random lost girl

i wanted to learn how to hunt ruffed grouse and train bird dogs so i sent an email to my local chapter of the ruffed grouse society explaining that getting into wildlife groups is intimidating to me because I’m trans

and all they saw was that someone under 60 wanted to learn to hunt grouse & several months into my mentorship I was told that like 7 old guys argued over me until they had to pick a number between 1 and 100 to decide who got to personally mentor me.

and he said “I was actually suggesting lunch first for your comfort on the assumption you wouldn’t want to get together with a man you’ve never met, in the woods with a gun.”

If someone you know is grieving, telling them "just let me know what I can do" means nothing. They can't. They don't know. And the small things are too embarrassing to ask for.

Bring them a cheese platter. Pre-Cut fruit. Peanut butter pretzels. Protein shakes (like slimfast) Food that requires no prep and does not create dishes.

Do the dishes. Take out the trash. Sweep the floor. Vacuum the carpet. They won't ask you to do this, but it will help.

I agree with all of the above and will add:

1. We got a care box and loved it: coffee, tinned food, some sweets, and necessities for a month 10/10

2. One of our friends paid our electricity bill. 10/10

3. One friend spent a day gardening because we couldn't. She also washed the dishes. 10/10

4. We had lots of people come by the house-so appreciate the condolences. Some were there wrll into the night. please pick up on cues and leave when you have out-stayed your welcome.

5. The best gifts are memories-pictures and stories of the deceased are to be treasured and if I saw a photo or heard a story of my dad that I didn't know I would be so grateful!

oh

my

god

Luckily I am the stubbornest human alive, ‘cause I never woulda finished otherwise. I didn’t know what I was doing, didn’t know the terms to look up how to do anything, I musta reinvented the wheel like eight times and it took ten months, BUT I DID IT.

Figured I’d suffered enough and would never do it again and now I’m on quilt #9 smdh

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I’m hyperventilating.

Holy shit. Holy SHIT.

This is INCREDIBLE.

Oh my god.

I’ve gotta go lay down holy shit look at this how do we just walk by other human beings every day and live our separate lives when there’s a person sitting next to you on the train or in line for coffee who goes home and makes things like this what even IS being human holy shit.

Okay so on a purely technical level, this is not that difficult, you just gotta come at it a little sideways.

The background of this sucker is just rows of 1.5″-wide fabric strips. I can’t remember the exact pattern, but I wanna say it was something like one row 6″ strips, one row 4.5″ strips, one row alternating? I don’t remember exactly, it was a while ago. That’s not difficult, you just lay it out and sew it all together one row at a time. It’s not hard, just tedious.

The fish are a lil different. I can’t draw, there is a disconnect somewhere and my hands are stupid, so I figured out probably fifteen years ago that tracing was the way to go. For this, I legit just yanked several photos of fancy-looking goldfish off the internet and traced over ‘em in Photoshop.

Once I had enough, I printed my outlines, laid ‘em out on the background to create the idea of movement, and then traced the outlines out on fabric and pinned the hell out of ‘em.

This woulda been WAY easier with Heat ‘N Bond, but I didn’t know that was a thing at the time. From there I just used just about every fancy stitch on my inherited sewing machine to make the fish STAY WHERE I PUT THEM, and also look good.

I have since learned this is called “raw edge applique” but whatever. It’s fun, it’s neat, you can do it with a bunch of stuff and impress the hell outta people. More recently, it’s how I’ve gone from this:

to this:

(this was another project I SUFFERED over unnecessarily, because I’m the dip that decided to quilt the waves, like a moron)

This is worse when the catastrophe is unexpected, when the animal is juvenile or when cruelty was deliberate. And sometimes the body is such a mess that CPR or any attempt at heroics is really just… performative.

In times like this, all we can really do is try to manage the people that witnessed it: the owner, their family, the good samaritans who helped them get to the clinic, and the bystanders who happened to be in the waiting room. All of those people need to be managed to some degree after witnessing that degree of trauma.

The pet owner, and possibly the family, need the most time and attention. They may well be in shock, and while you’re trying to tell them what’s happened and get permission to stop CPR, you also need to watch them. Encourage them, gently, to sit down if they need to. Bring them a glass of water if they need to. Nothing wrong with offering a bit of emergency chocolate if they look really shaky or this is going on a long time. Tell them you will clean up their pet and make them look presentable if they want to spend time with them saying goodbye. Encourage them to call family or a friend. Do not let them drive until you are quite sure they are safe to do so.

Then we have the good samaritans, who also witnessed the trauma. Though they’re less emotionally invested they will still be affected. And practically, they may need a lot of help cleaning up their car. (Do not apply heat to blood)

Lastly the bystanders also need to be spoken to, because they’ve also witnessed a terrible trauma, or its aftermath. And you don’t know what previous traumas or baggage they’re carrying with them. At the very least they need a check in, thanked for their patience, and possibly herded to a location that is not covered in blood.

Another good example of this is Titanic. Even if you were somehow ignorant of the ship's sinking, the film makes sure you know that it sank with its framing device of Old Rose telling her story to people salvaging the Titanic's wreak. And Titanic's plot structure could only possibly work if you know the ship is going to sink. I'm not just talking about building tension, tragedy, and stakes for the characters like with the above example, I mean that if you didn't know that the Titanic was going down walking into the film, the abrupt shift from romance to suspense-disaster would be an increadibly tough pill to swallow. But it works because we expect it. You don't walk into a film called Titanic without expecting the damn boat to sink.

However, the sad thing about both of these examples, is that despite all the benefits that came from telling the audience these things ahead of time, I think the main reason the creators didn't make them plot twists was because they couldn't have. Treasure Island is the single most influential piece of pirate media out there, and you'd have to have been living under a rock for over a century to not know the Titanic sank. So, the writers had to work around the fact that these important turning points in the narratives were common knowledge, and they wound creating incredible stories as a consequence.

If the audience knows before the character knows, it's horror

If the character knows before the audience knows, it's a whodunit/mystery story

If the character and audience find out together, it's adventure And of course:

Me, hanging on by a thread: