For things worth keeping

Made this post about 15 minutes after the repair guy who fixed the pump on my dishwasher packed up his tools and left, as the dishwasher was whirring along doing my dishes from that morning.

Finally redrew my planner doodles in a postable format, featuring the Eridian Welcoming Committee by @justcakethanks

Original under the cut

Hunting for some coochie

Wrote a G up on his belt

imagine being on your lunch break, and your supervisor comes over to your table, tells you to stand up in front of everyone. they draw everyone's attention to your thighs. they tell you that you have broken the dress code because of the length of your shorts. they tell you to go change (so you do not get the rest of your lunch break). they do this every single day at lunch. every day. so you read the whole dress code front and back, and you choose your clothing carefully to not break it. you bring a cloth tape measure with you to work because they will not believe you. this time when your supervisor tells you that you're breaking dress code, you pull out your tape measure and show that you are within the limit. your supervisor says "I bet you wouldn't want me to bring you to the boss and let him measure it, would you?" it's clearly a threat: if you don't obey then you will be put alone in a room with your boss and he will touch your thighs. you don't know how to respond. you're taken out of lunch again.

- Within hours of surgery, I wake up from a nap to my cat gently sniffing at my incisions with great alarm.

- I was not allowed to shower the first day after surgery, and the cats, seeing that The Large Cat is not observing its cleaning ritual, decided I must be gravely disabled and compensated by licking all the exposed skin on my arms, face, and legs.

- I currently have to sleep with a pillow over my abdomen because my cat insists on climbing on top of me and covering my incisions with her body while I sleep (which is very sweet but not exactly comfortable without the pillow). She also lays across me facing my bedroom door, presumably on guard for attackers who may try to harm me while I'm sleeping and injured.

Ever since then, my kitties make a POINT of sleeping in the border of my bed, to create a "bump" so If I EVER rolled over? I wouldn't fall. They even taught the ones that came after to do the same.

What I (foolishly) didn't expect is that she would keep teaching herself tasks to caretake me. She aggressively guards me when I catch an infection. If it's been too long since I've eaten, she will pester me until she watches me put food in my mouth. I had to train her out of trying to drag me to safety after fainting. Just wild things for a cat to choose to do.

So imagine my confusion this year when during the height of one of my scariest health episodes, this same cat is constantly acting up. It felt like she timed it to me finally being well enough to get out of bed. No matter what I was doing, this little grey cat would be right there: pacing, pestering, and absolutely demanding that I lie down to cuddle her. Cuddling isn't even her thing.

Amid trying to settle her, my symptoms would inevitably catch back up to me. So I'd just drag myself back to bed – and suddenly, she was an absolute angel again. And this cycle just kept repeating, seemingly without rhyme or reason. The only time my cat didn't start doing this was when my wifey was around.

Fast forward a couple months. I find out my migraine disorder has progressed (a thing untreated migraine can apparently do) to a rare form that sometimes mimic stroke (a collection of symptoms that can apparently happen outside of stroke). It's a huge relief, but one with big health considerations. Key among them, it means my migraines needed to urgently be detected, prevented, and treated due to the possibility of hemiplegia. So, I start the arduous process of logging my migraines, and aggressively treating any first signs of them.

My cat has continued bugging me during all of this. And while I'm venting about that and going over my migraine logging with my wifey, they suddenly stop me, point at a day I'd marked, and say, "Hey. Wasn't that one of the days she was really acting up?"

It was like a light bulb moment. We went over all our shared messages, cross referenced them with my logs, and yeah. Yeah, my cat had been bullying me for getting out of bed every fucking day I had a migraine. The only days she hadn't were when I'd spent the entire day with my wifey... the person that takes care of me and gets me to bed when my health gets bad.

TL,DR: my cat figured out what was making me sick before the doctors did, made it her job to alert me and enstate bedrest, and only takes a vacation when she knows somebody else can do the work.

like think of the speed of light vs speed of sound, MASSIVE gap, no wonder eridians have a longer lifespan. i have to imagine a scenario where rocky realises grace lowkey reacts at superspeed if he sees something far enough away for the light and sound discrepancy to be obvious. cause sure rocky can hear for miles but theres gonna be a delay eventually

gothic horror is when The Thing is Of Your Own Making, the Location has a Deeply Bloody History, and the Outside is Wet and Cold and Is Caging You In.

-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-

Plus some more^^