the gloom still looms

would win the award for worst children’s birthday parties. all the other parents are taking them swimming, these two are doing anna karenina reading parties and trips to the verne invention museum with a bunch of stroppy 7 year olds 

telling children with upcoming eye exams not to trust their optometrists (the parents of these children frowning deeply in disapproval in the background)

while all the other parents are proud and a little nervous at the prospect of their children going on a school trip, bertrand spends the whole time spying on them trying to work out if they are actually being kidnapped 

so boastful about their talented and precocious children. “such good news that pippa is mastering the alphabet. they each have their own talents, don’t they! violet invented an automatic rolling pin at the weekend.”

really not the best house for play dates. there is a smoke alarm in every room for mysterious reasons, the top shelves in the library are utterly off limits, and nobody is allowed sugar in their tea 

“she’s so odd; she’s always asking everyone new we meet if it’s a sad occasion…”

I can never emphasize enough how much I love the city in DICK TRACY (1990).

a last minute argument arose, and esme and georgina, who had previously planned on going to the masked ball together, were now going separately. didn’t have the ability to hypnotize someone into being her date like georgina could, esme decided to strike a deal with someone she knew who was definitely not happy about the georgina’s act of hypnosis.

caramel salt ; georgina orwell / bertrand baudelaire

long letters filled with complicated words discussing different fields of topics, polite pleasantry catching flies with honey, subtle suspicious glances at each other behind the glasses. it’s not a love story, but maybe it could have been, once, had things been different.

3, 2, 1, Action! ; gustav sebald / larry your-waiter

gustav sebald got on his nerves, and larry really only put up with him for jacquelyn’s sake, knowing he was jacquelyn’s good friend. gustav sebald with his annoyingly handsome hair and his annoyingly husky voice as he talked about zombies in the snow. gustav sebald with his ridiculous black cape that was supposed to make him look like a ridiculous vampire wanna be but only somehow made him look ridiculously attractive. it’s becoming a problem.

another first kiss ; beatrice baudelaire / r, the duchess of winnipeg

the first time beatrice and r kissed, it was at a rehearsal for a play. it was r’s first kiss ever, but she knew it probably wasn’t beatrice’s. the moment ended far too soon, and before she could realize it, esme was already loudly saying the next line, and everything that happened that afternoon afterwards felt like a blur. it was just a rehearsal, a kiss that didn’t mean anything, r told herself. but why did she keep thinking back on it?

unsent ; ernest denouement / bertrand baudelaire

bertrand’s plan in regards to stop frank from overworking himself was to try to work as hard as him and help him with everything, which hopefully eventually would get frank to tell him to take a rest, and then use this to negotiate and say “only if you promised too”. he thought it’s a reasonable and fail-safe plan. beatrice said he was just looking for an excuse to be a workaholic himself. kit said he was in love, which was totally absurd.

an arrangement between two ladies ; kit snicket / r, the duchess of winnipeg

it’s a nice arrangement - kit would attend the balls r’s family threw with her as a date to stop them from trying to get her to move on from beatrice by setting her up with someone r had no interested in, and in turn she could enjoy all kinds of expensive food the party provided. neither of them had planned it to turn into anything more. at first.

logical choices on summer nights ; georgina orwell / kit snicket

a last minute argument arose, and esme and georgina, who had previously planned on going to the masked ball together, were now going separately. didn’t have the ability to hypnotize someone into being her date like georgina could, esme decided to strike a deal with someone she knew who was definitely not happy about the georgina’s act of hypnosis.

caramel salt ; georgina orwell / bertrand baudelaire

long letters filled with complicated words discussing different fields of topics, polite pleasantry catching flies with honey, subtle suspicious glances at each other behind the glasses. it’s not a love story, but maybe it could have been, once, had things been different.

3, 2, 1, Action! ; gustav sebald / larry your-waiter

gustav sebald got on his nerves, and larry really only put up with him for jacquelyn’s sake, knowing he was jacquelyn’s good friend. gustav sebald with his annoyingly handsome hair and his annoyingly husky voice as he talked about zombies in the snow. gustav sebald with his ridiculous black cape that was supposed to make him look like a ridiculous vampire wanna be but only somehow made him look ridiculously attractive. it’s becoming a problem.

another first kiss ; beatrice baudelaire / r, the duchess of winnipeg

the first time beatrice and r kissed, it was at a rehearsal for a play. it was r’s first kiss ever, but she knew it probably wasn’t beatrice’s. the moment ended far too soon, and before she could realize it, esme was already loudly saying the next line, and everything that happened that afternoon afterwards felt like a blur. it was just a rehearsal, a kiss that didn’t mean anything, r told herself. but why did she keep thinking back on it?

unsent ; ernest denouement / bertrand baudelaire

Went on a mist forest walk and found:

1 and 2) A mystery mushroom (that kinda looks like a fae’s house!)

3 and 4) The appropriately named for this month Ghost Pipe! (Monotropa uniflora)