More studies, finally getting around to doing animal anatomy albeit in a roundabout way

Dark Teyvat

1) lied about us not staying for long (they stayed inside for three hours, I could only do one and I was not in a great shape after that one hour)

2) said I could go to the car when it got too much

3) used those arguments to make me give up on using my own car

4) refused to open their car for me when it got too much and said I wouldn't be allowed to go to my uncle's like last time (I knew I couldn't take that restaurant for long from experience. They already had to drive me away from it once)

5) left me to rot in the car during a heatwave with only my water bottle (not very cold) without anyone checking in on me with so much as a text for two hours. I'm not exaggerating, I checked the time stamps of texts I sent to my aunt upon arrival and after we left.

I wish I wasn't being literal. I also wish I didn't still remember Christmas and being very sick and my parents

1) giving me soup with strong pepper in it despite me repeatedly telling them my throat hurts when I swallow my own saliva or speak

2) told me to eat something solid when I asked what options I had

3) blamed me the following day for not getting canned soup in the garage that I didn't even know existed (and the garage was too cold for me to go comfortably)

4) blowing a gasket when I told them I wasn't in any state to go to extended family Christmas

5) demanding I explain to my aunt, the host, I wouldn't be coming

6) short-circuiting when my aunt (warned before them that I wouldn't be coming) had simply texted back with something "that's too bad, rest and get well soon."

-ancient roman posca: water, red or white wine vinegar, honey, salt, herbs (coriander, mint, thyme)

-switchel: water, ginger, vinegar, sweetener, lemon, salt

-ayran: yogurt, water, salt, mint

-sees the reports of the heatwave in Europe-

I have a friend I know from when we were both 6. She is the only person living nearby and so she saw me go from walking through limping to wheelchair on a daily basis. I keep her updated on my health even tho we rarely hang out anymore. She was gonna come over yesterday and I had to cancel. She asked if I can’t hang out later that day. When I said i won’t feel better later, that if I feel that bad in the morning later will only get worse she got annoyed and “joked” that I’m just finding excuses. And I was surprised, she knows all about me being disabled after all? So, a bit taken aback, I told her it’s a normal thing for me.

“But you got the diagnosis now, aren’t you better?? I thought you’ll get better now”

"You were diagnosed, why aren't you better now?"

As if diagnosis was about being cured. And she could clearly see I wasn't being treated for autism, anyway.

Like. I had no idea why she'd think I'd be cured or on the way to be cured. That's how my brain works. Knowing what's going on won't change it, it'll simply give me tools to know what's happening. And what's happening is that I now have the words to tell you "I need accommodation for this or it will hurt me." (She still doesn't get it and whenever I fold, it hurts, especially since promises don't mean a thing to her)

Sometimes my friends cancel things. I tend to complain about things being added last time far more than about it being cancelled. I also tell people they don't need to tell me why they cancel. I don't care, not my problem, you can do that as long as you tell me beforehand. Cancelling is allowed. Ideally I'd like to reschedule, when everyone is available, but that's it. Cancelling saves me energy, I'm fine with that.

I've met disabled people. If they tell me they can't do something, I'm not going to question it unless it's related to treating other people well (that's the one and only area where I'd allow myself to do that, and it hasn't come up so far. I'm thinking of touching inappropriately, getting physically or verbally violent, stuff like that). I've had an acquaintance tell the TTRPG group "Sorry, turns out I can't make it tonight", and that's okay, we gotta work with it (and drive him to/from the session to make it easier on him). It's really not that hard.

I nod, setting down my chalk and spellbook. “It does sound like there might have been a bit of a misunderstanding.”

“She took against me, that's what happened,” the dead girl says with a scowl. She looks about fourteen, round faced and spotty, with whisps of brown hair peaking out from under her mob-cap. Her face and her crossed arms have a tell-tale bluish tinge to them. A cholera death.

“I been here for don't know how long and never gave any trouble. Nobody ever complained about me 'till her.”

…well, that's not strictly true.

Number 12, Barclay Street has been attracting rumours of haunting since the mid nineteenth century.

Sounds of faint singing and crying in the corridors at night. Cold spots. Doors that open and close by themselves. Animals acting strangely. Harmless, mid to low-level stuff, typical for a bored teenage poltergeist.

Still, pointing that out isn't likely to achieve much, and certainly the most recent complaints of blood running down the walls, screams in the dark and paralysing night terrors seem distinctly out of character.

The ghost toes the chalk again, more tentatively this time. It stays resolutely unbroken.

She could get out if she wanted to. I'm not one of those assholes who brings out their full arsenal of wards and sigils for a first meeting with a level 2 spectre. The summoning circle will keep her in one place for as long as I need her to talk, but it wouldn't hold for a moment if she really fought against it.

I take it as a good sign that she's still here. Pouting or not, she's clearly willing to work with me.

“None of the others could do this,” she says. “None of 'em even saw me.” She looks up. “Are you here to exise me?”

“Exorcise,” I say instinctively, and curse myself when she flinches. “Sorry, no, no! I don't exorcise people from their homes without good reason, not if they're happy where they are.”

“I was happy. Till she started calling in all them ghost hunters.”

Mrs Delaney had been quite persistent in her attempts to 'fix' her haunted house. Most of the people she found were charlatans, of course, but I'd still arranged an appointment as fast as I could once word reached me. It wouldn't have been long before she happened upon somebody with Talent, and unfortunately not everybody in this field knows how to behave like a professional.

“I think we might be able to help each other,” I say, careful to keep my voice calm and level.

“Don't see how. Not unless you can exorcise Her.”

“Not quite what I had in mind.” I pull out my phone and scroll through my photos. “You say that you're not the cause of the most recent incidents of paranormal activity?”

A pause. The ghost gnaws on her lip. I wait, patiently, keeping my body language open and nonthreatening. “I… I knocked her coffee cup over,” she admits at last. “She was being mean and talking on her telephone, saying I done all these things when I never did! So I decided to show her what I could do if I wanted.”

“Hmm.” The ghost eyes me nervously, as if expecting me to pull out a book, bell and candle and banish her on the spot.

“I only tipped it,” she adds. “I didn't break it or nothing!”

“You shouldn't have touched it at all,” I say sternly. “But… I can appreciate that you were frustrated, so let's say no more about it.”

The ghost looks relieved.

“My point is,” I continue, “if you weren't the one making blood rain from the ceiling or tormenting people in their sleep, then what was? There's no other ghosts on the property.” I find the picture I was looking for. “You can get anywhere around the house, right? Including behind the furniture and in the backs of cupboards?”

“Yes'm.”

I hold the phone up so that she can see the picture on the screen. “I'm going to let you go free in a moment, and I need you to see if you can find anything that looks like this.”

The ghost wrinkles her forehead. “What's that when it's at home?”

And the kids are like "but they get into our bug traps" and "we didn't catch him he followed us home"

And their parents are like. Please i do not believe that 6 fucking pixies smuggled themselves into our garage on the underside of your bicycle saddle and then set up shop in the old dolls house. These are living beings they're not toys it's not kind to treat them like this

And the kids are like we are NOT treating them like anything you said we're not allowed to trap them and they always get into our traps so we always run away when they see us and then they follow us and get inside our backpacks and stuff

And the parents are like

Stop lying!!!

And then they set up wildlife cams and not only can pixies apparently do all of that and are very desperate to hang out with these human kids (who have fun life-sized toys and are covered in wonderful things like glitter and are a free source of fresh bugs and pop tart crumbs)

But they can also like. Fully just pick locks and shit.

Yes, I was tearing through books constantly, and talking to this teacher at least weekly. Because even though I always loved reading as a kid, literature was always a very weak subject for me in terms of a teaching-to-standardized-test school setting (I just do awful on "what color were the curtains" type multiple choice questions. Those details don't stick in my memory THEY JUST DON'T). But that didn't matter for this class. I could just read my way out of any bad test score. I have always had fond memories of how I "fudged" my way through that class and "abused' the extra credit policy.

There's generally going to be rooms dedicated to and build for warmth, the living quarters, both for nobles and their servants. This will be the central living tower, or parts of it called a Kemenate (literally 'room with a stove'), the great hall and work spaces around the kitchen. You can put the Kemenate on top of the hall to catch the big fires' and daily living's heat through the wooden floor, but you often can't put wooden stuff on top of the kitchens (that's a fire risk). If you have the money and space, you build a whole separate comfy place for living because you don't have to stay in the most defensible part of the castle all the time. These separate living buildings are also called Kemenate and are often build from wood, cob, brick etc.

People used to wear much more clothes indoors, including while sleeping, and those clothes were much thicker and sturdier than what we largely wear today. Every time you think of how cold those stone walls are, think about everyone wearing a linen shift + two-ish layers of wool on all body parts except hands and head + stockings and shoes + some kind of head-covering. In Ye Old Middle Ages, women are probably wearing a wimple, which is kind of like a modern Hijab in terms of coverage. People wear shifts, socks, and a head-covering to bed.

I think people used to radiators also really underestimate how much a large open fire/tiled stove heats up a room. Also, middle and northern Europe (as well as parts of Northern China) had and to this day have beds and benches build into tiled and cob stoves. Those fuck.

Beds are enclosed so you stay warm in them, either by curtains, in wall niches or with wood. There's also a type of bed that's inside a chest (like a coffin) so you can stuff your stuff inside during the day and put down the lid to use it as a bench. That's also another reason for people to always sleep in groups. Depending on the era, one of the jobs of a lady's maid or a retainer might literally be warming their master's bed. In early times and among servants, people also sleep in large groups in rooms together in general even outside a farming context, often with animals like pet dogs, too, which further warms everything up.

Walls are not bare, cold stone, but covered with a layer of plaster or cob, tiles or wooden panels, sometimes layered, and believe me, this makes such a difference. Source: I lived in a Ye Olde German Farmhouse with 70 cm thick stone walls and flag stone floor and all that converted to modern flats for a while.

On top of that you hang tapestries on the wall, which are not like modern printed cloth but basically wall rugs, sometimes several inches thick, and rugs or rushes (like a light cover of hay) on the floor on top of stone, tile, wooden panelling or a cob floor cover that goes over the heave flag stone. Pillows and blankets on all sitting surfaces, often on top of panelling (in the case of benches build into the stone). The roof of a room is also tiled, panelled or plastered. Upper stories will generally have wooden floors. Stories in a tower heat each other upwards, so the nicer rooms are further up.

The inner stone walls of a castle, even if stone and very thick, will heat up a few degrees in comparison to the outside walls if the castle is continually heated/lived in, and also trap heat inside, and this will make a difference. Inner walls might also be thinner and made of wood, cob or brick. You're defending against the outside, after all.

You put stuff in the windows. Holy shit. Screens of wood, horn, cloth or leather/hide, often treated for extra insulation. Why are these fantasy castles all so drafty.