Nayahahaha

Gosh, what a babe!

one of the best tips for Real Life that I’ve ever picked up is to always highball your estimate whenever someone asks you “when can you get this done by” by about 25% (if you can get away with it). that way, if it ends up being harder than you thought, you’ve got extra time to figure things out and if you were right about how much time it takes then you get to look like an absolute genius instead of just a simply competent person.

what you may not have realized is that I learned this crucial piece of life advice from an episode of Star Trek where Scotty is telling Geordi that whenever he told Kirk something on the Enterprise was at full capacity, it was always only ever a notch or so below full capacity so that Scotty looked like the god of all engineers when he was able to magically hack the warp drive to run a little beyond what he’d told everyone else was “full capacity” and honestly that one throwaway gag from Star Trek has changed my life.

When you understand that kids and teenagers being salty about literary symbolic analysis comes from a very real place of annoyance and frustration at some teachers for being over-bearing and pretentious in their projecting of symbolism onto every facet of a story but you also understand that literary analysis and critical thinking in regards to symbolism is extremely important and deserves to be not only taught in schools, but actively used by writers when examining their own work to see if they might have used symbolism unintentionally and to make sure that they are using symbolism effectively:

When you understand that a lot of the reaction against literary symbolism is because we don’t educate about  symbolism as a communication form (people have historically used x symbol to mean y) and instead is taught as a fact (x symbol means y) so it strips analysis of any relevance to the world or other texts AND we don’t teach tropes/archetypes/genres from a young age so students are being exposed to literary analysis for the first time as 13-16 year olds and rightfully feel like it’s been made up

Delicious. Finally a good fucking addition.

When you become a teacher and you realise that the reason teenagers don’t like literary analysis in English class is because they’re forced to try and decode the ‘right’ analysis that exists in their teacher’s head and are spoon-fed small, language-based points that can easily fit into an exam answer because teachers don’t want to risk allowing multiple, sometimes imperfect interpretations in their classroom that might foster a love of reading because they’re too concerned with teaching exam technique: 

When you realise that the system is set up like this because so much pressure is placed on exam results as the only metric of school success and frequently determine the amount of funding a school receives, which means that poorer schools which are frequently low-performing desperately double down on the teaching method above: 

When you realise all of this is supported by a Conservative government because they haven’t bothered to read any pedagogical research published in the last fifty years and think that school should be ‘hard’ in order to ‘weed out the clever ones’ because they can’t imagine a classroom functioning in a way other than the shitty private schools they went to in the 70s: 

FINALLY. ANOTHER GOOD ADDITION. DELICIOUS.

I really like how many of the world’s most iconic structures and places are just right next to some of the most mundane stuff imaginable, for example

Stonehenge

Is right next to a busy road

The Pyramids of Giza

Are at the outskirts of Cairo

Niagara Falls

Are part of the town of the same name

And Agrippa’s Pantheon

Is crammed inside downtown Rome

It just so interesting to notice.

I lived in Nîmes for three years, and the mundane feeling I got whenever I would walk from my apartment, by the Roman coloseum in the city which was 2000+ years old, and continue with my life because it was just sort of there still surprises me when I think about it.

This post is just that feeling put into words and pictures.

I loved walking into York and turning the corner to see the cathedral rising up, the heart of the city, as it was designed to be.

It’s a reminder that history doesn’t exist in a vacuum, only in books and museums and stock photos. It’s a fallen tree covered in new growth.

i say no homo to other humans in case they interpret something im doing as something a human would do

14 year old me fucking went off with this one

Love conversations where every single participant has certified Issues

One guys issue is not knowing vampires are real. I feel him

Love burying the lead "he's 33 I'm 22-" bitch he is 433 give or take

Have you ever vomited so hard you not only wrecked your throat but dislocated your collarbone?

How about a migraine so bad it triggers your mast cells into a pre-anaphylactic reaction and you start breaking out in hives all over your body?

Yeah. Me neither until 4 o’clock this morning.

New level of hell unlocked.

And the migraine is still ongoing. I’m just no longer blind and dry-heaving.

I hate this.

Having vague flashes of memory which include going for a walk around the park at 3:50 am with Mothman because sometimes walking helps. (It did not)

Holly Mop licking my forehead relentlessly.

Mothman packing heat packs around me in bed and holding onto me because he couldn't get me to stop shaking and warm up.

But, y’know, it’s just a bad headache.

And I thought migraines so bad I'm reenacting the exorcist. This has unlocked a new fear.

I’m legitimately terrified. This is the worst a migraine has ever affected my other illnesses.

I’m lucky my MCAS is so well managed right now because otherwise I probably would have tipped into anaphylactic shock. I’m not unconvinced I wasn’t.

Joy, I dunno if this will help, but I figured I would share the knowledge in hope it might help you.

You said you popped your collarbone out of joint due to vomiting. I'm gonna guess that means it dislocated at the sternum end (which, rare as far as I know, and dear gods, OW!), which implies that your SCM (sternocleidomastoid muscle) completely spasmed and wigged out on you. SCM is a freaking brutal migraine trigger, and the trigger points (special massage word for evil knots of doom) are very much known to cause migraines/head/facial pain.

All that to say, if you can get your neck/SCM to relax and get that collarbone back into place, it might really help reduce that migraine. Maybe have Mothman Google some SCM release techniques, since I'm gonna bet he'll be way more able to figure out what you can tolerate better than I could. Heat on those muscles (the front of your neck) might also really help them chill out.

Apologies if this is all useless for you. I hope you feel better soon.

Thank you for the reminder. I looked up my medical notes because that name pinged a memory and the sternocleidomastoid on my right side was one of the areas badly affected by my chiropractic injury when a whole bunch of muscles ruptured and tore.

There was a violent spasm happening on that side of my neck last night while I was unable to stop throwing up, at least now I know which muscle it probably was.

My collarbone slipped back in without too much trouble (yay, EDS...), but I can feel it threatening to pop every time I move or cough. It’s also tender af so I’m trying to support the area but it's hard when my neck and shoulder have frozen to splint the area. Basically everything hurts and I’m dying but at least I know which muscle to swear at so thanks for that.

SCM is one of the muscles that ruptured and tore in your chiropractic injury?!? 👀 Bloody hell. No wonder you have chronic migraines. And vicious ones to boot. Just look at this referral pattern for the trigger points...

X = trigger point locations

Red = pain referral areas. The denser the dots, the more commonly it is that pain is reported there.

And with an injury like that, you're going to always be fighting the muscles spasming back up on you. Gah. I'm so sorry you have to deal with this. It's a special kind of hell.

If you want pointers for getting the shoulder to chill the hell out, let me know. I can easily write a small dissertation on what to look for, the likely culprits, how to protect your own joints when applying pressure to knots (or, to be truthful, Mothman's joints in this case, since I don't think your fingers would be up for it), etc. Shoulder tension directly feeds into neck tension; release the shoulder and the neck will calm down. Not completely, but usually enough to stop the pain cycle. Releasing the shoulder also usually reduces the pain in the neck muscles, which then allows them to be worked. So something that can't be touched without screaming (SCM) will just be mildly tender after the shoulder gets released.

I'm holding back the rabid info-dumping monster because I know unwanted medical advice can be very upsetting (and I think you're cool and don't wanna get blocked). So yeah. Let me know if you want additional info and I'll put something together.

Yeah, those are all my migraine spots. It's excruciating. I used to work on this trigger with Magic Physio Man until covid made him stop and now I try to do it on my own. But yeah. Yeah. Don't recommend partially rupturing your SCM. It's not good.

My migraines usually only acts up with hormonal triggers these days, but considering hormones affect my joints/muscles (thanks, EDS) that doesn't surprise me that the SCM could be linked.

The problem with relaxing the area too much also means ny joints slip out, which causes more soft tissue trauma which makes things tigthen up more which yeah, vicious cycle.

I’m contemplating getting a body braid to see if it will help take the strain of holding everything together off my soft tissue. I mean, it's worth a shot at this point. I just need to find the money for it.

And if you want to drop that dissertation at me I’ll gladly read it. I used to get a lot of benefits from bodywork. I just can't afford it/don't trust a lot of people near my neck after the whole chiropractor thing...

Alright. Extreme rough draft accomplished. I have literally done zero editing and instead just word vomited as much as I could think of onto the page. Is it done? Also no, but it's got all the main stuff in there, and the primary target muscles. Hopefully it's clear enough to get everyone started. I will go back and add more to it later. I tried to downgrade everything so that you can understand what is being asked with zero massage knowledge. I guess we'll find out if I succeeded or not.

I do have an issue where I can randomly skip entire words and such in sentences. My apologies for that, as I haven't taken the time yet to reread it four times and try and catch all the errors. I wanted to get the main bulk of the info out there because I know people are in pain and access to this could mean a lot for folks.

Without further ado: Google Drive Link to the PDF

Tagging commenters who mentioned wanting it: @airmidcelt @thewildsarecalling @borealislaura @daftari @ceanothusspinosus @thestorywitch

Thank you for taking the time to do this. Even at a quick glance, I've spotted several areas I used to work on with Magic Physio Man that are going neglected with my current care routine, so this is excellent and gives me the language to pinpoint which muscles are being bastards so I can better direct my care.

Reblogging to save a life.

Mine. My life. It's me.

It's been a couple of years since I've vomited so hard I've injured myself, and usually it's in my upper back/shoulders because that's where the worst of my hypermobility and muscle spasms, collide, but it's a really similar pattern of symptoms otherwise. I've also had enough issues with my SCM recently and enough bonkers migraines and mast cell flares that this specific combo is definitely possible.

I've had the 4am ER trip due to random anaphylaxis in my sleep less than 6 months ago, the subluxed cervical vertebrae giving me an instant onset blinding migraine a few weeks later (and more than once), and now I am cooking up a hot case of some sort of weird adrenal shit on top of pre-existing sex hormone oddities.

I'm so sorry you've been dealing with this utter mess.

Thank you 💖, I’ve no idea if this is helpful or relevant to your issues but I saw “weird adrenal shit” and figure its worth mentioning Addison’s disease/adrenal insufficiency to you on the off chance no one has mentioned it.

A subset of MCAS patients can end up with secondary adrenal insufficiency due to our prolonged exposure to steroids but also because MCAS itself can damage the adrenal cortex.

In most people, steroid-induced adrenal insufficiency is caused by not tapering properly, but with MCAS patients, our constant up and down between fight/flight caused by the idiopathic anaphylaxis and the meds we use to control it can damage the adrenal gland and cause it to stop producing enough cortisol and aldosterone.

It's often overlooked in MCAS patients because of how similar the symptoms are to MCAS itself and also because secondary adrenal insufficiency isn't accompanied by the same darkening of the skin that tends to tip doctor's off that your adrenal cortex is busted.

I have an MCAS friend who ended up in adrenal crisis due to her doctors missing it until it was almost too late, so hopefully talking about this more might help someone even if it's not the adrenaline issues you’re dealing with.

Good luck, I wish you well with your own health journey. This shit sucks.

Decided to say fuck it to my congestion. Closed myself in the guest bathroom, blocked out all ventilation, turned my massive humidifier on full blast and ran myself the hottest bath i can stand.

This is my enclosure. I live here now. I have recreated the water cycle in a matter of minutes and can finally breathe.

Would love to show y'all but yeah

During one semester of PE in high school I got put in a section called Team Sports. This was significantly better than a regular unit because the athletic kids were able to play and I largely got to sit and watch.

Months were devoted to what they called Pickle Ball but I’ve since learned was basically ping pong with larger than average paddles. The paddles had been through the absolute wringer, all padding had been rubbed and torn off by a relentless stream of bored adolescents like myself.

This presented me with a unique opportunity. I had a pencil, nominally used to keep score. I had a blank wooden panel. And I had large stretches of time sitting on the sidelines.

Every day I’d pick a blank paddle. I’d doodle little animals, bizarre monstrosities, and a bunch that were just a huge eye in the middle with the words “Big Brother is Watching”. What can I say; I was reading 1984 at the time.

When we finally finished with the paddles and moved on to badminton I completely forgot my dozens of illustrations.

It wasn’t until several years later that it got brought up again. I was hanging out with a friend and their younger sibling. We were listening to them lament their high school experience of the day. “But I won the Pegasus paddle, so that was cool.”

“Wait- what?”

“Yeah, most of them are just Big Brother, so they’re not exciting, but there’s only one Pegasus so we fight over it. Last week I had an elephant I really liked though.”

“You guys fight over the paddles with art on them…?”

“Yeah!”

My friend turned to me and asked, “Didn’t you make all those drawings?”

Their sibling lit up, “You made them?!”

I sat in silence as the complexity of the world and the waves we leave behind as we move through it washed over me. I contemplated how intertwined I was with the rest of existence to create such a beautiful moment.

I had made art on a whim out of boredom and it had an effect on someone else’s day, someone who through random happenstance years later was telling me about it all unknowing.

Their sibling was delighted when I drew them another pegasus on the spot and announced that they’d be the talk of PE now that they’d uncovered the mystery artist.

when i was a freshman in high school, there was a senior who decided (perhaps on a lark, perhaps because his backpack broke, i never asked him) to come to school with all of his books and papers and belongings in an open plastic tote. looked kinda like this except it was sky blue, more oblong, and had more of a lip to hold on to. it was just wide enough to hold textbooks.

and then he just kept doing it. everyone thought it was pretty funny, him walking around with all his possessions in an open tote. it jangled when he walked because he would toss spare change in it and once it was under all the books and papers it was hard to fish out.

then when he graduated, he did something random and fateful: he gave it to a junior.

who did the same thing. except now, it was a thing. it was a tradition. and it seemed like the idea was to give it to someone nerdy who liked looking a little ridiculous.

when i became a senior, i became the 4th person entrusted with the box, quite unexpectedly. the 3rd bearer and i had bonded over both reading homestuck, and he thought i'd be a good candidate. i was the last person to carry it who knew the guy who started it.

funnily enough, i actually liked it a lot more than a backpack. it was shockingly convenient. on days that it didn't rain.

anyway, i gave it to someone after me, who amused everybody by taking it, dumping out and pocketing the spare change (remember the spare change?) and proceeding to literally not use it the entire year. but he did pass it on, i heard.

obviously that was years ago but every once in a while i'll hear from some old classmate or another who has a younger sibling attending the school, that the tradition is still kicking. it would be nearly 15 years old by now. i sincerely hope that someone is still carrying around that 15 year old box simply because it's mildly amusing.

and for me, the roof of my car still has the scuff marks from when i would take it out of the back seat and rest it on the roof while i closed and locked the doors.

There’s a hidden level of brilliance in this moment:

Chef Boyardee is known today for his cheap out-of-the-can pasta, but in his native Italy he was a renowned expert chef. He was reduced to the face of microwaveable eateries after his death.

Sound like anyone else from this movie?

Chef Ettore Boiardi, known today as Chef Hector Boyardee, was a key player in keeping poverty struck families fed for a low price, before he ever came out with the canned pasta line. He would jar his sauce in milk bottles and provide bags of dry noodles for families in Cleveland, Ohio’s Little Italy sector. It was during the Depression, and pasta could be made in large portions at a low cost. This was the start of his venture. 

After years of success, he eventually opened his canning facility, opened his restaurant “Il Giardino d’Italia” in New York, and helped feed the Allies during the war. Everyone always glazes over this part of his life, especially the Cleveland part. He lived here. He DIED here. He’s BURIED HERE. My mother took care of him at the nursing home she worked for in her early 20′s when he was ailing and spoke of nothing but the kindness he and his family radiated when they were there. Chef Boiardi was an immigrant with a dream and was always there to help those in need, because he knew what it was like to be in that position. Never let that go.   

I had thought he was a fictionalized mascot, like Aunt Jemima or Betty Crocker, but this is really interesting.

“Proud of his Italian heritage, Boiardi sold his products under the brand name Chef Boy-Ar-Dee so that his American customers could pronounce his name properly.“

And if you have a name that isn’t “standard” in America, that is a Mood.

i have not stopped thinking about this goodreads review for a MOMENT since i read it. it pingpongs in my head at all times. yesterday i walked into the kitchen and i realized i hadn't washed the pot from the night before, and said coldly, "the work of a sad little man who needs to see the ocean." unreal. i know i am changed.

And you can use their reality to keep them calm if they are panicking! We had a husband who was always panicking trying to find his wife. Telling him she had passed away was not an option, but through the family we figured out their routine and could tell him not to worry, that she was at the salon or getting coffee with MaryAnne and would be home soon. It calmed him down, stopped him from trying to climb out of windows looking for her, and kept him in his own reality.

If you are working with dementia patients and they aren't your family, try to get small details from the family that can help!

We had an older gent who was always wanting to get in his car and drive off so we would tell him his car was in the workshop. Eventually someone came up with a car of a make and model he’d owned that was non-working so we parked it up in the garden and he used to get in and sit happily behind the wheel and go for ‘drives’ - he even used to give other residents lifts to wherever they thought they were going.

Trying to orient someone with dementia is cruel in the short term and ultimately pointless. You’ll only upset them by trying to tell them the truth and they’ll have forgotten in an hour and be asking after the same long dead people again. My mother has worked in dementia care for over 25 years and will often tell families “So-and-so is happy in their dementia world”

[ image id: a screenshot of an answer to a question regarding dementia. the question asks “how do i answer my dad with dementia when he talks about his mom and dad being alive? do i go along with it or tell him they have passed away?” the answer, written by david mcphee (ph.d. psychologist, therapist) is as follows:  “enter into his reality and enjoy it. he doesn’t need to be ‘oriented’. thank god the days are gone when people with advanced dementia were tortured by huge calendars and reminders signs and loved ones were urged to ‘orient’ them to bring them to some boring reality. if dad spends most of his time in 1959, sit with him. ask him questions he didn’t have time for before. ask about people long dead, but alive to him, learn, celebrate heritage. his parents are alive to him. learn more about your grandparents. if he tells the same story over and over, appreciate it as if it’s music, and you come back to the beautiful refrain. this isn’t ‘playing along to pacify the old guy’, this is an opportunity to communicate and treasure memories real but out of time.”  / end id ]

the fact that walls get dusty is ridiculous. you're vertical. act like it.

Does anybody else get legitimately worried when a fanfic author who was updating regularly just suddenly disappears with no warning? Like, is it a serious case of writers block or are they in a coma? Did they just up and quit? Was it me? Were my reviews not good enough?! Did they die 😳?! Were they kidnapped? Do I need to file a missing persons report? Excuse me officer, there’s been 13 weekly updates and now nothing for months! Find them! What’s their name?! Name!? I don’t know their name but they write 3k+ chapters and I need them safe and back in my life!

Sir, that’s my emotional support fanfic author.

Officer: i’m sorry, but you can’t file this person missing.

Me: you don’t have all the facts.

Officer: which are?

Me: i love them.

So, painful story, but I’ve really needed to tell it for a while.

My best friend, the woman I loved for 13 years, was a fic writer in the middle of an especially long piece. She updated on a schedule and had for years. She had a small, but loyal following.

And then she died out of nowhere. One day we were laughing, the next she was in a coma, 3 days later she was dead. She hadn’t been ill and to this day we don’t know what took her. She was just gone.

I knew she had friends all over the world so I went into her email to see if I could find addresses and notify people after a week of blind grief. In her inbox were about a dozen concerned messages from her readers. I cried. I cried and cried and I responded to all of them, telling people she had passed.

And the messages kept coming. Those people spread the word and message after message came in, most of them addressed to me now, as I had given those original readers my contact info. There were words of comfort and grief and just every emotion imaginable in that scenario. I wrote back to them all, thanking them and comforting them.

For months after she died, during the worst of my grief, I had those messages. I had those people. And they had me. I really think I might not have made it to the other side without them.

So, the fact that you care? That you think of them? That these authors who became a presence in your world are missed when they aren’t there? It means something very real. On the off chance that the author did die? Anyone who has seen this post will find comfort during the loss of their friend or family member, knowing that you all exist. That they aren’t alone. That you CARE that the world now lacks their loved one.

So, yeah. I’ve seen this post and ones like it for years and wanted to share this story. I finally could today.

Thank you, every person who reblogged this post. People like you are the biggest reason I’m alive today.

Art by Leah Gardner