Monkey’s Paw

Monkey’s Paw
By Ratlaf

I know we’ve seen this variation of FMG story before but I haven’t written one yet so I suppose this is my contribution to the Monkey’s Paw concept…  Enjoy!

*

“Yar!  What’s that??!!!” I asked promptly dropping the whole box!

“What’s what?” Marissa asked me.

“That, in the box.  It looks like a hand.” I said as I rummaged for what I’d seen.

“Oh that? That’s been in my family for years.  We use it mostly for Halloween parties ‘cause it’s all creepy and gross,” she explained as I pulled out a very convincing hand that looked like it came from a monkey of some sorts.  All five fingers were curled up into a sort of fist, but as I held it the fingers slowly opened up and extended.

Both of our eyes grew wide as we watched and when I asked her with my eyes she replied; “It’s always been closed, well, at least it’s been closed since I was a kid.  I just thought it’d dried up or something.”

“OK… Hmm, well where do you want this box?” I asked putting the now open paw back in the box.

“Eh… With all the rest of the random stuff, right over there,” she pointed.

‘I wish we were done moving all her stuff in and relaxing on the couch!’ I thought to myself as I set down that box, and the next thing I know we’re sitting on the couch, Marissa’s cuddling up to me as I put my arm around her and all of her stuff was moved in.  We’d just opened a few beers and were totally exhausted, looking to relax for the evening. 

Wow, time really flies when you’re busy, but just to be sure I checked my watch and it was about an hour and a half later than when I’d set down the box with that crazy monkey’s paw in it.

“Hmm, that’s curious…”

“What’s curious babe?”

“What, oh nothing.  Didn’t it seem to you that we got done moving fairly quickly?”

“I guess…  It still took us about 2 hours, and I’m definitely going to be sore tomorrow from all that heavy lifting…  but to finally be living together makes it totally worthwhile!”

“Yeah…” I replied absently thinking about that monkey’s paw again.  I thought I knew a way to make today’s efforts seem like nothing to her.  After wondering a bit about the fact that what had happened earlier was totally impossible and that I just lost track of time while we were moving, I thought: ‘What the hell…  I wish my Marissa had been born Myostatin negative.’

This time I noticed an immediate change!  My woman was getting heavier and heavier as she relaxed in my arms.  She was also growing bigger too, and I noticed that her ladies weights were being replaced with a real weight set that we’d thrown wherever we could as we were moving.

In a matter of thirty seconds she easily added 40 pounds to her body and from the feel of the hardness of her I could tell that it was all muscle.

“Mmmm, that was such a good workout,” she purred as she stretched in front of me.  Her stretching also made her new muscles flex and bulge and I was startled to realize just how much extra muscle a person who is negative for the Myostatin gene builds.  Although judging from the weights she must lift a bit too because she was easily more muscular that any woman I’d ever seen, and most guys too come to think of it.

“What is it babe?” she asked when I gasped at the new size of her.

“I just never realized you were this muscular.”

“What are you talking about?  I’ve always been strong, ever since I was a baby.  Sure I’ve been lifting a bit since we met but I’ve always been stronger than everyone around me.  Don’t you remember?”

“Oh, yeah, sure I do, I guess you just caught me off guard.”

“Hmm, okay.  You’re not having second thoughts about this are you?”

“What?  No!  Of course not!”

“Oh good, because you’re one of the few guys who doesn’t treat me like some circus sideshow freak.  Although I’d’ve done well with that life.  Out lifting all the guys in the audience with one muscle packed arm. Mmmm, maybe I should lift a bit more,” she said as she experimentally flexed her arm which suddenly bulged to at least 15” of feminine power.

“Woah, you’re huge!”

“Babe, I’ve always been this big.  What’s going on?  You’ve always loved the fact that I’m stronger and more muscular than you.”

“I have?  I have!  Yeah, I definitely have, I guess it’s just all that moving’s made me a bit light headed.”

“Oh, okay.  Lets get some dinner then,” she said as she stood up.  The next thing I knew she was carrying me across the living room.  She’d taken hold of the hand that was draped over her suddenly broad shoulders and held onto it as she stood up, and she just took me with her!

“Aaaah!”

“What, did I squeeze too hard?”

“No, it’s just that you’re so strong!”

“Okay, now I’m starting to get worried, I’ve never seen you so hungry and light headed that you’d forget that I carry you all the time, especially when we’re having sex because it turns you on so much, and you get so hard for me.”

“I what…?” I said vaguely registering the fact that I was already hard for my now very strong woman!

“Alright, sit yourself here and I’ll rustle up some grub!”

“Okay.” I said as I watched her move about the kitchen.  As I watched her I realized that she really was quite muscular now.  She wasn’t super cut or anything but her body was definitely bulging with muscles that would totally dwarf and overpower my own.

“You know babe, ever since I was five I was strong enough to lift and carry my dad.  I was doing one armed pull-ups by the time I was two.  The iron cross on my first birthday, remember I showed you my baby picture…  And in high school none of the boys were able to beat me at arm wrestling because puberty made me even stronger and more muscular.  This is how I’ve been all my life and I love it!  And I know you do too.  You’re the best of all those men who didn’t treat me like a mutant and I love you and want to be as strong as I can for you.”

“Really!” I replied still dazed and trying to figure out what just happened.

“Sure, in fact, I think starting this week I’m going to lift five days a week at a proper gym instead of the once or twice a week I’ve been doing at home.  Then we’ll see just how much more muscle I can pack onto my 5’9” 180 pound frame!” she said treating me to a double biceps flex that would make any lightweight female bodybuilder envious.

“Okay,” I was thinking about the wish and the only explanation was that the two wishes I’d made today had come true, the last in such a spectacular fashion that I’d’ve never imagined it to be possible in real life.

“You’d like that wouldn’t you my love?”

“Oh yeah!”

“I’d be able to pin you to the wall with one hand instead of two when I give you a blow job…”  I was hard for her and I noticed she wasn’t preparing dinner anymore.  “I’d be able to carry you with one arm to your bed…  I’d be able to pin you down using just one arm instead of two, and you’d have absolutely no chance of escape against my one muscle bloated arm…”

I vaguely realized that she’d lifted me off the chair and was holding me against her body with her hands under my legs.  She’d moved us to the nearest kitchen wall and pressed me against it.  Then she began to work my body up the wall while she held me pinned by her body, her legs helping as well.  The feeling of weightlessness was amazing and when I felt her unzip me, and slide me farther up the wall so that she could take me into her mouth, I very quickly began twitching with my orgasm.

“Oooh, you’re definitely going to like a stronger more muscular version of me if that’s all it takes now…”  then I realized I was floating through our house to our bedroom and when she threw me onto the bed I bounced a bit before she pinned me down.  She was using both hands and I was barely able to squirm out of her grip.  When she realized I was trying to take off my clothes, she let me and pulled off her own as well.

I then leapt at her and although she wasn’t expecting it she absorbed my weight easily and began positioning me so that I’d slide up into her, while she was holding me.  Once I was filling her up, I felt her arms quiver with the effort and she laid us down on our bed where we brought each other to several amazing orgasms.

I was in heaven because mere hours ago she’d been struggling with one of her own book boxes, and now she was maneuvering me around with some serious muscle and power.  She was in heaven because she’d found the best man in the world to match her and the life she was born into!  Or the life she was born into after the wish I’d made!

I thought about the monkey’s paw as we held each other in our afterglow and wondered how many fingers were still uncurled.

*

She was as good as her word.  My Marissa went to the gym every day after work and lifted for about an hour.  Since it took me about an hour to do my running workouts it worked out well because we’d arrive home at about the same time.

Wow did she change!  Not only did she grow much stronger much quicker her body gleefully added muscle upon muscle to her already well muscled body.  Not only that but her muscles also became very defined as she worked off the little bit of extra body fat she’d had.  She was eating copious amounts of food in order to feed her growing body but when she told me she’d added three inches in two weeks to her arms alone, I gladly paid the extra money at the grocery store.

A month after  we’d moved in together she’d totally transformed herself into the most muscular woman in the world, as far as we could tell anyway.  We’d compare her measurements and best lifts to the other female bodybuilders in the sport and Marissa totally blew them all away.

Her 22” arms were able to curl 100 pounds each, she was able to bench 500 pounds for 20 reps, and at her 5’9” she weighed in at 235 pounds for the contests she entered!  Needless to say I was in heaven, and she was thoroughly enjoying the fact that she was able to lift me so very easily, especially when we were having sex.  Her new strength opened up quite a few new possibilities, all of which we totally enjoyed while orgasm after orgasm ripped through our bodies.

It seemed though, that even with the Myostatin gene turned off, she’d reached the maximum muscular size women were capable of.  She was so much stronger than me, and every other woman in the world, that I should’ve been happy, but one day, when she had totally obliterated all the women in a regional bodybuilding competition, the men took the stage and even the scrawniest of men still out muscled my woman.

When we got home Marissa went to take a shower.  I rummaged for that monkey’s paw and when I found it I saw that two of the fingers had closed again.  The pinky and ring fingers.  Smiling to myself I thought: ‘I wish that my Marissa was born with 200 times more testosterone receptors in her muscles than a normal woman while keeping her levels of the testosterone hormone normal for women.’

This time, the thumb of the paw closed.  I heard the floor of the bathroom creak ominously as she stepped out of the shower.  My body shuddered uncontrollably at the thought of how muscular she’d be having been born without myostatin regulation and hypersensitivity in her muscles to the little bit of testosterone that women naturally produce as a result of puberty.

Would she be as big and muscular as those guys we saw in the contest today?  Would she make them look like shrimps, or would she make even the champion male bodybuilders look puny by comparison?  I couldn’t wait to find out.

“Did you see the looks on those guys faces today babe?” her musical feminine voice drifted through the bathroom door as the floor creaked again.

“I did, they couldn’t believe what their eyes were telling them…” I invented wildly, hoping against hope that she’d totally embarrassed the guys at the competition today.

“Well, when you’re genetically gifted to build more muscle than anyone on the planet, it’s pretty easy,” she said coming out of the bathroom wearing just a bathrobe. 

I nearly passed out! 

Where before her bathrobe somewhat concealed the fact that she was a very muscular woman, now it was struggling futilely to cover even a fraction of her immense muscularity.  Her neck traps and delts were so enormous that the collar of the robe was resting where her traps met her delts.  The resulting “V” of the robe traveled over a chest and pair of breasts, hovering without support, that seemed to make her so thick from front to back that she’d fill an entire doorway.  The “V” ended halfway down her pool ball sized abs directing my eyes down to her mammoth legs each of which were easily twice the size of her narrow waist!  After admiring her calves, which looked like volleyballs, my eyes toured back up the impossible muscularity of her gigantic legs, past her narrow waist, up her rock hard tummy, over her monumental, pillowy chest to her shoulders and finally to her arms.

It was her arms that finally unhinged my knees. They filled her sleeve so completely that only her deltoids were covered with struggling silver fabric.  Her biceps alone were bigger than her calves, and her triceps bulged out as if she had a dozen horseshoes vying for position under her skin.  Unflexed her one arm looked bigger than her head and the cable of muscles forming her forearm made my legs look skinny!

“That’s right babe… I want you to take me right now!  Out muscling those men at the competition made me so horny…” she growled as she put one hand under my armpit and lifted me off the ground while her arm bulged obscenely!  She always wore this robe when she wanted me to make love to her, to overwhelm her with my skills and passion, when she was horny and didn’t want to work for her orgasms…  This bathrobe, among a few other items of clothing she possesses, always did the trick because I was rock hard for her as she carried me through the air to our bed.  She hovered on top of me for a bit but when I untied her robe with my teeth and peeled it off of her heaving, flexing body she willingly let me turn the tables as she played the part of the submissive woman being taken by her man.

Much as she loved being exponentially stronger than me, and driving me crazy with her strength and power, she still needed to feel like a woman, to feel my weight on top of her, to feel me moving inside her, to feel me in control…  As always, because we have such a close bond, we orgasmed together, well it was actually her third when I finally let myself go into her to drive her totally over the edge.

In our afterglow she smiled sleepily at me and said: “Ever since Junior High, when my muscles began growing on their own, I thought I’d never find a boy, or, well, a man, who’d love me for who I really am.  Then I found you, and no matter how inhumanly muscular and strong I grow, I’ll always have you.”  As she was talking about being inhumanly muscular I almost instantly grew hard for her again.  “That’s right babe, no human ever has built an arm as muscular as mine,” she said flexing one of her arms that I knew stretched the tape at just over 32 inches, four inches more than her waist!  “Mmmm, are you ready for round two, I know I am!” and this time she totally overpowered me as she pinned me to the bed with one arm and began riding me.

My whole body was pleasantly sore the next day.

*

Life went on for us for the next few months and we took every opportunity to enjoy her unrivalled physique.  She didn’t compete because the female bodybuilding guidelines applied to women without her genetic gifts, but she was constantly invited for guest posings at those same competitions, video and photo shoots, and appearances at expos. 

She did compete in the World’s Strongest Woman competition and after submitting to every drug test know to man and a humiliating gender test as well, they allowed her to compete.  As if her beautiful feminine face, cute high pitched voice, narrow waist and generous breasts didn’t efficiently convey her womanhood…!  She requested to compete with the men’s weights against the other women so that it’d be a closer competition.  Instead of letting her humiliate the women in this manner they had her compete against the men where she still totally and completely blew them away.

One day she came home from a shopping trip with her friend Kelsey with a pair of high heels.  She wears heels occasionally when she wants to be the same height as me, but these were something else entirely.  They had a 5 inch platform under the ball of the foot with a heel that added another three inches on top of that!  I don’t know what that heel was made of but it must’ve been some strong stuff to support all 385 pounds of her magnificent musculature.  It came to an almost suicidaly thin point that made me wonder how she was going to be able to walk wearing these behemoths.

She snatched them out of my hands and said that those are for later, but as she went to put them away my mind was already bursting with ideas of what it’ll be like when she’ll be six inches taller than me…  That also led me back to the monkey’s paw with it’s two fingers still uncurled.  So I did some quick research online, and from the same source that I’d based my previous two wishes on formulated the wording for my third wish.  I wasn’t going to use it yet but I had a pretty good idea of what would happen when I did!

*

“Are you ready for me now my big strong man?!” Marissa asked a few days later.  I’d just arrived home from work and her melodious voice drifted towards me from our bedroom. 

“You bet I am my…” I stopped mid sentence because she was wearing a see through nightie and those 8” heels she’d bought.  Her new height and her bulging gargantuan muscles (which were stronger than any man’s on the planet) made my jaw drop and my eyes bulge out of their sockets!  “…my Amazonian goddess of muscle!” I finished agog at my woman’s new stature.

It was amazing how much bigger and more muscular she looked when she towered over me by six inches.  Bending down to me oh so slowly she flexed her whole body in a most muscular pose.  The explosion of muscle from her body, combined with the fact that when she’d bent down I was still looking up at her made me wild for her.

I also decided to submit my next wish right then and there, because I wanted to see the effect it’d have on her in person.  I’d missed the swelling of her muscles to inhuman size when she’d been taking a shower before.

‘I wish my Marissa was born with twice the normal levels of HGH all through her childhood and all through puberty, but normal levels of HGH in adulthood.’ I thought to the Monkey’s Paw.  I felt, rather than saw, the index finger curl closed and had an image in my mind of the paw flipping me off with it’s middle finger.

Before I could think about it she began to grow as she was sexily walking towards me rubbing her hands all over her body.  The nightie and shoes grew right along with her because my wish had, presumably altered the timeline to match.

As she sauntered closer to me I was looking farther and farther up at her.  She broke through six and a half feet, soared past seven feet, shattered eight feet, and finally stopped growing when she was a bit taller than the eight-and-a-half foot tall doorframe behind her, wearing those heels of course.

Not only did she grow taller, her body and muscles grew in proportion with the rest of her.  She was just as muscular at her well over eight feet of height as she had been when she was only a few inches shorter than me!  Her previously 32 inch arm had grown into a muscled behemoth that had to be at least 60 inches around.  Her arm alone was bigger than the width of my shoulders.

“I… ubbadu wah uuuu…” I whimpered as I realized that her one arm, wider than my shoulders, was at my eye level.

“Hmmmm, I just knew this new nightie would totally overwhelm you.  I don’t even need to use these glorious muscles I was born with, or my towering height either,” she said as she stepped right up to me.  I had to look up slightly just to stare into her glorious breasts.  When I finally made it up to her eyes she treated me to a double biceps flex that was totally out of this world!

Once again this glorious physique I’d given my woman floored me.  She bent down to me, except that she was now so gigantic it seemed to take ages for her to finally make it all the way down to the floor where my body was twitching involuntarily with pleasure and desire.

“What’s wrong babe?  You’ve been weak kneed a lot lately.”

“Yeah, I guess I’m just continually amazed at how gigantic and muscular you are.”

“Babe, we’ve been together for years.  You haven’t been floored by me in a long time.  I’m glad I can still turn you on so much just by towering over you, flexing muscles that you’d never be able to build in your lifetime, even though you are a puny man.  I’m glad I can still turn you on just by being who I was born to be…  Your muscle giantess!  Oh! I wish…”

But she didn’t finish her sentence.  Instead she put one finger under my armpit and lifted me into the air so fast that I felt like I was on a rollercoaster.  She threw me a little into the air and caught me with her other hand.  It’s a good thing my place has twelve foot ceilings!  I was definitely hard for her by now so with that same finger that had thrown me into the air she ripped off my clothes.

While holding my whole body in one hand, her muscle bloated arm barely even flexing with my weight, she gave me the best blowjob I’d ever received, almost nine feet off the ground, that feeling of being weightless because of my woman’s strength hyper-accentuated by the orgasm she was giving me in mid-air!

All that night she’d get me hard just by flexing her massive muscles, towering over me as the giantess she now was, and make me orgasm by curling me up to her mouth with a bicep bigger than my torso, by holding all of me inside her with just her vagina, and by riding on top of me, totally smothering me with her muscles while not crushing me to death!  It was the greatest night of my life.

“Wow, you’ve never been this turned on for me before.  What happened tonight?” she asked me after what had to’ve been her sixth or seventh consecutive orgasm.

“I guess I just realized again how incredibly lucky I am to have found you, my mighty giantess.” I invented wildly again.

“No! I’m the lucky one!  Until you came along I hadn’t had a boyfriend since seventh grade.  Ever since puberty hit me and transformed me!”

“Tell me again my lady muscles…” I invited.

“You’ve heard it before.”

“Well, I just like hearing it again,” I replied as my dick twitched a bit at the prospect of hearing first hand what it was like to turn into a muscle packed giantess at puberty.

“Oh, I see how it is…  Well, I’d always been strong, ever since my first birthday when I did an iron cross.  I’ll show you that baby picture again.  Everything I tried I did really well because not only was I super strong for a girl, I was also tall too.  I was always in the back row of my school pictures because all the other kid’s’d disappear behind me.” 

I was already growing hard and she hadn’t even made it to the good parts yet. 

“By the time I was eleven I was five and a half feet tall and so well muscled that I’d always be the first kid picked in gym class, and one time, this college boy at the mall asked me to flex my muscles.  I weighed 165 pounds already and my arms were 15 inches around.  When that same guy asked me out I told him I’m only in 5th grade, I’d better ask my Mom.  He looked horrified and scuttled away.”

“When I was twelve I entered puberty and wow did that change me.  I first noticed that all my clothes wouldn’t fit anymore, or that I’d rip through them as the day went on.  I remember one day when my muscles had grown so much in just one day that my pants and shirt ripped and everyone at school was taunting me and calling me ‘She Hulk!’  That was probably the worst day of my life.”

“In a year I grew a foot taller and added at least 150 pounds of muscle easily making me the strongest and most muscular girl on the planet.  I was the biggest person in my Middle School including the gym teacher who used to be a bodybuilder.  Nobody called me ‘She Hulk’ anymore unless they were either my friends or paying me a compliment, like when I’d single-handedly pinned three of the guys on the wrestling team.”

“A year later I’d added another foot of height and about 150 more pounds of muscle making me the tallest and most muscular person on the planet.  And I hadn’t even touched a single weight to try and build my muscles up!  By the time I could drive I’d reached my final, towering height of eight feet and a quarter of an inch and leveled off at about 550 pounds of car lifting, tree snapping muscular strength and power.” 

“Of course my other womanly endowments grew too and I had to have custom bras made for my unheard of size.  Although I’d rarely wear them because my muscles seemed to keep my breasts from sagging.”

“By this time I’d been forced to come to terms with my giantess of a body and I decided, since I have no hope at all of hiding the fact that I’m now an enormous woman, majestically tall and hugely muscled, I’d start working out and build myself up to the maximum my genetically gifted body was capable of.  I’d long since given up hope of ever having a boyfriend so I substituted that with my training.”

“When the doctors did a full genetic work up on me, just to make sure that I was healthy and in no danger of hyper-thyroidism, Marfan Syndrome and several other giantism genetic diseases, they revealed to me, and the broader scientific world, that the combination of genes that I possess completely explained my height and musculature yet had never been seen in any species on the planet.  They found that I was Myostatin negative, had about 200 times more receptors for testosterone in my muscles, and twice the normal levels of Human Growth Hormone all throughout my childhood and adolescence, yet all normal human female adult levels of testosterone and HGH.” 

“I’m a perfectly healthy adult woman with a genetic make up that turned me into the eight foot tall, 785 pound muscle woman with whom you’re now sharing a bed, my little man!  I can bench press your car, military press you motorcycle with one arm, squat with my SUV and totally overpower you with my huge bulging sexy flexing muscles my sweet little man!” she concluded pouncing on top of me again because she was totally turned on and I was rock hard for her and ready to explode into her yet again.

We set a personal record of about a dozen orgasms for her, and half as many for me.  Women and their multiple orgasms…!!

*

That next day, after we woke up at about 2 in the afternoon, I went in search of the monkey’s paw.  It still had it’s middle finger up, flipping me off, but as I held it that finger curled and the paw was once again curled into the fist I’d found it in.

“Did it flip you off too?” my Marissa asked me, ducking slightly under the door as she came into the garage where the paw had ended up.

“What?”

“It did that to me too.  I guess it figures that five wishes is being a bit too greedy so it always flips you off and gives the last wish to someone else.  In this case me, because my sister stole all but one of mine…”

“What are you… You mean you knew about this.  You knew when the wishes transformed you?”  I asked flabbergasted and looking up into my Marissa’s face for the slightest trace of anger.  There was none, and she smiled as she reached down to me, picked me up gently and kissed me passionately.

“Of course I did.  Didn’t I tell you it’s been in my family for years.  I was just playing along so that you’d finish turning me into the woman of both of our dreams.  I’ve wanted this just as much as you did, and thoroughly enjoyed every one of your wishes.  Although I was a bit surprised at how you worded them, making the changes in me genetic from birth.  It made my wish so much easier…”

“What did you wish for my sweet muscle goddess?” I asked kissing her again and immensely relieved she wasn’t going to rip me limb from limb.

“You’ll see when you go to work tomorrow…”

*

On the way to work I noticed a large number of SUVs that seemed bigger than what I’d previously been used to.  I also noticed that the doors of all the shops, cafes and stores were easily ten feet tall, and when a woman walked out of one of the stores it looked to be a perfectly proportioned door.  I’d driven by before I could get a good look, so I shrugged it off.

Our receptionist wasn’t in yet when I arrived at work, and Kim wouldn’t arrive for another hour or so, which meant that I didn’t see any of the women in the office until our weekly meeting at 9.  As I was walking to the meeting I caught a glimpse of one of the women sitting in her cubicle, only it looked like she was actually standing.

Getting more and more confused I actually squawked loudly when the women of my office walked in for the meeting.  They were all at least seven feet tall and enormously well muscled!  All the guys took the entrance of these muscled giantesses in stride, I was the only one gaping.

I struggled through the morning, being dwarfed by incredibly tall and muscular women all throughout the office.  I needed to escape, so I went out for lunch.  I didn’t find anything different outside my office.  The waitress who served me was almost nine feet tall with breasts the size of beer kegs yet so round and delicious.  The table next to me had a trio of ladies that had obviously come from the gym and were packing so much muscle on their bodies that I was feeling weak in the knees as I brought my food to the table next to them.  Everywhere I looked women were at least seven feet tall, and so enormously muscled that no guy in the world would be able to compete with them, ever.

None of them, however, were as muscular as my Marissa, who had apparently built herself up just for me, especially since it seemed all women had her genetic traits now.  My phone chimed with a text message and I saw that it was from my lady muscles. 

‘I wished that all women in the world were just like me!’ her text confirming my suspicions.

With a shudder of pleasure and desire for my woman, I decided that it really wasn’t so bad.  It was what I’d wanted after all, and to know that every woman in the world was as genetically gifted as my Muscled Massive Marissa, made me smile with complete happiness and total contentment!

“Mmmm, I can’t wait to take you tonight my mega-muscular maiden…” I texted back.

“Ooooh, take me if you can my little lover boy…” 

I barely made it through the rest of my day!