Love to wake up in the morning only to cry for the third time about today's failed plan, I was supposed to go to a water park with a coworker but she bailed on me yesterday evening.
Having plans failing bc people bail on me and having to reschedule is unfortunately a running theme in my life + of all the 4/5 people I call my friends basically only one kept in touch and actually proposes to spend time with me (🙃) + but that really doesn't matter bc of the nature of my job, i have odd hours and definitively no days off on the weekend, at least in summer.
I love being in the water but I'm extremely shortsighted and I don't feel comfortable wearing lenses in the water bc I'm terrified I could accidentally open my eyes under water and lose them (and that shit costs me over 200 bucks every 6 months, they aren't cheap!), being without lenses means I can see colors and blurry shapes when I'm not wearing my glasses. It makes getting out of the water and reaching my belongings really awkward and anxiety inducing.
Last week I proposed my coworker bc I saw we had a matching day off and she was actually her counter off with the water park after me proposing the beach or the pool and it got me so excited!! I completely forgot about that, last time I went there I was still a minor!! I literally spent every day of this week thinking about going to my fave attractions and having fun in the water now that I bought a swimming suit that could properly contain my boobs and have someone being my support eyes. This bail really crushed me in such a horrible way, I was supposed to have so much fun today 😭😭😭😭
having to go to work today again is just . . . besties i don’t think employment is for me it’s really interfering with my fangirl lifestyle or whatever that one tumblr post said :/
I am never going to complain about Greek Duolingo again
I mean, I am. But still.
So, as some of you know, my family has been coming to this tiny Greek seaside village for several years. Just over a week ago I came out here with my mum, under the impression that early September, after the height of the summer heat, would be a good time to have a holiday. ANYWAY Storm Daniel had other ideas about that. Locally things are improving (I'm actually really pissed off about the disaster-porn tone of most English-language media coverage, but that's another post). The power is back on, there's running water most of the time, and though the latter is not drinkable, a truck from the government came and handled out free bottled water yesterday. But we are currently kind of stuck. Can't do tourist things. Can't go home. There aren't any local flights out until Saturday and the road to Thessaloniki is still closed.
So this evening, feeling kind of aimless and depressed, I go down to the nearest beach with a couple of binbags and start cleaning up in an effort to at least do something positive. I always try to do this at least once out here and obviously, after the storm, there's a lot more plastic and rubbish than usual.
At some point I find this large, round bit of metal - some kind of machinery part, I think -- that's too big for the bag, so I take it to the bins on its own, leaving the rubbish bag on the beach. And when I come back for it, something among the stones beside it moves.
Specifically, it pulls its head sharply inside its shell
So, meanwhile I've been trying to learn some Greek with the help of Duolingo.
I currently have a 33-day streak and... I have questions. Shouldn't I be able to use the past or future tenses by now? Shouldn't I be able to say "x is like y"? I can't do those things. But one thing I absolutely can say all day long is έχω μια χελώνα : I have a turtle.
This is far from the limit of Duolingo Greek's turtle-related content. "An obsession with turtles" is my mother's characterisation. I can inform you that the turtle is not a bird, and, improbably, that the turtle is drinking milk. I can introduce you to a turtle in company with a horse and an elephant. As far as Duolingo is concerned, it really is turtles all the way down.
Now this, you may be able to see, is not a turtle. It has claws rather than flippers. It is a tortoise. I know there are wild tortoises in Greece: my aunt once rescued a pair of them shagging in the middle of the road -- but that was up in the mountains. I've even seen one myself, but it was also on a road and very dead.
I am 95% certain they don't belong on beaches. There's nothing for it to eat, except, unfortunately, a lot of plastic. Even if it gets off the beach it will immediately find itself on a road where it could get hit by a car. I'm pretty sure it must have been washed down by the floodwater and has been just sitting there, dazed, ever since.
Now obviously the first thing I want to do on encountering this unusual animal is to go and tell my mummy, so I do. The tortoise immediately brightens her day. She agrees that the tortoise is not happy on the beach and needs to be taken somewhere safe. it gets surprisingly wriggly when picked up so we put it in a carrier bag with some grapes and cucumber and go looking for somewhere to rehome it.
We find a path leading up between the houses towards a likely-looking field, but before we get very far a dog in a yard goes berserk and a man's head pops over a fence and demands to know what we're doing. He does this in English, as evidently we're just that obviously tourists.
"I found a tortoise on the beach!" I explain. "We want to find somewhere to put it."
"A what," he asks.
"It's like a, you know," I begin and then to my astonishment I find myself saying... "μια χελώνα"
"Oh! A turtle!" he says.
"But from the land. δεν είναι χελώνα", [it is not a turtle,] I say, as I am worried he will tell me to put it back near the sea where I found it. As it turns out it actually IS a χελώνα, Greek does not distinguish between turtles and tortoises, but I don't know that; I can't even name the days of the week or identify any colours other than pink yet, give me a break.
The man's entire demeanour changes and thaws. He does not worry about my turtle-that-is-not-a-turtle conundrum. He knows where οι χελώνες come from and where η χελώνα μας belongs. He leads us through a gate into a courtyard area.
"[somethingsomething] μια χελώνα," he explains to the assembled onlookers, of whom there are, suddenly, a surprising number.
"ΜΙΑ ΧΕΛΩΝΑ!!!" crows the throng of delighted small children, who are, suddenly, everywhere.
"μια χελώνα!" I agree, accepting that at least for current purposes, that is what it is.
"Μπορούμε να δούμε τη χελώνα σας; [can we see your turtle?]" asks an adorable little girl, shyly, and I understand??
The children fucking love looking at the χελώνα and showing it to them is kind of magical?
I finally put the tortoise down on the grass of this wild area off to the side of the courtyard, and marvel aloud that it is weird that I barely know any Greek except how to say μια χελώνα.
"I think she will soon run off," a kind lady called Aspasia assures me, seeing I remain slightly anxious about its fate. "I don't know why I'm saying 'she'. I suppose because χελώνα is feminine in Greek."
"Yes! I know that!" I exclaim, thrilled.
"Well done!" she says. And also she asks if we are OK for drinking water after the storm and if we need any help with anything and is just generally incredibly lovely and now we know more of the neighbours!
So "μια χελώνα" has just become, by a long way, my most-used and most understood and all-around most conversationally successful phrase in Greek. So I guess I have to admit I was wrong to doubt Duolingo's wisdom: it is correct to be obsessed with turtles. And I concede that prior to learning how to count to ten or to distinguish right from left, the simple ability to yell the word TURTLE over and over again is, it turns out, a crucial element of the responsible traveller's social skills.
(I am pretty fluent in Italian and turtles haven't come up in conversation even once?)
I just spent some time scrolling through this blog and am suffering from sever laughter. Thanks so much for collating the countries craziest moments. One of my favourites is when Scott Morrison was in Hawaii while the bushfires where burning.
December 2019: As Australia's east coast is engulfed in the worst bushfires in living memory, rumours begin to circulate that Australia's Prime Minister Scott Morrison may have secretly fucked off for a holiday in Hawaii.
Keep in mind, this is what is going down in Australia at the time:
The Hawaii rumour is initially written off as a fringe conspiracy, because surely nobody could be that fuckin tonedeaf, and it was quickly forgotten about... until an Australian man visiting Hawaii UPLOADED A SELFIE ON THE BEACH WITH THE PM THROWING A SHAKA.
At which point all hell broke loose.
Overnight the formerly popular "Scomo" became the most despised man in all of Australia. Think "firefighters shouting out of their windows to news cameras" level of despised.
After about two days of radio silence and pretending like he was still at home running the country, the Prime Minister's handlers finally dragged him onto call with an Australian radio station, where he pinky promised to return to Australia as fast as he could in an attempt to calm things down.
Unfortunately Scott's empathy consultant (a real job) then had to watch Scott pour more gasoline on the dumpster fire by uttering the now famous phrase "Look I don't hold a hose mate" when asked by the radio interviewer why the fucking fuck the fuckhead wasn't fucking in Australia doing his fucking job during a massive fucking crisis.
Testing just how much worse things could get, Scomo then proceeded to NOT rush back to Australia as promised, instead attempting to complete the rest of his holiday, a fact that was exposed when a passerby snapped a picture of him still lounging on the beach two days later.
Eventually, holiday complete, Morrison did reluctantly slink back to Australia, and in an attempt to calm things down, he decided to pay a visit to a small town that had been destroyed by the fires.
Which was a big mistake.
Scomo still had not registered how absolutely and totally he had screwed the poodle with his Hawaiian beach vacation, and he walks into what is now taught in PR classes as one of the greatest examples of "what not do do in a crisis" in all of history.
Scotty from Marketing, as he is now dubbed by the nation, spends a painfully cringe-inducing hour wandering around a burned down town with TV news cameras in tow, having to FORCE PEOPLE TO SHAKE HIS HAND in what is some of the most awkward footage you will ever see.
At this point it's probably also worth mentioning that, before becoming Prime Minister, Scott Morrison's biggest claim to fame in politics was being the guy that was so far up the coal lobby's arse that he literally brought coal into parliament and waved it around, claiming it doesn't hurt people.
So when a protest was organised it turned out to be one big national fuck you to the Prime Minister, the likes of which the world has never seen before or since.
Needless to say, at this point Scomo's career was dead in the water, but thanks to the rules brought in to stop Australian political parties from knifing their leader every two weeks (a popular Aussie passtime) Morrison basically couldn't get fired until after the next election.
And so, when the election rolled around in 2022, we decided that was an opportune time to travel over to Hawaii to erect this bad boy tribute to the Prime Minister, on the very beach where Scomo had sat and drank margaritas that one fateful week in December as Australia burned (thanks to @chaser for funding the ticket)
✿ little lando norris is in love and yn likes to walk him like a dog
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yn posted a story
replies
landonorris cmon love 💔
charles_leclerc Just let him have this one
lilymhe the hand placement??? 👁️👁️
↳ yn you don’t wanna know how many times i tried to move it
hearts4lando this is so cute
alexandrasaintmleux I want what you and lando have
↳ yn don’t even 😭
carlossainz55 JUST DATE ALREADY PLEASE
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landonorris posted a story
replies
maxfewtrell your like her little puppy dog
↳ landonorris idc as long as im hers
yn stop this madness
↳ landonorris you know you like it babe
francisca.cgomes absolutely down bad
↳ landonorris always for her
charles_leclerc No photo credit?
↳ landonorris no you kept call me her little bitch the whole time…
↳ charles_leclerc Did I lie?
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f1wags
liked by landonorris and 383,072 others
f1wags Lando Norris and Yn were see getting cozy on the beach earlier today, what do we think about this? 👀
estiebestie NOT LANDO LIKING THIS 💀💀
yn NO NO NO LET ME TELL ME SOMETHING
⤷ landonorris do tell
⤷ yn ITS NOT WHAT IT LOOKS LIKE I SWEAR
hoeforsainzzz UHM HIS HAND HELLO?
lovely.leclerc friends definitely don’t get that touchy with each other 🫣
⤷ landowantrizz and they definitely don’t look at each other that 🤨
landolovesyn this is the norm for them 😭
beloved.hamilton Stop that’s so cute 🥹
sharls_lerklerk shes the nonchalant, wears the pants in the relationship, in between black swan & white swan, knows she can get whatever she wants out of him gf and he’s the chalant, will do whatever she says, puppy dog, putty in her hand with one look, can never say no, baby girl bf
⤷ yn no 👎🏽🚫🙅🚮
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daniel3.jpg
liked by maxverstappen1 and 925,082 others
daniel3.jpg to feed your soul
landonorris my girl
⤷ yn no stop
yn delete this now
⤷ landonorris cmon babe you know you want me as bad as i want you
⤷ hearts4lando HELLO? lando norris is the standard
lilymhe what’s that thing doing with me kika and alex’s girl
⤷ francisca.cgomes little lando thinks he can bag our girl 🤣🤣
⤷ alexandrasaintmleux he just doesn’t know when to quit
⤷ yn i know where home is 😘
⤷ charles_leclerc hello??
⤷ alex_albon i can’t do this anymore.
⤷ pierregasly tell me about it
charlesismyman69 HAND PLACEMENT IS EVERYTHINGGGG 🫦
landolovesyn they act like a couple but yn is playing SO HARD to get 😭
ethereal.yn i’m patiently waiting for lando to just hard launch one of these days (im going insane i can’t wait any longer)
⤷ landonorris same
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landonorris
liked by carlossainz55 and 5,924,173 others
landonorris my girl, my girl, my girl ♥️ this one goes out to all you bitches that doubted me, that said i could never get someone as beautiful as yn, that told me to move on, that said i could never get her, to everyone who ever called me lando norizz i hope you bitches are weeping right now.
yn damn
⤷ landonorris you know your blushing right now don’t even
♥︎ by yn
danielricciardo Bro got the girl
⤷ oscarpiastri After 4 years
⤷ carlossainz 4 years of yappin about her
hearts4lando ik lando already bought that ring 😭
⤷ lando.norizz he’s probably had it for a few years now let’s be honest
pierregasly getting freaky on the main?
⤷ landonorris always
landolovesyn MY PRAYERS HAVE BEEN ANSWERED 🙏🏽🙏🏽
estiebestie just fell to my knees in the middle of walmart
⤷ landonorris same
littlelandonorris lando norris the man that you are
landowantsrizz the second picture HELLOOO? 😭
⤷ lilac.leclerc the second picture? WHAT ABOUT THE FIRST PICTURE???
sharls_lerklerk i’ve been here since they first met at silverstone 😭
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yn
liked by zendaya and 18,024,795 others
yn my little bitch, forever & always babygirl ♥️
landonorris it’s like your life goal is to make me look like a fan
⤷ yn are you not my little bitch?
⤷ landonorris i’m whatever you want me to be baby
⤷ yn that’s what i thought
lilymhe 🐕🐕🐕
francisca.cgomes can’t believe this man child took my woman
⤷ landonorris I WON
alexandrasaimtmleux so cute…i guess
landonorris damn girl why your feet so sexy 🫦😘🥜🤤🍆🍑
carlossainz55 I thought you two getting together would mean he would finally shut up about you…I thought wrong.
⤷ oscarpiastri You think you have it bad?
ynissocutiepatootie y/n heard “walk em like a dog” once and took it to another level
hoeforsainzzz lando norris is the definition of dedication
landocanrockmyworld i love how she makes him look so tall 😭
An idea popped into my head that I feel you would write very well!
Rafe x virgin!reader. They are having a pretty heavy make out sesh, he slips his hand into her pants and then she just blurts it out? Like, "I'm a virgin," and she's like terrified. But rafe doesn't mind at all.
(also, is the 🪩 taken.)
oh my goodness!! I’m obsessed with this. no it is not taken omg welcome to the club!!!!!!!!!! ty so much for requesting 😚😚😚😚
your night with rafe had gone as perfect as any night could have, dinner by the beach, watching the sun go down while you ate dessert, and then heading back to tannyhill with him for the night, like you always did.
your nights with rafe always ended the same day, crawling into bed wearing one of his big shirts and then making out until you were soaking through your panties and rafe was hard beneath you. you're sure that rafe might have guessed you're a virgin by now, from the way everything he does is so new to your body, reacting primally to every touch. the two of you fall asleep like that, and you feel tingly from your head to your toes, waiting for rafe to say something about going further.
you're sure he would. there's no doubt in your mind that he's ready to, and he's probably done this with a million girls before you-a thought that makes you want to cry, but you put that aside. you're rafe's now, and you know that giving him your virginity is part of the deal. you're not sure just when that'll be, since he has you in your panties nearly every night.
maybe it'd be tonight. when the two of you get back to his room, you head for his dresser immediately to pull out a shirt, but rafe pushes you against the door. he leans down into a deep kiss, and you let it progress, hands snaking into his hair while he holds your waist tightly, his own hands running up and down the soft material of your sundress.
it's a little uncomfortable against the door like this, but rafe eases you up immediately, your legs wrapping around him while he pins you in place. you don't mean to start moving your hips, grinding down against him, it's just instinct, chasing that toe-curling feeling that you haven't been able to feel with rafe yet. his hands snake further down to the hem of your dress, and then slide underneath the material to the smooth skin of your legs.
rafe's hands keep traveling, gripping your thighs while he keeps you locked in a kiss that has you feeling dizzy, would have your knees weak if he wasn't holding you up. his tongue pokes into your mouth, and you moan around it, not even wanting to pull away to breathe.
you have to, though. rafe's hands are at the waistband of your panties, and just as he starts to grope, finding where he can yank them down so he can finally do what he wants to you, you pull away, hands resting flat on his chest.
he likes you like this--hair disheveled, lips red and swollen, the strap of your dress hanging off your shoulder. he leans in, pressing a kiss to your shoulder and then your collar, then up your neck.
"rafe," you whine, but it's easy to let him keep going. "we should stop-"
his eyes dart up to meet yours, pulling his face away from your neck.
"why would i do that, hm?" he kisses you again, but you turn your head away. "finally got you where i want you."
"i-well, i'm a virgin, rafe." it falls out of your mouth, even though you've spent countless hours thinking about the best way to tell him. you've thought everything through, how to say it, how to reply based on his response, how to deal with the embarrassment you're sure to feel.
"yeah?" he questions, pulling away to look at you in the eyes. still pushed against the wall, you can feel his hard dick pressed against you. the two of you don't move an inch, besides for the nodding of your head to answer his question.
"so, no one else has ever touched you where m'touching you?"
you shake your head.
"and no one's ever seen you like this?"
you shake again, feeling your eyes get watery.
"i'm sorry-"
"why're you saying sorry? told you to stop doin' that."
"because... because it's embarrassing."
"says who? hm?"
"says everyone. right?"
"no, kid. not me. you want me to stop?" your body melts into his grip. you shake your head again. "good girl. c'mon, get on the bed. not taking your virginity against this door."