The Great Curator

losing a friend (for the one that got away) 1/3

part 2

@frenchtoastlesbian on tumblr // pinterest personalmessage.blogspot.com // @linguinereid on tumblr // trista mateer // from pinterest // richard siken // ocean vuong “on earth we’re briefly gorgeous”// from pinterest // from pinterest

I am demonstrably sad, and lonely, and full of fear. But there are other people who will hold my hand, who will point out the hawk overhead, who will give you That Look in a public place. The other day at a coffee shop a child said "look! It's snowing!" so all of us strangers went to go look out the windows. It wasn't the first snow and it won't be the last but wasn't it lovely, like that?

How wonderful to live in a world where birds and frogs both say beep! How wonderful to have an ocean of beautiful sharks with their dinosaur teeth! How wonderful the moon and her changing face, how wonderful the bees and their dancing to communicate, how wonderful shrimp and their forbidden layers of vision! How wonderful, you, and what you will give the world! The way we love things enough to spend entire blogs devoted to them? How people will let me explain my Pokemon team to them? How we will both jump at the scare in the movie, how we laugh so loudly, how it feels to give someone your baking? How wonderful to be alive. I am sorry for forgetting.

reblogging with my own tag because i did it myself

and i was right

i still wasn’t convinced though, so i slowed it down even more

“The plan was to grow our money so we could feel financially secure enough to have a baby.”

This is a couple that’s already worth three million dollars. They own their own home. They have a passive monthly income of $12.5k without lifting a single finger, and he can make $30k/mo working for 60 hours. To put that in normal 40-hour weeks, this means that he works until mid-May, takes the rest of the year off, and makes five hundred and sixty thousand dollars for his trouble, on top of the three million they already have and any income she might have.

tl;dr: That’s a lot of fucking money for very little effort.

And these people are scared. They think that thisisn’t enough money for them to raise a child

You’re some broke, awkward guy in his twenties who can’t keep a job down to the point that you Know that the letter your recently dead mom wrote to her also dead famous friend’s coworker contains Something about giving you employment. So you march yourself down to this fancy restaurant, submit yourself to verbal whiplash, fork over what might’ve been the last thing your mother ever wrote, and become the lowly janitor

Fine, right? I mean, shitty day/week/month/whatever, but you aren’t picky. You have a job, so you can pay rent. Except you accidentally spill like half a pot of soup and you panic. You literally got this job like fifteen minutes ago and you already fucked up. Rent is breathing down your neck so you do the Broke Twenty Something thing where you try to use water to hide the difference, throw in some spices because you have no idea how cooking works, and hope that no one notices despite the fact that one sniff tells you you fucked it up worse.

Then a rat fixes it.

A random rat fixes it.

(You’re broke, you’re mom is dead, and you cook worse than a rat. Imagine that.)

And somehow the soup gets served to a food critic that’s apparently well respected and now you have no idea if you’re gonna be flayed alive by your new boss or given a job you are in no way qualified for. Rent is still a thing.

Then you realize the rat understands human language and knows enough body language to communicate. Then you realize you’re own body is fucking weird because this completely random rat (that you had to explain morality to because he stole some herbs from your neighbor) is controlling your limbs by tugging on your hair. Also you become lowkey famous yourself because the rat is that good a cook.

And you have to go along with it because you need money to eat and not be homeless and you need a job to get money. It hasn’t even been a week.

At least your coworkers are nice enough. You get a crush on one of them and get a crash course on cooking and working in a kitchen and sexism and oh my god like at least three of your coworkers are technically criminals aren’t they?? Also your boss gets you drunk and asks you a bunch of weird questions about pets. You only wanted a job

(The rat makes you kiss the coworker you kinda have a crush on that’s been teaching you everything. What the fuck. You probably have to explain consent to a rat now. Luckily the coworker likes you back and is okay with the kiss, but still. What the fuck)

(Also the rat now seems to have a rivalry with your new girlfriend. What the hell, rat buddy? You’re literally the reason these two are together, and also the girlfriend has been working in the food industry longer than the rat has been alive probably, she clearly knows her shit)

Suddenly, out of nowhere, the rat walks up to you with some documents about how your dead mom’s dead famous friend is your dad. Also your boss did DNA tests on you behind your back (invasive much??). Now you own an entire restaurant because of a deadline in you’re secret dead dad’s will that was like two days away from being moot.

(I dunno about y’all, but I’d need to sit down for like seventy years at this point because there’s like fifty different layers of fucked up here. You grew up without knowing your dad, then you learn you’ve been working at his restaurant. He’s famous and his face is on a bunch of frozen food dishes. Both of your parents are dead. Your mom never told you or your dad about the being related thing for some reason. Your boss did a DNA test on you. You own a restaurant and you can’t even cook. Your new pet rat somehow got this information before you and can apparently read. Your father was a famous chief, your name is literally a pasta, and you can’t even cook. It’s only been a couple months, what the hell)

Now you’re famous and the food critic they lowkey caused your secret dad’s death is after you because he has a weird vendetta going on, and also your rat (who’s like your best friend at this point let’s be real) is acting weirder than usual, but at least you have a better apartment and get to talk about how much you love your super cool and smart girlfriend in public.

Next thing you know, your rat is sneaking other rats into the kitchen, you have to explain that a rat can cook better than you, and everyone quits in the middle of the day (what the heck, one of them probably killed a guy and another was in the circus. The rat thing is weird but like. You can roll with the punches. Why can’t they??)

So while you’re like having a panic attack because of this, your rat unionized his rat friends and now the kitchen is being run by rats. What can you do? You wait tables because what the hell, you’re in way too deep at this point.

(Also, side note, Linguini totally missed out on his true calling as a professional roller skater or something. Dude’s graceless even when he isn’t being piloted by a rat, but on a set of roller skates he’s friggin amazing)

Luckily, your super smart (maybe ex?) girlfriend comes back (even if the whole rat thing is still throwing her off, but hey. It’s prolly nice to have Somebody acknowledge the weirdness of this entire thing without jumping ship). Apparently the food your rat cooks is so good that the food critic that lowkey killed your dad reevaluates his entire life, but now he wants to meet the person that made the meal. What do you do — your (maybe ex?) girlfriend is the only other human here, do you say she made it or do you show him the rat?

You decide to make this Super Important Super Harsh food critic wait hours, then you and your (probably) girlfriend have to show off how you’re weirdly drift compatible with a rat. The food critic just like. Thanks you for the meal and leaves. What do you do?

Also at some point during the night the rats kidnapped your weirdly invasive ex-boss and a health inspector. So yeah, you should probably deal with that.

Then the food critic that lowkey lead to your dad’s death writes this inspirational piece that critizes critics, tanking his own career in the process, only for the health inspector to shut down your dad’s restaurant. But okay, the now ex-food critic now takes the money he made shattering the dreams of other chiefs and invests in your rat best friend’s dreams, and now he’s kinda your friend and you work at the rat’s restaurant with your amazing girlfriend.

All this happened in only a few months. You just wanted a job.

Like normal people, they repeat something daily for a couple weeks and it sticks. They might miss a day here or there, but the overall habit is formed.