And they actually met 😭

https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2024/04/09/solar-eclipse-new-york-teacher/

Whereas in 1994, when we had a visible solar eclipse, my high school English teacher threatened disciplinary action against any student who left his class early to go observe it. He told us at the time "You'll have plenty of chances to see a solar eclipse." I don't remember what the hell we were reading at the time, but I remember being so scared of getting in trouble, I missed the eclipse.

Seeing an eclipse at 92% coverage a few days ago was the culmination of 30 years of waiting. We haven't had anything that high for that long. I finally got to see my solar eclipse, Mr. Smith, at the age of 45.

Certified Library Post

Happiness Will Come To You.

when tho

When You Least Expect It. Probably Late March

reblog for happiness to come for you in late march!

I reblogged this last year and I hung out with blink-182 backstage on March 30. Reblogging again because it worked the first time.

honestly, last year one of the best days of my life happened in late March

I really need this march

I’m on my knees begging

Given the news I just got, I'd fuckin' LOVE some happiness right now.

Why is there a watermelon there?

So, back in the day, I worked at a video store that was part of a small chain, and yes, we're talking pre-DVD era. The chain had a mail and phone order business (and a very early online catalog) and a warehouse to ship products. Word from the warehouse folks was that one of the most popular sex toys they carried was a very large silicone item nicknamed "the fireplug" due to its girth. So, you know, it's all laughs, but legit the above? Not the weirdest thing I would have heard working there.

cats don’t understand what it means when you give them kisses ):

good news tho!!  they understand it 2 a point (i was distraught about this post so i looked it up)

cats don’t kiss like humans but they do appreciate human touch and feel loved when u kiss and pet them

they don’t understand kisses but they accept them as forms of affection n love

ur cat knows u love them

You can also help them understand by mixing kisses with rubbing your cheek/nose/forehead over the top of their head, their cheek, or down their shoulders, just like cats rub against each other and humans to show affection. Also gently bonking foreheads to imitate the ‘I love you please pet me’ headbutt. Brushing & scratching at itchy spots for them imitates the grooming that cats who live together in colonies do for each other. Basically just try to find hygienic ways of imitating cat social behaviors, short of actual licking, lol. 

My cat will touch her nose to mine & rub her cheek across my face, which allows me to plant a kiss on her cheek. When she’s sitting in my lap, she’ll tip her head back until I lean down and kiss or nuzzle the top of her head. I’ve even found her occasionally trying to imitate the “mwah!” sound of my kisses, where she’ll nuzzle my face and make little chirping “mah! mah!” sounds. Cats are pretty smart little social creatures; they’ll figure out how to speak your language, especially if you put in the effort to speak theirs. 

Cats absolutely can learn what kissing is and one of ours stubbornly solicits it by jamming herself under our chins and tipping her little head to the side with her ears flat to make a landing zone. Only little kisses with little kissy sounds satisfy her.

If given the chance to learn, and not forced into accepting it, they understand what kisses mean perfectly well. I promise they do.

When my cat is sitting near me and I say "kisskiss?" she will, most of the time (when she wants kisses), lean her head over to me and I will deliver kisses to her noggin. This is usually followed by her rubbing her little kitty face against me, and sometimes, if I'm lucky, she makes a little noise that sounds like she's imitating a kiss as best as she can.

My cat before her, a male who literally reached out for me in the shelter and gently took my hand and guided it to his face for nuzzling, used to sit in my lap constantly. Most of the time he was curled up or sprawled in my lap, but when he sat up he would stretch his head up towards me and make a little inquisitive noise. I'd kiss the top of his head and he would bump his head up to meet me.

Cats understand.

love the sailing boat discourse and all but i have to say being on a ship for a prolonged time does change a man and i don't mean in a hardened but wisened sailor kind of way i mean that everytime my brother returns from sea after a few months he has to be reintroduced into society like some sort of feral beast. being on a boat might not give you scurvy but it WILL erode your impulse control and ability to react normally to any situation whatsoever. that's just what months of hard work and inability to leave while the ground moves does to a mf

[ID: Anonymous asked: can you PLEASE elaborate on how coming back from sea makes you feral //end ID]

i have to stress that my brother is usually a calm and collected individual who makes a joke too loudly drunk sometimes but otherwise is pretty unassuming. however, he did his apprenticeship as a ship mechanic during covid, and was genuinely trapped in a container ship’s engine room for six consecutive months. in the first week of coming back, my brother has:

- taken a beer i calmly handed him, slammed it back in one go, and thrown the bottle as far as he could before i could even react

- in general consumed all food with the ferocity and disregard for social custom of a street dog to the dismay of my mother

- responded to a poor mcdonalds worker in a customer service voice said “sorry, busy day today” with “how is that my problem” (i tipped them very well and apologized profusely)

- overall reacted to people making polite conversation with a challenging and provocative tone misplaced in. a fucking grocery store

- developed a habit of random manic laughter, especially while doing things like driving, going on walks or other main land activities

- climbed a wall, a fence, and a silo on three seperate occassions without any warning or announcement

- RIPPED a fucking street post out of the ground and ran home with it.

again, he mostly returns to normal after you rehabilitate him (mostly by taking him shopping and to bars) but its fucking fascinating to witness someone forget about the social contract. and it has been better since they have been allowed to leave the ships in harbour again. but god damn.

My experience on a boat was not really the same as the above, but even in a limited situation like mine was, I can see how it would reach that point.

I was at sea for two weeks on a two-masted schooner, doing marine research and learning how to operate a tall ship. I was in high school, as were most of the rest of the people on board. We had eight adults on board and twice as many teenagers. My mother had done a similar program two years prior, with a ship full of adults, most of whom were science teachers. And let me tell you, we both came back semi-feral. I had never heard my mother swear prior to her coming back from this program, but when she did? Something not fitting where she wanted in the dishwasher was cause for a string of obscenities I had never heard from anyone, let alone my 5th grader science teacher mother. When I got back? Showering was a luxury I couldn't comprehend. I either spent half an hour or more, or avoided showering like the plague. There was no in-between. I had an urge to climb things no one should climb. My sleep schedule was fucked from the watch schedule and I would be up at 4am, looking for things to do with no regard to anyone else. The weirdest things struck me as hilarious.

I will say, that at 4am, after a shift on bow watch, staring out into the dark horizon with the ocean swells coming up to meet you and bioluminescent plankton glowing where they've been disturbed, making waves of pale light in the water, something changes in your brain. You have to cope with the size of the sea and all its weirdness. You have to cope with both realizing you are alone out there and that the people on your ship are the only people you will see. You adjust. It was one of the coolest things I've ever done, and it's nowhere near the amount of time that people spend on ships in the military or in shipping, but even that small bit, yeah. I can see it. It changed me as a person and while I've been reacclimated to society for the past 25 years, I'm not the same person I was before I stepped on board that ship.

“magic isnt real” — plants just grow out of the ground. for free. everywhere.

"It doesn't stop being magic just because you know how it works."

-Terry Pratchett

When I was in high school my biology teacher was a former nun. She'd left the convent specifically to teach biology in a secular school. She told us this during our first class. She told us about how when she learned about cell mitosis and all the other various processes that make plants and animals grow and live, she got chills. That these were the miracles she'd been looking for when she became a nun, and she wanted to show young people how those miracles work.

You can believe in miracles and know that every step in the process that makes flowers bloom is one of them.

In honor of 2023 being the 40th anniversary of Tamora Pierce’s Song of the Lioness quartet, these are the beloved and much-read paperbacks I bought with my allowance money in 1992, when I was 13.

genuinely partially agree with the people on twitter

nobody NEEDS a pillow collection that says "live laugh love", especially when they are never used as actual pillows

it's like buying an off-road car as a farmer and keeping it in the garage to only be looked at and admired

having things with form over function in mind is a luxury problem that wouldn't be a thing in a not classist environment in which you constantly compete with everyone else about who has the perfect life

i also think that if you still disagree, you probably have lost control over your own life choices, or may have never had any

Hey man how's it going

Having so many decorative pillows that your couch can no longer couch is a problem.

Having a couple of decorative pillows that spark joy is totally neutral as a choice. It's not bougie or whatever--do you have any idea how cheaply you can get decorative pillows at yard sales and thrift stores? I have one decorative pillow I bought new. It's orange and has a T. Rex going RAWR on it. It came from Target. My happy dinosaur pillow does not make me the ruling class.

Maybe breathe and let people be happy?

Emet made the sole decorative pillow for the shop couch out of her dead dog's favorite t-shirt.

So. You know. Bougie or whatever, lol.

Mila always has a spot on the couch now.

No, no, that's exactly it.

"having things with form over function in mind is a luxury problem that wouldn't be a thing in a not classist environment in which you constantly compete with everyone else about who has the perfect life"

The function is to look pretty and make me smile when I see it

"What the woman who labors wants is the right to live, not simply exist – the right to life as the rich woman has the right to life, and the sun and music and art."

-Rose Schneiderman, 1912

This is part of a discussion on the phrase "bread and roses" in labor strikes in the US in the early 1900s, initially used by activist Mary Todd. The phrase was later popularized in the song, Bread and Roses, based on a poem by James Oppenheim. In that, you have the following lines:

"Our days shall not be sweated from birth until life closes— Hearts starve as well as bodies: Give us Bread, but give us Roses."

Sometimes you just want something nice, okay? And people should be able to have something nice, regardless of their financial situation or class status.