Firebird Scratches

I did a thing

They're so silly, I love them

via indiarosecrawford

Frog Paints a Water Lily Pond 🪷🎨🐸

𝑓ₒᵣ ⲕᵢ𝑛𝑔 ₐ𝑛𝑑 𝑐ₒ𝑡𝑡ₐ𝑔ₑ

Ok, I adore the Frogs to begin with, but the sheer finesse and dedication of this one boggles my mind.

This made my morning 🐸🎨

i feel like no one really wants to hear that sleep/exercise/nutrition/hydration are major factors in treating mental health issues bc we’ve all talked to that person who thinks your depression would be cured by one good session of goat yoga or whatever but unfortunately they do help and i’m chronically annoyed about it

Lotsa people in the notes like “i can’t change these habits because im too broke/depressed” which, as a formerly broke and depressed person, is patently untrue, so here’s some starting points:

-hydration: carry around a water bottle. a funky metal water bottle you can put stickers on is like $10 and if you can’t afford it just chronically refill a gatorade bottle or smth. Just having water nearby will help. And hydration really, really helps with energy levels for things like…

-exercise: my advice for this always is “find a sport you actually like”, but if you’re coming off of a years-long depressive sedentary period, start by walking. Like, TO places. The bus stop. A neat tree in your neighborhood. Is there a convenience store nearby? Go get a gatorade (see:hydration). Is there a library or other place where people gather? Even better. This is free and doesn’t have to take any longer than 10 minutes at first. And don’t go telling yourself “oh it was only 10 minutes it doesn’t count” STOP! That is the depression talking! Literally any amount of movement is 100x more movement than you were getting on the couch! You’re doing great! And once you’re in a good exercise habit, it will help a lot with…

-sleep: ah, the white whale. But remember that literally just lying quietly in the dark is resting, even if you don’t sleep (it’s science!). Try to be in bed, no lights or phones, at the same time every night and just…chill. listen to some chill music. Try not to get up for a least a few hours. And then, the next day, when you’re wrecked?? Try to avoid napping at all costs. Your circadian rhythm should theoretically stabilize after a few nights of doing this, and resting should become easier. Human chemistry is SO routine based, just keep your schedule as best you can!

Nutrition: yeah this is depression hell. But it’s not as expensive as it seems to “eat healthy”. Apples, bananas, and oranges are all cheaper than chips and also require pretty much no prep, just shove em in your mouth (and don’t give me that shit about caloric content; yes, I know chips are more filling, but they’re not going to give you the happy chemicals you need to help depression. If you’re so broke you will starve without 100 extra calories from a bag of doritos, your depression has environmental causes much deeper than lack of apples.) If you CAN cook even a little bit: frozen vegetables are cheap af and they slap with some butter and garlic powder. Throw some frozen peas in your mac and cheese. Kale and zucchini are cheap as hell in summer and they are delicious when flash fried with butter and salt. I know taking 5 minutes to cook seems insurmountable when you’re depressed but as my therapist always says, the cure for depression is doing the things depression doesn’t want you to do. And it will improve your mood so, so, so much to get some fruits and veggies in you.

please notice that literally ALL of the above are about building HABITS. And habits are built by inches. A single serving of frozen vegetables will not cure your depression. But a single serving of vegetables, every day? a liter of water, every day? a short walk to see some trees or smth, every day? It really does help. And Don’t beat yourself up if you miss a day or seven days or fourteen days. Just pick it back up where you left off. 2 servings of vegetables in a month is better than 0 servings in a month, or a year.

A lovely addition from @dulcecatrina

This is all self care. That term has been co-opted by companies trying to sell fancy bubble bath and face masks and shit, but this here is the original meaning, and it’s literally what a therapist has told me to focus on to cope with depression.

Also, re:food. If the choice is no food or shitty food, then shitty food is better. Don’t let perfect be the enemy of good. If you have a bag of chips and an apple, try to eat the apple and if you do, count it a win! And if you eat the chips, it’s still a win cause you ate food. I’m also a big fan of cheese sticks, easy and contain protein (also delicious because cheese).

In terms of nutrition, the most helpful advice I’ve seen from real-life nutritionists is „add on, don’t take away“. If you will dependably eat your chips and chicken nuggets, don’t try to stop eating chips or nuggets to replace them with „healthier“ things.

Eat your nuggets and ADD some celery/an apple/an orange/some frozen veggies.

Eat your chips AND eat some salsa/a sandwich/a tangerine/ some apple sauce.

At the bottom of the pyramid of needs is getting enough food. Any food at all. Once you have that, you can start diversifying your food intake by adding on stuff to the things you like to eat.

I recommend reading Ellyn Satter‘s nutrition model (a scientifically reproducible way to feed yourself (and your kids, if you have any) reliably and well) for more information.

Its also more than ok to recognise that food is more and serves more function than just calories in and out. Food is comfort, food is culture, food is celebration, its caring and love, its something to love for. Good food makes you feel better about the universe, makes you feel nourished and home.

If a food makes you feel safe, eat it and feel safe! Thats important! You don’t have to forgo comfort food and subsist off of celery to be “doing food right” or whatever. Your emotions are part of your health. Your comfort and safety is part of your health, hugely so for mental health. Your body size is irrelevant. What matters is how you feel. You cannot hate yourself out of depression, deprive and punish yourself out of depression. You have to care yourself out of depression, be gentle and kind and giving to yourself. You have to start saying yes to yourself instead of no. If you can get a salad and pick at it and be hungry, or get a burger and chips and enjoy the whole thing, get the damn burger and chips.

If you have conditions re food like diabetes or coeliac etc. do keep that in mind and also talk to your drs, see what can be done re your medications that can help you eat what you need to. Be as kind to yourself as you can. Make informed choices about food and medical consequences, whatever choices are right for you.

Yeah, add, dont take away. Work with, not against yourself. Take half steps when you cant leap to an “ideal”, its ok. If a change is a marginal improvement its still an improvement even if not how youre “supposed” to be doing things.

Be kind to yourselves. Youre going through a lot. You deserve gentleness.

So within two days of each other, Fox News writes an article comparing aromanticism and asexuality to pedophilia, and then Matt Walsh releases a video saying asexuality is a mental illness and asexuals are tricking teenagers into having depression.

Not sure what’s going on right now over in Conservative World, but it’s a hell of wild U-turn for them to suddenly switch from “Oh no! The left is sexualizing our children!” to “Oh no! The left is asexualizing our children!”

It’s a reminder, I guess, that they’re coming for all of us. The fash and the white supremacists will not make nice distinctions between the queers when they put us up against the wall. There is no gatekeeping, no label-policing, no purity-purging and no assimilation that any of us can do that will save us. They want us dead, and while they’ll start with whoever is most vulnerable at any given time, they’ll get around to all of us eventually.

Queer solidarity means all of us because the fash are coming for all of us.

All Dividers are Feds. Stand united or die separately.

ANYONE who is trying to divide our community is a fucking Fed. That includes other queers who like to argue about who is and isn’t “allowed” in our community.

part of why i recognize little to no difference between so-called "recreational" vs "medical" drug use is because i recognize stress as a medical issue. mind-body dualism has us all convinced that stress is an ephemeral emotion that doesn't affect our bodies, but like daily stress, particularly if you're also disabled in some way, just Will Kill You. it can destroy your organs, overclock your brain, weaken your immune system... the effects of prolonged and consistent stress are underresearched (because then we'd have to question how we allocate labor. lmao), but they're there. if you use weed every day for no reason other than you need to force yourself to relax chemically so you can have fun and take your mind off stress, that is indistinguishable from medical use to me, having discarded mind-body dualism.

i think a lot of people in the notes are missing my main point, so here it is again even more simplified: having fun is medically necessary. there is no line between doing something for fun and doing it for your health. fun is necessary for your physical health.

Alright girls, you know what we need to do

They aren't ready for girlsterous

That sounds like a lot of their problem.

All right, ladies, let's girlsterous this motherfucker

Unless you were a tech at NASA back in the day, when one time some hydrogen a) escaped in a particular building, and b) caught on fire. This was extremely difficult because hydrogen does NOT burn on the visible spectrum humans evolved to see (and flee). Rather, it technically does, but it’s so pale that in practice, no one could see it. Additionally, pure hydrogen burns without smoke and with so little ambient heat that you can’t really sense it till you walk into it. So, per the lore, for a few days all the techs in that building just walked around brandishing brooms in front of them like lances. If your broom lit on fire, congrats! You have located more burning hydrogen! Do not proceed!

oh my god it's real and it was LITERALLY called "the broom method" holy shit

#yeah that's not how you're supposed to hike. slowest hiker takes the lead#the group's gotta match their pace anyways you need to make sure you don't lose them#especially since if they're breathing hard they may not be able to call out to warn the others they're falling behind#also. that way they can call breaks when they need by just coming to a halt

#if the rest of the group gives them shit for it that's the groups failing#you gotta set the bar at the lowest level of the group. if that's too low for some people you've got too wide a range of abilities#note that sometimes shit will happen and thats okay

#i once had a lowkey asthma episode 15km deep into a mountain trail with no phone service. during a heatwave. on an uphill section#the trail was fucking covered in mosquitos and blackflies. my sibling did NOT appreciate how often i had to stop to gasp for air

#and when it was all over and i apologized for the bug bites guess what! they admitted they'd overreacted and apologized for being an asshol#because rushing your hiking partners just makes their situation even worse

I think you and I should reproduce.

LOLLLLLL

every once in a while im like "lmfao isnt england embarrassed to have a queen" but like the lawyer wig situation is honestly above and beyond that weirdness like what is that. do they make you guy your own wig. is it like harry potter where it chooses you. is it custom. do you go to a judge wig store. how come some wigs dont fit and look like shit

Wait judges wearing wigs isn’t a universal thing? (The monarchy is a shit show we know that). But your judges don’t wear wigs? How do you know they’re the judge then?

i love this question. you guys are alright sometimes. in america the judge wears robes and everyone else dresses like its sunday service

statism is a helluva drug

WHY DOESN'T THE WOMAN GET A WIG???

not going to lie guys i don’t think being employed is for me

devastated to report that being unemployed is also terrible

it's almost like we need to entirely restructure society or something

man this politics shit is easy

around the year 1500, medieval painter hieronymus bosch drew a person with sheet music written on their butt being tortured in hell.

500 years later, someone decided to transcribe and play the song. now, you can hear it too!

There’s also an extended instrumental version by Jim Spalink that absolutely slaps. It has a hurdy gurdy in the latter half of the song and I love it. It’s played on the three instruments you can see in the painting (lute, harp, and hurdy-gurdy)

If you can’t listen to it under the SoundCloud link, it’s also on YouTube.

Always reblog butt music

gotta say, I love the direction we're taking steamboat willie mickey mouse in now that he's public domain. I was expecting tumblr to rip him apart and be like "we feast on his corpse" (and I would have been on board with that lol), but we've decided that he's one of us now. he's a hero of the working class, newly liberated from his capitalist oppressors who sought to shackle him to traditional values and conservatism for decades. he's supportive of leftist causes. he's trans. he's married to jay fucking gatsby.

we're not celebrating that mickey mouse is dead.

we're celebrating that mickey mouse is free.

and that's beautiful.

This is way more interesting and subversive than that stupid horror movie coming out.