I got tagged!

tag 10 people you want to know better

tagged by @pushbuttonkitty (thank you!)

relationship status:  married

favourite color:  violet, especially when paired with blues & greens

favourite food:  dolmathes from my favorite Greek restaurant. Although their calamari is awesome, too.

song stuck in my head: Calypso by John Denver

last thing i googled:  Dreyer's ice cream

time:  12:29 pm

dream trip: would love to go to Holland someday

Tagging @shazrolane @oopsabird @spreadwings and anyone else who wants to do it

Thanks for tagging me, and sorry it took so long to respond; I’m on a social media blackout

relationship status:  married

favourite color:  any of the cool colors

favourite food:  tiramisu

song stuck in my head: Currently Just Can’t Get Enough

last thing i googled:  Where was Stranger Things filmed

time:  3:57 pm

dream trip: horseback photography safari in Africa

Tagging anyone else who wants to do it

TICK PSA

Alright you guys, ‘tis the season again and I’ve already seen bullshit float about so here we go: what to do and what not to do when you happen to have a tick attached to yours truly.

WHAT NOT TO DO:

DON’T cover the tick in anything. Vaseline, nailpolish, whatever. Doesn’t matter. It’ll all suffocate the tick, making it panic vomit germs into your blood stream. That’s the opposite of what you want.

DON’T burn the tick. Same problem, plus the additional option of giving yourself a burn wound in the process. 

DON’T squeeze the body of the tick when you try to remove it. Again this empties the tick’s digestive system into your body. Bad. 

DON’T wait for the tick to detach itself. The longer it stays on you, the higher the chances it’ll transmit anything to you. Plus when ti detaches it may again vomit germs into you. 

WHAT TO ACTUALLY DO

STAY CALM. A tick hanging on you is not a reason to panick. You’re not going to keel over just like that, and if you’re unsure what to do, there are many resources on the internet on how to safely remove a tick, like this one from the CDC (aka the professionals)

USE APPROPRIATE TOOLS. These can be suitable tweezers (the pointy kind, not blunt tipped ones), tick removers (there are cheap ones out there, those you can buy at the vets are totally fine for use on humans, too!). Ideally you can remove the entire tick in one go, however if that doesn’t work and the mouth part breaks off in your skin, that’s not a terribly big deal and you can totally remove it separately after you got the body remove. Again, don’t panic.

KILL THE REMOVED TICK. But not by squeezing it. Flush it down the toilet, submerse it in alcohol in a container etc. Ideally if the tick has bitten you and not your dog, keep the tick around in a sealed container in case you start having symptoms and someone needs to identify the tick species. Also IF you start getting symptoms like the tell tale Lyme disease rash, HIT A DOCTOR RIGHT AWAY AND TELL THEM ABOUT YOUR TICK BITE. Do not wait this out, ticks can transmit a whole host of diseases beside Lyme, so be mindful of that, too! 

Some of those diseases you can actually get vaccinated again, such as tick born encephalitis. Check with the local authorities if you live in a risk area, and if so, get the shots to protect yourself. 

Excellent post! I would like to add that ticks hide in tall grass and bushes mostly. They do not drop down from trees or jump to other people’s heads etc. Ticks aren’t designed to jump, they latch on somewhere on your leg and then crawl upwards in most cases. 

So be careful with bare legs and tall grass!

To avoid ticks when walking through grass, tuck everything in. Tuck your shirt into your pants and your pants into your socks. This keeps the ticks outside your clothes. When you get home, check for ticks at warm points like the backs of your knees and at elastic bands like underwear and bra lines. They often collect there. If you check right away when you get home, you can often catch them before they’ve had a chance to burrow in.

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I was in schools in the 80′s and 90′s. There was no more god in the schools then than there is now. I’d actually say there was less in the 80′s - Fellowship of Christian Athletes wasn’t a thing, staff prayer meetings wasn’t a thing, “Meet Me by the Flag Pole for Morning Devotions” wasn’t a thing. 

Just curious: What do you call it when there is no central meal cooked in your household, and individual members are expected to find leftovers/cook for themselves?

We call “fending for yourself”

True Mandalorians get on the scale every morning. It is the weigh.

not to oversimplify an extremely complex discipline but if i had to pick one tip to give people on how to have more productive interactions with children, especially in an instructive sense, its that teaching a kid well is a lot more like improv than it is like error correction and you should always work on minimizing the amount of ‘no, wrong’ and maximizing the amount of ‘yes, and?’ for example: we have a species of fish at the aquarium that looks a lot like a tiny pufferfish. children are constantly either asking us if that’s what they are, or confidently telling us that’s what they are. if you rush to correct them, you risk completely severing their interest in the situation, because 1. kids don’t like to engage with adults who make them feel bad and 2. they were excited because pufferfish are interesting, and you have not given them any reason to be invested in non-pufferfish. Instead, if you say something like “It looks a LOT like a tiny pufferfish, you’re right. But these guys are even funnier. Wanna know what they’re called?” you have primed them perfectly for the delightful truth of the Pacific Spiny Lumpsucker

Not to derail but OMG

@white feminists: stop telling brown girls they’re “harming” feminism when they shave their body hair and conform to beauty standards. It’s much harder for brown women to pull off not conforming than white women. There’s a very harsh double standard when it comes to body hair and beauty standards in general on brown girls. (if ur white maybe reblog this to support ur brown sisters)

bucky slipping into other languages when steve fucks him > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > >

@delphiniumblooms

In my heart it's absolutely Yiddish. Bucky would have almost certainly learned it growing up Jewish in early-mid 20th century New York City. He's fluent in it, being exposed to it from birth, and can easily switch between English and Yiddish.

Just like how they were never able to fully erase and burry Steve from Bucky's mind because of how deeply they are engrained in each others very bones, it is similarly true for Yiddish.

(since he grew up with Steve he probably knows some Irish just like Steve would know a stuffiest amount of Yiddish and Hebrew)

When Bucky cannot communicate in English for whatever reason, he defaults to Yiddish, it anchors him.

Now, as Bucky's healing progresses, and he has more good day than bad, his brain mainly defaults to it when Steve (who has a bit of a language kink, thank you very much) is driving him out of his mind with pleasure. He gets a little (okay a lot) smug when Bucky starts rambling and begging in Yiddish through his moans, gasps and panting. Steve understanding him and being able to give Bucky exactly what he's asking for just makes it all the better.

Happy 100th birthday to the late and great Sir Christopher Lee

Theocracy is theocracy is theocracy.

Holy shit this is a BIG FUCKING WARNING SIGN. Challenges to school and public libraries aren’t cool obviously, but they’re not unusual and we have a framework for handling them. This is something new and alarming in a whole new way 😬😬😬

Republican "free speech" y'all and don't you forget it.

This is a direct challenge to the freedom of the press and if it isn’t struck down at the first hurdle we need to make sure it never sees the second one.

On the miniscule off-chance that anyone who sees my reblog might be thinking “oh, it’s just queer books that they’re trying to ban” - A Court of Mist and Fury is a het romance. It is a het romance containing het sex scenes, written by a straight white woman.

People have been warning all along that the right-wing thought police were never going to stop with queer lit or ‘woke’ lit, and that every time they got an inch they were going to take a mile until they’d banned absolutely everything that didn’t conform to their strict right wing fundamentalist Christian views. If you were waiting for proof of that, here it is.

For context, the last one isn't edited at all. Nothing could improve that.

SKY WHALE SKY WHALE SKY WHALE

No. Look at the position of the tail fins. They’re perpendicular rather than parallel to the ground. That’s a sky shark.

SKY SHARK SKY SHARK SKY SHARK

Except the upper fin is smaller than the lower fin. So that means the perspective is angled. This is a whale.

SKY WHALE SKY WHALE SKY WHALE

[i.d: a photo of a cloud, at sunset, over some tall buildings, that looks roughly like a whale. /end i.d.]

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I did a super grown-up thing and hired a service to look after the Cryptids while I’m traveling (Auntie A would do it, but everyone’s out of town over Memorial Day weekend!) and it’s going surprisingly well, all things considered. 

[ID: Two images; the first is a photograph of Polk the Tabby, hiding underneath my bed, flanked by storage boxes. In the second image, Polk and Dearborn the Tortie are crouched just inside the bedroom door, looking out at the petsitter, Polk peering over the top of Dearborn’s head.] 

For whatever it’s worth, I’ve used the same pet sitter for....15 years now. She’s only ever seen one of my cats. The others are that good at hiding from her.

I'm seeing a lot of social media posts of library displays of banned books, and while that's great, as a former librarian, let me explain why you may not see any displays at some libraries, especially if you live in an area where these book bannings are going on.

Librarians for the most part are not fans of banning books. I worked in one in a deep red area and I can pretty much guarantee I worked with the only five liberals in town.

Now, what do you think happens when a parent comes in and sees that table of books? Think they're letting their kids come home with ANYTHING off that table?

Not having the display out doesn't mean small town libraries are not in solidarity. It means they're doing what it takes to survive. I promise kids and the librarians both have access to those banned book lists. And in places where they are banned, it's much easier for librarians to sneak those books home with kids in front of parents who would otherwise ban them from the house.

Stay sneaky, folks.

I am OBSESSED with people telling me how they met the love of their life. Just found out my director met his wife through a misdirected email - that’s fate right there.

“I saw her last name was Jewish - and I’m Jewish, so when I corrected the email I told her Shabbat Shalom with a smiley face — this was the very beginning of the emoticon era, you understand. She had a watermark of a dog rescue at the bottom of her email, and I love dogs, so I found her website and there she was — all these videos of her rehabilitating dogs and talking about the organization. I fell in love with her just from those videos.”

“I asked if we could meet for coffee, told her I was looking for volunteer opportunities — which was halfway a lie — and she said ‘okay, but just so you know I have a boyfriend, so this is strictly business,’ and I was so disappointed, but I did want to meet her. We sat in that coffeeshop until they turned the lights out on us, and she broke up with her boyfriend the next day.”

MULTIPLE people in the notes have told me how important these tags are to them so here’s to keeping it in the main post.

I brought my D&D books to high school because I was preparing for a campaign I was running that weekend. Spouse saw them and started talking to me. 30+ years later, we bought a print of that cover art from the artist and had him sign it after telling him the story, and that he directly contributed to us being married

watching a youtube interview with nigel ng, the guy who makes those uncle roger cooking videos, and the interviewer was like “as a comedian, aren’t you afraid of the woke mob coming for you”, and nigel says something along the lines of “i mean yeah i get criticism sometimes but constantly focusing on the ‘woke mob’ is so boring. “wokeness” is usually just a word for empathy and empathy is a good thing. sometimes that doesn’t translate well to making jokes, and i’ll say something mildly inappropriate to get a laugh, and when those jokes don’t land people might respond with criticism. but that’s just a reality of being a comedian and i’ll take that criticism happily.” and the interviewer keeps trying to ask him if he’s afraid of getting cancelled and he keeps going “no” LMFAOOOO

So last night was my first welding class and the second i walked through the door the teacher said “hey you’re zoe right” and I started to panic because how does the teacher immediately know who I am fuck did I have this teacher before how come i don’t recognize him fuck fuck i’m a terrible person

turns out i’m just the youngest person in the class by about 30 years so the deduction wasn’t that hard

anyways, apparently people keep taking the welding class over and over again and the wait list is like 100 people long and so it was by some act of providence of pure dumb luck that I managed to get a spot. This also means I was the only person there who hadn’t welded before.

I’m stationed at a big center table where the teacher can keep an eye on me, and everyone else is in booths on the surrounding walls each making their own projects. And these are impressive looking projects. One guy is making a side table, a woman is making a giant metal rocking chair, and another guy was making a wind chime out of old compressed air canisters. 

The elderly gentlemen in the booth right behind me introduces himself to me as Jim and asks me if this is my first time and I say yeah and he smiles at me and tells me I’m gonna love it and how this class is so fun.

Immediately Jim becomes my new best friend. He comes over whenever I stop to take a break and asks how I’m doing and even helps me take the welding mask off when I couldn’t figure out how to do it myself. 

at one point i see Jim and another old guy talking to the teacher and i catch the old guy pointing at me. now being pointed at is usually never a good thing. the teacher has had me welding edges of scrap metal together so I can get a feel for the equipment. The teacher comes to check on me and I jokingly as him if those seasoned guys were making fun of me. 

Turns out I’m super good at welding and the old guy didn’t believe it was my first time welding ever and Jim was trying to convince him I was a newbie. :D

So for the entire 3 hour long class, like 15 middle aged and elderly people would periodically come by my table and check in with me, making sure I’m having fun and asking me questions about my life, and things like, do you know where the drinking fountain is, making sure I’m taking breaks, looking out for me and that kind of thing, all while being completely kind and supporting and complimenting me on my welding skills. 

and that’s how a community center welding class gave me 15 new grandparents. i love them all and this class is going to be amazing

important addition 3 years later because I forgot:

the other elderly gentleman’s name is Gino and spoke with a thick Italian accent and took to calling me Bella for the rest of the semester. Jim made sure to always take the booth closest to me. 

Another guy in the class named Mike did salvage diving as a hobby and always showed me pictures of the cool stuff he’d found. He also made very cool sculptures out of spoons, forks and knives. I at one point made an offhand joke that I was moving soon, and was jealous that Mike had all this cutlery to spare to make sculptures out of. (I was going to be moving in with my boyfriend and neither of us really had a lot of kitchenware) The next class he brought in an entire cutlery set insisting that he was trying to clean out his house because he had so many and wouldn’t take no for an answer. We still have them to this day :)

They had cupcakes waiting for me on my birthday and on the last day they had framed picture of me with my final project because “it’s important to celebrate your successes” and encouraged me to give it to my mom (which of course I did, along with my cattail sculpture)

long story short I would die for each and every one of them and there’s a group email chain that we all still keep in touch with and as of a few months ago it was Gino’s 85th birthday. 

It’s stories like these that shake me to my core and remind me that while I am not surrounded by the kindest people, kindness is innate and human. I’m so happy for you, op