Neglected personal tumblr of an almost nonexistent dabbling writer, enjoys Star Wars, Transformers, Hollow Knight, and aliens and robots in general. Uses They/Them pronouns (gender is *weird*). Can now rightfully claim to be 18+ years old! Open to roleplaying, depending on what's going on. No NSFW.
The world was ending in a big explosion and a tiny white glowing golden retriever puppy sat in front of me. He turned to me and said in a sad, soft voice, “Everything has an expiration date.”
Genuinely and truly ppl who think children can be "innately evil" or "born bad" have no business working in childcare, pediatrics, education, child psych, or child services of any kind. How can anyone hear about a young child demonstrating violence and NOT immediately come to the conclusion that at some point in their short and vulnerable life they have been exposed to unspeakable violence. There's no such thing as a "bad seed" and to claim there is is either eugenics (genetic markers of evil) or using supernatural fantasies (demonic possession etc) to justify doing real tangible harm to a real tangible living child.
the post surgery compression binder is more comfortable than youd think but it still gets pretty itchy. so dont be afraid to take benydryl, itll help you rest and stop the itch
sounds weird but try not to flex your pecs… watched a horror game play through and every time there was a jump scare my whole body tensed up including my pecs which hurt like a bitch
you might be numb in some areas affected by the surgery. especially if your surgeon does any liposuction along with just cutting your boobs off. right now my armpits are numb which makes cleaning them weird. less of a tip and more its normal for early in recovery
about a week in stuff starts to feel like pins and needles. i thought that meant my one nipple was falling off. turns out its the opposite and its them coming back to life. the post op compression binder while annoying does help the tingling feel less weird
you surgeon may be ripped to hell and back like mine and put the compression binder on super tight. ITS OK TO LOOSEN IT A LITTLE.
its there for compression to keep the swelling down but same rules apply as a regular binder: it might be a little uncomfortable and feel tight but you need to still be able to BREATHE
invest in a long pair of tongs or one of those claw grabber things. i just made ramen that was in a cabinet above the microwave. how? tippy toes and tongs.
You can buy little hair net looking guys at some major pharmacies that include shampoo and can be used to wash your hair in bed if you’re having trouble in the shower
(This is a general surgery tip but all my disabled friends swear by ‘em post surgery it makes your life much easier and you can feel properly clean)
top surgery tip 12) it’s okay to sleep on the couch or in a chair if it’s too difficult or painful to get in and out of bed. My couch plus a pile of throw pillows on either side of me was the perfect place to sit and simmer as I recovered.
I also recommend getting one of those airplane pillows that go around your neck. very useful if you end up sleeping sitting up and don’t want your neck to crick.
when it comes to scar care. anything is better than nothing. and you dont need to shell out hundreds of dollars for fancy scar creams. to massage your scars as long as everythings properly closed you can just grab an gentle unscented or naturally scented lotion and use that. shea butter, cocoa butter, bio oil the like. youre just looking for something for sensitive skin and thatll keep them hydrated.
Since joining Tumblr, I’ve met a lot of young queer people. Look, I’m a bisexual man in a gay relationship, and I’m approaching 30. I was still a kid when Matthew Shepard’s story was being covered on the news. I remember thinking, “I better keep my mouth shut about these feelings I’m having.”
And then I met Dominic when I was 12, and people could see how in love we were. And we got the shit beat out of us. The year I met him, some kids in the grade above me held me down against the bleachers in our gym and stomped on my hand until my fingers broke. Instead of sending me to the nurse, the teacher sent me to the assistant principal to explain the situation. She asked why the kids had beat me up. I said, “They were calling me gay.”
Her response was, “Well, are you?”
My, “I don’t know,” earned a call to my parents, and I was outed. Efforts were made to keep me from seeing Dom. Throughout high school, Dom’s stepmother intensified these efforts. He slept in the basement of the house. Although he was an incredibly talented student, he was prohibited from participating in any extracurriculars. He suffered a lot of physical abuse during those years.
The day he turned 18, he packed up everything he had and walked to my house, and we’ve lived together ever since. Things are better, but they’re not perfect. I’ve had trucks pull up next to me at stoplights and, seeing the pride sticker on my car, through old drinks and garbage into my window. I no longer speak to my dad’s side of the family. I haven’t been to see them for Christmas or Thanksgiving in years. One of my uncles had cornered me at Thanksgiving when I was 17 and said, “I’m not going to judge you, but I’d be happy to break your neck so God can do the judging a little sooner.”
I joined a support group for trans and intersex people. When I joined, 40 people attended regularly. Within the year, the group was half the size it had been. Some couldn’t make it anymore, because they were staying at the shelter, where their stay hinged on them agreeing to instead to attend homophobic sermons. Some were put in correctional therapy. Five of them died. Three of those, I didn’t know, but I knew Alex, the 19 year old who was fag-dragged in Kentucky and died a day later in the hospital, and I knew Stephanie, who went home to Alabama to care for her mom in hospice and was beaten to death with a baseball bat by her mom’s boyfriend.
Tumblr is not reality. The dynamic here does not reflect the dynamic out there. Here’s the part where I finally make a point, and it might be extremely unpopular - but guys, value your allies.Value each other. We are met with enough hate in our daily lives to enter an online safe-space and meet more hate from our own, over petty things. Don’t go after one another over every little thing you find problematic.
Learn to see nuance. Maybe the word “queer” bothers you, and you see a gay man using it as an umbrella term. Maybe someone called a trans man a trans woman because they’re confused about terminology, but the post where they did it was voicing support for the trans community. Maybe someone is just asking a question, wanting to learn more. Stop. Attacking. These. People.
Allies are being driven away. Members of our own community are being ostracized. Others are feeling nervous and estranged, and it’s largely because of places like Tumblr, where the social justice movement is quickly becoming violent and radical. I am begging you, stop nitpicking “problematic” things and start directing your efforts to create real change. When it comes to comes to your allies, forget the “social justice warrior” mentality and put down your torch. Educate calmly. Be respectful. Be understanding. Be forgiving. And I’m certainly not saying that your anger doesn’t have a good place - when you are met with bigots on the street, congress members who want to pass hateful laws, violent protesters, abusive parents, prejudiced teachers, that is when you need to be a warrior. That’s when it counts. In the real world. When you have the opportunity to protect people from real harm. Attacking your would-be allies via anonymous asks is just going to lose us ground in the long run. And we don’t have time for that, not when trans women of color are being murdered every day, not when states are still fighting against marriage equality, not when there are politicians in office who believe that trans people are possessed by demons, not when we’ve just lost 50 brothers and sisters to one gunman, not when the media won’t even admit that the attack was homophobic.
Please step back. Look at the big picture. Look at where we are, globally. Don’t just log on to your safe space and attack your allies over small missteps. That’s like washing the dishes in a house that’s on fire, kids. Let’s fight on the battlefield, and when we come home to each other, let’s just focus on bandaging up our wounds so we can go out and win the war.
[image ID: a screenshot of the notes on this post, featuring several people indicating they want to know more. End ID.]
OKAY SO. You know how we talk about how one way fast fashion has made itself “necessary” is that the clothing looks like shit and feels horrible after just a few washes?
Let. Me. Tell. You. Something.
Laundry stripping is a process where you load your laundry into a tub or bin (I’ve been using my bathtub) with warm water, half a cup of borax, half a cup of washing soda, and half a cup of laundry soap (not detergent, SOAP, there’s a chemical difference). Leave it there for at least eight hours. I’ve been going for 12-24.
What you will come back to is a tub full of nearly-opaque black-gray-brown water that absolutely REEKS. This is normal. You are looking at (and smelling) hard water buildup, body sweat and oils that were embedded in the fabric, dead skin, and just regular grime.
Wring out your clothes. Throw them in the washer. (I like to do a spin-only cycle before going any further, because I have one of those washers that determines by weight how much water any given load needs.) Wash as usual.
You will notice I didn’t suggest any further pretreatment, and that’s because 1) you don’t want to layer too many chemicals on top of each other but also 2) you may not even need it.
When your clothes come out, check each one as it goes into the dryer, and if anything else s still stained, set it aside to run again with a regular pretreatment. One of the sweaters I did this with apparently did need a second treatment…to deal with what appears to have possibly been a hot chocolate stain that was previously invisible due to “well, it’s old” dinginess. Iwasplanning to throw this sweater out. It looks almost new now. I need to wash it one more time for the probably-a-hot-chocolate stain, and then it needs to have the hem weighted to block it and bring it back to evenness, but dude. I wear my clothes to rags and I thought this thing was unfixable. “I need to reshape it” is nothing.
Remove clothes from dryer when done. Fucking MARVEL at the colors and how good the fabric feels. Give them a smell. Get righteously and royally angry that you can rejuvenate this stuff so easily, with a process that does take awhile but is 90% hands-off, but we’ve been trained to believe it’s all got to be binned once a year because discoloration and gross fabric is “normal wear and tear” and can’t be fixed.
It’s utterly unreal! I just pulled a seven-year-old work undershirt out of the dryer and this thing looks NEW!! It FEELS almost new!!! One of the shirts I hung up from the last load is older than some of the people on this site and it went from “I keep this to wear on laundry day, for sentimental reasons” to “I could actually wear this out of the house, it looks old but respectable”! The pajama bottoms I’m wearing were from Goodwill and they have BRIGHT YELLOW in them! I thought it was goldenrod!!
I do not know how often you’re supposed to do this (doing it every time can strip the dye out of your clothes, not to mention it’s way too much work to do every time), but once or twice per season seems respectable. I don’t wear white, so I can’t test the “it will make whites look almost-new as well” claim, but I’ve seen a lot of people on the cleaning subreddit attest that it works.
Just remember: WASHING soda. Not baking soda. I tried baking soda and a little bit happened, but not a lot.
Go forth. Rejuvenate your clothing. Strip your laundry.
Please have a moment of silence for the people who were killed instead of freed when news of emancipation finally reached the furthest corners of the american south.
have another moment for the ledgers, catalogs, and records that were burned and the homes that were destroyed to hide the presence of very much alive and still enslaved people on dozens of plantations and homesteads across the south for decades after emancipation.
and have a third moment for those who were hunted and killed while fleeing the south to find safety across the border, overseas, in the north and to the west.
black people. light a candle, write a note to those who have passed telling them what you have achieved in spite of the racist and intolerant conditions of this world, feel the warmth of the flame under your hand, say a prayer of rememberance if you are religious, place the note under the candle, and then blow it out.
if you have children, sit them down and tell them anything you know about the life of oldest black person you've ever met. it doesn't have to be your own family. tell them what you know about what life was like for us in the days, years, decades after emancipation. if you don't know much, look it up and learn about it together.
This is Juneteenth.
white people CAN interact with this post. share it, spread it.
Jonathan’s arc in Dracula is too fucking relatable. It’s “this man is making me uncomfortable but nothing bad enough has happened so I can’t report it yet or leave because I’m at work and people will not understand and they’ll think I’m crazy and maybe I’ll lose my job and I want my job because I’m getting married soon.” Then “oh now it’s Very Bad but im trapped and the only way to stay safe is to keep the creepy man happy and pretend I’m calm and that I don’t know what’s going on or how trapped I am. Because if I make a fuss he’ll retaliate and it will be Much Worse.” And then “well things got worse and no one gets why I didn’t do more earlier but I couldn’t. I couldn’t. Because society is what it is.”
Anyway thinking about the creepy coworker who kissed me at the holiday party and tried to pretend it was a normal greeting. And how I just stood there because you don’t make a fuss.
Thinking about the man who brought me unwanted gifts constantly until my (male) boss found out and was horrified on my behalf. And I’m trying to explain that you don’t get to stand up for yourself as a woman bc you never know how it’s gonna go for you.
And about the guy who was the head of HR who sexually harassed me and how a well-meaning but naive other man found out and reported it and I got laid off in retaliation. I didn’t even report it myself and I got laid off.
Three different jobs and I (and all women) have dozens more stories just like these.
Jonathan is everything to me because I get him so much. It do be like that. It really do.
darkwarfy
