RE: Trailer Trash 60, 60 pt 5

    Without much further ado, Tabitha input her information into the Yahoo! fields to register for an account there. While she would have preferred to open off with a Gmail account for familiarity’s sake, the Gmail provider was half a decade from fruition—and besides, everyone in the local circle of teenagers online seemed to favor Yahoo messenger. Asking about other messengers revealed that AIM and MSN were around, but Tabitha received only blank stares from Casey and Matthew when asking about the more obscure ICQ. For a brief period in the early aughts Tabitha had used all of these messenger services, after which the practice fell out of vogue as everyone began texting each other directly to flip phones or early smart phones.

    The username Tabitha finally decided on was Brittlestar, which had been Julie’s writing moniker. The Brittlestar name and Julia B. Brittany’s ‘edgy online persona’ which drove its creation would otherwise never come about in this lifetime, because Tabitha’s major long-term resolution was to ensure Julie was never abused throughout her childhood, whether that meant pre-emptively reporting her father to child services, adopting her personally, or even kidnapping her!

    Instead of everything she went through before, Julie is going to have a lovely childhood where she is cared for and appreciated, Tabitha vowed. Then, at the same time, her BRITTLESTAR name will live on. I’m now the only one who can carry that mantle for her! I promise I will be every bit as edgy and unapologetically cringe as you were, even if I have to launch into photoshopping all those cursed dark humor memes you had into existence myself. Maybe Alicia and Elena can help.

    Still spectating their progress from behind their chairs, Matthew also started walking through how Tabitha could set up her own Geocities page, which was something Tabitha had tinkered with in her previous life but did not remember well at all. Getting anything online done at early-internet speeds was an excruciating exercise in patience, and watching the web pages struggle to slowly load in continued to earn incredulous stares of amusement from Tabitha. Hannah however found all of their internet stuff incredibly boring, and before they were called to the table for dinner managed to goad Casey into using Matthew’s Gameboy for a Pokemon match. From the shock and dismay Tabitha overheard, Casey was not letting Hannah win, but thankfully the battle was interrupted by their meal before it could conclude.

    Plates of chicken alfredo steamed from each of the positions at the table, and while everyone took their seats Tabitha also observed a basket of cornbread covered in a towel, a large serving dish of mashed potatoes, and also a tray of broccoli buttered with garlic butter. One single incongruent serving at one of the center seats was instead fresh macaroni and cheese for Hannah the picky eater, and although Mrs. Williams placed ketchup there beside it, Sandra swiped the plastic condiment bottle away with a roll of her eyes and set it off to the side and out of reach.

    “Dear Lord—we thank you for the blessings of this food, and the good company we’re able to share it with today!” Mrs. Williams bowed her head in prayer. “Thank you for sending us a little angel like Hannah to brighten our lives, and for beautiful, outstanding young women like Casey and Tabitha, thank you for my wonderful son Matthew, and then also thank you for giving Sandra so much patience and strength! In your name we pray. Amen.”

    “Amen,” Tabitha joined in to murmur with the others before looking up.

    That felt—strange, Tabitha blinked, trying to focus on giving her food an appreciative look so as not to reveal her discomfort. Are you really allowed to just… CALL PEOPLE OUT, whenever you’re saying grace? Is that just a thing she’s used to doing because of how involved she is with her church stuff? Maybe I’m just not used to it, but it made me feel really put on the spot.

    She was accustomed to her father saying grace only before major meals like Thanksgiving or Christmas dinner, and he always kept things short and sweet; simple. Mr. Moore had always apparently been of the mind that speaking too much in a prayer was, if not blasphemous, then at least considered irreverent or disrespectful. Seeing that Karen Williams was instead perfectly comfortable with naming names or delivering grace like it was a benediction monologue felt very strange to her, but she also couldn’t really say that it was wrong. Just different, very different from what she was used to.

    No one else commented on it, with everyone instead grabbing their forks and digging in.

    Tabitha joined in, trying a little of the chicken alfredo first—it was very good—and then following Casey to scoop herself a serving each of garlic butter broccoli and then mashed potatoes. This already felt like a lot of food, so Tabitha was going to use that as an excuse to opt out of the cornbread, because she had never liked the taste of cornmeal. While the main course chicken alfredo was certainly good, to her surprise the garlic butter broccoli really stole the show! If she wasn’t filling up so fast, she would have immediately gone for another helping. The mashed potatoes were good but perhaps too rich, so much so that when Tabitha saw the porcelain gravy boat passed around, she declined with a small smile.

    Sweet Jesus! Tabitha thought. I might just be used to um, to much more SIMPLE or ah, HEALTH-CONSCIOUS fare, but it’s very clear that Karen is in the NO SUCH THING AS TOO MUCH BUTTER camp, with her potatoes. These must be like, 1:1 butter and mashed potatoes. It tastes amazing maybe, sure, but I can almost feel my arteries sealing over!

    It was hard not to contrast the rather decadent broccoli and potatoes here to the much more simple green beans and potatoes Tabitha had made for the get-together last night, and Tabitha wasn’t sure if she should feel proud, or if she should feel humbled. On the one hand, with Mrs. Williams’ cooking flavor certainly won out—garlic butter broccoli in particular—but then on the other hand, Tabitha couldn’t even imagine serving such a rich diet like this regularly without them all turning into butterballs.

    “Hannah dear, how’s your mac and cheese?” Mrs. Williams asked. “I made it with extra cheese—I know you always liked it with more cheese. If you’re willing to try just a tiny bit with tomato slices, I can—”

    “Noooo~!” Hannah protested with a giggle. “No tomatoes. That’s a vegetable!”

    “Tomatoes are a fruit, technically,” Tabitha remarked before taking another forkful of her chicken alfredo.

    “They are?!” Hannah stared in disbelief.

    “They are not,” Casey shook her head. “Tabitha’s just teasing you!”

    “No, they actually are,” Matthew spoke up. “Tomatoes? They’re actually a fruit.”

    “Matthew!” Casey gave him a gasp of teasing dismay. “Don’t say that. How could you say that?!”

    “Er, well botanically speaking, tomatoes are a fruit—” Tabitha clarified. “But, most people consider them a vegetable, because of their flavor profile.”

    “That’s so interesting!” Mrs. Williams praised. “I’ll have to look that up. Hannah, if tomatoes are a fruit instead of a veggie, do you think maybe—”

    “Noooo!” Hannah cried out with a laugh. “No way.”

    “She means to say,” Sandra took a sip from her glass and then cleared her throat. “No thank you, Mama Williams.”

    “No, thank you!” Hannah chirped out at the reminder. “No thank you. No tomatoes! Ever.”

    “You know, ketchup is just tomatoes and sugar—” Mrs. Williams started to say.

    “—No, thank you!” Sandra was exasperated this time. “Good Lord, the things you’re teaching her. Ketchup on mac and cheese. It’s just not right!”

    “It’s unconscionable,” Tabitha brought up their joke from earlier with a solemn shake of her head. “Unconscionable.”

    “Oh, it is not!” Mrs. Williams laughed. “Listen, I bet if both of you would try it, you’d like it. Matthew grew up with diced tomatoes in his macaroni and cheese, and he always loved it!”

    “Matthew…” Casey gave her boyfriend a look of concern and reached across the table to place her hand upon his. “I’m so sorry.”

    “You poor, unfortunate soul,” Mrs. Macintire chuckled.

    “He always loved it!” Mrs. Williams insisted. “Matthew—tell them!”

    “Uhhh,” Matthew cast a sheepish look down at his food. “No comment?”

    “Matthew!”

    “Now, this broccoli, though,” Mrs. Macintire said with a gesture of her fork. “Mm-mmm-mmhh! I’m not even normally a huge fan of broccoli, just—wow!”

    “Well, thank you,” Mrs. Williams said. “At least I’m good for something! Hah! Hannah, how about it, do you think you’d maybe try—”

    “No broccoli—I mean, no, but thank you!” Hannah gave an adamant shake of her head while wrinkling her nose at the prospect. “Bleugh!”

    “It’s actually really good!” Tabitha said. “I like it a lot. Do you want to try a little tiny bit of mine?”

    Though she was only seven years old, Hannah sitting beside her managed to give Tabitha a wide-eyed look that was both extremely skeptical and even a little pitying. It was funny, because even amidst acting incredibly stubborn and childish Hannah was still able to surprise her with the sheer depth of expression that seemed well beyond her years—so long as she was expressing things in a condescending manner. Tabitha found herself forced to wonder if Hannah picked that up more from Officer Macintire, or more from Sandra.

    “Hannah, here,” Casey said, scooping out a very tiny sprout from the larger dish in the middle. “You can’t even taste the broccoli, it all tastes like garlic.”

    “Garlic?” Hannah pursed her lips.

    “Like garlic bread, you like garlic bread,” Mrs. Macintire prompted. “Try just a little teeny piece.”

    “It tastes like garlic, and everyone loves garlic,” Casey insisted. “Here.”

    “Ehhh—” Hannah couldn’t hide her grimace. “Uhh… I’ll try a really little piece.”

    The offered piece was delivered to the side of Hannah’s plate, after which the little girl then dissected the small broccoli floret even further with the edge of her fork until only a tiny thin sliver was there. Then, to the goading and encouragement of everyone at the table and only after a long, grudging look of reluctance did Hannah finally put the miniscule portion into her mouth. She made an exaggerated face of disgust and mortification as she mechanically worked her jaw to chew, and then dropped her fork to immediately reach for her glass of water with both hands to wash the flavor away.

    “Hannah…” Casey let out a long sigh.

    “Wow, that bad, huh?” Sandra chuckled. “Good Lord.”

    “Oh, it is not!” Mrs. Williams couldn’t help but laugh as well. “Hannah hon, how was it? It wasn’t that bad, right?”

    “That was… very weird tasting,” Hannah decided. “Garlic taste should just be on garlic bread. Not broccoli.”

    “What about garlic wings?!” Casey argued. “Spicy garlic wings. Garlic chicken. Pierogies, with garlic and onion. Even mashed potatoes is best with garlic! Everything’s good with garlic.”

    “Hear, hear!” Mrs. Williams nodded. “See, Hannah? All sorts of new things you can try.”

    “Yuck,” Hannah shook her head in dismay. “No way. No way.”

    Conversation fell into a small lull for a few long moments as everyone turned more of their attention to their food, and Tabitha found herself really enjoying this dinner get-together. There were perhaps some Pokemon matches to be had yet this evening, and she’d been able to use their computer to finally set up a first email account in this lifetime. The earlier talk with Casey about the future hadn’t gone quite as planned, but that was okay, too. It gave Tabitha a lot to think about, and she really felt like she was coming to terms with people not believing her. She had spoken up about things enough that later on when everyone encountered all sorts of evidence, that Tabitha wouldn’t feel as though she’d been keeping secrets or hiding things from everyone she was close with all this time.

    “So,” Matthew spoke up, quickly wiping his mouth with a napkin. “I was real curious—what are you guys doing about that whole towel thing? At school.”

    Tabitha accidentally dropped her fork with a clatter, and used her good hand to hide her face, utterly mortified.

    “Towel thing?” Sandra asked. “What do you mean, towel thing?”

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/// Survived the final cap or crown installation or whatever and am now already back to chewing food somewhat normally. The day after that procedure though I was helping one of the new church guys scrub mold off all the walls and furniture at a place he's about to move into though, and man. I think I personally only got a living room, a hallway, two different closets and a couple pieces of furniture scrubbed clean, but I was aching and sore all over and pretty much laid out for the past few days recovering. Mostly I think from either stretching up to get near ceilings or crouching way down to get the low stuff. Part of it's just me not being as young as I used to be, part of it's that ever since living in the shitty old trailer I used to where black mold was creeping up everywhere, I wanted to be super fucking thorough about scrubbing all of the surfaces I could clean there.

Otherwise I'm pretty okay, just been bunkering down for winter here basically and trying to avoid everyone's political drama. Will be switching over to inaugurate Renfaire Fantasy with its first proper chapter for a bit, and then returning to finish out RE:TT chap 60 after that so that I can finalize it and get chap 58 sent towards RR and A03. Will fix links and guide page later. Please no election discussion or politics in the comments!