#bitogoth

FWIW in swim lessons we learned to get used to breathing cycles by standing in the pool, breathing in, then ducking our face underwater and breathing out slowly through our nose. Then come up again to breathe in. The goal was to breathe at a normal rate and just get used to doing it in the water. I’m a bit puzzled by trying to breathe out through your mouth while swimming as I can’t imagine doing it, but practicing while standing may help. (And nose plugs might too.)

That’s basically what I ended up doing today! Well, I was doing the breaststroke while doing it, but that was much more manageable than the crawl. 

myjennieblr replied to your photo “I’m just gonna post pictures of my cats when I go swimming, I guess....”

I suppose you could always go with side stroke, back stroke, or breast stroke and largely avoid the breathing issue? But good for you for pushing outside your comfort zone!

My problem at the moment is that while trying to do anything where my face doesn’t end up in the water, my posture is so terrible that I keep kicking the bottom of the pool. I can feel my body align and my legs rise to where they should be the second my face goes into the water, which is annoying as fuck seeing as I can’t keep it in there for long :D 

Backstroke would work but I think I need earplugs. I was Not Enjoying the sensation of water in my ears. 

bitogoth replied to your photo “I’m just gonna post pictures of my cats when I go swimming, I guess....”

Have you considered nose plugs?

Pretty soon my entire body will just be hermetically sealed away from the water :D I think I probably won’t need noseplugs in the end, I just need to properly master breathing. 

terrie01 replied to your post “I just scrolled past this thread again and it occurred to me to look...”

What was the worst fact you learned about Wuthering Heights today?

Well apparently everyone in it is MEANT to be terrible, which admittedly does take some of the fun out of Heathcliff being So Very Terrible. 

silentstep replied to your post “I was thinking about Venom this morning before breakfast, like you do,...”

what defines "loserdom" to millenials, d'you think?

Well, if we look at the other replies to that post, apparently we all think we ourselves are losers :D 

I do think Millennials don’t really have an external concept of loser, because there’s a certain generational rebellion against that kind of sitting in judgement on a person. But I think also it’s important to understand that Generation X wasn’t judging other people either, necessarily, which is why I brought up Reality Bites. 

Reality Bites, in part, vocalized the way that GenX embraced loserdom and slackerdom as a rebellion against the ultra high-achieving, status-seeking, conspicuous consumption madness of the 1980s and early 90s. It wasn’t automatically a negative thing to be a loser -- it meant you were charting your own course and you weren’t seeking validation from people (older adults) you didn’t value. You see that in Ethan Hawke and Winona Ryder’s characters -- he is a deliberate slacker as a way of rejecting a culture he doesn’t respect, and she becomes a loser because (very presciently) she was given every tool for success and then thrust into a situation where success was literally impossible, then held accountable for failing. 

Millennials mainly refer to themselves as losers as a defense mechanism, to point it out before others can, because we hold ourselves to appallingly high standards. A lot of Gen-Xers -- not all, but a fair amount --  embraced the identity of loser because “loser” was a label applied to them by people they considered assholes. 

What’s so interesting about Venom is that Eddie is very Millennial in composition, as a character -- but to the writers, to the people who built him, that seems to signal “loser”. It’s a weird blind spot in the film, almost like it comes from an earlier draft where Eddie was much less successful to begin with.  

reallyquantum replied to your post “I was thinking about Venom this morning before breakfast, like you do,...”

Yep, my friends have guessed that the bad reviews are significantly due to the reviewers not getting how deep the millennial humor runs

I am sadly in the wrong part of the country for your kitten-trek, but I LOVE YOUR HAIR!

Your eyebrow game is on point!

oh my GOD thank you so much??? my eyebrows are the bane of my existence so that is like, the best thing ever to hear.

kaitywithay replied to your photoset “hello yes I am how you say… tres spoopy”

You're so cute!!!

thank you bby!

threefootroo replied to your photoset “hello yes I am how you say… tres spoopy”

/SCREECHES LIKE SPOOPY BANSHEE

yesss my spoopy banshee wife <3

brainsandbooshay replied to your photoset “hello yes I am how you say… tres spoopy”

Amazing! And I love that lip color!

thank you! i put this bright magenta gloss on top of some matte black lipstick from e.l.f. and i’m like yes... this is the color i’ve always wanted.

erdsthenerds replied to your photoset “hello yes I am how you say… tres spoopy”

You're so lovely!!

I… should not have read this just before bed, because now I’m all AAAAAAAA! (and mini-Natasha with a little knife *heart breaks*)

Beautiful! He’s a keeper! ;D

Yay for getting everything fixed and having a safe car now! Few things are more terrifying than stepping on the gas to merge into traffic and NOTHING HAPPENS. *shudders*

I haven’t had that happen yet *knock on wood* but I have stepped on my BRAKES and had nothing happen. EQUALLY TERRIFYING. 

Also, going down an interstate at 70mph and your car just stops working. That happened too. 

Hello! I absolutely adore Gail Carriger and recommend her books whenever I can!

To say that my family did not take it well is a gross understatement, particularly my mom, who already has issues dealing with my illnesses. For my sanity and theirs, I have not told them about the biopsy because I have no info and don't want to stress them out- I am freaked out enough that I really have no spoons to keep them calm while I'm dealing with this. I feel like a hypocrite, since it makes me crazy when my family keeps illness and injury from me until after the fact. Finally, to make things awkward I am close to my in-laws and MIL knows all and is driving me to the surgery. My mom is slightly competitive with her, since I'm close to my in-laws geographically so my mom sometimes feels left out. I am pretty sure that holding off on telling my folks is the right thing to do for me... mostly, I just needed to vent to someone who understands spoon shortages and how exhausting family dynamics can be- thank you for listening. :}

I’m so sorry you’re dealing with the health issues! Biopsies blow, and Celiac definitely blows, but on the plus, often knowing you have Celiac can help you work out how best to manage the array of autoimmune issue that come with it. 

And I’m sorry that you feel like you can’t tell your family, though I know that feel for sure.

In terms of feeling guilty about not telling your family, I think the only thing to do really is to remind yourself that it’s your body and your business -- as an adult, nobody else has a right to know anything about your body you don’t want to tell them. I have frequently not told my family about medical stuff because yeah, why should I have to keep them calm as well as myself? The people I tell about my illnesses are the people I know I can trust not to make things harder. And my mum is GREAT about sickness if you give her a specific condition, but if you don’t know what’s wrong, she gets the worst free-floating anxiety I’ve ever seen and starts sending me horrifying googlesearch articles on death and also weird holistic medicine. So until I have a name, she doesn’t get the news. 

There’s a thing called Ring Theory, which goes “Comfort in, dump out”. You can read more about it at that link but essentially the rule is that you give comfort IN -- to people who are closer to the person experiencing the trauma, or to the person themselves -- and you dump your worries and pain OUT, to people who are less close to the situation than you are. (This can imply a sort of hierarchy of pain that I’m not super into but on the other hand it’s a great way to remind people not to make life harder on their ill loved ones.) 

Sadly, it sounds like your mother in law understands comfort-in, but your mother may not quite have the hang of dump-out yet. If you can find a subtle way to slip her that article....:D

Not telling your parents when you don’t know anything specific yet is utterly understandable, and honestly I think most people on being told a loved one is ill, might ask “Why didn’t you tell me” but would be satisfied with “I didn’t want to say until I knew for sure.”