Kiss them for me

Beginnings and endings and beginnings. Meet Riley and Lexi. Aunt and niece. Survivors (cue to Reba).

Japan’s vast assortment of mascots all share a similar problem.

…you guys…

Just read an excerpt from a productivity/goal setting book that concerned Tolkien.

His publisher mentioned that people wanted more about the hobbits after Tolkien published The Hobbit.

So Tolkien started another novel.

And apparently bounced between the depths of despair and the height of confidence for the entire process (he said that: “his ‘labour of delight’ had been ‘transformed into a nightmare.’”)

He gave up multiple times.

That book? Fellowship of the Ring.

You know what kept him going? C.S. Lewis’ support.

First lesson: if you’re stressing over your book, remember that Tolkien did too.

You know what else kept him going while he wrote Lord of the Rings? Well, 

having an income while he wrote, that he didn’t really have to work for. In fact, he held his dream job (Professor of Literature) with a full-time income, that came with a pleasant private office. He sat at work, for which he was being paid to do something else, and actively avoided doing his actual job while he pursued his own unrelated novel.

having a stay-at-home wife to run his entire home and family for him.

having servants…. that helps….

having a large, pretty house within a pleasant 25-minute walk of work.

never having to do:

household maintenance

laundry

cooking

cleaning

Life Admin

the not-fun gardening

the not-fun childcare

The work day of Men of His Time ended when they came home. Women of His Time, and Staff, existed to run the rest of his life. And that’s what they did. Jonald Ronald Rolkien Tolkien was the center of his household universe, which existed to support him in every possible way.

Let’s be real: he was not the person who was up in the night with a teething baby. That was what the nanny was for, followed by the wife. It would have been unthinkable for a man of his time/class to do his own childcare.

Actually, it’s worth noting that he had in particular a Very Intelligent Icelandic nanny, who lived in his house and looked after his four children all day, and was never given a holiday, and told the children lovely bedtime stories about trolls and the Icelandic Edda, and who provided a useful resource for the language and myth he used in LoTR, until his wife became too jealous.

I mean, what could YOU do if you had that much support? Write an epic! probably!!

Because nobody was forcing him to do anything, ever, he slept late and woke up late. sounds nice

Tolkien did not do laundry. He did not cook meals. He did not clean the house. He did not wrestle rice pudding down the necks of his screaming babies, while calmly and lovingly answering his schoolchild’s questions. He wasn’t making a cake while talking to his boss on the phone and wiping up the dog’s sick. He did not spend hours every day in the process of keeping his home together, or sorting the affairs of his four children, or sorting out the wifi. The Care and Keeping of Tolkien was outsourced to wife, servants, scouts, assistants, waitstaff.

He would have received free meals at work, although he usually walked home for lunch, where he was served food and alcohol that he took into his private study. but if he didn’t want to do that, Oxford profs of His Time could just get free lunch. He could ring a bell to be brought tea and snacks at work. And then he would go home and be served dinner.

Going to the pub with his friends, who supported and admired him! Sure!

not having to go home in the evening to his four toddlers and children, because he was a Man of His Times! and he could totally just spend evenings holed up in a pub with his admirers, because he was not required at home to help, or parent, or do anything in the home, except be served a glass of beer and go into his study.

god, imagine spending hours in the pub on a work night with a bunch of highly qualified literature professors telling you how smart and lovely and amazing you are. heck YES you’d be encouraged.

The Hobbit was already popular so it was probably quite helpful to know that while writing the next work.

Working and writing in a place that is generally considered to be an inspiring setting for academia and literature. Want to write Elrond’s Council? Sit down at a beautiful old stone table and start writing about the table. Want to write about a tree? Go write under your favorite ancient tree in the Botanical Gardens. Want a snack? Ring a bell and a scout will bring you toast and a cup of tea.

I mean, he wasn’t exactly spending his 40 hours a week under a manager’s baleful eye while he manned the self-checkouts at the Tesco in Coventry, or pumped gas for minimum wage in Montauk, scribbling notes into his phone. He floated around The City of Dreaming Spires, dreamily making art, while several people labored very hard so that he would be untroubled by Real Life while he floated.

Let’s be real. Tolkien’s literary accomplishments are very impressive, but he L I T E R A L L Y

was doing them on his work clock with the full support of a pit crew.

To be fair, I love the man. And I love the huffy apologism in the Tolkien Gateway: “Writing  [The Fellowship of the Ring] was slow due to Tolkien’s perfectionism, and was frequently interrupted by his obligations as an examiner, and other academic duties.”

I’m ??? sorry that writing a novel on the company dime was frequently interrupted by occasionally having to do his job???? oh my god I love and hate this so much,

Dianna Wynne Jones, of Tolkien’s students at Oxford, commenting “of Tolkien, they said he was wasting his time on hobbits when he should have been writing learned articles…”

maybe because that’s what academics are SUPPOSED TO DO, it is their job,,,

He would also deliberately mumble incomprehensibly, ignoring his students, deliberately delivering terrible lectures, so that they would all go away; but Dianna actually wanted to receive some of the education she’d been promised:

“I imagine I caused Tolkien much grief by turning up to hear him lecture week after week, while he was trying to wrap his lectures up after a fortnight and get on with The Lord of the Rings (you could do that in those days, if you lacked an audience, and still get paid).”

God love the man! Deliberately teaching so badly because he planned to alienate his students and collect a paycheck! He would be flayed on social media for less, today. There would be news articles about the Lazy Professor. He would be fired, and buried, and dug up, and fired again.

*screams at the top of my lungs*

$185,000/4 br

Laura Dern in dramatic wigs

Armie Hammer worshipping a tiny brunette

The aqua 1960s

Purple Florida

People named Doug Jones

Taika Waititi inventing the buddy comedy

Kid protagonists I want to adopt immediately

Nosebleeds + Timothée Chalamet

So about 4 days ago my brother was working in the yard and he was getting rid of this big old plastic pot we had that was already falling apart. To fit it in the garbage bag he had to smash it into smaller pieces with a shovel.

But when he dumped out the dirt….

…eggs. Ten little eggs.

My mom brought them in to show me. Not knowing what they were or if they were dangerous or not, she asked me if I wanted to take one and open it up outside to make sure it wasn’t full of baby bugs or something. I told her that they were definitely reptile eggs but she was still giving them the ‘I-still-don’t-trust-that-they-aren’t-bugs’ look.

I knew there was no way it was full of bugs and I wouldn’t be able to get it off my mind if we cut one out and killed it. But then I remembered candling.

If you don’t know what candling is, it’s when you put a flashlight under an egg to check if it’s fertile or not.

So I told her to hold on and I ran to get a flashlight.

Lo and behold they were not bugs.

It was our first time ever candling anything so we weren’t exactly sure what to look for. The only videos I had ever seen for candling an egg was a video talking about how some geckos lay eggs without a mate but there is a rare chance they could be fertile anyway; the eggs in the video were always empty though. So we checked all the eggs and they were all alive and responsive. I managed to convince my family that I was 99% sure they were lizards of some kind.

Since we kind of accidentally destroyed their nest and a storm was coming we set out to give them somewhere safe to hatch.

 We got a pot and filled it with damp dirt like the one we found them in but smaller. After candling each egg, we made a divot in the dirt and placed each egg half in and half off, careful not to turn them too much and damage them.

My mom did some research and found that the eggs needed to be kept somewhere with good humidity so we got a plastic book crate, drilled some holes in it, and filled the bottom with wet paper towels.

The mystery eggs were put in the garage where it was just as hot as outside but safe from the huge thunderstorm.

Day 2 of eggs and nothing happened. We didn’t think anything would happen just yet but we were all a little worried that we were doing the wrong thing. It was my day to go finish up cleaning up the dirt and shards from the broken pot in the yard when I found another egg.

I picked it up and it wasn’t as firm as the others. In fact it was leaking. I called my mom and candled the little guy. He was just as alive as the others were. There wasn’t much room in the new incubator with the other eggs so we got a tiny beta fish tank we haven’t used in years and fixed it up for the egg. We put it in the garage next to the others.

Now this egg had me worried. He had been out in the storm with a damaged egg. I would go out and check on him throughout the day. Not a thing happened and I was starting to worry that he didn’t make it.

Day 3 of eggs was interesting. I went out to check again on little egg 11 with my mom. She asked how the others were doing and wanted to see. It was fogged up on the inside so I shone a light through and saw it. A head! A little baby lizard head poking out of the egg! 

The incubator was taken inside and everyone was gathered around the table. We would all switch from watching the eggs, to someone doing research, to checking the eggs, to setting up the empty tank we had, to checking the eggs again.

All together 4 little lizards were hatching. They’d kick for a bit in their eggs but then fall asleep because it was so tiring. 

After a while my mom got concerned about one that hadn’t opened its eyes in ages. It wasn’t moving. I picked up the egg and put it in my hand. I rubbed the shell and gently gave it little tugs. Then out the baby came!

This little guy came out healthy and fast. After a brief look-around he ran out of my hand and back into the pot. Then over the edge of the pot to explore the hides we fit in. 

After 4 of the babies fully hatched and we figured out what we were going to do, we put the incubators in the spare tank we had so we could keep an eye on them. At that point it was a little past 1:00am and a 5th egg started to hatch.

Day 4 of eggs and lizards we went to the local pet store to get something that these super small babies could eat. Luckily, Petco carries super small crickets and meal worms. We loaded up on reptile supplies: bus, vitamin dust, hides, heat lamps, you name it we probably bought it.

Upon getting home my mother and I readied the tank.

At that point all but two eggs had hatched. One we thought wasn’t going to make it because it didn’t react when I candled it, and the other was number 11 who was found a day late and broken. We decided to move the two into one incubator instead of two while we moved 9 of the lizards into their temporary home.

When we look for them they were hiding in the incubator all curled up together under a plant we had put in. They actually seem to do that everywhere they decide to hide which is kind of surprising to me. I thought they were going to all be really territorial with each other. But they seem to like each other more than I thought they would.

After a few hours, number 11 hatched and he was just as healthy and fast as the others despite being through the storm earlier. Not too long after that, the last egg hatched. He was much smaller than the others but equally as fast. We added them both to the tank with the others and they hid as quick as a ninja.

Day 5 of lizards was mostly setting up heat lamps and lights and worrying if they were okay. They stayed hidden under rocks and brush. We never saw them eat so we went back to researching.

Day 6 of lizards and they are alive and well! They’ve taken a liking to the new heat lamp and have been scuttling around there all day. I even saw one eat a cricket! 

Even the smallest of the bunch was enjoying himself in the warmth :)