Daily OpusEverything I write is freely rebloggable. Just keep the source and tell people about my books :D [Until I decide otherwise, my pronouns are Ze/Hir/Hirself. As in "Ze went to the shops to get hir medication hirself". Thank you for the respect.]
One of their own writers said it the best: Never trust a creature that smiles all the time, they’re up to something. And they were very, very correct. The most frequent portent of doom, next to phrases like, “Hold my beer,” or “I think I know what I did wrong,” is most definitely a Human smiling in a certain way for a period longer than ten minutes.
It’s a sure and certain sign that someone is going to get what the human thinks they deserve. And it was happening most alarmingly on the bridge of the Wandering Star, where the Ship’s Human was having an apparently evil idea. The most her crew could hope for was that it was going to happen in the general direction of their current foe.
Who, thankfully, was also unnerved to see a Human smiling at them like that.
cleaning with ADHD is a nightmare. it’s an endless cycle of finding a half-finished chore and stopping the one you were already working on, then remembering that something else needs to be done and getting started on that, then finding half-finished chore and
i have the solution! i call it ‘junebugging’.
have you ever seen a junebug get to grips with a window screen? it’s remarkably persistent, but not very focused. all that matters is location.
how to junebug: choose the location you feel you can probably get some shit done on today. be specific. not ‘the bathroom’ but ‘the bathroom sink’. you are not choosing a range, you are choosing a center; you will move around, but your location is where you’ll keep coming back to. mentally stick a pin in it. consider yourself tethered to that spot by a long mental bungee cord.
go to your location. look at stuff. move stuff around. do a thing. get distracted. remember you’re junebugging the bathroom sink and go back there. look at it some more. do a different thing. get distracted. get a sandwich. remember you’re junebugging and go back to the bathroom sink.
nt’s will go crazy watching you, and if they demand to know When You Will Be Done you will probably have to roll them in a carpet and stuff them up the chimney. you’re done when you feel done, or you’re too bored to live, or it’s bedtime, or any number of other markers, you get to pick. but the thing is, by returning repeatedly to that one spot, you harness the ‘hyperactivity’ part instead of wasting all that energy battling with the ‘attention deficit’ part.
not only will the bathroom sink almost certainly be clean, and probably the mirror and soap dish too, you might’ve swapped in a fresh toothbrush, a new soap, you might’ve unclogged the drain – you will probably also have cleaned or fixed up several things in the near vicinity, or in the path between the sink and where you get the fresh toothbrush, or maybe you did your grocery shopping cuz you were out of soap, or maybe you couldn’t find a clean hand towel and ended up doing laundry.
this is good. you got shit done! it wasn’t necessarily Cleaned The Bathroom in the way nt’s think of it, but screw ‘em. things are better than they were.
plus you worked off enough energy to be able to sleep. which is not small potatoes when living the ADHD life. :D
Don’t let the adorable name fool you—this is some Seriously Good Advice. May be useful for brain fog and depression, too!
Seriously. I mean it. Because inevitably you will love something that no one else loves. Or you will love something that everyone loves and people will shit all over it because it’s “so trite and unimaginative and done.” Or you will love something that no one else has ever heard of. Or you will love something dark and edgy and or obscure and people will roll their eyes and say, “What, do you want people to think you’re dark and edgy and obscure?”
Alternatively, you will not love the thing that everyone else loves, and you will wonder what precisely is wrong with you that the sight of that thing is aggravating the shit out of you now when the whole world sings its praises as one.
People will irritate you. They’ll irritate you with headcanons that make no sense and misinterpretations of canon. They will make the same jokes 500 times. They will overwhelm your corner of fandom with something you either are tired of hearing about or don’t care about. They will post art that isn’t theirs. You will meet people who think you are the greatest person ever and bombard you with messages only to wander off when they find someone new or shinier; you will meet people whom you admire and who do not really seem to notice you exist.
So give zero fucks about it. Seriously. Like what you like, blacklist what you need to blacklist, and ignore everything else. Be friends, play nice, enjoy it. And in the meantime, just do you. Like what you like, love what you love, and to hell with all the rest of it.
Stop telling yourself that the grass is greener on the other side, because it’s not. It is greener where you water it. So take control of your life and start watering your own pastures and grow your own greener grasses.
Stop both envying your neighbor’s green grass AND watering your own. We’re in a fucking drought. You can’t sustain that shit. Think beyond the lawn that society told you to want. Put in some native plants that will thrive and bloom with very little water. They might be a little more spiny than what you first planned, but there is great beauty and variety in these hardy survivors. Your yard will be way more interesting and friendly to wildlife than that of the people who took the easy route and poured on water at the expense of other people and organisms. (This has been a California-themed post hijacking.)
No but like along with being literal good advice (GRASS AND LAWNS ARE A TERRIBLE IDEA WE SHOULD REVERSE THIS CULTURAL EXPECTATION NOW) this is also metaphorically good advice (as I’m sure you knew when you posted it).
There are sometimes things that you take for granted that you are just Expected To Want or Do or Be that you don’t actually have to. You’re so used to it you don’t even think about it, but the moment you do a less resource-heavy alternative appears.
On an environmentally friendly level this is a terrible example, but a couple years ago I was talking with my therapist about problems I was having being a functioning human being, and I went on a rant about the dishes and how they stress me out and I feel like I never get them done and then I hate myself and after listening to this whole rant I expected my therapist to give me the normal pep talks about being kind to yourself and taking it on a little bit at a time but instead he just had the most exasperated look on his face and he said,
“Buy some paper plates.”
He said it like it was the most obvious thing in the world and I was completely speechlessly thunderstruck.
He said, “As an environmentalist, I am giving you permission for your own health to buy some paper plates. Problem solved.”
I don’t always use paper plates now. My mental health does allow me to keep up with the dishes better than I was (though these days my physical health has started interfering). But when I feel that slipping? I skip the cultural expectation that I should just be doing the dishes all the time. I conserve my (metaphorical, the opposite of literal in this case, sadly) water, and I buy some paper plates.
There a thing that’s ruining your mental health? Your life? It feels like a simple thing that other people can just DO, but you can’t? Often there’s a simpler solution. If you are tired of taking care of your hair, cut it into a pixie cut to save yourself the hassle. Hell, shave it off. You don’t need hair! Google hangout is a great alternative to going out when you want to talk to a friend but aren’t sure you can get yourself out of your house. If food stresses you out, buy shit you can just grab and eat without even having to microwave (I fucking love cottage cheese and vegetables for this exact reason).
You do not have to cook. You don’t have to date or get married. You don’t have to be monogamous if you do want to date or get married. You don’t have to be straight. You don’t have to be a boy or a girl. You don’t have to look a certain way or talk a certain way or eat certain things. You don’t have to go to college. You don’t have to be in that major. You don’t have to own a house. You don’t have to want or have kids. You don’t have to wait for the perfect partner to have kids if you do want them.
It’s such a normal thing to have a lawn that many people don’t even consider the time, money, and water it would save to just get rid of it and replace it with an alternative that takes into account the native environment of where it’s growing. How much easier their life would be without maintaining something that just went there because it was expected with no regard for whether it naturally fit, and instead put in plants that serve the same function but actually thrive and take root with no real effort.
Instead of fighting to maintain expectations, throw away your lawn and plant natively instead. Both literally and metaphorically.
To beat the heat, from an aussie is rural Oz where it gets up to 47+C in the summer.
• Cotton sheets.
• Loose cotton pjs. A singlet (you might call it a vest?) or loose tee up top. Undies or boxer shorts down below. Or just ditch them dude. Sleep in the nude.
• Put your sheets in the freezer for awhile.
• Don’t wear socks to bed.
• Keep a window open but your blinds or curtains shut.
• Invest in a chillow or a neck cooler. You can get them on ebay or look for a website that sells them. (i only know where to get them in a store, sorry!) Neck coolers are great for laying across your head in a humid, hot room with no air con. Firefighters use them here. Thats how I came across them. Chillows are… cold pillows I suppose.
• Drink lots of water. Dehydration is not fun, trust me. You may think you’ll pee a lot, but it’s better than loosing too much fluid where it counts.
• You can make a fan out of anything. (x) <— so cute.
• Sleep on the floor, or a hammock. Hot air rises apparently. Of course it does. Except here where it’s everywhere. (except right now, it’s so cold guys. Visualise the cold)
• If you don’t have a fan, perhaps invest in one. You can even invest in a usb run one.
• Little portable fans are a thing, so are handheld fans and even fan pens. And are quite cheap.
• Go swimming. If you can’t go swimming, run a cold bath and chill for awhile.
• Make cool treats. Like icypoles.
• Turn off all heat sources and all lights. Camp out.
• Don’t wear closed shoes, wear flip-flops (what a funny word!) or sandles.
• I used to get a water spray bottle, spray my face and then fanned it to keep cool.
• If you’re lucky there may be some public spaces around town/or your city, that actually have air conditioning. For example, our little cinema, which is actually big it’s a theater, anyway, offered free movies when it got above 40c because it was so cold inside. The generator died because of the heat but it was still cooler inside that in most places. Keep a look out in your local news.
• Pop your water bottles in the freezer.
• I wish I could send you all the little doodads we use to keep cool here, sometimes air cons just don’t do a thing.
• Take an umbrealla outside. No I’m serious, it offers shade. If you have to walk, use an umbrella.
• If your tea has caffine … i’m afraid you’ll have to subsitute it. I’m very, very sorry. It’s not good for the heat.
• Drink something with electrolytes.
• Slip, Slop, Slap. Slip on a shirt, slop on sunscreen and slap on a hat. (not a cap guys) Also sunglasses.
• Put your feet in a bucket of cold water.
• Wheat bags (heat packs) can go in the freezer! ( i did not know this)
• Chances are some of your live near a beach. Guess what you need to do.
• Ok you can have tea. Iced tea. Nor you don’t have to buy it. Just make it like you normally do, pop in some ice cubes from the freezer and put them in a fridge for awhile. Or make the tea into icecubes and pop it into water once frozen. Or or…make a smoothie with frozen fruit. OR OR, TEA ICYPOLES.
• If you must drink tea, have it warm, not hot. Apparently it works better than cold drinks. Try chrysanthunum.
• It may sound strange, but spicy foods.
• Fruit, lots of fruit.
• Please look at these for pets and young kids. (x) (x) (x)
• Typo is the store that has the fan pens…but they don’t ship to the UK. so perhaps if you know anyone in the US or australia, they may be willing to bulk buy some if you all pitch in.
Thats all I have for now, but please don’t hesitate to send me an ask.
Cool towels.
If you can’t find them in a sporting goods shop - buy a chamois or five from an auto goods shop. Same thing.
Get them wet, but not dripping, and wear them on your head. Works best if the air is moving (yeah it’s fans again)
Also, cloth bucket hats (aka giggle hats) can be doused and worn wet if you have to go out in the sun.
even if you get along great with your family you will get along even better with them after moving out
generic is almost always just as good as name brand. But there are some things you never buy generic, including: peanut butter, ketchup, liquid NyQuil, Chips-Ahoy chewy chocolate chip cookies
just imagine the person on the other end of the phone hates talking on the phone as much as you do. Even a receptionist. I worked as one and I hate talking on the phone
at least once in your life you will go to Wal-mart to buy something under $20 like an ironing board or something and your debit card will get rejected. No one will judge. Everyone at some point in their lives has had $2.98 in their bank account.
thrift stores
everyone else is too busy panicking about everyone else noticing every tiny thing that could possibly be wrong about them to notice any tiny thing that could possibly be wrong about you
you will screw up. a lot. you live and you learn. and when you start to think too hard about that embarrassing thing that happened and how you wish you could change it, just tell yourself that what’s done is done. There’s no changing it, so just forget it and move on. It’s the only way to stay sane.
do the dishes before the sink grows its own ecosystem
you can’t put Dawn dishsoap in the dishwasher.
if you are the only one in the aisle at the grocery store, and you need to get from one end to the other without even looking at anything in that aisle, then you should totally cart-surf down the aisle. Growing old is mandatory. Growing up is optional. Hold on to the little things. They make all the difference.
never try to make cake from scratch at 3am. You end up with a topographical map of Middle Earth.
15% tip.
the best way to get money for food is to tell your grandparents about how you basically live on microwaved mac and cheese. Their horror may result in twenty bucks and orders to go out and get yourself “a real dinner”.
sometimes life sucks, and knowing that it might get better doesn’t always make it suck any less, but you’ll never get to the non-sucky days without enduring the suckiness.
no seriously, NEVER put Dawn in your dishwasher
Do not buy generic brand spaghetti sauce either.
Always check the type of light bulb that goes in lamps. A 60w is not interchangeable with a 40w.
Dollar store batteries work just as well as store brand.
Reward yourself from time to time when you do things that you needed to get done. It’s a good way to remind yourself to do them. Going out to pay a bill? Get Starbucks or something you don’t get often. Rewards don’t have to be huge, they can be small things like that.
Rice, pasta, flour, sugar, cheese, eggs, milk, a pack of chicken, a pack of frozen veggies and a well stocked spice cabinet go a long way food-wise. Splurge and get the biggest container of rice you can. You don’t have to go back and buy it again anytime soon and it makes a TON of meals in the meantime.
Rice can be cooked on the stove. You don’t need a fancy rice cooker. Two parts water to every one part rice (two cups water for one cup of rice for example). Get your water boiling, add rice, put a plate or lid on it, put it on low for 20 minutes. It should be done.
Keep a calendar on your pc of bill due dates. If your bills are set up at inconvenient times, like all of the services started on the first or something, then call up the company and find out if you can get your billing date switched to something more manageable. A lot of places do try to work with you.
There is no shame in calling a company and asking for an extension on a bill. Let them know what you can pay, pay that amount, and they arrange when the rest of the payment is required. This can stop you from having services shut off man. It shows responsibility on your part.
Take time to eat, even when you don’t feel like eating. Your body needs energy to live.
Wash or rinse your dishes before putting them in the dishwasher. It prevents gross caked on junk.
“The Works” is an excellent cheap toilet cleaner.
MAGIC. FUCKING. ERASERS. THEY WORK ON EVERYTHING JUST DON’T SCRUB HARD. I took the ring out of our bathtub with one. Also generic ones work just as well.
Keep some bleach around but if you use it for cleaning? Dillute it. There’s rarely ever a case where you need to pout straight bleach on anything. A cap full or two in a bucket of water works just fine.
DO NOT MIX CLEANERS. Chemical reactions are can be very dangerous. Here’s a good list. (Note that vinegar and baking soda can actually be a good combo for removing smells from things but it’s not very good at actually -cleaning-.)
If you drink? Don’t take meds at the same time it’s just not good.
Make sure you check the dosages on your pill bottles. No one wants to accidentally overdose on cough syrup or ibuprofen.
If you have a uterus make sure you have a heating pad and ibuprofen on hand for the pain. Hot baths also generally help and Ginger Tea is excellent for any nausea.
Buy a first aid kit. It’s worth it in the long run.
You can often do your taxes online at places like TurboTax.
Petroleum jelly (aka Vaseline) is good for chapped lips and you can get a decent sized tube or tub of it (generic brand version) for cheaper/same price as Chapstick.
KEEP TRIPLE ANTIBIOTIC OINTMENT IN YOUR HOUSE FOR CUTS AND SCRAPES AND SORES.
~~Medications~~
Over the counter medications (stuff you can buy right off the shelf no prescription needed) have a name brand and a generic name. ALWAYS buy generic if it’s available it is literally the same thing and way cheaper usually.
Some names to remember when you’re looking for meds!
Acetaminophen = Tylenol
Used to treat pain and reduce fever. Do not take with Ibuprofen.
Ibuprofen = Advil, Midol, Motrin
Used for pain and fever, is an anti-inflammtory. Is good for period cramps because it is an NSAID (non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drug).
Naproxen = Aleve, Naprosyn
Treats fever, pain, arthritis pain, gout, period cramps, tendinitis, headache, backache, and toothache. Is also an NSAID.
Acetaminophen + Asprin + Caffeine = Excedrin
Usually marketed as “Migraine Relief” as a generic.
Asprin = Bayer
Use for pain, fever, arthritis, and inflammation. Makes you bleed easily so should not be used for periods. Might reduce risk of heart attacks.\
Triple Antibiotic Ointment = Neosporin
Used on cuts, sores, and scrapes to reduce risk of infection and promote healing.
Also a general mutli-vitamin isn’t a bad idea and if you don’t get a lot of fruits or milk/sunshine in your diet you might want to get vitamins C and D specifically for daily use.
if you do accidentally lapse and put dawn in your dishwasher, run it empty and put hair conditioner where the detergent goes. that’ll clean it out (tip given to me by dorm custodian when roommate did the thing).
if you live off ramen, add stuff to it! add veggies you like, don’t use the whole flavor packet to cut down on sodium and msg or don’t use it at all and add your own spices.
if you’re making something with potatoes in it (beans, stew) potatoes are done when you can easily stab a fork through them.
you can microwave a hotdog as long as you put it in a microwave safe container of water. microwaves work by making water molecules vibrate. also, when reheating rice leftovers, add a small amount of water, like maybe a spoonfull, so it doesn’t get hard and crunchy.
the rice cooking advice above is for long grain rice. if you’re making short or medium grain rice, a 1:1 ratio (one cup water for one cup rice) is better, so the rice doesn’t come out too mushy.
buy a few cans of chicken. wholesale club stores like sam’s, costco, or bj’s tend to carry multipacks for a good price. they’re incredibly useful for when you forget to defrost meat.
buy meat on sale and put it in the freezer. buy vegetables on sale, and put them in the freezer. frozen veggies are often as flavorful and good as fresh ones, keep longer, and often come in microwaveable bags or with microwave directions.
soak ink stains in milk to help get them out or at least lighten them.
soak blood stains in water as soon as possible, with a bit of detergent or stain remover. scrub at them. use cold water, heat binds proteins to fabric. tbh, there’s no real need to change the washer from cold-cold setting unless the thing you’re washing says to wash in warm water.
acetone, found in most nail polish removers, dissolves super glue.
YOU’RE ALL DOING GOD’S WORK BLESS YOU
Takes pictures, have prints made and put them in photo albums. Be IN the pictures, have someone take pictures of you and your friends. Get over not looking perfect in thw picture. Someday that friend might be gone and those pictures might be all you’ll have, you will want to be in them. I made that mistake with my best friend, i always felt weird asking for a picture together… he died of cancer January of 2014 and now i have no pictures of us together. Its my only regret in life.
For people who experience Shark Week: I have found that a breakfast of two fried eggs and a matching weight of fried Black Pudding [aka Blood Sausage] to be most efficacious in reducing the agony of the day once the blood starts flowing. The sausage is literally LOADED with iron and the eggs are a big protein boost.
Also, you can buy it in bulk and refreeze it indefinitely.
Speaking of protiens:
I say: Buy meat when it’s on sale and cook it immediately when you get home. You can then portion up the results and freeze them for later consumption.
Stews save lives
Invest in a halfway decent sewing kit. You can hand-repair popped seams and deciduous buttons and therefore extend the life of your clothes. Never get the dollar shop ones, they’re just no good.
Never try to microwave an egg in the shell. Just… don’t
Never buy perishables in bulk. Unless you have a firkin ENORMOUS freezer
For those who don’t have or can’t afford a freezer - try googling how to make preserves. They used to jar EVERYTHING back in the bad old days
And if you’re going to do that - make fucking CERTAIN your glass jars are CLEAN
You can make your own tomato sauce [ketchup] by slow-cooking dodgy tomatoes with vinegar and brown sugar.
Unless you actually know what the fuck you’re doing - don’t attempt to do your own electrical work
Australians only - if you’re tired of hunting down tradies to do the thing, try using serviceseeking.com.au - not only do the tradies come to you, but you can price compare and get the best deal.
That said, never hire the lowest bidder. Go from the second or third-lowest and work your way up.
DIY only looks cheap from the outside. They never tell you the cost of tools or the price in time and effort. If you know how - if you can borrow or you already own the tools - then go for it.
Freezer burn does not effect the flavour of the food. At worst, it just dehydrates it a little.
I get asked all the time, in letters and e-mails and questions from the floor: “Can you give me a few tips about being a writer?” And you sense that gleam in the eye, that hope that somehow, this time, you’ll drop your guard and hand over the map to the Holy Grail or, preferably, its URL. I detect, now, a slightly worrying edge to all this, a hint of indignation that grammar, spelling, and punctuation have a part to play (“Don’t publishers have people to do all that?” was one response) and that the universe is remiss in not making allowance for the fact that you don’t have the time.
So, instead, I give tips on how to be a professional boxer. A good diet is essential, of course, as is a daily regime of exercise. Pay attention to your footwork, it will often get you into trouble. Go down to the gym every day — every day of your life that finds you waking up capable of standing. Take every opportunity to watch a good professional fight. In fact watch as many bouts as you can, because you can even learn something from the fighters who get it wrong. Don’t listen to what they say, watch what they do. And don’t forget the diet and the exercise and the roadwork.
Got it? Well, becoming a writer is basically exactly the same thing, except that it isn’t about boxing.
It’s as simple as that.
~ Terry Pratchett, “How to Be a Professional Boxer,” Foreword to the Writers & Artists’ Yearbook 2006 (2005), from A Slip of the Keyboard
Put basically: If they’re offering it to plebes like you, the bubble is about to burst.
There are numerous economic bubbles in past and present. The stock bubble. The internet bubble. The housing bubble. The quantum chocolate bubble. Okay, I just wish there was a quantum chocolate bubble…
The point is, bubbles are just like pyramid schemes. Sooner or later, they’re going to run out of people to sell it to and the whole shebang is going to fall on top of whoever’s stuck on the bottom.
That usually means the “sucker” portion of the common throng. The people who believe they’re going to get rich by investing everything they own on a shanty-house in BF-nowhere that the bank says is worth tons and that said people can’t possibly repay inside of ten lifetimes.
The people who genuinely believe that sending a letter to five friends will result in a vast fortune arriving to them by mail.
The people who really think that some wealthy person in Nigeria [or wherever] is going to launder their millions through a plebe’s bank account.
And the people who think pyramid schemes really, really work.
Let me run through some math. Person A decides to start a little scheme selling otherwise worthless pieces of paper as part of a pyramid scheme. He sells to ten people and gives instructions to each to sell to ten more. They remove their names once they’re at the top of a list of ten people.
On the first iteration [the first sale] there are 11 people in the loop.
Second iteration, 111 have bought in
Third, 1111.
Fourth, 11111. Fifth 111111. By the sixth iteration, you’ve reached over a million people. By the ninth, one billion.
There are about sixty billion people on this earth, the last time I checked. At that rate, you’re going to run out of suckers. And the last people to buy in are always the first to cop the consequences of falling for it.
Same principle with [Mad-Lib here] bubbles. The richest people get hold of said maguffin first, and sell it at inflated prices to those lower in the economic scale as an investment opportunity. Increased demand equals increased value, and a few of the lower echelon sell it down, again at an increased price, to those slightly beneath them.
Lather, rinse and repeat for a few iterations and Joe Schlubb and his neighbours are all desperately trying to sign you on to Maguffin Inc.
Only the skeptics can survive bubbles with their fundings intact. Them, or the people who started it in the first place.
If you’re at a sales pitch and they mention the wealthy’s secrets to getting rich, leave. That’s a sure sign you’re about to be bubbled.
