“People come for the answers, but they never come for the eye.”

So I was made to feel old today...

Two decades today

Naw, LET HER COOK!

THE REAL QUEEN OF RAP!!!!

Leaving this in the tags was criminal

LambLittle

absolutely stunning midsommar dress by Kong Min Seon via instagram

@sliceofpearpie

#wears this and jumps at you through a weedhatch on a boat

saw this the other day and showed @elodieunderglass and she explained to me about weedhatches and boat pussy

(Bussy)

The biggest lie in fanfiction is that everyone has a first aid kit in their house. I have never owned one in my life

Wait do y’all not have like…first aid boxes in your hall closets? Like just a plastic box that has your basic first aid shit?

...no? Wait, you mean some people actually have first aid kits lying around their homes? 

I... personally don't have a first aid kit at home and never had, neither my parents had, but... I've always had a "medicine cabinet", that always have... things like bandages, peroxide, alcohol, chlorhexidine, anti-burn cream... I don't know, the kind of things you are supposed to find in a first aid kit.

Don't you folks have that kind of thing?

#now#fire extinguishers? that's only for rich people

Realizing our household may be more accident-prone than most because we have a fire extinguisher on both levels and a full-on first aid kit, and we've needed them.

This is terrifying. Please get some of this shit for your home.

If you are renting, your landlord is supposed to provide a fire extinguisher (check local rental laws and your lease, and if you don't know where it is in your home, find out). You should keep it in the kitchen and/or near the fireplace if you have one. You can get these on amazon for $20. Check dates and make sure your extinguisher is not in need of replacement (again, if renting, replacement/reimbursement should be your landlord's responsibility).

They will save your ass and they are not "for rich people", oh my god, holy shit.

For first aid:

First, you should definitely invest in a first aid/CPR course (infant and adult classes cost the same and are more comprehensive, it's worth it). Red cross offers them regularly and all over, and they cost around $100 and take about 4 hours your first time. You renew every two years, and renewing takes less time and costs less because you can take them online at that point, but even taking it once is helpful (but attempting serious FA/CPR if your cert is out of date is a bad idea; you will forget shit and might do more harm than good). You can also put this on your resume! It's especially useful (and required) in childcare/education.

Some basic tips for pretty run-of-the-mill stuff:

And some basic supplies to keep around, in a first aid kit or medicine cabinet:

If you know how to use others things, keep those other things around. Don't try to keep stuff around that you don't know how to use properly (like tourniquet kits), or if you do, make sure anyone using them does know what they're doing.

This list is also tailored to cover a variety of needs; you may not need some of this stuff personally, but if you have a friend over who has migraines, menstrual cramps, a bee sting allergy, or a latex allergy, it's a good idea to have some stuff on hand to help them out.

It's also a good idea to stock this stuff in your car if you drive, and definitely have them with you if you go hiking or camping (especially in a low-or-no-service area). You should also add a warm blanket, granola bars, water (in case you get stuck somewhere), and cat litter (for getting out of snow/mud) to that list for your car.

You should definitely also keep jumper cables in your car at all times, and consider getting a battery charger so you don't need to wait for someone else to show up and help you.

For the love of god, yall, please don't brush this stuff off as "rich people shit". I'm sorry you weren't taught this stuff, I'm sorry it wasn't normalized for you, but it's never too late to learn and make sure you're keeping yourself & those around you safe.

when our first kid was 18 months old they didn’t speak but they listened to everything and took in a huge amount. Dr Glass either pretended to be injured or was actually mildly injured and making a bit of it.

Anyway, the result was that the 18 month old grimly and determinedly toddled into the kitchen to the drawer and pulled out the first aid kit. They toddled in fiercely, plumped on the floor, opened the kit and …

Visibly stressed, unable to speak, consumed with fierce determination, the baby sifted through the contents of the kit, identified something that resembled a bandage, and placed it hopefully on their father’s ouch.

We weren’t quite sure where the various pieces of the ritual had come from, but today the child remains firm in their insistence that they will enter the medical profession. (today I was walking with them and answered a question about climate change; they were quiet for a time, and then asked if the planet would exist long enough for them to become a doctor.) (yes of course it will.) they have a “kid’s guide to first aid” book.

The experience taught us to have a little accessible first-aid kit on hand with children’s band-aids/plasters - which obviously have magical properties - so that the children can self-medicate if they choose. Although a certain amount of loss should be expected (when they are all roleplaying doctors and all of the stuffed animals in the house are bleeding to death) it’s a cheap way to let the kids take an interest from the earliest possible age.

ID: photo of a circle cut out of a leaf, placed on someone’s palm so the lines on the leaf align perfectly with the lines of their palm. /end ID

tumblr isn’t a social media it’s a farmers market and the people you follow are the vendors and your mutuals are regulars and sometimes a person I buy pumpkins from will start selling realistic models of sailboats and damn i’m not gonna buy any but I will come by and compliment you on your sailboats

Sometimes the bakery stall that's been selling top tier muffins and bread for years all of a sudden has an entire table dedicated to moss balls wearing little hats. and the correct response to that is "okay! happy for you!"

I drew a little something for the Hiveworks micro comic summer~

I love opening up this website first thing like the morning paper and immediately seeing multiple posts like "how to get rid of the evil clown on the dashboard". like oh is this what we're doing today

I can finally share this little project I’ve been working on!! it’s called “the Crown of the Fae” and i really wanted to explore how my two characters, Aiden (the fae) and Aiva (the wee lass) met each other! And what better way to do that than in the form of RHYME!!! But honestly, these two characters mean a lot to me, and I’m so glad my book illustration class finally gave me the opportunity to do a little more with them! .

this is beautiful and inspiring. i want it as a printed book. i feel like if i was younger, this would definitely be one of my favorite bedtime stories.

An angel. Alchemy treaty Aurora Consurgens, 1420-1450

La Dame de Saint-Sernin, and an Early Dynastic Sumerian lady

Long covid has derailed my life. Make no mistake: It could yours, too.

By Madeline Miller for the Washington Post, August 9th, 2023.

Audio version available in the inline link.

Madeline Miller, a novelist, is the author of “The Song of Achilles” and “Circe.”

In 2019, I was in high gear. I had two young children, a busy social life, a book tour and a novel in progress. I spent my days racing between airports, juggling to-do lists and child care. Yes, I felt tired, but I come from a family of high-energy women. I was proud to be keeping the sacred flame of Productivity burning.

Then I got covid.

I didn’t know it was covid at the time. This was early February 2020, before the government was acknowledging SARS-CoV-2’s spread in the United States.

In the weeks after infection, my body went haywire. My ears rang. My heart would start galloping at random times. I developed violent new food allergies overnight. When I walked upstairs, I gasped alarmingly.

I reached out to doctors. One told me I was “deconditioned” and needed to exercise more. But my usual jog left me doubled over, and when I tried to lift weights, I ended up in the ER with chest pains and tachycardia. My tests were normal, which alarmed me further. How could they be normal? Every morning, I woke breathless, leaden, utterly depleted.

Worst of all, I couldn’t concentrate enough to compose sentences. Writing had been my haven since I was 6. Now, it was my family’s livelihood. I kept looking through my pre-covid novel drafts, desperately trying to prod my sticky, limp brain forward. But I was too tired to answer email, let alone grapple with my book.

When people asked how I was, I gave an airy answer. Inside, I was in a cold sweat. My whole future was dropping away. Looking at old photos, I was overwhelmed with grief and bitterness. I didn’t recognize myself. On my best days, I was 30 percent of that person.

I turned to the internet and discovered others with similar experiences. In fact, my symptoms were textbook — a textbook being written in real time by “first wavers” like me, comparing notes and giving our condition a name: long covid.

In those communities, everyone had stories like mine: life-altering symptoms, demoralizing doctor visits, loss of jobs, loss of identity. The virus can produce a bewildering buffet of long-term conditions, including cognitive impairment and cardiac failure, tinnitus, loss of taste, immune dysfunction, migraines and stroke, any one of which could tank quality of life.

For me, one of the worst was post-exertional malaise (PEM), a Victorian-sounding name for a very real and debilitating condition in which exertion causes your body to crash. In my new post-covid life, exertion could include washing dishes, carrying my children, even just talking with too much animation. Whenever I exceeded my invisible allowance, I would pay for it with hours, or days, of migraines and misery.

There was no more worshiping productivity. I gave my best hours to my children, but it was crushing to realize just how few hours there were. Nothing was more painful than hearing my kids delightedly laughing and being too sick to join them.

Doctors looked at me askance. They offered me antidepressants and pointed anecdotes about their friends who’d just had covid and were running marathons again.

I didn’t say I’d love to be able to run. I didn’t say what really made me depressed was dragging myself to appointments to be patronized. I didn’t say that post-viral illness was nothing new, nor was PEM — which for decades had been documented by people with myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome — so if they didn’t know what I was talking about, they should stop sneering and get caught up. I was too sick for that, and too worried.

I began scouring medical journals the way I used to close-read ancient Greek poetry. I burned through horrifying amounts of money on vitamins and supplements. At night, my fears chased themselves. Would I ever get relief? Would I ever finish another book? Was long covid progressive?

It was a bad moment when I realized that any answer to that last question would come from my own body. I was in the first cohort of an unwilling experiment.

When vaccines rolled out, many people rushed back to “normal.” My world, already small, constricted further.

Friends who invited me out to eat were surprised when I declined. I couldn’t risk reinfection, I said, and suggested a masked, outdoor stroll. Sure, they said, we’ll be in touch. Zoom events dried up. Masks began disappearing. I tried to warn the people I loved. Covid is airborne. Keep wearing an N95. Vaccines protect you but don’t stop transmission.

Few wanted to listen. During the omicron wave, politicians tweeted about how quickly they’d recovered. I was glad for everyone who was fine, but a nasty implication hovered over those of us who weren’t: What’s your problem?

Friends who did struggle often seemed embarrassed by their symptoms. I’m just tired. My memory’s never been good. I gave them the resources I had, but there were few to give. There is no cure for long covid. Two of my friends went on to have strokes. A third developed diabetes, a fourth dementia. One died.

I’ve watched in horror as our public institutions have turned their back on containment. The virus is still very much with us, but the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has stopped reporting on cases. States have shut down testing. Corporations, rather than improving ventilation in their buildings, have pushed for shield laws indemnifying them against lawsuits.

Despite the crystal-clear science on the damage covid-19 does to our bodies, medical settings have dropped mask requirements, so patients now gamble their health to receive care. Those of us who are high-risk or immunocompromised, or who just don’t want to roll the dice on death and misery, have not only been left behind — we’re being actively mocked and pathologized.

I’ve personally been ridiculed, heckled and coughed on for wearing my N95. Acquaintances who were understanding in the beginning are now irritated, even offended. One demanded: How long are you going to do this? As if trying to avoid covid was an attack on her, rather than an attempt to keep myself from sliding further into an abyss that threatens to swallow my family.

The United States has always been a terrible place to be sick and disabled. Ableism is baked into our myths of bootstrapping and self-reliance, in which health is virtue and illness is degeneracy. It is long past time for a bedrock shift, for all of us.

We desperately need access to informed care, new treatments, fast-tracked research, safe spaces and disability protections. We also need a basic grasp of the facts of long covid. How it can follow anywhere from 10 to 30 percent of infections. How infections accumulate risk. How it’s not anxiety or depression, though its punishing nature can contribute to both those things. How children can get it; a recent review puts it at 12 to 16 percent of cases. How long-haulers who are reinfected usually get worse. How as many as 23 million Americans have post-covid symptoms, with that number increasing daily.

More than three years later, I still have long covid. I still give my best hours to my children, and I still wear my N95. Thanks to relentless experimentation with treatments, I can write again, but my fatigue is worse. I recognize how fortunate I am: to have a caring partner and community, health insurance, good doctors (at last), a job I can do from home, a supportive publishing team, and wonderful readers who recommend my books. I’m grateful to all those who have accepted the new me without making me beg.

Some days, long covid feels manageable. Others, it feels like a crushing mountain on my chest. I yearn for the casual spontaneity and scope of my old life. I miss the friends and family who have moved on. I grieve those lost forever.

So how long am I going to do this? Until indoor air is safe for all, until vaccines prevent transmission, until there’s a cure for long covid. Until I’m not risking my family’s future on a grocery run. Because the truth is that however immortal we feel, we are all just one infection away from a new life.

[ID: an art piece depicting a long haired person curled up in a ball with their arms around their knees, wincing. there is a shower of bright red and dark red cells and virus particles all over and around them. end ID]

absolutely stunning midsommar dress by Kong Min Seon via instagram

@sliceofpearpie