#joel nava

[songlations]

"Ella" by Joel Nava is a soft, slow melancholy song about accepting the end of a relationship. Acoustics and vocals, very raw. It's slow enough and will let Spanish students practice pronunciation.

View On WordPress

[tattlesandtales]

Closed starter for @bellespirits *** Nessa watched Jett hammer the board into place over the smashed window — his punishment for breaking the window being the hard labour to fix it — with her hands on her hips. Jett had never weilded a hammer before, and neither had Nessa, but he was certainly making it work to the best of his ability and Nessa didn't have the knowledge to correct him if he was doing it wrong.

"Do I need to board up all the windows?" Jett asked, the hammer hanging from his fingers with his loose wrist tilted backward, looking less than pleased at the idea that had just occurred to him.

Nessa felt her lips tilt up in a smirk at his disgust, and turned her gaze up to look at the facade of the building. It was run down and tired on the outside, needing more than a little bit of TLC, but Nessa's skills were not up to that. The old brick building had been a dive bar up until a few weeks ago when Nessa had taken over the lease and the regular business, and yesterday she had closed it down for a face lift. Inside the building, Nessa was confident that she could tear up the carpet because she'd already had a look under and seen the gorgeous hard wood beneath, and painting wasn't going to be too difficult. She'd have to renovate slowly, when she could afford it without chewing through the life insurance money from their parents that acted as a safety net to keep Jett clothed and fed.

"Ness?" Jett called, trying to get her attention, and she snapped her gaze back to him.

"No, all the others are in tact and hopefully they stay that way. Besides, I need your help to paint the frames and the doors before your soft little hands give up on me," she answered him, then waved her left hand at the window in front of him. "Get to it, the longer we're closed, the more money we lose, and I haven't even booked the inspections to make sure the place is up to code, or decided on a name to rebrand with."

"I still think renaming the place so soon after taking it over is a bad idea," Jett said with a scowl, but went back to hammering the nail before she could respond. Granted, Nessa didn't have much to say on the matter anyway, so she let it drop.

Instead, Nessa made sure her grey Walmart tank top was tucked into her thrited jeans — neither even remotely her style — and her hair was up in its loose bun to stay out of her face so that she wouldn't get paint on anything that mattered. Then, hesitantly, she bent down to open the paint lid, uncomfortable with her own indecision when she was usually so confident.

"Uh…aren't you supposed to sand the surface before you paint?" Jett interrupted, before she could pick up the can and pour it into the new paint tray.

Nessa paused and looked at him over her shoulder before sighing and straightening back up. Honestly, Nessa had no idea, but the wooden frame was definitely rough and weather worn under all the chipped paint. It would make sense to deal with that before painting so that the new coat didn't just fade into the cracks and look somehow worse.

"I don't kn—" Nessa cut herself off, the wind change bringing with it a new smell. Familiar, yet strange. Another werewolf was nearby, and coming closer. Nessa tilted her head and gestured at Jett to stop hammering for a moment so she could listen for the encroaching footsteps and see if she could sense danger. Nessa couldn't trust her instincts, so despite feeling no threat, she stepped closer to her younger brother to put herself between him and the oncoming werewolf, and tensed to wait. Jett, in turn, stepped closer to her back and she could hear him holding so tight to his hammer handle that his knucles creaked, his heart picking up in his chest to flood his body with adrenaline.

Nessa's own heart was hammering in her chest, but she took a slow and deep breath in to regain her composure and let some of the tension ease out of her body. Being immediately in the defensive would only show weakness, and distrust, and Nessa didn't want to get off on the wrong foot with anyone in the town she was hoping to make a home out of. Especially with the town not being that big. An elementary and a high school, an Aldi, a farm supply store that doubled as a livestock feed store, a handful of eateries and Nessa's bar, a post office attached to a visitor centre, a small sherrif station, a gas station attached to a motel and a fast food joint, and finally a small local library and youth centre with a basketball court was all that made up the main street. Apart from a large apartment block near the only entrance to the town was the biggest physical structure, and the houses around the main road were on small blocks of land. The blocks of land got bigger the further out you went until you were facing miles of farmland where you were lucky if anyone heard you scream. Nessa liked that it was small, she craved community and a sense of normalcy for herself her brother, and she liked that there was one road from the highway to Main Street so she wouldn't have to keep her head on a swivel to feel safe. The nearest city was a two hundred and eighty mile drive back down the highway. From what Nessa had been able to find online, the state itself experienced four distinct seasons, and the weather never got too hot to bother her and her brother's heightened werewolf sensitivities, and it would even snow in summer. Nessa was looking forward to adding a mulled cider and wine to the seasonal menus.

All of the comfort she was dreaming of would melt away if this werewolf brought with them a territory war, or a traditional — and in Nessa's opinion, outdated — pack mentality. As much as she believed multiple werewolves could live comfortably and harmoniously in this world, they were also human after all, she'd been proven to feel alone in that time and time again.

[iaminvincible]

44!

Damn dude, when we were kids we never would have imagined getting into our 40s, huh?  I can’t believe you would have been 44 today.  I wonder what you would have been like as a middle aged guy.  Married with kids, or still playing the field?  I can only guess.  

I always remember when your birthday is coming around because mom always says that you were almost a Memorial Day baby.  But I guess you didn’t like Mondays even before birth, so you broke out early.  

Things are more intense than ever, and I suppose I probably write that every year.  But I’m also more capable than ever.  I feel stronger, smarter, and faster than I ever have in my life.  I’m getting better at dealing with crisis, emotions, and responsibility.  I’m not perfect, but I’m working on it.

It occurred to me the other day that I put minimal effort into so many things just to buck authority.  I half-assed high school to show my teachers that their lessons were easy; I dragged my feet through college to reveal the pretentiousness of post secondary education; and I screwed around at my first few career-type-jobs to show that any idiot could make things work.  Sometimes, it seemed like it was all some form of passive protest against authoritative figures, or maybe the concept of authority in general.

Now that I’m a few years into some serious personal and professional commitments, I’m realizing that there’s no more authority figure hovering over me to piss off.  The only person I’m pissing off by slacking now is myself.  I have to get more active in my protests, so I’m putting in work.  I’m pushing harder than ever in every direction - professional obligations, creative endeavors, family ties, and friendships are all getting 100% of everything I’ve got.  I’m firing on all cylinders.  

I mention that because I think you’d be proud of how far I’ve come from skipping class to watch cartoons and eat cereal on your couch.  But I’d be lying if I said I don’t miss those days.

Well, happy birthday, man.  I hope you’re celebrating somehow.

[iaminvincible]

41

Fuck, man.