when there will be a much safer option with only a handful of compromises?

Conclusion

I'm not writing this because I hate the Surface brand and want to see it fail - the absolute opposite! I have so much love and passion for the brand and I think it's one of the few that is truly innovating with new products. But the more products I buy, the less faith I have in the brand. I can't keep spending MORE to have a WORSE experience than what the competition offers. Of course, when you have brand new innovative products, there's bound to be rough spots; I understand that and can forgive that. But almost everything I talked about are things that are not new problems - they're things that have been solved for years.

The entire reason I was inspired to create this post was because I realize that, in the future when it's time to upgrade my SP7, I considered switching to an iPad Pro. That truly pains me to say, as I've been such an advocate for the Surface line and I've been a huge critic of the iPad Pro. But I can't keep pretending that I'm fully satisfied with my purchase when the experience has been getting worse. It kills me that a brand with such potential is squandering its reputation. It feels like they're innovating new products… So that other companies can execute it better. Surface can create amazing devices, but they fall flat at everything else. I don't have the time or energy to jump through all these hoops at this price. I'm tired of constantly restarting so it will connect to my headphones, or it won't connect to the internet, or it won't connect to my pen, or it won't unlock, or it won't recognize my type cover, or because of some other random quirk in Windows.

The whole concept is "a tablet that can replace your laptop", but right now it's basically a touchscreen laptop with a detachable keyboard (sold separately of course). Windows 8 had much more of a tablet ecosystem, but Windows 10 completely ruined that. They said they would make the tablet experience better but there has not been a single change to the tablet experience since launch.

There would be compromises and sacrifices of course, like the Type Cover's best-in-class typing experience, but I personally would be willing to lose things like that for the benefit of not having to deal with all of the garbage like I do now. Also, while I will always prefer the kickstand, their magnetic keyboard thingy is pretty slick. Microsoft and Apple both have a lot of compelling offers, yet they both end up dropping the ball so hard. It's sad how the future of full tablet-PCs isn't relying on hardware - it's software. Both Apple and Microsoft can continue to pump more and more powerful hardware into these tablets, but it won't significantly change the experience until they actually get off their butts and update their OS. (And I don't just mean a new coat of thin paint, Microsoft.)

We're at a point in personal computing that we're not limited by technology, but these companies' lack of interest in innovation or change.

I'm sure I'll get a lot of flack for this post, but I hope people understand that this all comes from a place of love. The Surface line is so close to being the perfect devices for me, but they just keep missing the mark. I understand that a lot of people probably don't have these problems - but please remember that, unfortunately, that is the minority. This should be apparent on this sub of all places, every day there's a new post on here needing help with some obscure issue or flaw that they're experiencing. If you think that all of this is too much to ask, please remember that this is Microsoft's signature line. They are a Trillion-dollar company. Hundreds of companies don't have a quarter of their money or size, yet don't struggle with these problems.
Get it together, Microsoft.

Section One: Assets and Debt
Annual Bonus: 20-30% of my salary
Retirement Balance: ~$150,000 between 401k and Roth IRA. My salary has nearly doubled in the past four years, and I’m playing catch up. My goal is to have $300,000 saved by 40. I started saving for retirement around 23 or 24 but missed a few years here and there due to pay cuts and living abroad.
HSA: $7,000. My company funds the annual limit at the beginning of the year because we have a high deductible health plan, but for the past two years I’ve been saving this contribution to use as another retirement vehicle. I pay for medical expenses out-of-pocket. Annual eye, dental and physical exams are covered.
Emergency Fund: $40,000
Travel Fund: $3,000
Investment accounts: ~$13,000
Grad school savings account: $2,129 (I just paid Fall quarter’s $8,200 tuition)
Checking account balance: ~$1,000 each payday. I pay off my credit cards in full a couple times a month.
Credit card debt: $0. Two years ago, I had $6,000 in cc debt and no emergency fund. Grateful for how far I’ve come.
Student loan debt: $0. I studied Political Science in the early aughts and graduated owing $50,000 between Sallie Mae and the government. I finally paid them off in 2017 and had zero help from my parents.
Net worth: ~$215,000
Pronouns: She/her
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Section Two: Income
Monthly Gross: $14,583
Monthly take-home: $7,840
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Section Three: Expenses
Rent: $1,900. I live alone in a studio apartment.
Retirement contribution: 13% of my salary ($1,694 monthly). I also put $6,000 in a backdoor Roth. The company match is 4%.
Savings contribution: $3,000 (I’m about to start shifting this to investments)
Investment contributions: $500-$1,000
Debt payments: $0
Donations: No set donations but it’s between $5-10k per year, usually from my bonus. I’ve been giving to COVID relief efforts for LGBTQ folx and BLM efforts recently.
Electric: ~$30
Wifi: $60
Cell phone: Paid for by work
Subscriptions: $200 (Netflix, Spotify, Chegg, Google storage, iCloud, Feather furniture rental)
Regular therapy $300 (I go biweekly)
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Annual Expenses:
Grad school tuition: $25,000 per year. I saved enough to cash flow this year’s tuition from my bonus last year. Work reimburses $10,000 per year.
Chase Sapphire Reserve: $450 (will be $550 next year)
Amazon Prime Student: $59
Renters Insurance: $140
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Day 1 - Tuesday | Daily total: $18.49
3:30 a.m. A car alarm is blaring outside and I’m in a hypnagogic state for about 30 minutes.
8:30 a.m. Real alarm goes off. I’ve been WFH since mid-March when our SIP went into effect, but I’ve been going into my actual office a couple of days a week lately. My desk there is much better for my neck, back, wrists, and mental health, and there’s no one around. Have some Trader Joe’s instant coffee with a splash of hazelnut creamer. It’s honestly better than the drip at the cafe near my place.
10 a.m. I post a room divider on Craigslist to sell since I’m doing some redecorating. I’m planning to put some plants I ordered in its place to serve as a barrier between my “bedroom” and “living room.” Oh, studio apartment Tetris. It sells almost immediately and the guy Venmos me $125 even though he’s not coming to pick it up until tomorrow morning. Score!
10:30 a.m. Eat some meatballs in marinara for breakfast I got from the deli counter the other night for dinner but forgot to eat. Throw on blue jeans, a striped shirt, one of the cloth masks made by my mom with a coffee filter liner, and my helmet. I’ll just say this now, people in SF are great about mask-wearing, and any store, indoors or out, requires them. I own many.
11 a.m. Ride my e-scooter to the office to prep for a call at noon and another one at 1:30 p.m. I’m in an online master’s program and get a notification that our final group project has been graded and posted in Canvas for my Finance class. I wind up with 94% in the course overall. Go me! I text my mom and the woman I’m seeing long-distance, J., the good news. They are my biggest cheerleaders.
12 p.m. Meetings meetings meetings until 2. Eat some chips and drink a can of Kombucha from the office kitchen. The rest of the workday is spent updating our website with some new photos and compiling a monthly report that needs to go out this week. I also discuss my birthday plans with a friend. I suggested a few of us visit a lake that I had never actually been to but drove by a few weeks ago and thought it was gorgeous. However, the planning is getting cumbersome and logistics around social distancing and renting a boat for the day are proving complicated. I decide to suggest a new plan tomorrow and ask everyone to hang at a local park instead.
5:30 p.m. Ride my scooter home. This is a recent endeavor after deciding taking the bus was too risky and walking home at night has been sketchy on more than several occasions the past few months. I look like a total dork but it’s fun and easy so who cares.
7:30 p.m. Order a turkey club sandwich and fries for pickup from a restaurant around the corner I had a $10 coupon code for. The difference is $7 with the change rounded up for the Grubhub relief fund. I leave a $5 cash tip ($12). Stop at the bodega for a can of bubbly rose. $18.49
8 p.m. Eat, drink, and catch up on TV. I have the week off from school before Fall quarter starts next week, so I watch the first episode of a new show called Lovecraft Country because I love actress Jurnee Smollett. Some friends have read the book it’s based on and now I want to read it too.
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Day 2 - Wednesday | Daily total: $133.97
7 a.m. Awake too early but just go with it and start a book titled Patsy I’d been saving for when I had this week-long break from school. Receive texts from a couple friends saying there are wildfires in the area near the lake we were planning to go to, and people are evacuating. Feel awful for everyone going through this on top of everything else.
9:30 a.m. I have a video call at 10 so I get ready. Wear another striped shirt and yesterday’s blue jeans, which has become my quarantine uniform. I have six or seven of them now in varying styles and colors. I told myself the stripes add a little razzle dazzle. The room divider buyer arrives so I haul it down to the lobby.
10 a.m. Drink warm water with lemon during the call. It’s about the environmental design review for one of our upcoming projects. Probably should have ordered a side salad instead of fries last night because I’m having mild heartburn.
12:30 p.m. Walk to the bodega across the street for smoothie ingredients: raspberries, oranges, beets, avocado, and a few bananas. I bought a single-serve Ninja blender last month (highly recommend) and have been on a smoothie binge. I’m iffy on the beets...will see what I can concoct with them. Make a smoothie with berries, banana, spinach, frozen avocado, and unsweetened coconut milk. $17.15
1:30 p.m. Focus on getting close to inbox zero and compiling the report to send to our partners since I’m taking PTO tomorrow and Friday. J. texts saying she made dinner reservations (my love language) for when she comes to visit in a couple weeks. The place has a nice patio and looks like they’ve figured out how to properly distance the diners. Run down the street to pick up some wash & fold (I send out the bedding and towels every two weeks). $32.50
5 p.m. Break to eat a frozen burrito and run back to the bodega for lemons, limes, Tate’s gluten-free cookies, and a 6-pack of Fort Point Strawberry Darling which winds up being a bit sour for my taste but I can bring it to the park hang this weekend (if it still happens). The air quality right now isn’t great. Find a couple of packages addressed to me in my lobby. Birthday gifts from two friends. Feeling loved and my birthday isn’t until Saturday. I usually don’t make a big to-do about it but maybe I was feeling antsy this year due to a lack of regular human interaction and motions generally at everything. $21.48
8:30 p.m. I’ve been watching the DNC and whittling work emails down to inbox twenty. I’ll take it. Kamala Harris is sharp, and it’s time to log off. I FaceTime J. for a bit and wind up having to schedule a work call for tomorrow morning but am otherwise looking forward to having some time to myself.
11 p.m. Late night shopping on the Target app before bed. I order two swimsuit tops in different sizes. They sent me the wrong size a couple of weeks ago, so I am trying this again. I also get a Bona microfiber cleaning cloth and a Pixi shade stick in Copper Glaze. $62.84
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Thursday - Day 3 | Daily total: $17.19
8:30 a.m. Awake before my 9 a.m. Sonos alarm. I have it set to peaceful music, so I usually just let it play. Check the news for a status update on the wildfires and see some awful photos. Poke my head out the window to assess the sky and weather. My call is at 10 so I make my cheapo coffee and start some laundry in my portable washing machine. Watch the latest episode of Married at First Sight which I discuss with my bff. We were incensed after the poor matches last season, yet here we are again. Look at Clare V. purses online while hoping the MAFS couples are still happy after the honeymoon. J. randomly Venmos $10 for a latte. She’s so thoughtful and cute.
11 a.m. Call over. I get back to life admin and my laundry list of things to do which includes reserving a rental car to run various errands and get around this weekend. I also make an appointment to visit a Black-women-owned nursery in Oakland tomorrow, post a few items on Craigslist for sale, and research air purifiers. I’m considering the $499 Dyson one but that’s a big impulse buy.
3:30 p.m. The bed I ordered from Feather is delivered. Two nice gentlemen dismantle the old one and assemble the new one in about 20 minutes. I just started using Feather, a furniture rental company, to try out a new bed and couch. The free delivery, assembly, and swap outs were the selling points for me. I love the Floyd sofa I got last week.
6:30 p.m. I lose track of time but see if J. wants to have a date tonight which usually involves Netflix watch party. I order a steak salad for pickup from the restaurant across the street and get 25% off my first order. I leave a $5 cash tip when I pick it up. I’m not really in the mood for a movie so we just FT for a few hours and I head to bed. $17.19
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Friday - Day 4 | Daily total $256.61
10 a.m. True PTO day today. A Craigslist buyer comes to pick up a bench I posted for sale ($40 earned). I spend the morning putzing around, beautifying, and getting ready to pick up the rental car.
1:30 p.m. The rental car company will charge $125 when I drop it off Monday morning, however, my $300 CSR annual travel credit just reset so I’m expecting it to be credited back right away.
3 p.m. Arrive for my appointment at the plant shop. I LOVE IT HERE. It’s a little outdoor oasis and all the plants are healthy and gorgeous. The women running it were lovely too. I purchase three 6” plant babies: mother-in-law's tongue, Wandering Jew, and polka dot. $85
4 p.m. I’m at IKEA looking for a plant stand and room divider option for my studio. I wind up with a few picture frames, sheer curtains and a rod, two throw pillows and covers, a lampshade, and plastic hangers for laundry drying. The shelf I wanted for the plants was out of stock. $117.59
6 p.m. Stop at a Target nearby to grab a bottle of wine for a dinner party tonight. There should be six of us in my friend’s backyard. Also grab a NYX lippy, toilet paper, and a USB cord since my phone is about to die. $54.02
6:30 p.m. Arrive at my friend’s yard and it is lovely. Flowering bougainvillea and a lemon tree hug the dining table. Her street is lined with the tallest palm trees and it just feels so California. After dinner, wine, cake, and dancing, I head home smiling and happy around midnight. Call a very sleepy J. to give her a rundown.
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Saturday - Day 5 | $58.27
9 a.m. Awake to Happy Birthday messages from family and friends. My mom and stepdad call and I chat with them for a bit. Mom sent me a lovely bouquet of flowers and they both pitched in to buy my e-scooter earlier this month. I have leftover dinner party cake and tea for breakfast. The cake was made with quinoa flour and carob chips, so I’m calling it healthy.
11 a.m. People are (understandably) backing out of the park hang due to the poor air quality today, but a few friends are still down so I start getting ready. I check BAAQMD’S website and it’s in the unhealthy range for sensitive groups, although I wonder if we’re all more at risk due to COVID. My sister calls and I see she’s sent me $150 in birthday money. I sent her this exact amount for her birthday last month; I agree it is a bit silly. J. also sends me $140 for a floor mirror I’d been eyeing. It is WAY TOO MUCH because I make triple what she makes. I vow to sneak it back to her somehow. Put on a midi-length polka dot romper and rainbow Tevas, pick up my friend about 10 minutes away and head to the park. We stop at a bodega in her neighborhood and I run in to grab chips, salsa, guac, and brie. $33.32
3 p.m. Having fun at an empty park spread out in a circle on our own blankets. We debate the discographies of Brandy and Monica (it’s Brandy, no contest) over snacks and wine. I ask everyone to take a pic of someone else with my Instax camera as little keepsakes. My car friend gives me a card and a bottle of wine. I really appreciate these folx.
8 p.m. Car friend and I grab chicken tacos and Mexican limeade from a place with outdoor seating before I drop her home. $24.95
10 p.m. Home and FT with a sleepy J. for a bit and watch Frozen II in bed while responding to Instagram birthday wishes. I gotta say it was a good day (Ice Cube voice).
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Sunday - Day 6 | Daily total: $219.17
7 a.m. Why am I awake? Is this the waking up early in your old age everyone speaks of? I have never been an early riser. Text with J. since she’s two hours ahead and rises with the roosters. Stare at the comically hideous IKEA pendant lamp shade I put up yesterday. It looks like a wet wad of toilet paper cum crumpled up homework. I decide to head back to IKEA after seeing the one in Palo Alto has the glass shelf unit I want to house the plants.
10 a.m. I want to take a self-portrait in my living room since my coffee table is currently full of said plants and three bouquets of flowers and it looks like a mini botanical garden. I decide to curl my hair and put on makeup and lipstick. I pair it with a bright yellow floral dress and gold jewelry.
12 p.m. Photoshoot over and I catch up in my group chat before making the trip to Palo Alto. The IKEA line is snaking around barriers in the parking lot like the entrance to a music festival. I regret this decision immediately and decide to head downtown instead to get lunch and stop by West Elm. I bookmarked a mirror there but want to see it in person. The mirror is stunning but at $500 I’m not ready to bite just yet. I get soup and salad at Mendocino Farms and eat on their patio ($16.55 with tip). The ice cream shop across the street is calling to me. I get a scoop of Brown Sugar Banana with hot fudge and almonds ($8.50 with tip) and FT J. to show her because she’s obsessed with ice cream. With sustenance, I head back to IKEA and the line has thankfully died down. I get a new lamp shade, the shelf unit, and another picture frame for a limited-run poster by a local artist that says “what the fuck” — because 2020 ($102.03). $127.08
5 p.m. Stop by Target, Trader Joe’s, and the gas station ($20 offset by CSR) in the city before making my way home. I book a car every few months and do all.the.errands. I was hoping to find planters at Target but no such luck. I get a can of shaving cream and some comfortable looking olive-green paper bag waist pants ($31.67). TJ’s haul includes collagen protein powder, avocado, lettuce, labneh, balela salad, pineapple chunks, flax bread, corn chowder, and a bottle of wine ($42.85). The cashier sees it was my birthday yesterday (I know) and he disappears for a minute only to return with a little bouquet of flowers. I get emotional. $74.52
Sidebar: The past few years have really shown me that your friends will show up for you and people love you for just being your authentic self. I am always so blown away by it. I am working on getting better about accepting and feeling like I am deserving of generosity and love. My therapist is helping.
7 p.m. I am late to the Lovecraft Country watch party and probably have to skip it tonight, but I luck out and find a parking spot in front of my building. Have corn chowder with some leftover cheese and crackers from the park for dinner and pineapple chunks with a leftover cupcake for dessert. I am determined to put the shelf unit together and put up the new lamp shade tonight. I order a few self-watering planters on Amazon ($17.57 after a gift card balance is applied). $17.57
2 a.m. Finally in bed after finishing chores neglected from the busy weekend, writing out a few thank you cards, and taking a long, hot shower. I see an email from the Professor warning us the homework this week will take a few hours, so plan accordingly.
​
Monday - Day 7 | Daily total: $18
7:30 a.m. No.
8:30 a.m. I return the rental car and walk home before putting myself together for a 10 a.m. Zoom. The rental company emails the receipt ($125.64 offset by CSR). Listen to The Daily while checking various banking apps and see the $300 bonus from opening a Capital One 360 savings account a few months ago was credited. Make a smoothie with frozen spinach, avocado, blueberries, pineapple, collagen protein powder, and unsweetened coconut milk.
11:30 a.m. Still on Zoom while writing this money diary and looking at the syllabus for class (Financial Accounting). It requires an e-textbook, but I sign up for the 14-day trial because the purchase button isn’t working.
12:30 p.m. Break for a lunch of TJ’s Mexicali salad and a side of cheese and crackers. Make my cheapo coffee as well since I’m anticipating a long day of work and school.
3:30 p.m. I’ve been doing what we’ll call working for the past three hours. Now on a call about some ad placements we’re doing for an upcoming virtual event. The next meeting gets canceled, so I play catch up from my PTO days.
5:00 p.m. Decide that’s enough for the workday since I’ll be in the actual office tomorrow morning to meet the IT guys. Unload and reload my mini dishwasher then reread my syllabus to get a better understanding of this week’s assignment. Although my program was already online-based, it’s not all that user-friendly and stuff hides in weird places. I see several other confused individuals have posted on the Ask the Instructor board.
6:30 p.m. Take a study break and order sliders and fries from the pub around the corner. I will likely regret this later when I get heartburn but nothing else sounds good and I rarely feel like cooking (I am Fran Lebowitz in her April New Yorker interview). $18.00
11:00 p.m. I’m texting with a friend about the artwork she’s been posting on Instagram. It’s fantastic and I ask her if it’s for sale, and ask if it was ok that I even asked her that. She’s an interesting, sort of mysterious woman I met through another friend a couple of years ago. She said she’d been quietly selling them but was afraid to really put herself out there. I encourage her to do so immediately. We discuss the pieces I’m interested in and she offers me a much too generous F&F discount. I object but she says, “strangers can pay full price.” I will send her $100 + shipping tomorrow morning once she tallies it up. I shower, watch the season finale of I May Destroy You (whewwww), and make it to bed around midnight.
​
Reflections:
I normally budget $800 each paycheck for general spending money; I don’t budget everything out by category. Food is always up there. This was a higher spend week, but I accounted for the household stuff with Craigslist sales and the $300 Capital One bonus. I also made about $350 in birthday money. Overall, it was a great week. Take a shot every time I say birthday.
​
Breakdown:
Food & Drink: $218.48
Home: $322.19
Health, Beauty, Clothes: $96.51
Other: $86.52
Weekly Total: $723.70

Part One Part Two
Now, having a chic pad isn’t the MOST important piece of adulting. Taxes, filing important papers and calling the doctor without crying first are all more important than matching your table lamps. But having a sweet fucking place for your friends and potential love interests to hang out at makes you look like 1) you have money, 2) you give a shit about how things look and 3) you give a shit about your house and taking care of stuff.
We all know none of those things are true. After all, you are here aren’t you? But making a good first impression is important, even if all you have to your name is a bunk in half of a dorm room. So. Here is how the fuck to impress people and to boost your mental health by giving a shit about your surroundings.
Step 1. CLEAN YOUR FUCKING ROOM. Dude. THROW AWAY THE TRASH. Literally this may be all you need to start impressing people. If pigs don’t shit where they sleep, you don’t need to throw away shit where you sleep. VACUUM YOUR GODDAMN FLOOR. And if you don’t have the funds or friends to be able to get one, then use a broom and manhandle those cookie crumbs out the door. I get it. Depression is a bitch, and it can make you want to literally lay in bed and do nothing and give no shits about the cleanliness of your personal space. But if you want to feel better (and I sure hope you do) then you need to change something. And I GUARENTEE that washing your sheets and going to bed in a clean room is going to clear at least a few of those rainclouds away.
If you feel like your arms will LITERALLY turn into crispy jelly beans if you start to clean your home because you are *so* tired, then set a timer. Do 5 minutes of hard cleaning. You spend more time in the shower cleaning your balls (I hope), you can get off your ass and clean for 5 minutes of your day. 5 minutes is better than no minutes, and I PROMISE it will make a difference. Just cleaning up and taking out the trash will make a difference.
Step 2. Make your bed. And I am not talking just spread your filthy grime covered farty comforter over your rumpled sheets. Strip the bed, wash your linens (ALL OF THEM, INCLUDING YOUR PILLOW) and then re-apply clean sheets. If you are just starting out with buying sheets and bed linens, get 2-3 sets.(again, doesn’t have to be all at once. One set is enough to start with of course) I recommend organic cotton sheets from like tj maxx or something. They are $20 each, and they feel soft as warm butter over your bare asscheeks every night. They also cost the same as the cheap sheets from walmart, and they get softer every wash and have a longer shelf life. You don’t need to focus on thread count, that’s a bunch of hooey anyways. Just get good quality sheets with sturdy seams. Get a duvet (a fancy word for comforter) and a duvet cover. A duvet cover is basically a pillow case for your duvet, so that when your stuff gets gross you only have to wash the cover and not the whole thing. Use a top sheet as well, because then you have even LESS to wash when you wash sheets. (the whole idea of a top sheet is to keep your comforter from getting sweaty and gross, like a duvet cover does)
When you are washing your shit, use some good fucking detergent and the dryer sheets. Go all out for your bedding so that when you huff that shit in the middle of the night you are sniffing the good stuff. (please don’t forget to wash your waifu pillow too dude. Like, Gross. Wash it. )
I can straight up tell you though, if you walk into your room after a long day at work or class or what the fuck ever, your mood will be COMPLETELY different if you walk into a clean room with the bed made vs walking into a shrine to mountain dew that smells like pit stank. Same with the opinion of anyone you bring home. Trust, people will want to do a 180 if they walk in your place and see your sheets standing on their own because you haven’t washed them since 2008.
Keep in mind, making your bed doesn’t have to be an all the time thing. Wash your sheets at LEAST once a week and make your bed at the same time, and you will be fine.
Step 3. Buy a bed with a headboard. TAKE YOUR MATTRESS OFF OF THE FLOOR. You can get a platform bed set for like $150-300 online. Don’t leave your mattress on the floor and certainly don’t stick with the same rail set you borrowed from your parents when you moved out and never returned. If you have no other option, keep the rails and buy a headboard from the thrift store. It will instantly make your room seem more grown up if you have a real bed. If you live in the dorms, well, that sucks. Enjoy your prison bed. Maybe cover it in contact paper or something so it feels less depressing.
Step 4. When purchasing furniture, don’t buy the whole damn set from Ashley or Aarons. Those places are scams, they charge too much for sofas and items that are poor quality and will break down over the course of a couple years. (that’s my OPINION, based on many many years of watching friends go through the rent a center furniture life cycles). For the same price as an Ashley furniture sectional, you can get a leather down filled sectional from Article that is actually comfortable and will last for the next 40 years. Online furniture buying has really scaled up in recent years. Wayfair, Article, Joybird, All Modern, and even Target have some quality pieces that are in the same price range as the rent a center crap, and you will ACTUALLY get compliments on your style and taste instead of having the same set of furniture as Brian down the street who panicked and bought the whole 4k floor setup at aarons. Thrift stores are also a VERY good place to purchase furniture. I have found some amazing dining tables and dressers from thrift stores and they make my place look unique, often for way way less than I would spend online. Typically when I am looking for a piece of furniture, I hit thrift stores for a week or so before buying online, just in case I find the perfect thing locally and sustainably first.
Step 5. Buy a rug. Buy a lamp. Get some art. (bro if you put a fucking Live Laugh Love sign in your house, I will hunt you down and make you eat it. Get REAL art. Like shit that is weird but cool and makes you smile or think every time you look at it. There are too many broke artists out there with cool shit that they sell for the same price as a mass-produced canvas of a cow photograph for you to be buying art at Hobby Fucking Lobby.) Basically, get all the little shit that elevates your pad from a place to live to a place to LIVE. If your house was a person, make it fuckable. Make it so sexy you would lick its ass for breakfast. Put some curtains up on the windows. Yeah, the dollar general curtains and rods are ok, no one cares about the rods. Just raise them to the ceiling (Makes your ceilings look taller and gives the illusion of grandeur) and make sure your curtains are touching the floor. Don’t dress your house in capris, that’s not sexy. (General rule of thumb, the 96 inch panels are typically long enough for most houses. Yes, they are more expensive. Get them anyways. It DOES make a difference and people DO notice. IKEA has inexpensive curtains if you want to really budget, and some of their shit is cool as fuck)
Step 6. When purchasing furniture, avoid plastic at all costs. That cheap $20 walmart tv stand with plastic piping holding it together? Burn it. Its ugly, cheap, and screams broke. Use a dresser instead, its big enough to hold everything and looks dope. Keep board games or kids toys or booze in the drawers. Or clothes, if you are short on closet space. Plus, if you need a dresser in the future if you shift furniture around, boom, already got one. The cube organizers from big box stores are awesome. Yes the bins add up at $10 each. Its shitty. But those bins will TYPICALLY last 3-5 years if you aren’t using them to move books or whatever. (I know this from experience. Fabric bins and lots of books don’t fucking mix)
Thrift stores ALWAYS have nice wooden furniture for sale. Yeah its vintage. Get it anyways. Vintage is good for the environment, often cheap, and you really won’t give a shit if your $10 solid oak coffee table from 1963 gets rings on it because it was $10 and its wood, so you can always sand it down and refinish it.
Step 7. Find a fucking place for everything that needs one. Don’t leave your school papers out on the table because you don’t know what to do with them. Put them in a folder and put that folder in a drawer. Put your winter clothes in bins and store them under your bed, don’t leave your winter coat hanging on the back of the chair all year because you “don’t have space” Trust me, you have space. And if you don’t, you have too much shit. Put your toilet paper rolls under the cabinet, don’t leave them on the floor. Store shampoo bottles you are not using but still have product in your bathroom cabinet, or give them away, or recycle them. Your Paul Michell shampoo was $80 and made your hair look like it was constantly wet because it was so greasy. We get that you are reluctant to get rid of it. So put it out of sight for a few months and if you don’t use it AT ALL that whole time, throw it out. Don’t be a fucking hoarder because you feel guilty over spending money on something that didn’t fucking work for you. Get a fucking piggy bank for your lose change, or hell, put it in a jar. No one cares, just don’t leave it in a pile on your dresser. Put your toenail clippers somewhere you can find them. Quit leaving your not quite dirty not quite clean clothes on a chair and empty a damn drawer for them so you can at least shove them out of sight. FIND A FUCKING HOME FOR YOUR SHIT.
And dude. Again, I get it. I know this could be daunting. I am hearing the whole “Yeah haha but I am too poor to think about my house I have better things to spend money on” yeah you think I don’t? I would MUCH rather buy a drone or 1,000 chicken nuggets than a pair of curtains or a rug, but your nest will directly affect your mental state and don’t you want a good mental state? If you are too broke to even sneeze at a lamp, check your local freecycle pages or free listings. You can get the most surprising stuff for free sometimes. Ask around. I bet someone near you is moving and doesn’t want to haul a rug they only halfway like across town. You do not have to be rich to have a nice place.
TLDR; Clean your room, make your bed, take out the trash. Do your fucking chores, they don’t stop just because you live on your own. Get curtains, lamps and a rug so that your house is suddenly fuckable in a not weird kind of way. You can find a better deal on furniture online than the shit at Ashley or Rent-a-Center. Put your shit away that doesn’t have a good home instead of allowing it to clutter your spaces.

Previous Diary in February 2020 but I can't figure out how to link it... Keep trying to edit to get formatting right sorry!
Section One: Assets and Debt
Retirement Balance IRA: $11,300 (I started working my first full-time job August 2019 and have been contributing since late 2019; I contributed 6k for 2019 and will contribute 6k for 2020 by the end of this year)

401K: $26,500 

Equity if you're a homeowner: N/A
Savings account balance: $22,900 in a HYSA (yield isn’t very high right now ha…)
Checking account balance: $3500
Credit card debt: none. I always pay in full
Student loan debt: none. I worked as a Resident Advisor to pay for housing and worked other small jobs for spending money. I had some small scholarships and my parents closed the gap for tuition (about 10k/yr) for a Chemical Engineering degree.
Section Two: Income
Income Progression: I've been working in my field for 1 year, my starting salary was $102,000. I received a COL raise at the end of 2019. Yes, I work in O&G.
Main Job Monthly Take Home:
After all deductions this much hits my checking account: $5300
Deductions- 401K: $875 (This is 10% of my salary. I was previously contributing 20% and on track to max out this year but I decided to reduce my deduction for the rest of the year to build up my cash savings. I’m aiming for $31K by the end of the year which typing it out sounds really high but I am very nervous about losing my job and could also swing this around to a grad school fund or down payment fund or something)
IRA: $580 (auto-transfer)
Gas: I also have an auto-deduction of any gas or carwashes I put on a credit card (10% company discount!) but this varies usually $50-75/m
Vanpool: In the before times, I took a vanpool most days to work for about $70-80/m but this has been suspended since March.
Section Three: Expenses
Rent: $1213
Renters insurance: already paid $158 for one year
Savings contribution: Usually aim for $1700-2000 but for the last 3 months of the year I’m aiming for at least $2500
Investment contribution: none other than retirement
Debt payments: no debt
Donations: I budget $100 for giving each month and have $60 in recurring donations. The rest I donate to important causes to me at the time.
Electric: just moved and have not received a bill yet. Previously about $40
Wifi: $60
Cellphone: $83 to my parents
Subscriptions:

Spotify: $10.81 Hulu/Disney+/HBOmax: $30 Netflix: use my parents YNAB: $84/yr Bon Appetit mag: $30/yr New Yorker: $150/yr 

Gym membership: I used to do weekly spin classes and pay per class but I haven’t been since March. Besides that, I used to use my apartment’s gym. Currently, I work out at home with a kettlebell.
Car insurance: $106 to my parents
Quick preface: I move apartments in this diary and also end up being a bit of a hot mess with my spending! I won’t be super detailed with times and whatnot unfortunately. More reflection at the end. Enjoy!!
Friday, September 11:
6:30 am: I am up early for a meeting at 7am! I have yogurt with mango, granola, sliced almonds, and chia seeds. I work for a few hours then leave at lunchtime to pick up my keys for the new place and check it out! I love it!! It’s so cute: it has a built-in desk, balcony and is open but not quite open-concept with an alcove for the dining room and mostly closed off kitchen which I really like. I previously had a roommate and am so excited to have my own space. I’m moving a few blocks down the street so I decide to “dirty move” as much as I can. First trip I take my big snake plant and a bunch of shirts and pants on hangers. I walkthrough the apartment and start planning where things will go. I head back home to finish working. 3:30 pm - I decide to end a bit early because I’m so excited to move! I take another dirty trip with half of my small plants, hanging dresses, my fridge condiments (the soy sauce leaks through my cloth bag uggh), and a sleeping bag. On trip 3 I take the other half of my small plants, sweaters, some pots and pans, a suitcase of clothes from my dresser, and my sewing machine. The rest of the night I pack more then watch TV. I go to bed at about 10 am in advance of an early day tomorrow.
Saturday, September 12:
7:00 am - I naturally wake up early for some reason. I decide to run some things to Goodwill since I’m up. I stop at Juiceland on the way back. $12.39 My parents are going to help me move the majority of my stuff today. They arrive at 11am with a dolly and breakfast from Panera. We all wear masks the entire time (yes even while carrying boxes!) as I recently did some traveling. I did not do a great job packing so they help me finish packing. I leave at noon to meet the ATT tech for internet installation. It takes forever for some reason and isn't even working due to a network outage by the time he’s done. 1:45 pm I head back to my old apartment to meet my family and they are ready to go!! We take 3 trips total to move a variety of well-packed boxes and “dirty move” boxes. At the end, all that remains is my large furniture which I have movers coming tomorrow for. (will explain this on Sunday). I see my parents off then start unpacking. I stop at the bank and take out cash then I go to the new place to unpack for a bit before going to pick up some new items I found onFB marketplace. The first is a wicker bar cart for plants. We do a contactless pickup and I easily fit it into my car. $85 The second purchase is a papasan chair for the balcony. $40 The lady told me the dimensions beforehand but my dumb butt didn't even think to measure my car let alone question if I could fit both the bar cart and chair into my car at the same time. Well to my great disappointment the chair is way too big to even fit through my trunk opening even if I didn't have the bar cart. I start stress-calling and texting people. An amazing work friend,B, agrees to come help me! It’s about a 40 minute drive for him so I somewhat suspiciously wait in my car for him.Then it’s a 30 minute drive to my apartment (I’m really so grateful). He brings in the chair for me then we decide to get dinner. First, we have to go back to my old apartment as I’m selling my old bar cart. Sell that for $60 then we walk to Izakaya (japanese) and wait a bit for a table on the patio. I get poke, he gets a pork burger. I treat as a thank you but I have to really insist as he’s too nice. $46.81 It’s nearly 10pm but the restaurant is still poppin and there’s honestly a lot of people out and waiting in line at bars. After dinner, B helps me take down the curtains in my old apartment and then has to drive 40 minutes back to his place. I finally get to bed around midnight.
Total: $184.20
Sunday,September 13:
8:00 am - I’m up and quickly get ready. I don’t eat anything as I have no kitchenware. I start taking apart my bed but panic when I can’t find the right allen wrench. I panic call my mom and she starts getting ready to head out to help me when I find it. I finish deconstructing the bed and head to Uhaul to get a truck as my movers should arrive at 10.
Ok, long story short - I decided to use Uhaul moving help to move my large pieces of furniture (queen bed, 2 dressers, coffee table, 2 side tables, entry table, kitchen table) as most fullmovers were quite expensive. I found a super cheap company that would do 2 hours of moving for about $60 ($50 discount) which sounded too good to be true. It was. He tried to cancel the day before, we rescheduled to Sunday then 20 minutes before the move time Sunday he canceled again. I am furious and send him a long text on how unprofessional this is. (I also hate communicating over text but anyway). I’m stressed out as my old lease ends Monday and after panicking to my mom I start calling moving companies and find one that can come at 2pm today. (Side note: why did I not just move the furniture with my parents or with friends? It honestly seemed too hard and I feel bad asking for large favors like that. I can’t even believe I asked B to help me with the chair yesterday. Also, new place doesn’t have an elevator). So now it’s 10:15 am and I’m stress sweaty. I get a mattress bag before leaving $4.33 then I head back to my old apartment and start cleaning my room, bathroom and the fridge. I realize I’m hungry and upset so I get chilaquiles and a bellini from a restaurant down the street. They’re ok but it feels very starchy and I only end up eating half. $32.16 2:05 pm The movers arrive and it takes them about 40 minutes to load the truck (really not much left) then about 50 minutes to unload as the new apartment has no elevator. I tip them $20 each and the moving cost is $245 for a 2-hour minimum. $285 First thing I do is put the bed back together. I am feeling so handy that I can do this myself. I recently got a lot of tools (drill, hammer, screwdriver, laser level) and have been quite the handywoman if I may say. I go to the old place to finish cleaning. My old roommate arrives with her boyfriend so we can clean the common spaces together. She basically doesn’t help me clean the common spaces at all but I’m over it. [I wipe all the baseboards, cleaned the fridge/freezer, oven, scrubbed out the sink, wiped all the cabinets, swept, vacuumed, and mopped. Homegirl dusted the windows and fans. w/e] I grab Piada for dinner and I get a cookie because it’s been a day. $13.49 The rest of the night I set-up essentials and then spend about 1.5 hours on the phone with ATT as surprise! My internet is not working like the tech said. I get a bit worried as I am working from home and don’t want to have to go into the office if I can’t get it working. Luckily, wefinally fix it and I go to sleep in the new place.
Total: $334.98
Monday, September 14:
I am so excited to get to work today as I have a big new monitor and built-in desk. I set-up everything last night so I can easily get going today. I don’t have breakfast as I don’t have many groceries. My couch is delivered at 10 am and it is beautiful! I went with a faded rusty red and I had some doubts (big regret shopper) but it looks way more muted in person. Mid-day I go to my old apartment to do a last walkthrough and turn in my keys. I decided to walk over to get some steps in but poorly time it and am 5 minutes late to a section meeting. Luckily, it’s a big meeting so no one notices I’m late. For lunch, I throw together some leftover rice and brussels sprouts with a fried egg. I top it with soy sauce, sambei olek and thai chili sauce. It’s good but not super filling. I finish working by 5 and then continue unpacking. Still not many groceries so I grab CFA $7.49 (using a 10% boost from cashapp). I order a water filter from Target as this apartment’s fridge doesnt have a built-in water dispenser like my last one. I get a large container (30 cups) with a spigot that can sit on a shelf in the fridge. $42.06 I notice Away is having a big sale and order a duffel bag I’ve been eyeing for several months to match my suitcase. $105
Tuesday,September 15:
I have nothing for breakfast again and I am so hungry. I go to HEB during my lunch hour. I buy salad mix, bell peppers, carrots, cucumbers,tomatoes, broccoli, cabbage, corn, jalapenos,avocados, cilantro, parsley, strawberries, blueberries, nectarines, apples, walnuts,hummus, corn tortillas, hard tofu, frozen cod, oat milk, eggs, and yogurt. I remember to bring my stash of coins and cash them in for about $8. I use another cashapp boost to get 10% off.$56.53 I have a late lunch at 2 and grab Salata. I use a $10 off cashapp boost. $4.79 I start a loaf of sourdough while working; I’ll bake it tomorrow morning. I pulled over one of my dining chairs to use at my desk but it doesn’t have arms and my kitchen table looks lopsided with only 3 chairs. I order an office chair from Staples. $108.24
Wednesday,September 16:
I wake up and start preheating the oven for sourdough. I work through the morning and go for a walk during lunch to my community garden plot. It’s pretty overgrown and I will need to put in some work to prep for my fall garden. I think this time I’ll do more planning and chart it out. For lunch I have the few bites of salad leftover from yesterday and a slice of bread. I finish up at 5pm and unpack some more. I have a snack of crackers, cream cheese, and jam before doing a workout. I’m doing a 10-week exercise program but I got caught up with moving and took a break for a few days. Afterwards, I cook corn and black bean tacos and have a late dinner around 8pm. I decide to sign up for Real Therapy to try out a group format and talk to other people struggling with similar problems to me. I’d like to find a traditional therapist but I think this will be something good to start now as well. The pandemic has been ROUGH on me. $34 I end up staying up late just goofing off. I order some things for Lush from a friend who recently started her first post-college job (as a teacher :/ with some in-person students) and had her birthday. $31.82 And of course I end up ordering some things for myself. I get bar soap, bar lotion and bath bombs. I’m trying to move away from plastic packaging so hopefully this bar lotion works. $50.01
Total: $115.83
Thursday, September 17:
I finally feel like I’m falling into a routine. I’m up at 7 and I make breakfast: slice of sourdough with mashed avocado and 2 scrambled eggs with strawberries and a glass of orange juice. I start work at 7:45 and make an iced matcha with oat milk around 9. 12 pm - I break for lunch and make a salad with spring mix, bell peppers, tomatoes, cucumbers, carrots, blueberries, walnuts and feta cheese. I would usually put chickpeas in my salad too but I only have dried chickpeas and did not prep. Oh well. 5pm - I log off work and decide to get my workout in right away. Then tacos again for dinner. And of course more unpacking and I do a load of laundry. I finally have the space to lay out all my clothes so I can hang dry everything and don't use my dryer at all! My office chair was delivered in the afternoon so I set that up and move the dining chair back to the kitchen table. At this point I’m 90% unpacked and mostly have the annoying things to do like install my bookshelf (brackets on the wall), curtains, and hang pictures. I’ll save it for the weekend.
Total: $0
Food + Drink : $173.66
Fun / Entertainment: $0
Home + Health: $475.30 (papasan chair, bar cart, office chair, Away bag)
Moving: $269.33 (movers, mattress bag)
Clothes + Beauty: $50.01 (Lush)
Transport: $0
Reflection: Whew chile! This was a very high week for me! Now writing this reflection on Saturday I also bought a few more plants (bringing my count above 30), and exercise bands. Then on my way to the hardware store this morning I accidentally hit a curb and really messed up my wheel and blew the tire. The auto shop just told me it’s at least $400+ to replace 3 of my tires which are dry rotted!! No quote for the wheel yet. So! I am having a spendy week for sure. I previously cut back a lot early in quarantine but have now been buying some things for my new place. I’m pretty much starting from nothing with furnishings and I have saved a good chunk so far since starting my first full-time job a year ago so I’m trying to feel less guilty! Being at home so much, I’ve really wanted to invest in my space and make it as comfortable as possible. I anticipate after this month I’ll hunker down again. This really ended up being a moving/furnishing diary but I’m happy to expand on anything!

Lots of people these days have second or third jobs. The days of a K-12 education getting you the mortgage, the car and the white picket fence are long gone. I used to get frustrated at the fact that I “did everything right”, studied hard, went to a good college, got a decent qualification, and I still struggled. But after a few months of averaging four hours sleep a night and getting stock levels between your daytime employment at the cafe and your job night-managing a big box store mixed up eventually you just resign yourself to it in a numb way. But when these two grim service industry hustles still didn’t make ends meet I used to turn to the surveys.
They are lots of websites that pay you a little cash (or vouchers or coupons or rewards points) to spill little details about yourself. Age, gender, occupation, education, favourite colour, preferred holiday destination and so on. In the era of “big data”, social media espionage and surveillance capitalism it’s really no different than submitting yourself as a guinea pig for medical trials, only instead of expending a liver or appendix for quick cash you’re selling little parts of your personality to keep the lights on.
So when I spotted the “Happy Valley Dream Survey” I was intrigued.
None of these surveys had ever asked me about my dreams before. Oh aspirations definitely. Where do you think you’ll be in five years, what’s your ideal occupation, what was your dream job as a kid. Little pieces of personal minutiae dedicated to building up an advertising profile in some corner office somewhere so they could figure out what kind of toaster all the baristas that used to dream of being vets would collectively prefer. But none had ever inquired about those mad nighttime hallucinations all of us humans merely take as a matter of course. Wake up sweating at 3am after facing down a High School English test in your boxer shorts? All a lovely part of the human condition.
So I clicked in and answered. It was relatively simple, only asking you to describe the strangest dreams you’d had in the last month and rate the frequency at which you remembered your dreams as well as the relative strangeness of your reported dreams in comparison to more ‘regular dreams’. As a teenager I had been briefly obsessed with the idea of lucid dreaming, the ability to remain conscious in and take control of your dreams, and although it had never fully come to fruition it had kept me in the habit of keeping a dream journal which meant, in comparison to most of my population, I tended to remember much more of my dreams. I threw in some bullet points on some my strangest recent night-time reveries (one of which involving a spirited debate with Mr T and Queen Elizabeth about the relative benefits of Robespierre’s Reign of Terror) pinged off the information and used to newfound spare change to grab myself a little breakfast pastry on the way to my coffee shop job.
I tend not to answer unknown numbers, having that perennial fear it’s a scammer or a debt collector of some kind, so I have no idea what compelled me to answer that one. On a rare night off I was peaceful dozing, tongue lolling out and drooling, the whole nine years, when I was awoken by the cacophony of my factory settings ring tone. When I answered the phone I thought curiously that I couldn’t remember what I had just been dreaming about.
“Hello...am I speaking to DBTraven right now?”
“Uh...yeah”
“Oh how very wonderful. I’m calling from the Happy Valley Subconscious Services Centre. We were very interested to see the results of your survey and feel you may be an excellent candidate for much more lucrative opportunities. Could you come down to our Services Centre on [My City Street] immediately?”
My foggy brain took a moment to process the request. It was 3am...who in their right mind is operating some kind of survey centre at 3 o clock in the morning. My immediate thought was I had accidentally joined some kind of cult and would end up roped into a kind of group marriage scenario was I to head down there.
“If we see you in the next half hour we’re pay you one thousand dollars no questions asked. All we ask is you come and talk to us”.
At that point I was certain of two things. One, I had in fact volunteered myself to be part of some kind of bizarre end-times cult where I would have to drink poison to ascend into a UFO. Two, that 1000 dollars upfront would go a long way to digging me out of the rent hole I was in and maybe might even give me enough breathing space to afford an apartment where I couldn’t fry bacon on the stove from where I lay in the bed. I got dressed in a flash and head downtown…
...to find myself standing outside a Nail Salon. “Cutie-cles” the sign blared in hot pink, with an attractive woman winking slyly and brandishing her long, ornate nails. The lights were off inside and you could almost see the space where bustle and gossip were meant to occupy, between the gaudy vanity mirrors and cream recliner chairs. There was something eerie about it but, more importantly, an empty nail salon seemed unlikely to be the source of my dreamed-of cash injection. Just as dejection was beginning to seep in I received a text.
“Side Entrance. Say your name, followed by the word “Awake”.”
Things got more ‘Eyes Wide Shut’ by the minute but, mind filled with far off dreams of an apartment where the “bed-room” was in fact a separate room, I floated on down the alley beside the nail salon. I came to what looked like an emergency exit and rapped on the door a couple of times, producing a few hollow thuds. After I heard nothing for a few seconds I called my name into the darkness and, after a moment of hesitation, said the word “awake”.
The door swung open to reveal a halogen-humming hallway. A man in a security officer’s uniform regarded me, while his fellow behind him patted down a girl about my age who seemed dazed and drowsy. He instructed me curtly to follow him and we walked down the hallway as the girl behind me had something taped to the inside of her coat and was ushered out the door. My heart rose into my throat as we walked, passing peeling paint and bare walls. This looked neither like an innovative survey start up nor some kind of death cult, but instead the sort of place where organised criminals might bet on bare knuckle boxing matches. I was shocked when we emerged into an airy foyer and I was greeted by a smiling, professional looking receptionist in a neatly pressed pantsuit.
“Mr Traven! We are just so very delighted to meet you”.
She looked away from me and started tick-tacking on the computer in front of her before I could respond and she then swiveled around to face me and informed me the 1000 dollars had now been deposited in my account. Not wanting to look a gift horse in the mouth and still a bit stunned by the whole situation I elected not to question the fact that the survey sites had always said your banking details were held securely and were inaccessible by any of the private organisations you were surveying for. Before I could say one word I was being whisked into a little glass cubicle behind reception marked “Dream Lab 1” to be greeted by a woman, a few years younger than myself, in a lab coat draped over a hideous lime green sweater.
“Have you ever wanted to do good in the world, without lifting a finger, and also benefit yourself financially at the same time?”
No ‘hello’. No ‘how are you’. Not even a quick review of my medical history or further strange surveys. I could feel my hair begin to prickle with suspicion. It was the kind of conversation opener you expected to be quickly followed by a reassurance that “no, this is in fact a kind of ‘inverted funnel’ funding model!”.
But I just nodded. I figured I could squeeze these freaks for a little more before I got the hell out of dodge.
“Have you ever read about those people who used the idle processing power of their gaming consoles to simulate protein folding and assist in fighting disease?”
Recalling some fragment of a headline I had read somewhere I told her that I had. She smiled and continued with her earnest-sounding sales pitch.
“Well we do something like that here. While you sleep we borrow some the subconscious processing power you ordinarily use for dreaming and lend it out to private clients working on everything from medical solutions to prime number generation. If you’ve ever dreamed of...um desired to get paid handsomely to sleep then this is an incredible opportunity to be on the cutting edge of science and fill up your pocket at the same time”.
It didn’t immediately scream “orgies, sister-wives and armed stand offs with the government” but I couldn’t help but feel that there was more to the whole process. I inquired about how exactly the whole process worked and the woman, who I would later come to know as Dr Tanner, pulled a thin metallic shard from her pocket and offered to show me how. Feeling the weight of my landlord’s unread text message in my pocket I went for it.
I awoke and equations were swimming in the halogen. Mathematical symbols floated along in the light like those alphabet spagetthios, Greek symbols in a synchronised swim with incomprehensibly large numbers for someone used only to price tags and sales taxes as his primary act of numeracy in the day to day. As they vanished I rose from the firm mattress and met the face of a smiling doctor Tanner.
“You may have just helped to advance the field of theoretical mathematics by a year or more. Not a bad way to make 3 grand huh?”
My head was hazy and, grabbing beneath the fog, I felt the warm intensity of my original suspicion. My phone didn’t seem to work in the confines of the ‘services centre’ so I asked Dr Tanner if there was some way I could check my account. She gladly volunteered her information and there was 4 grand staring back at me, more money than I had ever seen in one place, never meant my perennially barrel scraping bank account. Taking all precautions to delete my login information from her computer also gave me time to collect myself and pick my jaw up off the floor.
“Would you be interested in continued opportunities with Happy Valley?” she asked.
As I walked toward the exit one of the security guards begin to rustle in his desk for something to give me but the other held a hand up at him.
“Awake” he cautioned his colleague and the two let me out into the night air without incident.
The next day I went looking for a luxury beyond my wildest imagination: an apartment with windows.
If you’ve ever turned around to a domineering boss, told them “I quit” alongside some choice profanity and home truths, you’ll understand the sense of pleasure that coursed through my veins on the day I strolled out of the coffeshop for the last time. I had already moved to part time in my retail gig, full of the inimitable pleasure of half-assing things when you come in on your weekend shift and knowing your incompetence will be erased by whatever calamities occur in the days you’re off. I felt totally and completely free and the only inconvenience I had to show for it were the sometimes odd residues of those tasks that occupied my sleep: the chemical formulae I spotted sometimes in the early morning light or inheritance task calculations drizzling down my shower curtains as I open my eyes after washing my hair. A small price to pay, I thought, as I strode to the door of my 1st floor one bedroom apartment. I greeted the doorman-my doorman!- as I stepped inside and for a moment I thought he looked just a tad familiar.
I convinced myself it was another piece of ‘dreamy debris’ when I heard him mutter the word “awake” as I crossed the threshold.
For the past several months I had been “working from home” so the speak. Dr Tanner had informed me that the first few sessions usually required pretty strict observation of the ‘sleeper agent’ as she liked to jokingly call me, but eventually Happy Valley were content to send me home with the NeuroChip and inform me by email of clients and payment information every couple of nights. At that point I simply couldn’t believe my luck and my friends marveled at my tasteful, airy apartment and the carefree manner in which I ordered rounds of drinks at the bar with wild abandon. It also didn’t hurt my love life, is all I’ll say.
Happy Valley kept me under a strict non-disclosure agreement, which Dr Tanner said related to the ‘experimental prototype nature’ of the subconscious interface technology I was using. When people asked I told them I had picked up a job with a research-related start up which technically wasn’t all that far from the truth. They didn’t also need to know that when they saw me stare blankly into the head of my beer sometimes it was because I was seeing visions of molecules breaking apart and recombining in new and indecipherable ways.
When Dr Tanner told me I would have to come back to the services centre for my next appointment at the unsocial hour of 1am I must admit I bristled slightly. I had grown used to my comfortable, dream-computing playboy lifestyle and any imposition on it seemed like an intolerable demand. I had come along way from glumly agreeing to stay behind and clean out grease traps.
“This assignment is of a serious and sensitive nature. We feel you are the most capable agent we have at the moment and we would very much like you to take it on”.
The flattery was pleasant but I needed a little bit more convincing.
“And of course it will be incredibly lucrative. Have you ever wanted to used hundred dollar bills to mop up your two century vintage wine you spilled on your marble floor. It’s that kind of lucrative”.
The doorman’s eyes burned into my back as I hurried out the door.
“It’s government related...that’s as much as I can tell you”.
Dr Tanner perched on her chair in the corner next to the observation bed and chewed the corner of her lip, in thought. Were those nerves I detected in the ordinarily unflappable Doctor? That I didn’t like and it set my nerves jangling.
“I’m going to be flying drones or something in my sleep aren’t I?” I asked, partly as a joke and partly as an expression of the uneasy suspicion that was welling up inside me. Tanner laughed it off and soberly reassured me that no “military or foreign policy objectives would be satisfied” by my assignment. She followed up with this reassurance with implication of the fortune this assignment would bring me. I believe the phrase “set for life” may have been thrown in there once or twice. She sure knew how to speak to a cash-strapped millenial. Perhaps, I suspected, because she may have been one herself. I lay down on the bed with my mind swimming with visions of financial security and all the avocado toast one could eat….
….and awoke, staring at my hands, covered in blood. The light was low and at first I thought the stains were mud. Had I fallen somewhere? Where had I been?
I looked out to find myself in a spectacular penthouse apartment. Floor to ceiling windows, kitchen island, state of the art home cinema. Had I merely skipped directly to the “unfathomably wealthy” part of all this. My heart beat, deep and rich. I was still caught in the relaxed rhythm of a dream. Until I saw the body.
I had thought it was just a pile of clothes on the bed. As my eyes grew used to the dim light, the only source being that of the early morning skyline spilling in, I could make out hair and ears and wounds. My heart began to pound and my legs almost gave way. An older man in a silk dressing gown, splayed on the bleed as his blood seeped into the mattress. What took over then was instinct and all that remained in my conscious mind was a string of blaring profanities as I washed my hands and splashed my clothes in a panic.
I was already speed-walking my way down the hallway (“don’t run don’t run don’t run running is suspicious”) when I heard Dr Tanner’s voice.
“He’s awake! This can’t be possible”.
I turned in fright but no sign. It was then my thoughts turned to the NueroChip. I tugged at where it sat like a parasitic insect behind my ear but its pincers refused to give. Was it being controlled remotely? It was then my palms began to sweat and I felt that pit of my stomach fear. I looked to one of the maintenance closets in the hallway I was walking down. You know that feeling in a dream, where you know something terrible is coming but you haven’t quite seen it yet? I knew whatever was on the other side of that door was coming and it meant to do me harm but I was rooted to the spot.
The Dr Tanner phased through the door, towering over me quite larger than her ordinarily more diminutive frame.
“This was not supposed to happen. Everything has gone wrong. One of those minimum wage morons in security didn’t do his job properly. But….”
A pall of resignation came over her face, as though she was acknowledging the death of friend
“High risk, high reward. I’m afraid you’re going to have to take the rap for this one. Oh and don’t bother mentioning Happy Valley. By the time the sun comes up we’ll be nothing but an empty commercial space once tied to a shell company”
With that she disintegrated and I took off, heart hammering, into the night air.
I’ve been hiding out in a disused stock room of my old coffee shop for days now. I remember how I used to fantasise, after surreptitiously getting the key for this place copied, about how I was going to plant some heinous, smelly object in here to get back at my boss someday. Instead I’ve hidden myself. The NeuroChip won’t come off and I haven’t slept since that night. Nightmares are now beamed into my skull remotely and every time I fall asleep I spend an impossible length of time in terror and agony. I see visions of detectives stooping down, brushing fancy sushi knives in that apartment for fingertips. I see that old man’s twisting maw chasing me through endless nonsensical hotel hallways.
So I do not sleep any more and my body aches for rest. But I am beginning to dream while awake and the shapes and shadows in my vision are my own.
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If you believe you might have use for my skills in your secretive organisation, please check out my resume here

Killer Piper
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Introduction Ben is an attractive young man, a man that is easy on the eyes and easy to fall for. He’s a big city boy who moved to his Grandfather's farm outside a small Alberta town called Ghost Lake. Ben moved there to take over his Grandfather’s rat extermination business because he wasn’t able to do the work anymore. Ben and his Grandfather had a stressful relationship, he was a moody, mean spirited and just not someone you want to be around. That wasn’t good for business. With Ben there running the business, it was booming; so was the murder and missing persons rate. The people of Ghost Lake were afraid, whispers were heard all around the town of what they thought was going on and who they thought was the cause of the high crime rate. Was it Ben? Could it be his evil Grandfather? Something more sinister? Find out more in; Killer Piper.
Killer Piper Chapter One Ben by Meagan Jeffrey ©2012
Ben was the man to call when you had a rat problem. He was the only one really who would come any time day or night to get them. He loved his job and loved rats. Ben didn’t kill the rats he’d remove, though, instead, he would catch them, cage them, then take them back home to his farm outside of town. Ben lived in a town called Ghost Lake. The town was built around a glacier-fed, man-made lake located approximately forty-five kilometres west of the city of Calgary, Alberta. It was formed in 1929 with the completion of the Ghost Dam and was developed on land leased from the Morley Indians by Calgary Power Ltd. The town was an old and spooky town of 6,700 or so people. Most of the people there would drive to Calgary for work and shopping; it was mostly families of generations who lived in Ghost Lake. The town had a very haunting tale to it. Only those who had lived there all of their lives knew if the tales were true, but they wouldn’t speak about them. One of the most haunting stories was about children back in the 1940s who had gone missing and were never found. There were nineteen children from 1942-1946 who went missing without a trace. Some said it was the Lake monster, but others believed it was an old man they liked to call the ‘Killer Piper.’ They said he would steal the children from their homes in the night, take them to his farm, and feed them to his rats, who would devour them skin and bone, leaving no trace of them to be found. No one was ever able to prove this, so the man was never held accountable for the missing children. But when the nineteenth child went missing, the townspeople decided that they’d had enough and went to the man’s farm, burned down his barn where he kept all his pet rats, then hanged him in a tree outside of his house. It was said that his ghost still haunted the farm, but no one dared go up there. Except for Ben, who bought the old farm, fixed it up, rebuilt the barn and now lives there.No one speaks of the story anymore, it’s almost forgotten really. Most people just think that Ben’s farm is haunted but don’t really know by who or why. They’ve just passed the story along from generation to generation and it’s been changed along the way. The streets were busier with happy families, people shopping, going out for coffee, dinners, celebrating, stores were offering lots of sales, promotions and welcoming people in. Flowers, pretty lights, signs, posters strewn the streets, stores, shops and homes. The town had come a long way since its dark, horror days that no one would dare speak of for fear it would come back again. Ben was a friendly young man, twenty-six years old. He had well-groomed dark hair, brown eyes, was about six feet tall, muscular build, tattoos and always dressed in trendy jeans; some torn, some were faded, and some had paint splatters on them. He was your all-around country boy. He'd wear nice bright shirts in bright pastel colours, bright blues, greens, purples and orange. He was very trendy, flirty and friendly-looking. Ben wasn’t one of those guys who had a big ego to go with his looks, he was very kind and sensitive. He liked to treat his woman well, take them on nice dates, go for drives and layout on a blanket, under the night sky looking up at the stars. He knew how to romance women but, didn’t get the chance to date as much as he liked to. Mostly because of his job and in part because of his home life. His Grandfather was very controlling and was also a not so nice fixture at the farmhouse. So, because Ben couldn’t date as much he spent his money on his car. He drove a 1973 Dodge Challenger that he bought for $72,995.00. He repainted it, rebuilt the suspension with new bushings and lowered the ride height. He rebuilt the engine adding 6.1L Hemi. The inside was just as impressive as the outside; if not more so. He had a fully lined cabin with Dynamat and stealth 11-speaker stereo system installed The car was a beautiful paint with a white racing stripe, blue and white leather interior and steering wheel cover, blacked outback and backside windows with the other windows tinted as dark as the law allowed. It was an amazing machine for an amazing looking man. Ben wasn't a very outgoing guy, he was more secluded, stay to himself type of guy, sort of shy. He was friendly, sweet and kind and with his chiselled good looks he could have any girl he wanted, but he was always single for the most part. He kept his hair clean and neat and facial hair to a minimum or clean-shaven. Some of the town's people from the coffee shops and stores would always tell him about their single daughters, nieces and other family members hoping to set him up but, Ben never took the bait. People started wondering why he wouldn't want to have a relationship; then one day the man at the local hardware store asked him and found out that Ben did at one point have someone special. He was engaged to a beautiful woman about five years prior to moving to Ghost Lake. She had tragically died in a horrific car accident on the highway. A drunk driver swerved into her lane and hit her head-on, killing her instantly. Ben never recovered from his loss, so he never dated after that. Either way, Everyone loved him from the moment he moved to Ghost Lake about five years previous from Calgary. He moved to Ghost Lake because his rat-catching business wasn’t going so well in Calgary with all the other, bigger companies who were willing to kill the rats. Ben was kinder and more humane to them and refused to kill them. Sort of like his grandfather. So, Ben took his business to Ghost Lake, where he had read online that the town had a bad rat infestation problem. The townspeople were very grateful that he moved there to take the rats out of the town but they didn't know that Ben had a dark secret, he was hoarding the rats in the Quonset on his farm, and keeping them alive.
Chapter two Ben’s rats
Some of the older folks in town had started to talk about how Ben had mysteriously moved to Ghost Lake with a rat-catching business and how it was too familiar to the old man who had killed the children and they also didn’t know that the old man was Ben’s grandfather. But they didn’t speak outside one another, as not to frighten the other people in town or cause Ben any problems…in case they were wrong. Ben seemed to be such a nice man, a man they’d like to see in town for a long time, and one day pick a nice young lady to settle down with. Ben had moved outside of town on a 23-acre farm that needed a lot of work and TLC. The fence, or parts of the fence that were standing needed replacing around the farm, there was an old chicken coop in a mess of trees and overgrown grass out back of the house, a white one car garage with no door also out back of the house another two-car garage was off to the side of the house and down the driveway a bit, and a Quonset further down the drive with an old farmer's hand house behind that which needed to be torn down. Soon as Ben bought the farm he started the clean up right away when he wasn't working. He had a huge pile of burnable garbage in an 8 x 10 ft. the hole that was already in the backfield of the farm. Other garbage that wasn't burnable was piled out by the two-car garage for him to load up in his truck and trailer to take to the dump. He'd make about two trips a day. He was going so often they quit making him pay for his loads. Ben Ben was out in his barn one nice spring day feeding the rats when his cell phone rang. When he answered, it was a young mother panicking over rats in her house. She was terrified they were going to attack her young infant son and asked Ben to come quickly to kill the rats. Ben hung up with the woman after getting her address and got in his red Dodge Ram 2500 that he used for his work truck and quickly drove to Ghost Lake. When he arrived at the address, he saw the woman standing in her front yard with her baby in her arms. Ben noticed that the town was always very pretty and happy looking with flowers outside stores and homes, streets were kept very clean, garbage empty and cleaned all the time, pretty bright lights adorn the streets at night. Such a calm and friendly town and it always seemed as if the sun was shining, never a cloud in the sky, or overcast, dark gloomy days. It was almost surreal. When the woman saw Ben's truck pull in her driveway she ran up to Ben’s truck when he parked it in the driveway, hysterical, saying that she refused to go back inside the house until the rats were gone. Ben told her to take her baby down to the local coffee shop and come back in about half an hour. The woman agreed, got in her car, then drove away. Ben retrieved a cage and a bucket out of his truck and went inside the house. Once inside, he walked around slowly and quietly, listening for the rats. He went into the kitchen, placed the bucket on the table and the cage on the floor. He opened the lid to the bucket and took out a scoop of food, then set it inside the cage and sat in the chair. He began to whistle a soft, slow, very creepy song. After about a minute or two of whistling, the rats came around the corner into the kitchen from down the hall. At first, he only saw two rats, then he saw four babies behind them. They walked right into the cage, started to nibble on the food, then sat down. Ben stood up, closed the cage and gently lifted it up onto the kitchen table. He closed the lid to the bucket and walked through the rest of the house.He went into the living room, looked at the pictures and photographs hanging on the walls, sitting on tables and shelves. He lifted some to get a closer look and set them back down. Then he went down the hallway leading to the bedrooms. All the bedroom doors were open, so he peeked inside the first room. It was obviously the baby’s room as it had pale blue walls, little teddy bears hanging with balloons and clouds, a fancy wooden crib and matching dresser, changing table and a rocking chair.
He didn’t bother to go into the baby’s room. Instead, he walked to the next room, which was the mother’s room. The walls were a dusty rose with a lighter shade of red carpet. There was a beautiful antique wood canopy bed, with gold curtains hanging around it and a red comforter and gold pillowcases. There was a matching antique wood dresser with a big mirror, vanity table and two end tables with some fancy lamps on each of them. He saw a beautiful old jewelry box sitting atop the dresser. He walked over and opened it. Inside were fancy gold and diamond rings, bracelets, necklaces and earrings. He touched a few, held up some, then put them all back. He didn’t take anything. Next, he went to the closet and opened it. He looked inside at all the clothes hanging neatly, then saw an old hatbox sitting all alone on the top shelf. He pulled it down, walked over to the bed, put it on top of the mattress and opened it. He saw inside letters tied together tightly with a red ribbon, photographs under the letters and a ring box. He didn’t untie the letters, but he did read who they were addressed to. The top one said it had been sent to Mr. Dorling. Ben flipped the letters gently and saw they all had the same name to them. He put the letters on the bed next to the hatbox and looked at the photographs. They were very old, black and white photos of a young man and woman. In some they were standing side by side, in others, they were holding hands or kissing. On the back, they all said Mary and Jonathan Dorling. Ben placed the photographs on top of the letters and picked up the ring box; he opened it. Inside was a pair of gold wedding bands. He placed everything back in the hatbox just as it was and returned it to the closet. He left the room and went back to the kitchen, gathered his cage with rats and bucket, then headed to his truck. He set the cage and bucket in the back seat of the vehicle and stood next to it, waiting for the young mother to come back. Not long after, the woman returned. She parked her car next to Ben’s truck and before taking her baby out of the car, she asked Ben if he had caught the rats. He told her that there had been a family of rats, that he’d caught them all and she wouldn’t have a rat problem anymore. The woman was very pleased, handed Ben seventy-five dollars and thanked him. Ben thanked the woman for the money and work, wished her well, then headed back home.
Chapter ThreeBen’s dark secret Ben took the cage out to the barn and let the rats out into the giant cage he had built for them inside the barn. The barn had 8-foot deep concrete floors and 3 foot thick walls, so the rats couldn’t dig down or out. He had a steel door just behind the wooden doors of the barn, so the rats couldn’t chew through that. Once he let the new rats go inside the giant cage he went inside with them and sat on the floor, shutting the door behind him. The rats would come right up and eat out of his hands and he would smile at them and pet them. He cared very much for these animals and took good care of them. “Now, guys, be nice to your new roommates. You will all get out of here soon like I promised and do as I told you.” Ben said to the rats. The rats all looked at him, listening intently and they understood him. They all nodded in agreement with him. Ben stood up and left the barn, shutting the steel door tightly behind him and locking it. He went to his farmhouse, went inside and after taking off his boots, hanging his coat, he went in the kitchen to wash his hands, make a coffee, then went into the living room. He sat on his black leather armchair, setting his coffee on the table next to the chair and picked up a notebook and pen off the table. He opened the book to a list of names and added Susan. He looked at the names in the book with anger in his eyes. There were nineteen names on the list. He closed the book and held it tight in his hand, squeezing it hard, then set it back on the table with the pen next to it. He took a sip of his hot coffee then looked at the elderly man sitting on the black leather sofa across from him. The man was wearing dark blue, dirty overalls with a dark blue, dirty t-shirt under and a red and blue, also dirty lumberjack
jacket over. His hair, mustache and beard were a mess and unkempt. “When are you going to get started, Ben? What the hell are you waiting for?” The old man grumbled at him in a raspy voice. Ben sighed and took another sip of his coffee before answering. “I just got the last one tonight. We will start tomorrow night. I promise. I had to get the last one, you know that. Now relax old man.” Ben snapped back at the man. Ben was frustrated now, so he got up, took his coffee and went into the kitchen again. He took another sip of his coffee then poured the rest down the sink and set the cup on the counter. He went back into the living room, to cross to go up the stairs to his bedroom and saw the old man was already gone. “Good,” Ben grumbled to himself out loud as he thumped up the stairs. He went into his bedroom, changed into some boxers and a t-shirt then went into the bathroom, cleaned himself up, brushed his teeth and went to bed.
Chapter Four Getting the job done
The next morning Ben awoke around eleven. He stretched and sat up in his bed. Before he could put his feet on the floor he saw the old man standing in his doorway looking at him. “What do you want now? I just woke up.” Ben snarled at the old man.“Tonight, you start. Or else.” The old man warned him, then left down the hall. Ben shook his head and sighed. He got out of bed and went into the bathroom to shower and clean up, get dressed and went out to the barn. He went inside again and sat with the rats. “Tonight is the big night for some of you. I will be taking 15 of you with me tonight, so be ready. We will leave once it's dark and the people of Ghost Lake are sound asleep.” Ben announced to the rats, then stood up and walked out of the barn, locking the doors behind him again. It was almost midnight before Ben had returned back to the barn for his fifteen rats as he had promised. He held open a big cage and fifteen rats ran inside it without him saying a word. He took the rats with the notebook from the house in hand and closed and locked the barn doors. He loaded the rats into the back seat of his truck and drove into town. He parked on the corner of a nice street lined with old, fancy two or three-story homes. He opened the notebook and looked at the first name on the list, it said Tammy. Ben closed the notebook, sat it on the seat next to him, then leaned back in his seat so he could see the rats in the cage. “Now, you remember what to do?” Ben asked the rats. They all were looking at him and they all nodded, yes. “Okay, no fucking up guys. We have to get through this list.” Ben warned them. He climbed out of the truck and quietly closed his door and opened the back door, took the cage out and shut the door almost without a sound. He walked over to a house with a white picket fence and a red front door with the numbers 2314 on it. He looked down at the rats in the cage, nodded at them, set the cage down and silently opened the cage door. The rats ran out of the cage and right to the house and around to the kitchen window that was left open just enough that they could climb in.
Once inside the rats went to the front door, made a ladder out of themselves and the top two rats unlocked the door for Ben. He silently walked inside and left the door open just a crack. He pointed to the upper floor and the rats ran up with Ben not far behind them. The rats went into the bedroom at the end of the hall and Ben went into the first room. Ben saw a baby sleeping soundly in its crib, tip-toed over to the crib and snatched the baby and ran out of the house to his truck. He ran around to the passenger side of the truck and put the baby in a car seat he had in the back. He quietly shut the door, ran back around to the driver’s side, climbed in and drove away without his lights on and went back to his farm, leaving the rats at the house. The rats crept into the parents’ room where they were also sound asleep and climbed on top of the bed. The rats surrounded the parents and started to bite their necks hard, deep and fast, blood spraying all over the bedsheets, comforters, walls, floor and the rats. They were biting so hard and fast the man and woman didn’t stand a chance at defending themselves or fleeing. They tried to scream, but their throats were already cut open too deeply to make more than gurgling sounds and gasp for whatever breaths they could before choking on their own blood.
Once they were dead, the rats ran over to the dresser, stole whatever jewelry they could, found their wallets and took those as well. They ran out of the house and back to the farm where Ben was already waiting for them. He was standing outside the barn waiting for the rats to return. When they did they ran up to him and spit out the jewelry and wallets at his feet then ran to the barn door and sat and waited for him to open it. He gathered the items they brought him and opened the door for them. The rats ran back inside and waited again. Ben didn’t close the door this time. Instead, he went over to the passenger side of the truck, took out the baby and walked over to the barn. Before he went inside he looked behind him at the old man standing at the doorway of his farmhouse watching him. Ben knew he couldn’t piss off the old man, so he turned back around and went inside the barn where the rats were all sitting on their hind legs, waiting for him. He didn’t look at the crying baby once, he took the baby, placed it on the floor and quickly left the barn, closing and locking the doors behind him. He ran back to the farmhouse, so he wouldn’t have to hear the painful cries of the baby being devoured alive by the hundreds of rats in the barn. He slammed the front door behind him, ran right upstairs to his bedroom, slammed that door and turned on his TV really loud. He sat on the edge of his bed hunched over with his head in his hands.“I can’t believe you just fucking made me do that. You fucking asshole!!” Ben yelled at the old man who was now standing in his room with him.“Don’t you talk back to me young man. You know why you have to do this. And if you don’t finish the list, you will be just like them... DEAD! Do you understand me?” The old man snapped back at Ben. Ben didn’t look at the man, he just sighed and answered, “Yes sir.”When Ben looked up again the man was gone. Ben turned his TV down and stood at his bedroom window, he heard nothing, just hissing and squeaking of the rats and silence. He walked back over to his bed, took some sleeping pills from his nightstand and crawled under his blankets and fell asleep.
Chapter Five I don’t want to! The next day a mailman had noticed that the front door to the home Ben had been to the night before was open, so he knocked. When no one answered the mailman went inside to see if the family was okay. He walked around the house and when he got to the parent’s room and saw them sprawled out in their blood-soaked bed, he nearly fainted, ran out of the room, down the stairs and out to the street yelling for someone to help him. A neighbour heard his yells, and came out to the mailman, he told them what he saw and they called 9-1-1. A few minutes later, police and ambulance arrived. They carried the dead bodies out on stretchers and took them away to the hospital. The police questioned the mailman, searched the house and soon after that the newspaper and TV crews were there. They interviewed the mailman, took pictures of the house and interviewed the police. That afternoon everyone in the town had known about the tragedy in their town and were frightened. That night the town was silent, eerie and shut down early. People were afraid and the older people of the town were now whispering about the missing children and killer from the 1940s. Ben headed back into the town that night with twenty rats this time, and let them go into another house. The same routine, but this time they had to go in through a dog door in the back of the house, run through the house to the front to let him in. Ben was dressed in all black and was very careful not to be seen and parked further away this time. He had seen the news so he knew the people of the town knew what happened. Again he went into the child’s room and snatched a two-year-old girl. Covering her mouth so she couldn’t scream he ran out of the house and down the street to his truck and took her back to his farm; just like the night before with the baby. And just like the night before the rats were left to kill the parents. This time they didn’t just kill them by biting their necks, the had devoured their entire faces to the bone! They again took wallets and jewelry and went back to the farm to a waiting Ben. “What the fuck took you so long?” Ben demanded to know from the rats. The rats just looked at him and spit the wallets and jewelry at him and ran to the barn door that was already waiting open for them. Ben went over to the truck, took out the crying toddler, ran her inside the barn, ran out and closed and locked her inside again. He sprinted into the house, to his room and cranked the volume of his TV and sat on his bed again with his head in hands. The old man was standing in front of Ben laughing at him. Angry, Ben stood up and yelled at the old man. “What the fuck is so funny? How do you find any humour in this? You, you, asshole?”The old man wasn’t laughing anymore, he glared at Ben, the hovered over him and said in such a tone that it shook Ben to his soul. “If you ever talk down to me like that again I will not hesitate to fucking kill you.” Then the old man vanished in front of Ben’s eyes. The next thing Ben knew his dresser was flying across his bedroom at him, crashing against the bed and falling on the floor in front of him with a loud bang. “Okay! Okay! I’m sorry, Grandfather! I won’t do it again. I am sorry!” Ben said loudly.
The next day the bodies were found and another statement was made on the news. This time the town was in a panic. They were worried about the two missing children and sad and scared about the parents of the children who were brutally attacked. They still didn’t know it was rat attacks yet though. Now the older people of the town weren’t just whispering about how this was too much like the killings in the 1940s, they were openly speaking about it to everyone and anyone would listen. People were terrified and were making sure all their doors, windows and dog doors were locked uptight. That night before Ben went back to town for his third name on the list his grandfather had told him he would need to be extra careful and extra fast and he would need to take the glass cutter with him to let the rats in the homes. This time the man wanted Ben to go to the rest of the homes on the list all in one night. Ben was worried he wouldn’t be able to go to seventeen homes in one night without getting caught. But his grandfather told him how to do it and said it would be done.
Ben opened the barn door and whistled that eerie, slow song. Four hundred and fifty rats came out of the barn, all calm and all ready to follow Ben. This time the rats all squeezed in the back of the truck, and some in the back seat and front with Ben. He drove just to the outside of Ghost Lake and let the rats out. House by house on the list Ben went to one of the windows and cut a small hole big enough for the rats to get in. And one by one they went in, let Ben in and killed the parents after he took the toddlers and babies. By the time Ben got to the seventeenth house, he was exhausted, but again, he cut a hole in the window, let the rats in and took the baby. He ran back to his truck with the last baby and loaded it in with the other sixteen children who were scared and crying for their parents. Ben sped away back to the farm and quickly unloaded all the children into the barn. By the time he had the last kids inside the barn, the rats were already back and running inside the barn. Ben closed and locked the doors as before, but this time he got back in his truck and drove as far away from the farm as he could so he wouldn’t hear all the screams and cries of the babies and toddlers being eaten alive by the Four hundred and fifty rats. His grandfather watched him drive away and was not happy. But he let him go; for now.
The next day people were crying, screaming and there was mass panic all over Ghost Lake. The seventeen families that were attacked were found and the town’s people were not just terrified anymore, they were pissed! The older people of the town who still remembered the deaths and missing children from the 1940s demanded the town’s people meet at the Hall and listened to what they had to say about the killings and missing children. All the townspeople gathered in the hall and the 6 eldest people of the town told them about the man who had taken children in the night while they were sleeping back in the 1940s, took them to his farm, the same farm Ben lives at and fed them to his rats. They had said how it’s funny how Ben comes and takes away the rats in the town but no one had ever seen him leave with any rats bodies. They said it was funny how Ben lives at the same farm as the man who killed the nineteen children years ago, how its funny that again there are nineteen children missing, and how a man who apparently didn’t know anything about Ghost Lake just suddenly moved to Ghost Lake from Calgary and bought up the farm that no one would live in since the murderers the missing kids of the 1940s.
Chapter Six Revenge!! The town’s people were shocked and furious. They wanted revenge, but they knew they needed proof. Just then a young policewoman came running in the hall and stood up in front of everyone, waving papers she held in her hands and yelled in anger and fear, “Ben is not some stranger from out of town who just by chance bought the farm and was by chance a rat exterminator. Ben is the great-grandson of Jonathan Dorling! I found all his information in the police database! He is taking his grandfather’s revenge out on the town and killing all those who killed his grandfather in the ‘40s!”
The town’s people in the hall were silent and stunned. They couldn’t believe it was happening to the town again. The townspeople had made a plan, out of rage to do what the townspeople did back in the 1940s and kill Ben like they killed his grandfather, but this time more brutally! After a few hours, Ben went back to the farm, sure that it was enough time that he wouldn’t hear any more screams or cries of the children. He parked his truck up close to his house and slowly walked inside to where his very unhappy grandfather was waiting for him.“You ungrateful shit! Why would you leave?” His grandfather demanded to know. Ben looked at him and said sadly, “I can’t listen to the cries of the children. I’m not a monster like you.”Furious, his grandfather vanished again and started to throw around everything in the house. Chairs, dishes, cups, pictures, the TV, tables, sofa, everything was flying across rooms, hitting walls, smashing, crashing, hitting Ben and just missing him. The bed was ducked down in the corner of the living room when he heard something outside his house. He ran to the front door and saw lights of cars coming in his driveway.
His grandfather was standing next to him at the front door window laughing loudly. “They are here to kill you. Just like they killed me.” His grandfather told him still laughing an evil laugh so loud it was deafening. Ben covered his ears with his hands and yelled, “SHUT THE FUCK UP!”His grandfather stopped laughing and vanished again. Rolling his eyes Ben watched as a mob of townspeople got out of their cars and trucks and surrounded his house. They were yelling at him, “KILLER!” and “MURDERER!” and that they were going to burn him alive in his house, slaughter him, beat him to death and hang him like his killer grandfather. Ben was terrified. He sat with his back against his front door on the floor and just waited for them to come for him. He knew there was nothing else he could do. Then he started to whistle. He whistled that eerie, slow song loudly. The rats heard the song and started to frantic against the concrete floor and walls of the barn. Because all four hundred and fifty of the rats were digging and biting at the same spot the floor eventually cracked and the wall broke, just enough they could get out in small groups. The rats scrambled out of the barn and went for the crowd of townspeople. A few of the people on the outside of the crowd saw the rats coming and started screaming. The people on the inside of the crowd were already pouring gas all around Ben’s house and were ready to set fire to it.
Ben stood up and looked out the front door window and saw people screaming and running from the rats. Then he saw one woman standing there watching him, watching them. She had a lighter in her hand, she walked up to the house where the gas was poured and lit it on fire. She didn’t run, she didn’t scream, she just stood there and watched the fire spread around the house, burning the outside slowly, getting higher and higher.
Ben didn’t back away from the door, he couldn’t move. He was in a trance watching this woman. The windows of the house cracked and broke from the heat and the fire was seeping into the house, burning walls, floors, ceilings, everything and getting closer to Ben at the front door. He started to cough from the smoke, and his eyes watered. He looked away to rub his eyes and cover his mouth. When he looked back out the window the woman was gone. His grandfather was standing next to him, smiling. “I knew this would come, they would come and kill you. I needed you to finish what I started and to play out my revenge. You did your job and now, you can forever pay for your sins in hell with me.” His grandfather told him in a mean, evil, emotionless voice.
Ben looked at his grandfather and just smiled. “I knew your plan all along, Grandfather, and that’s why I changed your list. The names on your list weren’t the families of those who killed you long ago. Oh, no. They were the families of your own bloodline!” Ben said now laughing hysterical. His grandfather looked at him with such shock and such pain. He screamed so loud it shook the walls of the house and all the people outside the house and all the rats froze in place. Then he vanished, leaving Ben to burn in the house. Ben whistled his early, slow song, calling all the rats to come into the burning house with him. They all ran inside as fast as they could, the people of the town watching them in confusion, horror, shock and happiness. Once the last rat was inside with him Ben looked out the window one last time and smiled at the people. They knew he was ending this circle of terror once and for all for them and repaying them for the pain and heartache his grandfather had caused. The door burst into flames, and they could see flames all around and behind Ben, as the house began to crack and crumble. Ben screamed in pain as he was burnt alive. The people could hear his screams and the screeching of the rats almost all the way until the house was completely engulfed in flames. The people cheered, clapped and slowly left the farm, left it all to burn.
As time went by the people of the town tore down everything at the farm. Taking away all memories and trace of what went on there. They moved on from the horror and pain of what Ben and his grandfather had done to the town. They rebuilt and started to live happy and normal lives again.
Chapter Seven You missed some What they didn’t know was that they didn’t get everything at the farm. Ben had built an underground cellar to the barn that was fireproof, and where he not only had an army of rat down there ready to attack and devour everyone, but he also had the body of his grandfather buried down there, so his soul would never rest and he would always come back and do the same things over and over; always come back and kill off the town’s people. And his grandfather’s ghost was pissed his farm, house, everything was gone and wanted revenge like never before. He released the rats from the cellar and led them to the outside of town and watched, as thousands of rats attacked, killed, devoured the town’s people alive; every one of them. Everyone young, old, male, female, child, baby, toddler or teen. The rats got every last one. Jonathan stood watching, pleased. Then he waited for the next group of people to come and start the town all over again.