honey and wildfire

I feel like I would have been diagnosed with OCD a lot earlier if the vast majority of screening questions (for mental illnesses in general) weren't based on the person's perception of their own behavior, in isolation. and what i mean by that is asking someone with OCD "do you wash your hands excessively?" is not a good question.

a person with OCD believes they are washing their hands the correct number of times. it's not excessive. we believe we're exhibiting best practices and helping to keep everything clean.

better questions might be, "does it seem like you wash your hands a lot more than your friends or family?" "do you get dry patches or cuts on your hands from washing your hands?" "do you find it deeply distressing, more so than how you've seen other people react, when you get something on your hands that you can't clean off right away?"

being asked "are you overly preoccupied with bugs, symmetry, and contamination?" also got "no" responses from me years ago in my life. what they didn't ask for, and didn't know, was what *exactly* I was doing in my day to day life that genuinely ate up my time and mental space to a concerning degree, but I *didn't know* that other people don't do this.

"do you spend a lot of time cleaning?" -> no, it's not a lot. it's a good amount. why?

"do you become frustrated because it seems like no one else meets your organizational and cleanliness standards - do you often 'take over' for other people because they can't do it right - do new friends seem surprised by how strict you can be about your living space?" -> oh. yeah. yeah I get it now.

if the screening questions on the mental illness test sound at all like "are you already aware you're mentally ill?" then, shocker, it's not going to work all that well!

A couple weeks ago I was practicing my owl calls on a night hike and I successfully called in a barred owl. My owl call is pretty good, but I've never called an owl to me from afar because I rarely do night hikes and so I don't get much chance to. I had expected to be really excited about this, especially since two of my coworkers are really skilled at owl calls and they don't usually get a response, much less a full conversation, but instead I felt so guilty. I eventually had to start ignoring this poor deceived owl that was following my call through the park. I felt like I catfished him.

I was gonna say "who among us would follow an inhuman voice in the forest yelling HEY, HEY YOU WHAT'S UP?" but then I remembered this website has me pigeonholed as Most Likely To Be Taken By The Fae. So. Yeah fair enough to this owl, I would probably do the same.

an appalling number of marginalized people in this upcoming generation appear to be under the impression that saying they're "reclaiming" a slur gives them a free pass to use that slur in a derogatory way towards other marginalized people in their communities that they dislike or think are annoying. maybe it's just the people i've had the misfortune of encountering in the wild, but it's getting bleak out there, folks.

like the other day i encountered some cunt using the fucking R slur to refer to an autistic person stimming in a way they found annoying, and when confronted about their ableism, they replied, "oh, i have ADHD, i can reclaim it." and it's like, no, you jackass, you absolutely the fuck cannot! that is not what that means! if the way you use a word is indistinguishable from the way a fucking nazi would use that word, then you're not "reclaiming it" anymore, you dumb bastard!!! you're just using it the same way the damn nazi does!!! shut the fuck up and be kinder you ass!!!

ON WISCONSIN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

My motto in a lot of things is "stupid problems require stupid solutions". For one, it takes me an unreasonable amount of mental effort to wrangle myself to take a shower, because the ferret operating my brian goes "nooo, not the wet box, it takes forever in there >:C" and it doesn't like being wet.

So to compromise how to take a shower without it taking as much time and involve as much Being Wet as it normally would, I will instead wash my body without getting my head wet (hair is dry, therefore we are Not Wet), and then later on wash my hair and face in the sink (body is dry, therefore we are Not Wet).

Because somehow, taking a five minute body-washing-shower at one time of the day, and taking five minutes to wash my head in the sink separately later, is easier and more efficient than just taking one single ten minute shower.

Tumblr is being weird and not letting me share my art from my mobile but I promise I'm doing stuff.

PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT:

Go for the bigger blanket.

Are you thinking of making or buying a blanket? There is no universe in which you will want a smaller blanket. Meanwhile, you have free will, and you can choose this universe to have a bigger blanket. Your potential to snuggle will unlimited by the boundaries of simple cloth.

Go for the bigger blanket.

"Men in dresses are seen as bad, but women in pants aren't!"

is not the statement that "men can't be feminine but women can be masculine in society" that you think it is.

Let me introduce: women with facial hair. Full beards. Mustaches. Bald women. Bodybuilder women. Women with visible body hair. These aren't "more acceptable" than men in dresses.

Pants don't have a gendered association anymore, while dresses do. There is something to be said for that, but it certainly ISN'T "masculine women are acceptable now."

if your disability makes it difficult for you to leave bed to brush your teeth, Colgate makes a product called Wisps that are single use, no-rinse toothbrushes you can use while in bed. They have a bead on the brush that dissolves and acts as toothpaste and can be swallowed. The other end has a toothpick.

[Image Description: Toothbrush that has a blue gel bead at the centre of the brush part. End ID.] Reblogging in case this is helpful for anyone. Also sharing a post I made a while ago about dental hygiene when you're chronically fatigued. (including some awesome tips from @energysavingselfcare) I wrote that post when I used to brush teeth sitting down; I've now been brushing my teeth in bed for several years. I can only brush my teeth once a day (using an electric toothbrush) and use a higher fluoride toothpaste, prescribed by my dentist.

from How To Keep House While Drowning by KC Davis (quoting Imani Barbarin)

Wisps are great! The bristles are quite soft and have a different texture than regular toothbrushes, so they may also be helpful for you if you have sensory issues surrounding toothbrushes.

Ahhh, there’s the obvious conclusion.

If we can de-extinct* species, surely there’s no point in worrying about endangered species anymore! We can bring them back anytime!

*depending on your definition of de-extinction.

if tumblr shuts down you can find me on tumblr. ill still be here. they cant make me leave

watching one guy inflicting mass damage to the already wavering willingness to reblog Palestinian relief posts because he keeps spamming blogs from multiple accounts while asking for 90k

Accounts @mosabsdr @abedmajeed and @nasergz were all created late january-early febuary of this year, all are asking for 90k USD on chuffed, all are mass spamming people.

I can't speak for the latter two blogs but mosabsdr is claiming to be vetted: ID 309. The original accounts connected to Mosab was @mssb9996- it was deactivated and the surviving blog is @mssb99961 and links to a now defunct Gofundme. The original goal of this Gofundme was 20k Euros. All pictures used by mosabsdr are from the original @mssb99961 and the attached Gofundme. I believe this casts sufficient doubt that the original images and story of Mosab has been stolen and used for a dummy account.

The original gofundme was edited out of the sheet and replaced with the Chuffed account- I do not know if the identity of @mosabsdr was confirmed to be @mssb99961

To my knowledge, the other two accounts are not claiming to be vetted so I cannot confirm the original poster of the images being used.

You don't know the rammies and the imps...

"there's a guy in the walls" movies exist in a universe that I fucking WISH was real. imagine how easy it would be to install stuff in walls if the space behind a wall was not 3.5 inches/8.9 cm deep and I could get my whole self in there. of course that would mean a guy could get in there too, but what are the odds.

<currently blogging from inside this idiot's walls>

PLEASE help me feed these ethernet cables downstairs or I'm gonna kill myself before you get a crack at me

thread it down here champ, we'll get this installed come hell or high water

you are the best scary murderer who could have ever crawled into my walls

I swear the human pain response is so fucking maladaptive. "Oh, yeah, being in pain for an extended period of time can provoke a system-wide inflammation response which both slows healing and causes additional pain in parts of the body unrelated to the original injury, so taking painkillers may actually make you heal faster" who designed this bullshit?

People will be like I love Greek mythology but I hate everything that involves incest, infidelity, violence, slavery, misogyny, undeserved suffering, questionable relationships, ethically dubious heroes and gods,and morality that is foreign to me.

I’ve never related to a post more