2006 Cyber Cats

dermatologists hate me

and so does everyone else

and when we break, we’ll wait for our miracle, god is a place where some holy spectacle lies.

“My best friend of 15 years, never misses a chance to show his love. This is Tony🧡”

(Source)

received this incomprehensible email from my ornithology professor

the fucking eagles got him

Kid vs Cat

i would rather die than market myself on linkedin. it's the modern day version of a peasant doing a little dance to convince the king to let him live

Thinkin about how as kids parents told us to clean our rooms without having ever shown us how to themselves, taught us any organizational skills, spatial management, or any other knowledge necessary to know how to efficiently tackle a mess without getting overwhelmed and then got exasperated when we as ten year olds didn’t just……figure it out

This is not a dunk on my parents for the record. I had wonderful parents growing up and still have an amazing mom. I think this is just one of those smaller and common things of parenthood that I think addressing would be monumental in reducing a very common household stressor. If parents led their children in cleanups and helped them reason out plans to manage their time and stuff, especially neurodivergent kids, the entire household would be a lot more calm, streamlined, and overall happy I think!!!

I’ve got one 7 year old perfectionist (possible ADHD) and one sweet 5 year old hurricane (DEFINITE ADHD) and me (also brain full of cats, despises prolonged supervisory things). Here’s some things I’ve learned specific to that that are also generally good for teaching kids to clean. (Or yourself.)

1. If you want a kid to clean, first you have to teach them to even see mess. They don’t! But it does stress them out.

“Okay, let’s look for something out of its place. If it’s on the floor, it’s out of place. If it’s on your bed and it’s not a blanket, it’s out of place.”

2. Go by category, it’s easier to find stuff to put away if your search engine has a specific target, and it’s more satisfying and efficient to put away a big chunk of mess at once.

“Got something? Ok, are there other things like it? Let’s find all the BOOKS. I will HELP YOU.”

3. Important!! Don’t walk away from a kid with focus issues expecting them to instantly learn a task and finish it! You are setting them up to fail! The first several times you need to be there for the whole process and demonstrate by helping. That motivates them. They feel less panic that you’ll bail and they’ll be stuck alone not knowing what to do next. Narrate what you’re doing, too. Help and supervise less as they seem to need you less.

“I’ll get the books on the floor, can you help me get the ones under your bed? I can’t fit!”

4. In my experience most kids, but especially kids with ADHD would walk to the fucking moon to help you, they just need a clear plan, keep the criticism light, short, and to the point, and ffs PRAISE THEM when they do things right, cause we’ve all (I hope) seen the statistics on how much more negative interaction they get compared to other kids (and rejection sensitive dysphoria is a motherfucker). But more than praise you need to show them how what they did was good for THEM. Do nooooooooot take this opportunity for an ‘I told you so’ or a ‘finally’ or you will suck out all their accomplishment.

“Hey, great job, you found that horse you were missing because you cleaned! And your room looks so nice! It’s really comfortable to play in now, and you did that.”

5. Emphasize it does not have to be perfect or complete to be worth doing. I don’t want to will my kids my paralysis of inaction because I can’t start part of something unless I can do all of it.

“We don’t have time to do the whole room, but let’s pick up the legos before bed so you don’t hurt your feet. And then it’ll already be done tomorrow!”

Other small but important things: make sure everyone is fed and not cranky when you start, including you. Do what YOU need to be in the right patient headspace for this. Put on music. Get coffee. Take breaks! Take dance breaks, tickle breaks, whatever. Make em short, set a timer, keep it consistent. Stop completely if they’re getting overwhelmed or stressed and be prepared to finish another day. They may complain and flop around a lot the first few times. Stay tooth grindingly positive and keep at it, it WILL get better. If you mess up, start again. It’s ok. It’s never too late.

I’m an adult with ADHD who finds cleaning their room a STRUGGLE, so I APPRECIATE THE HELL OUT OF THIS

Why are we never taught?

Why are we expected to just know?

And, for God’s own sake, why were we never exposed to the idea that being good at something often happens After being bad at something and doing it imperfectly anyway?

Seriously.

I teared up reading this. My mom and I “fight” over my bedroom all the time and she doesn’t believe me when I tell her I want it clean too because it hasn’t been clean in 16 years because all she does is tell me to clean it and get mad when it’s not clean. This is so important.

What's the opposite of claustrophobic can u be claustrophilic. I hate big open spaces and love being in a little cove...being in a little hidey hole...

Hey OP do you identify with this image because you might be a cat

I’ll never understand why anthropomorphic animal cartoons like Robin Hood and Zootopia will go to the trouble of creating character designs that are meant to be understood as “attractive” or even “sexy” to the human audience but explicitly avoid showing interspecies romances between anthropomorphic animals. Why is THAT weird but, like, trying to make rabbits recognizably sexy-coded to humans isn’t?

Sometimes, sure, but why was Maid Marian a fox in Robin Hood? There wasn’t anything particularly “foxlike” about her personality, and it would make more sense for her to be a lion. They made her a fox only because Robin was a fox and making her something else would be “weird”, but I don’t think the wolf cop or the chicken maid or the lion prince were actually meant to represent race.

The best inter species couple is Kermit and Miss Piggy as the Cratchits in A Muppet Christmas Carol, because all their sons are frogs and all their daughters are pigs, as God clearly intended.

there are only two genders: frog and pig

I’ve pointed out to my friends that the fact that Kermit and Miss Piggy’s kids are like that means either

1) they reproduce asexually and the children are clones of each parent OR

2) Kermit and Miss Piggy are members of the same sexually dimorphic species, hence the split between their male and female children

yes I have spent too long running about potential muppet biology

oh god

Third option, when they want kids they get some fabric and make one, and hope a Hand inhabits it

Do you think there’s a ritual for inviting An Inhabiting Hand to possess the empty husk of your muppet baby?

That 7 y/o knows something and didn't want to share

anyone else got problems

no you’re the only one

ok. sorry

eating out in a pandemic:

hello! i am a service worker and i do actually understand going out to eat occasionally right now for special occasions or because you are on the brink of losing your mind! but here is the thing: please respect the service workers when you go as much as you can. here are some ways to do it:

*wear your masks when they come near you, meaning pop them on even if they are just asking how your meal is.

* i like to leave my hand sanitizer bottle on the table both because i am using it often and because i want the service workers to know i am for ease of mind.

* i always do this, but right now it’s more important. if you are at a place where you take your own dishes to the trash, do it! it’s not the time to be lazy. workers have to touch your dirty dishes. if you are not at a self serve place, please stack them appropriately for easy carry! this means larger plates all together on the bottom, then smaller, then smallest. a neat little pile. collect your trash and set it on top of your dishes for easy removal and tossing. believe me, this makes a huge difference! instead of touching multiple dishes to stack them ourselves or to dig out trash, we only have to touch one.

* tip. listen, right now, i am tipping even at fast food drive thrus. it’s a respect thing.

* speaking of drive thrus, wear your mask in them. it’s 10 seconds of your time versus the life of them and their loved ones.

basically - i am, to a degree, thankful that some people are still coming out to eat. it helps me maintain my job and income. but there is fear everywhere and there are customers who make it blatantly obvious they do not care about us, both by refusing to wear their masks and by pretty much saying it to our faces. the more people that make this easier, the better it will be and the safer it will be.

not to beg for notes but this one would actually mean a lot to me if it was spread around like... working in the food industry right now really does come w it’s own little unique safety hazards and stressors and if more people were taught how to be conscious of that it could literally improve the current quality of life for me and people like me

thank you kirby

Oh thank god for kirby

i’m the opposite of ‘i liked it before it became popular’ i only discover new things to like once they’re not popular anymore

me: so i’m starting to get into this new thing

the new thing: a 10 years old videogame or st like that