Crow N’ Quill

Your action hero just got shot in the shoulder, stitched it up in a motel bathroom, and is now running through a forest. I need you to know that a shoulder wound severs muscle, nerves, and sometimes bone, and the human body's response to that is not "mild wincing followed by full range of motion." here is what injuries actually do to peoplee...

⊹ Adrenaline is REAL and it does allow people to do extraordinary things immediately after injury, BUT it is a loan, not a gift. you borrow the function and you pay it back later with interest. Your character might genuinely be able to run for twenty minutes after being stabbed. and then the adrenaline drops and everything the body was delaying arrives all at once. the collapse is NOT weakness. it's biology collecting its debt. write the debt collection. it's more interesting than the heroic sprint anyway.

⊹ Blood loss changes cognition before it drops you. you don't go from "fine" to "unconscious." you go through a whole middle stage of confusion, poor decision-making, emotional dysregulation, a strange calm, tunnel vision, difficulty forming sentences. Your injured character making a bad call, saying something they normally wouldn't, becoming suddenly and inexplicably gentle--that's blood loss. use the middle stage. it's dramatically rich and almost nobody writes it.

⊹ Recovery has a timeline and the timeline is long and boring and inconvenient to plot. a broken rib takes six weeks and during those six weeks sneezing is a genuine emergency. a concussion means no screens, no reading, no bright lights, and symptoms can persist for months. a stab wound to the abdomen means weeks of infection risk, limited mobility, and a specific kind of exhaustion that has nothing to do with sleep. Your character being sidelined and frustrated and useless for a long time is not a narrative problem. it's the story.

Cite CA Penal Code 396 - "California Penal Code section 396 prohibits excessive and unjustified increases in the prices of essential consumer goods and services, construction services, hotel lodging, and residential rental properties during and shortly after a declared state of emergency or local emergency."

Report to DCBA.LACOUNTY.GOV or call 1-800-593-8222.

You can also call and shame the landlords / rental companies directly.

“Are you going to have another tantrum?” Miss Daisy asks. “I thought you had gotten used to mommy leaving?”

Of course I cried that morning. It was the first time seeing my mother in decades and she had nothing on her mind but the early meeting she could not be late for. “I’m sorry, miss.”

She hands me a tissue. “Big girls don’t cry.” She looks at the picture. “Are you drawing a dolphin, dear?”

I shrug. I’m not sure what I’m doing. In Alfheimr there was no use to drawing. My fingers are so used to writing letters and numbers that I find it hard to draw. But the colour speaks to me.

I remember a birthday cake, covered in blue frosting and topped with seven candles. Susan smiled as she blew them out. Nobody needed to guess her wish but we made silly guesses anyway. We were laughing in the hollow expanse of Alfheimr’s dining hall, and for a moment we forgot about the thousands of other tables in the hall celebrating birthdays that day. It was just the twenty of us, formed into unbreakable hær, making a home for ourselves.

But then I’m also thinking of Susan turning white under icy waves when her önd was not strong enough to keep her warm. Nineteen terrified hands reaching for her as she sunk away, her smile now as permanently etched on her face as in my memories of her.

We begged our seggr to slow down and she refused. We cried that we just needed more time to learn. But time was the one thing that was in short supply. The loss of life was not only a calculated risk, but a guaranteed expectancy. No gradual awakenings for us. We were thrown into the deep and we would either sink or swim.

There were so many girls, and they needed only one queen.

okay starting with preschoolers (3-5 year olds) they range a lot. i mostly work with nonverbal preschoolers, but i know several who are insanely verbose and use big words. one of them will answer questions in full sentences, the other doesn't even respond to her name.

kindergartners are pretty similar, but they tend to do a lot of vacant stares.

first graders looove attention. if you pay attention to a first grader you're done for. they tend to start developing their personalities to an extent at this point, and are more like little drama queens than anything else.

second graders are complex, strange beasts. they know swear words. they watch horror movies. they stay up until 8. they're real rebels. at this point they get a little meaner. more likely to point out your boogers. they still think burps are funny.

third grade is a bunch of little guys. like at this point they're at the age where they think they're basically adults and have nothing to worry about. baby talking them is a bad idea.

forth grade is 9-10 year olds and trust me, they're so much more mature than you think. they're basically like people. some of them are pretty cool. some are not.

there are things you should be doing now to prevent yourself from starting to look like 🥀

Why does it matter? Future you would like to avoid the pain, limited motion, and fall risk that goes along with worsening posture.

What’s the focus?

1. Keep the flexibility in your spine

2. Stretch the muscles in the front

3. Strengthen the muscle in the back

Here are some simple things you can do daily while sitting and when you get up to go into the bathroom or the kitchen

Keep the flexibility by doing these repeated movements: 10 repetitions several times a day

The goal is to give yourself a double or triple chin. Keep your nose pointing forward, don’t let it tip up or down

Thoracic extension- use a chair with a seat back that comes up to the level of your shoulder blades. Try to bend back over the top of the chair without arching away from the seat back and without extending your neck. If the pressure from the top of the chair is uncomfortable you can place a towel there

Stretch the muscles in the front by using a door frame. This one will feel good afterwards

If this isn’t enough of a stretch you can do one side at a time. If you have the right arm up step forward with the right foot and turn slightly to the left. Then do it on the other side.

Strengthen the muscles in the back by squeezing your shoulder blades together for a count of 10 and then repeating 10 times. You can do this several times a day Hint: Don’t lift your shoulder blades up

There are lots more exercises for strengthening your back muscles but this is a good starting point and easy to do. I like doing it while driving

Tips:

Do the best you can

If it hurts stop