Blood and Honey

But now the company holiday party is upon us.

And I’ve been lying about the girlfriend.

Reasonable: “just say she couldn’t make it!”

and honestly the way that I feel about THAT is, "ok, so now imagine that you live in clown world and everyone you encounter is clowns and all the institutions you are forced to navigate are clown institutions run by clowns. that is life as an autistic person"

Bitch before enriched flour, neural tube defects like spina bifida were far more common. Even now, spina bifida clinicians and researchers are begging to have salt and maize fortified to reach groups that don’t use as much flour. Before iodized salt, the United States had a fucking GOITER BELT. Eleven years after the introduction of fluoridated water, a city in Michigan found the rate of dental caries among school children dropped a staggering 60%— in an era where tooth decay regularly fucking killed people

I’m literally not even going to start on vaccines, which are among the most successful and robustly studied public health measures in world history

I made this transparent PNG the night he died in preparation for one of the many ways I was going to memorialize him--a surface rug in his likeness that I planned on laying directly in the line of his favourite sunbeam. And I uploaded that PNG here, because this is the website where people post their cats.

I was not expecting the reception I got. Many people have pointed out that this post has more reblogs than likes, and how insane that is in 2025 when reblog culture is at an all time low. I didn't even talk about the fact that Burger passed away in the original post, it wasn't a tearjerker reblog bait or anything like that. People just loved Burger that much, in the same way I fell in love with him at first sight. He was such an ugly kitten.

Anyways, it's really special to me that so many people have reblogged my best friend. I made this PNG to memorialize him in a completely different way, and you all wound up doing just that in ways I never even imagined.

Thank you. Wherever he is, I know the sun is shining.

and here he made his first fatal error. his moment of hubristic sex pesting. because of course i know where the term blow job comes from, i love learning about sex and the history of sexual terms! i know so much about oral sex that i could write a book on it!

My mom told me stories about her childhood where my grandma would take her to a hotdog stand and they would buy a hotdog to split, and that was their meal for the day. My mom said grandma never complained in front of her and always made everything seem so fun, she never realized they were poor until she grew up.

My nana met the man who raised my mom with her some years later. He’s always been the one I called grandpa, but we were never that close. My mom described how my grandma still saved every penny she could even after marrying my grandpa who made plenty of money. She went to work events with my grandpa while wearing second hand dresses she repaired herself, while the other women wore dresses worth thousands of dollars. My nana suddenly started voting conservative like my grandpa, but she never actually participated in political conversations or defended right wing politicians. She stayed silent, and acted constantly liberal in her every day life. My grandma suddenly became very depressed after my grandpa started staying much later at work and traveling for work more. The doctor said she needed more vitamin b. My mom once said she wondered if my grandma really was deficient, or if that grandpa cheated on my grandma like the first one did. Either way, she still smiled. She still kept the kids happy. She still spent all her time teaching kids in schools or volunteering at women’s shelters.

Her and my grandpa always got along, and I’m sure my grandpa loved her based on how he reacted after she passed. And I would feel wrong to assume my grandma changed herself for or just stayed in a marriage out of financial need without any proof. But the truth is- I’ve thought about it. I’m not sure. The truth is it would have been reasonable, it would have made sense. The truth is she lived in a world where that wouldn’t be rare at all and there’s no way to know for sure. She lived in a world where that’s just as likely, if not more, than staying with someone because you love them.

Because of will shenanigan my mom didn’t get all the inheritance my grandma saved up for her, but she got a fair chunk. My mom owns her own house, she’s financially stable and can soon get her teachers pension. She’ll be okay for the rest of her life even if her husband doesn’t support her. That’s something my grandma never had. She has it now because of my grandmas work and planning for that for my mother’s entire life until my grandma passed.

they've still never managed their own bank account;

they don't know what banks they are with, what bank accounts even exist, how much is in them, how to access them;

they don't know all their assets and liabilities;

they don't know the overall typical income or outgoing expenses;

they don't know who their utilities are with, whose name they're actually in (husband or joint), how much they cost, or how the bills are paid (direct debit, BPAY, etc.);

they don't know the pension and/or superannuation details.

They may know all the shit and they may even balance the household books, but the accounts are in only the deceased husband's name, none in hers or as joint accounts which may complicate some things with the estate, especially given that there's often no bank branches to visit and it's almost impossible to just call the banks and speak to a person

Can you imagine dealing with the loss of your husband and having close to zero idea about or simple-ish access to any of that?

“Ghosts aren’t real” it’s very fair and rational that you believe that

“Ghosts aren’t real anymore” I’m about to hear a poem or very sad story