The · Good · That · Won't · Come · Out

Title: Boundaries crossed and beards contemplated
Author: ballroom_pink
Word count: I can't find the word count button in TextEdit
Rating: PG.
Disclaimer: If I owned this show, I'd be the happiest lady in the world! But I don't, thus my sadness.
Timeline: Post 4x14

Summary:
Ben’s mom sends photos of him as a kid. He is dressed as Abe Lincoln.

Author’s Note: I can't remember if I requested the prompt that “Ben’s mom sends photos of him as a kid. He is dressed as Abe Lincoln." for our Galentines Day lovefest or for Presidents Day, but I did ask americnxidiot and the next day I was equally overcome with my own plot and the thought that she was overwhelmed with other requests that she might not use it anyway. Well, she did and I just love it so much. And so between the time I prompted this ficlet and the time it was posted, I had written something and had been bugging the patient and ever helpful saucydiva with the first draft of my own attempt at the prompt. I've only written three other stories, so I was in desperate need of editing and direction and I want to thank saucydiva so much.

( In the time he has known and lived with April and Andy he has learned a few things: Andy knew no boundaries when food was involved, April knew no boundaries. )

Title: Salad sucks
Author: ballroom_pink
Characters/Pairings: Leslie/Ben, April
Rating: PG
Spoilers: Spoiler-free
Prompt: Exchanging Food. Thanks, slynn6776. Sorry, it's so late. I wanted to group it with a bunch of other drabbles and finally just gave up on getting those done by today.

April Roberta Ludgate-Dwyer would be the first to admit it but she didn't know much about men. She knew more than some, like Leslie Knope, but despite working with the manliest of men and being married to huge man-child, she was still clueless on some of their behavior. Her own dating history was brief and kind of peculiar, to say the least.
Take, for instance, what she witnessed at lunch the other day. She, Leslie, Tom, Andy and Ben were out in the courtyard — on one of the last days of nice fall weather in Pawnee - eating lunch. And she noticed something. Leslie ordered a salad only to vent her frustration, as always, at the disgusting lunch option and gave up pushing it somewhat to the center of table in order to focus on her chips.
Leslie and Ben were working on some project - April didn't pretend to care - while eating lunch and without even looking for approval from Leslie Ben did something that surprised and bewildered April. He ate from her discarded salad, bits and pieces rather, the cherry tomatoes and cucumbers.
Now, her husband would eat off of her meal and really anyone else's. Pizza crusts, half a donut, all of Kyle's hamburger, that was Andy, he really had no boundaries.
Then something even more bewildering occurred, Leslie took Ben's cookie and broke it in half and ate it and Ben didn't even care. Suspicious behavior? Maybe. Or maybe she had been spending too much time around Ron Swanson who probably would kill anyone who tried to eat so much as a fry off his plate. It was hard to gauge how suspicious this act was without a knowing glance from Tom or Andy and one of them was too busy perusing Men's Italian Vogue and the other was too busy eating his own "awesome" food. Where was Donna to notice this? Even awful Ann would have been able to notice this. And at that thought, April lost her appetite.
She thought about asking Leslie some veiled questions about men and their eating habits but she could foresee Leslie thinking April was implying something about her new marriage status and so that wasn't going to happen. April would just have to stay vigilant - well, as much as she could without giving up her lazy ways, those articles in NYLON weren't going to read themselves - to more signs.

"Grandma, I can see everything from up here!"
"I'm sure you can, Ellie."
The vivacious and it must be said, extremely precocious, 4-year-old with white blonde hair that matched her mother's went on to tell her grandmother exactly what she could see while sitting atop the fixture that resembled a giraffe in the middle of Perkins Park.
"I can see Ruby on the swings ... I can see a bluebird on the top of the log cabin playhouse ... I can see Rufus the dog going to the bathroom," Eleanor Ann Wyatt giggled.
"Sweetie, are you sure you don't want to get down and go on the swings?" Her grandmother asked her worried a bit that perhaps she was too young for it despite the young girl's insistence earlier that she had been on it many, many times.
"No, thank you ... not yet I want to stay up here for awhile. Ooh, I can see auntie Ann's house!"
Eleanor loved being at the top of structure. She loved how it made her feel like the queen of the park, well, princess, at least, because even at her age she knew her mom had made this park and was really the queen of it.
Eleanor also stayed at the top of the structure because she wasn't sure how to get down. She had only been on the toy a few times before and only when her dad had been around to climb up and get her. She really had to muster her courage to ask her stern but loving grandma to explain to her how to get down.
She put her chin down on the metal bars and looked around some more. Eventually her friend Ruby ran up to ask her if she wanted to play on the teeter-totter and despite really wanting to — her mom had told her all about them — she said, "Maybe later. I need to ask my grandma to help me get down."
She looked over at her grandma sitting on a bench talking to some old man and was about to request some help when she saw her mom and dad walking across the grass that was covered in little white flowers. She sat up and yelled across to them, "Mommy! Daddy!" She waved and waved to them without abandon.
They waved back with an equal amount of fervor.
(They were walking too slow as her mom was going to have a baby soon and waddled like a duck — something Ellie had not so tactfully pointed out to her parents the other day. To which her dad said he thought ducks were pretty cute. She reminded her dad that penguins were much cuter.)
Seeing that her daughter's friend was nearby, Eleanor's mother asked her, "Ellie, why are you up there when Ruby is down here?"
Inching closer to the structure, Eleanor's father whispered in her ear, "Are you afraid of coming down?"
Eleanor nodded sheepishly. Her father silently climbed up the structure and picked up his small child, her arms clinging around his shoulders until he put her soundly on the ground. She gave her father a peck on the cheek and then hugged her mother's protruding belly. She then ran hand-in-hand with Ruby to the teeter-totter.
Her mom and dad kept an eye on them while they made their way over to Ellie's grandmother.

So I totally geeked out and wrote a Parks and Recreation Ben/Leslie drabble. And I know I haven't posted to my own LJ in so long but I'm back with this drabble. I love Parks and Recreation so much right now that I can't help thinking about it and its characters.
So this is absolute first piece of fan fiction and I haven't written anything in so long so please let me know whether you like it or even if you don't.
( In The Night )
Haven't done an LJ cut in so long so hopefully I didn't screw that part up.

obama change 08

Idea stolen from junolovesmars

Below I am going to list 10 quotes from 10 different movies, whoever gets the most (without copy/pasting them in google or IMDB) wins! What's your prize? Nothing! Well maybe some sweet satisfaction. You get 1 point for identifying the movie, 1 point for identifying the character/actor who spoke the line, and 2 points if you can name the director.

1. "You don't have to read a book to have an opinion." Metropolitan - Whit Stilman (the cold medicine made me put Noah Baumbach and that's not right) greateststar & brodie890

2. "The buses! The buses are empty and look almost menacing, threatening, as so many yellow dragons watching me with their hollow, vacant eyes. I wonder how many little black and white children have yellow nightmares, their own special brand of fear for the yellow peril... Damn it, it's got to be more... positive. No, more negative! Start again. Yellow is the color of caution. No. Yellow is the color of cowardice. Yellow is the color of sunshine. And yet I see very little sunshine in the lives of all the little black and white children. I see their lives, rather, as a study in grayness, a mixture of black and... Oh, Christ, no. That's fascist. Yellow! Yellow, yellow, yellow. Yellow fever..." Opal (Geraldine Chaplin) in Nashville - Robert Altman griffin_mill

3. "What are you telling me, that you're, you're, you're gonna leave Emily, is this true? And, and run away with the, the, the winner of the Zelda Fitzgerald emotional maturity award?" Isaac in Manhattan - Woody Allen brodie890

4. "Second cousin. The kids don't come out funny or anything, I checked." Natalie in A Little Romance - George Roy Hill

5. "I think we have the kind of friendship where if I were the devil, you'd be the only one I would tell." Aaron Altman in Broadcast News - James L. Brooks

6. "I think JFK's a sweet potato." Shag stellar_ball

7. "Do you know what this family needs? A mute." Gus in The Ref globetrotter1

8. "Wow, now you can read Seventeen magazine and get all the references." Max in Kicking and Screaming - Noah Baumbach brodie890

9. "You licked my ear. I'd have bought a dog if I wanted my ear licked." Wilbur in Wilbur Wants to Kill Himself

10. "Maybe not everything is supposed to last forever. Certain things are like, like sky writing, like a really beautiful thing that lasts for a couple moments and then - you know? I know honey, love sucks." Leslie (Cynthia Nixon) in Little Manhattan


And if you haven't seen these movies, go and see them. Seriously, these are some of my favorite films.

Tally:
brodie890 10
griffin_mill 4
globetrotter1 2
greateststar 1
stellar_ball 1

I believe jjfan3405 admitted to Googling. For shame! If I believed in using emoticons I place a funny one here.

I carved this the other day for Halloween. I looked much better at night so that's when I took the photo, but I used the flash and it provided too much light, but then I finished the roll of film (yeah I'm old school) and decided to try without a flash on the next roll (which is far from being finished so you'll just have to wait). The pumpkin freaked out my cat - like I knew it would. She hissed and swatted whenever I tried to pick her up and just stared at it all night long.

1. I don't understand the term meme all that well. But I'll use the word because etilia76 had that as her topic ...

2. Here goes: Comment on this post. I will choose seven userpics from your profile and you will explain what they mean and why you are using them. Post this along with your answers in your own journal so others can play along.


Bill Murray as Herman Blume in Rushmore. I love that movie and I could have picked a Max Fischer icon, but I love that moment in the movie. He's a well-respected man, so say The Kinks, so say I.

( Read more )