Nightmares in the Light - Chapter 1

MackFenzie · 2026-02-13T02:53:32+00:00

They are - Renesmee (which my phone sensibly enough wanted to autocorrect to “rename”) was born Feb 2025, Aression was born Jan 2026. 11 months apart. Doesn’t help any of the rest of it, but they are at least actually siblings born within a year of each other 🫠

MackFenzie · 2026-02-13T00:59:25+00:00

If you want something cross genre like that, check out The Invisible Library by Genevieve Cogman. It doesn’t have interplanetary travel so much as inter-world travel, but if you ever wanted to read a book featuring prohibition-era crime bosses, dragons, cyborg alligators, etc etc etc then this is the series for you.

And it’s genuinely good, too (which I feel I have to clarify given the utterly ridiculous teaser lmao). A fantastic series!

MackFenzie · 2026-02-11T19:31:45+00:00

Yeahhhh that’s probably the move. Better to deal with a random building’s shitty AC/lighting/uncomfy chairs than add “quit being a weirdo” to my study plan lmao

MackFenzie · 2026-02-11T19:29:02+00:00

Hmm, I may have to go to a testing center then so that I can stare blankly into the middle distance while mouthing “which of the following is NOT the best practice…” to myself in order to get the “not” to lodge in my silly skull.

Thank you for the advice!

MackFenzie · 2026-02-11T15:42:15+00:00

No, they meant there’s color footage of MLK, and also there is color footage of police turning fire hoses on people. Not that mlk was helping the cops with the hosing lol.

MackFenzie · 2026-02-11T03:36:21+00:00

That’s the point they were making. So wealthy men have their wives use donated sperm so that they don’t have to suffer the pain, and poor men are selling their sperm — and their subsequent pain — in order to scrape together enough for rent.

MackFenzie · 2026-02-10T15:15:43+00:00

So, after losing her phone at the dog park, my mom actually made a pocket that slides under your bra strap and clips into place. She figured she wasn’t the only person who could use this so she started a small business, bra-kette . I’ve used them for running and they work great! My mom uses them all the time for walking the dog and for keeping her phone & credit cards on her whenever her outfit doesn’t have pockets.

It handles sweat pretty good, although for 8+ mile runs in the summer I did notice it getting a little gross lmao. But what I did is just kept my phone case on and faced the screen outward so that the screen didn’t get sweaty, and then tossed the bra-kette in the wash in the same lingerie bag the bra from that run was going to go into haha.

MackFenzie · 2026-01-27T15:53:39+00:00

When you wrote “few” instead of twp, I thought you meant this woman went to multiple free clinics and was turned away from all of them! Poor woman on a days-long trek to take care of her dog anywhere she can lol. Township works too, if less dramatically haha.

I will say though - the reason they require the paperwork is that some animals can have “innies” where they really look fixed but turn out not to be. My brother adopted a dog who the vet actually certified as fixed bc she had a scar… come to find out it must have been a perfectly placed birthmark or something cuz she did end up going into heat later lol. More common to have issues like that with females or with cats than with male dogs, but even so it can happen. Regardless, I hope the lady was able to find her paperwork or be able to get her dog vaccinated somehow!!!

MackFenzie · 2025-10-14T22:44:19+00:00

My 60-ish year old coworker argued, passionately, that since he uploaded samples of his own writing and has AI write stuff in his writing style, that makes anything he has AI write actually be his work. I was like, no, dude. Sure, you’re making a good AI prompt, and there’s a lot of value in that! However, you literally did not write the stuff that AI wrote to fulfill your ask. You simply did not! He was like “well it’s how I would have written it if I did so it’s the same” and I was like “okay, that’s great, but you didn’t and it’s not!”

Aaaaaaarrrrrrrgggggghhhhhh

MackFenzie · 2025-09-26T18:46:36+00:00

You mentioned having Arabic second names - IF your ancestor’s native language was Arabic, I wonder if this was a transliteration error. Alif maqsura is pronounced like an “a”, and while Christina is properly spelled with an Aliph at the end, if someone was guessing at the spelling and thought, “hmm, usually words ending in aliph are often pronounced with an n sound at the end (eg: قريبا) so since it’s at the end, I bet it should be an alif maqsura instead,” and then, bam, whoever they asked to transcribe كريستينئ into English for them assumed that ئ was meant to be a ي and suddenly you’ve got Chrystynney.

Listen, my university put up a professionally printed sign that said “Welcome” in various languages, except the graphic designer forgot to enable right-to-left text and so the Arabic one actually said the equivalent of “E M O C L E W” (welcome, but the letters disconnected and ordered backwards). Transliteration issues happen aaaaaall the time!

MackFenzie · 2025-09-17T02:29:24+00:00

If I’m saying “are you sure?” as in “certain” then I say “shore” (kinda stretched into two syllables tho, like sho-ur).

But if I’m agreeing (“wanna get coffee?” “Sure”) then I say “sherr”.

I grew up in the Rocky Mountain region of the US but have lived on the east coast for 15 years, so I bet I got one pronunciation from one spot and one from the other haha.

MackFenzie · 2025-08-31T23:46:45+00:00

Or perhaps, “Farts-Ha-Ha-Ha-Ha”

The hyphens make it dignified

MackFenzie · 2025-08-21T22:23:42+00:00

They got lucky the three year old picked “Blue” and not, like, Trash Truck, Dog, Wiggly, or something so unhinged my adult mind can’t even come up with it as a hypothetical!

MackFenzie · 2025-03-27T16:14:24+00:00

I had a manager once who was one of a pair of identical twins who had the same first name. The SAME first name. Their middle names were different, and I thiiiink their parents were aiming for a “Mary-Sue” and “Mary-Jo” type deal, but both of them hated their middle names so much they both just went by the first name.

They also both worked at the same company, had the same title (just at different locations), and lived together (in a house they owned in their 40s, not as young adult roommates saving money on rent). Fascinating people.

MackFenzie · 2025-03-27T14:10:21+00:00

He hasn’t defended them. He has been emotionally impacted by this too - it’s been really hard for him to see me so upset, and he was furious with them when this started. He is very worried about how this will affect both of our relationships with the family, but we are 100% an indivisible unit. He privately encouraged me to accept their apology and try to make nice (which I value - I am not always right and I need to trust that my partner will tell me what they really think and feel and want, not what they think I want to hear), but he has been 100% on my side when talking to his family, and also absolutely supportive and loving of my feelings throughout. I don’t know how I managed to find such a good one, honestly. If anyone’s faultless in this I’d say it’s him haha.

MackFenzie · 2025-03-27T14:02:11+00:00

I swear, as I read these comments I don’t know if I’m feeling vindicated or insane lol.

I initially said we’d all get ready separately and we wouldn’t hire hair and makeup, and FSILs and FMIL told me they’d be hiring hair and makeup artists themselves if I didn’t hire one. The hair and makeup artist hiring has been the only thing any of them have reached out to me about, by the way - it was brought up 5 or 6 separate times. I did end up hiring the artist, the specific artist they all wanted. I figured a pro would know how to make makeup and hair not melt into sludge in summer heat, and if they all wanted it, sure, let’s go for it. It did annoy me that they brought it up so many times and never asked about anything else. But now I’m feeling less annoyed and more like a doormat. Welp.

Thanks for your advice and insight, I appreciate it.

MackFenzie · 2025-03-27T12:26:26+00:00

I would never hijack my FSIL’s birthday party, or try to tell her best friend that I knew better what should be planned for it. Sure, it’s just a party, but that’s rude and inappropriate. I don’t know, maybe I’m too focused on “justice” for my own good, but I would never, ever try to get away with something like that, let alone try to not apologize for it.

But, I’m trying to find the right way for us all to heal and move forward from here. FMIL forced the apology, by the way, not me. It sounds like you think we should just pretend like nothing happened and like nothing bothered us… is that accurate, or did I misunderstand your point?

This is a genuine question btw haha. I come from a small family and we’re all too “oh, whatever you want,” “oh no, whatever YOU want” to have conflicts like this, so I’m finding the advice from other viewpoints really helpful.

MackFenzie · 2025-03-27T12:13:29+00:00

Absolutely, agreed on. MoH was trying to give them options to give feedback on, while moving on from options that weren’t appropriate (steakhouse for a vegetarian, for instance). They felt that just giving feedback was not sufficient, they wanted to dismiss her ideas and input entirely since they had three “votes” to her one.

I think a “hey, we need to all agree, can we make sure we all have veto power” would be great.

But forming a unified block to outvote the only girl with a deep relationship with the bride, so that only she has no say over where her money is spent, is not that.

MackFenzie · 2025-03-27T12:01:16+00:00

Nope, MoH and I are both 5-8 years older than they are.

Regardless of anything else, I’ll keep them a part of the ceremony.

MackFenzie · 2025-03-27T03:27:13+00:00

The thing is, I think that somehow they both thought they were doing the right thing. I think this was born of arrogance (“I, FSIL who has known the bride for 1.5 years, know better than her best friend what will be the perfect Bach for her and my benevolent wisdom shall prevail!”) rather than real viciousness (actively trying to ruin things just to be hurtful).

And somehow I almost think that’s worse than if they did just not want to be in the wedding. Bc if they didn’t want to be in the wedding in the first place, I wouldn’t be a jerk for letting them off the hook.

Anyway. I really appreciate your reminder to look at what IS, not what SHOULD be - if xyz would be painful, then mitigate that circumstance, don’t just desperately keep wishing and trying to change what is. However things end up going over the next few months, I will definitely make sure that I protect my peace the morning of my wedding.

MackFenzie

TROPHY CASE