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This Tumblr post is the first time someone has explained to me *why* I couldn’t feed them before those instances.

every single time i have had to say, "i understand that if he had food or water, he could aspirate it into his lungs under anesthesia. i am not lying to you." THEN someone would make a little note and i would stop being repeatedly asked.

not a single time was that risk explained to me. the only reason it came up was because i already knew. i still don't understand why it isn't standard pre-op counseling or pre-op check information, when me as a parent acknowledging the actual risk also put THE MEDICAL STAFF at ease because i conveyed that i had informed understanding as reason to not lie about giving my kid food.

2) any vegetable is better than no vegetable

Upon the Hail Mary’s arriving at Erid, the Eridians In Charge Of Things eventually require both Rocky and Grace to provide formal recorded testimony regarding the deaths of Rocky’s Blip-A crewmates and the final outcome of the Blip-A’s mission. It’s mostly Rocky whose witness statements they need; Grace is primarily speaking as an expert consultant on the topic of lethal radiation, as supporting evidence for Rocky’s claims as to his crewmates’ cause-of-death.

No one on Erid is gonna accuse Rocky, one of the Saviors Of Erid, of any kind of foul-play regarding his crewmates’ deaths. The hearing is intended to legally close that door so that neither Rocky nor the Eridian version of the Petrova Taskforce can ever be sued by family or friends of the dead Blip-A crew. However, when Grace initially hears about all this, he gets the mistaken impression that someone is pointing fingers at Rocky, and he gets most of the way through shouting his way into the witness box as a character witness in Rocky’s favor, before it’s explained to him that that really isn’t necessary.

That’s not the only hiccup in the whole process, though. As there is no unbiased party immediately available with the necessary expertise to translate Grace’s spoken English into any Eridian language, Grace uses his old cobbled-together laptop translator to help him record his testimony. (Erid’s legal courts do have provisions for taking statements from Eridians who cannot speak out loud, but those provisions generally assume the Eridian in question can provide a silent statement in engraved Eridian language, which Grace also cannot do with acceptable fluency.)

It isn’t until after it’s all over, when Rocky and Grace are hanging out in Grace’s temporary human-habitat (pre-beach biodome), that Rocky realizes — Grace’s laptop translator uses clips of Rocky’s own voice for its English-to-Eridian translations. Grace is now formally in Erid’s legal records, providing formal sworn testimony, using Rocky’s voice.

I came across it from Anne Lister’s diary, where she says that she would “grubble under women’s skirts” and honestly. The word perfectly encapsulates the fumbling feeling of fighting your way through layers of fabric to reach the promised pussy land.

However the word has been forbidden, reviled from the first moment my beloved heard it. They shuddered and it’s truly one of the only restrictions they’ve ever placed on my vocabulary so I don’t say it. But I do think it, on occasion.

Sometimes the word will pop into my head and I will think it too hard and my wife will turn and glare at me and accuse, “I know you’re thinking it!”

“But I didn’t say it!” I protest. But they’re always right. Even with no context they always know when I’m thinking it.

Today I told my wife, “I shared the unmentionable word with Astrid today and she quite enjoyed it. She repeated it several times.”

They bellowed liked a dying wildebeest and said, “I can go months without remembering that word exists and then it comes up again. It’s so disgusting, it’s what Sméagol would do on the ground digging for worms!”

I was laughing and protested, “It sounds like fighting through skirts, the groping around.”

“No! That is something that happens in the muck and the filth. It’s negative sexy.

“Bet you're gonna take to Tumblr and share it and some people are gonna be like, ‘Oh what a great word! We should definitely use that in our lexicon. Top tier word!’ And you know what? THEYRE WRONG. GARBAGE WORD. GROSS.”