Living the Big City dream @alexcansmile - Tumblr Blog

Adhd things that need to be talked more about (because adhd is more than just not being able to focus)

Short term memory loss. Seriously, I forget things that are said to me 5 minutes ago or will forget I opened a soda and will have 3 open cans by the end of the day with none of them finished. A lot of people don’t know about this, and so they think that I don’t care enough to listen to what their saying (which I do!!! I just can’t remember it) or that I’m lazy because of all the things I don’t end up doing because I forgot I had to do them.

Lack of motivation. Listen, I honestly can’t do anything on my own for the most part. I have to have someone else tell me to do something or have them set goals for me because it’s so damn difficult for me to do it myself. Again, I’m not lazy, I just have trouble doing things on my own

Language processing difficulties. Sometimes, English and words in general don’t work out in my head. Reading or even listening to someone talk can be extremely difficult for me to understand because my brain just won’t work. Why? Can’t tell you 99% of the time! It’s not that I need to focus, it’s that my brain is just buffering.

Needing multiple forms of stimulation at all times. I have a tin of putty that I keep in my book bag and a smaller one I keep in my purse at all times because of this reason. If I want to learn anything at school, I have to be able to look at something, hear something, and have something to do with my hands. Otherwise, it’s probably a big nope for me. What’s frustrating is that since this isn’t talked about enough, I often get called childish or get looked down upon because I have to play with silly putty in a highschool class.

Hyperfixation. Adhd can mean not being able to focus, but it’s also focusing too much on something! This can mean anything from a certain interest someone is in to at that moment, to something like a song that has been stuck in your head for a week. People seem to not understand this and think that we’re boring and have nothing else to talk about or that we’re annoying because we keep bringing the same things up over and over again but that’s not the case. Trust me, I’m annoyed with the hit or miss song too, but at least it’s not playing in your head constantly like it is for me

These are all the ones I can think of right now, but it’s really important we talk about this stuff more. All of these things that come with adhd can be very frustrating for those around us because they don’t understand that we can’t help it. To an outsider, it may just look like a person with adhd is just lazy and doesn’t care, when it’s actually just how our brains are wired. None of us want to be frustrating to others!! In fact, all of this frustrates us too!! But since adhd is just known as “not being able to focus”, people don’t realize what all comes with it and how it can really fuck everyone over.

Please add more if you can think of anything else!! I’m horrible with lists lol

adhdaiden

RSD (Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria) is also a fairly common experience of ppl with adhd! RSD is an extreme emotional sensitivity caused by the perception of failing, or being rejected, mocked, or criticised. (key word: perception. the feelings of rejection/failure aren’t always very rational). it seems to not get enough attention, even in discussions about neurodivergency, which rlly sucks b/c it’s a very painful thing to experience… it often also comes with suicidal ideation, and since not a lot of people know what it is, in some cases it’s misdiagnosed as serious mood disorders like bpd or bipolar :-(

quinintheclouds

^^^ I was gonna add RSD, glad someone else did! Also (this is long and I know I left a lot out/probably messed up but I don’t have the brain rn to proofread and these are Important):

shit… I had some stuff to add, I promise, I can’t remember

ummm ugh I really did though

oh! Oh yeah!

ADHD is an executive function deficit disorder (EFDD)

A lot of the below points are related/connected to executive dysfunction, bc it’s such a huge part of our brain structure, even with the help of meds. Strap in for some psychology fun, folks!

Our Limbic System: it’s like a Boggart - terrifying, in constant flux, and absolutely ridikkulus.

Amygdala chaos. Our amygdalas (part of limbic system in brain that regulates fight/flight/freeze) operate at extremes. This ties in with RSD a lot cause it can cause us to “overreact” with anger, despair, intense fear/panic, and/or a sort of paralysis that makes it near impossible to deal with difficult situations

Messed-up reward centers. We don’t “procrastinate” so much as we just don’t have the natural function to self-motivate. Also, impatience.

Hippocampus - in charge of memory & auditory processing

Wernicke’s area - responsible for speech comprehension

Broca’s area - responsible for producing speech

Basal ganglia - habit-learning and forming, schedule, routine

ADHD symptoms aren’t selective. People often say stuff like “if it was important you’d remember” or “you can focus on things you enjoy, so clearly you CAN focus and just choose not to.” Um, no. Symptoms can apply to anything. Even stuff we really care about we can forget or fail to get up the motivation for.

Hypersensitivity - we can get sensory overload easily, or have way too little stimulus, both of which impair almost all functioning

Sleep problems. Our options are insomnia, hypersomnia, or oscillating wildly between the two.

Neurotransmitters hate us! :) Too much, too little, too unregulated, synapse issues, you name it

Norepinephrine - Oh, norepinephrine… please return from the war. This is the Big One. The thing that first comes up when talking about ADHD in the brain. It’s in charge of motivation, stress/excitability/reactionary regulation, attention, memory storage and retrieval, alertness, maintaining focus and task endurance, processing sensory information, priority-setting, intentional behavior, thought-organization, executive functioning involved in reasoning, learning, and problem solving, etc.

Dopamine - our reward centers are messed up. It takes a LOT more for us to get a dopamine boost, and even then it’s much lower and duller than neurotypicals get. Exercise, food, whatever it is - it isn’t nearly as effective for us when it comes to depression/anxiety/mood problems in general. It can help, but not in the same way.

Serotonin - influences mood, social behavior, sleep, and memory.

Basically our frontal lobes are little shits (emphasis on little… they’re small) You know, the part of the brain that does that thing called ~Executive Functioning?~

Goal-oriented tasks - we often can’t just do something simply bc it needs to be done. That’s not enough.

Delayed gratification - doesn’t process unless instant results/rewards/consequences

Our perception of time is WAY off - either something is Now, or it’s Not Now and therefore waaaay in the future or past. If a project is due in a month, it will Always be a month away even the day prior to the due date. If I look at the clock and it’s 12pm, it will Be 12pm until I look at a clock again, even if I know it’s been a while since then

Impulse control - again with not understanding the concept of long-term. We also don’t inherently understand mood regulation or how to handle outbursts

Social behavior - uh, yeah. That can be hard. Sometimes we’re completely unaware of our surroundings and how we’re acting, but then sometimes RSD and social anxiety kick in and we become hyper-aware of every nugget of body language, tone, expression, etc., interpreting everything as negative (I’m making them uncomfortable, they hate me, I’m being weird, I’m stressful to be around, they coughed probably as a sign I should stop doing something. Or start? Oh no.) We blurt stuff out even if it’s totally unrelated or unhelpful, lots of times when we know we shouldn’t but we just? can’t help it??

Decision-making - hahahaha yep. remember fight/flight/freeze? Yeah this is “freeze’s” favorite place to butt in. Either our minds go blank and we cannot think of any options, or it’s exploding with Too Many possibilities to think through properly. This usually results in doing nothing, panicking, or crap what was the last one I was gonna say?? Oh right the impulse control thing again - we just do Something without foresight. Which brings us to

planning - thinking ahead is hard enough. We CAN plan and be good at it, but sticking with it is super difficult. Which is obnoxious bc being on a schedule in some way is known to be helpful for ADHD… oof.

Initiating, following through on, and switching between tasks. A lot of the time we honestly don’t know how to start something, or even how to go about thinking about starting something. I can’t think enough right now to fill this one out but you get it.

Working Memory: The ability to hold things in your mind. HAHAHA unless it’s something lodged in there for months there’s no telling if I can remember a n y t h i n g

Comorbid Disorders - Because of the way our brains are structures and how they function, ADHD has a SUPER high comorbitity rate, meaning there are often more disorders at play. For instance, ADHD nearly always comes with built-in depression and anxiety. Ppl with ADHD have higher likelihoods than the general population to also have: bipolar (type I or II, cyclothymia, dysmithia, rapid-cycling, etc.), OCD, BPD (ADHDers can have BPD as well, but it IS often misdiagnosed because of how similar it is to RSD), dyslexia, eating disorders, etc. Many ADHD symptoms are shared by/overlap with other things inherently, even without separate diagnoses, like being prone to chronic sadness or feelings of worthlessness, inability to regulate emotion, etc.

ADHD IS A REAL DISORDER THAT GOES WAY BEYOND WHAT YOU THINK

I know we ADHD peeps have trouble reading lots of text at once, so

TL;DR: AAAAAAAAHHHHHHHH!!??!?!!!??!!!

cronchy-bones

Nice additions y'all

explode-this

I did actually skim ahead to the TL;DR about ¾ of the way through, hello I am a total adhd cliche in the middle of an insomnia spell (when a month ago all I could do was sleep) now if you don’t mind I’m going to go play ukulele for hours until I remember everything else I gotta do

elizabethplaid

When I have brain fog and can’t word, it feels like the noise a dial-up modem makes. Thankfully, “verbing the noun” is a more common thing people do with their speech nowadays, so I can get by.

vrumblr

Every time I run across a post about ADHD like this it makes me go “Oh wow. I do almost all these things. I think maybe I have this. I should go to the doctor”

Then I don’t go to the doctor, usually because of said issues. Super fun.

robotsandfrippary

So Driven to Distraction: Recognizing and Coping with ADHD is a GREAT book on this kind of thing. It’s helped my husband tremendously. Really recommend it.

dollsonmain

Mmh. Imagining trying to tell That Guy that he might have an issue with the words “deficit” and “disorder” in it when I can’t even smile if he dies in a video game in an amusing way without him screaming at me because he assumes I’m mocking him and think lowly of him for dying in a video game…

alexcansmile

Verbing-the-noun is something I DO SO MUCH aaaaaaaa

oysters-aint-for-me

has anyone ever had the problem where you literally never want to do anything that you cannot reap benefits from immediately

like maybe I’m hungry but everything I have in the house at the moment would take 10+ minutes to prepare so I just……put off making the food for WAY longer than it would have taken to prepare the food when I first got hungry

Or i want to order some necessary thing online but the website says it will take a week to get here and i’m like “oh well fuck that” so I put off ordering it for like a week

Or if im like “I should clean my room because I like when it’s clean” but I know it’ll take me a couple hours so I don’t do it for like six months

It’s like there are only two times for me: right this instant and The Entire Rest Of The Future.

strawberryoverlord

That’s executive disfunction baby

coolswearypriest

I feel so called out

dilophosaurid

about adhd

it concerns me that people really don’t know that adhd isn’t a personality type or behavioral problem.

adhd isn’t someone who’s personality is driven by fun and disorder.

adhd is someone who’s brain goes all over the place looking for dopamine, because it doesn’t make or register enough of it, and when it finds a source of dopamine, it hyperfixates on it. it’s about deregulation of attention as well as emotions.

it’s not a person who can’t behave. a person with adhd can look like a lot of things. misconceptions about what adhd looks like kept me from even looking for a diagnosis, and it also kept myself and others (professionals, even) from taking my suspicions seriously.

everyone’s encouraged to reblog, but if you don’t have adhd, keep your additions to the tags.

lauramkaye

Smart people can have ADHD. And a lot of the time, they compensate for the ADHD with intelligence- until they reach the point where they just can’t overcome it anymore, which is why a lot of gifted + ADHD people have good grades their whole lives and then “suddenly” crash and burn. For some it’s college, for some it’s grad school, for some it’s postgrad or professional exams like the bar. Whenever the things they have to do can no longer be brute-forced at the last minute.

ADHD is often lumped in with learning disabilities but it’s really a DOING disability. We know what we should do. Probably we know six ways to do it. The trouble is actually getting our brains to activate so we CAN do it. Sometimes it’s like you’re being controlled by aliens or something because you say “I need to do X” and you’re going to do it and you just. Don’t.

tarysande

Some things I’m learning on this personal ADHD-diagnosis journey:

Some doctors will dismiss you when you admit that, yes, you got straight As in school and were never a classroom disturbance.

But that doesn’t erase the truth:

I got straight As because I liked school, liked learning, and wasn’t bored.

When I was bored in the classroom, I wrote novels instead of paying attention; that was quiet. I daydreamed all the time; so quiet. After being caught at this once or twice, my ADHD-sensitivity to criticism (rejection sensitivity dysphoria) clicked in and I realized if I answered a question at the beginning of class, the teacher would ignore me for the rest and never put me on the spot. I slipped headphones under my long hair and listened to CDs. Do you know how many times I listened to Tori Amos’s “Winter” on repeat in math class? How many times I invented “Student Council business” to get out of a class that was boring me to rage or tears? Do they care that, even though you got straight As, you missed more than a month of school days in your senior year because you just couldn’t deal with it anymore?

(Absences, I learned, mean nothing if you have straight As. Lies about how you spend your time mean nothing. Listening to the same song over and over and over to drown out the boredom means nothing.)

They don’t ask if all those papers and assignments that got those good grades were completed in a panic the night before after breaking down crying because how could I be so stupid, I knew this was going to happen, why can’t I stop procrastinating, why can’t I just have more willpower, why I am I such a failure? They don’t ask if you can’t finish work without a deadline, and that if the deadline is too vague or far away it means nothing except that you have longer to procrastinate until you panic. They don’t ask how many times you’ve started something and been unable to finish even though you want to, you really really want to. But you can’t. You know it doesn’t make sense. Knowing changes nothing.

Did you get bad grades? Were you a classroom disturbance? What were your report cards like?

They don’t ask if you’re living up to your potential. They don’t ask if knowing you’re not living up to your potential is the slow poison that taints every other aspect of your life.

Some doctors will say, “ADHD involves impulsivity. Were you promiscuous, did you have problems with drugs or alcohol?” And you will say, “No.” They will dismiss you.

They will not ask if you have a history of overspending, of impulse buying even when your brain says, “Sweetheart, you know you can’t afford that.” They won’t ask if you’re able to be patient when you want attention or feedback or praise. They won’t ask if you’ve pretended that some new piece of clothing was older, or bought second-hand. They won’t ask how much of those university loans you spent not on tuition, but on feeding the pleasure center of your brain that just wants more. More pretty dresses, more video games, more chocolate.

They will not ask how much time you spend on the internet, refreshing pages because you just can’t focus on anything else, and refreshing pages is easy, and might mean a little dopamine hit. They will not ask about the intensity of your interests. When you say the word “hyperfixation” they look uncomfortable, like you know a word you’re not supposed to know. Like they might have to take you seriously.

They’ll still dismiss you, though. You got good grades, you’re put together, you’re not fidgeting.

Some doctors will interrupt you when you’re trying to explain something, and yes, your explanation involves 23 diversions because you’re trying to really explain it. Really explain it so they understand. They will hold up a hand. They will snap, “Stop talking,” and your rejection-sensitive dysphoria will cripple you. You will want to vomit. You will start to cry and pretend you’re not crying. They will say, “I think you have anxiety, take these drugs. They will say, you are depressed, take these ones.” They will not listen when you say, “But the anxiety and depression have a common root; why won’t you listen to me?” They will not listen when you say, “Why are you treating the symptoms but not the underlying cause?”

Some doctors will treat you like you’re a drug-seeker, especially if you come in with too much knowledge (because you like learning, because you’ve always liked learning, because maybe you can’t control much of anything but you can read, read, read and cling to that knowledge like a lifeline; you can always be clever. You can always be smart. Less rejection that way.). They may narrow their eyes like you want medication for a nefarious purpose when all you really want is to be able to turn the key in the ignition and start the car. The car is good; there’s nothing mechanically wrong. The tank is full. But without a key, you cannot turn the damn thing on. And because your brain is not always your ally in these things, it whispers, “You’re imagining this. You have the key. It’s in your pocket. Just take it out.” But you don’t have a pocket. You don’t have a key. Telling yourself you do, you just need to find it, just need to manufacture it out of thin air does not make it true.

I’ve learned that to get help, the right kind of help, you sometimes have to turn yourself inside out. You have to somehow accomplish the things your condition makes most difficult: you must accept rejection, you must persevere beyond what you think possible, you must stand up for yourself over and over and get used to disagreeing with people trying to dismiss you, you must not let yourself be silenced.

I have a doctor who is listening to me now. It’s slow-going. It’s frustrating. It’s hard. The last year–more–of trying to make myself understood has been exhausting. But then, hasn’t my whole life been exhausting? Of course it has. I got good grades, I wasn’t a classroom disturbance. No one knew I was suffering. I slipped through the cracks.

The car’s been sitting idle a long time. I’ve probably done some damage to the clutch. But maybe I have a key. Maybe the car will shudder to life when I turn it.

tanoraqui

with some aid from @professorsparklepants, I have decided o the best Toby Daye fic I will never write: Quentin and Raj and maybe Chelsea sneak into a bar. A faerie bar

“sneak” might be a strong word. it’s run by a half-troll changeling and the assumption is that if you look over about 12 in human years and you can pay for your drink, you either know what you’re doing or you’ll get what’s coming to you

they’re very pleased with themselves anyway

they discover, in this bar, that October Daye is a Chuck Norris meme. None of them had heard about this before. All three are delighted

there’s a contest? of some sort? probably informal, between drunk people?

Our Kids, incognito and (thankfully) not drinking much themselves because they want to stay that way, and the excitement of absofuckinglutely lying to all their guardians about where they are right now is enough - Our Kids get in on this. Obviously.

“I heard October Daye wrestled a bridge troll with her bare hands, no magic or knives, and beat him to death” says a patron

“I heard October Daye found a Hope Chest and threw it in the ocean because she didn’t like the workmanship,” says Quentin

“Toby Daye took over the Silences just so she could fuck the King of Cats on the royal throne,” says another patron. A Tylwyth Tyg, she raises her glass. “I know, my second cousin was there.”

Quentin makes a gagging face. Raj plays hardball: “That’s shit - I heard Toby Daye is sleeping with the Luidaeg.”

“October Daye knifed Blind Michael in the throat and stole back all the kids he’d-” “Boo, you’re out, Sam! You can’t say real things!” “Yeah, that actually happened!”

“Hey, hey!” Chelsea waves her hand for attention. “Toby Daye tore open a hole to Annwyn and kicked the Duchess of Dreamer’s Glass through, because the Duchess insulted her jacket. AND she stole an Afrac on her way out. I was there, not some fake cousin.”

(That girl did not grow up hiding pointed ears through public school to not be able to say these things deadpan.)

it is conceded that that was a pretty good one

“Okay, okay, get this,” says a patron. “My wife’s cousin’s niece-in-law is a maid at the high court-” “No one related to your wife is a maid, Jemma!” “Fuck off, Marius! Like I was saying, my wife’s sister’s cousin works at the high court in Toronto, and I have it on her life that October Daye was hired by their royal majesties to personally train their heir in blood magic.”

Quentin inhales his drink, and can’t breath until Raj has pounded his back for about half a minute.

Chelsea takes the mike again to save them: “I heard Toby Daye found Oberon, but he insulted changelings so she slammed the door back in his face.”

“Yeah, that tracks,” the other bar-goers generally agree.

….

(I don’t actually have more to this. I just want the kids to have fun and for Toby to be a local meme.)

seananmcguire

Somebody please write this because I can’t. I will never be able to read it, but knowing that it exists will soothe my aching soul.

darkfrog24

“A Bannick tried to get the bloodstains out of October Daye’s jacket. It died two days later.”

“October Daye didn’t find the queen a new knowe. She told it to hurry its ass up and exist.”

“October Daye wasn’t sent to Silences as an ambassador. She just had a bet about who could bang the hottest king. October won.”

“That’s not a king of cats. October Daye just sneezed on a Shakespeare nerd once and he gained magical powers.”

(Raj snorts up his root beer.)

“Death keeps having near-October Daye experiences. …No, seriously. Didn’t she talk to Night Haunts?”

“If you take away October Daye’s coffee for a year and a day, she reverts to her true form.”

Quentin adds, “If you takes away October Daye’s coffee for five seconds, she rips your arms off.”

“Maeve swears by October’s tits.”

“October Daye is what the Luidaeg tells grodymonster horror stories about! Oh shit wait I said that out loud?! I’M SORRY I’M SORRY I—glgllllrlrrfffrrrrr.”

“WHAT THE SHIT?!”

“TREVOR, NO!”

“Where the hell did all these spiders come from?!”

At that point the kids quietly leave the bar and decide to go back to the library or charity bingo or wherever it was they told their respective guardians they were going to be.

professorsparklepants

AS ASSISTANT CREATOR OF THE ORIGINAL POST I APPROVE THIS ADDITION

tanoraqui

as creator of the original post, I second that delighted shout. Though I’d like to argue the last couple points:

It’s the bonus round on pub trivia night, where the game flips and whoever has the best lie wins, rather than the quickest truth. Tonight the category is, as read forth by the barwoman: “October motherfucking Daye.”

There’s a semblance of order. People raise their hands, or they don’t get the microphone. One server, a Hob changeling, carries it from patron to patron; the other, a girl who looks mostly Daoine Sidhe plus a little bit furry, keeps score based on what gets the most cheers. The barwoman oversees the semi-chaos genially, with the earned confidence of a bridge troll who knows she can bodily throw troublemakers from her establishment - and, indeed, a reputation for doing just that.

“October motherfucking Daye died once, but the Night Haunts were too scared to take her, so she came back!”

“October motherfucking Daye beat a stone giant in a fistfight - and it never broke her skin!”

“October motherfucking Daye once rescued a cat from a tree - a Cait Sidhe Firstborn, and the tree was Maeve’s!”

Some might be tempted not to. cheer for any “fact” but their own team’s, but that is not in the spirit of the Lucky Leper’s pub trivia night. You shout honestly, and others do the same. And anyway - this is midtown San Francisco. October “motherfucking” Daye is their Hero.

“October motherfucking Daye turned into a fish because she was tired of Grunge trying to ape her style!”

“October motherfucking Daye can beat Duke Torquill in a sword fight!”

Two princes and a junior page sit in a corner, trying desperately not to giggle - and trying to get the Hob boy’s attention, because boy do they have some good ones. (Their parents and parental figures are all under the impression that they are at one another’s houses - with inadvisable food and. drink, perhaps, but at least safely in private.)

“October motherfucking Daye sleeps on a bed of rowan!”

“October motherfucking Daye can drive from downtown to Berkeley in twenty minutes - at rush hour.”

No one notices the door open, or cares. People have come and gone.

“One time, October Daye met the Daoine Side Firstborn on a plane - and she told October she was pretty!”

“Starbucks asked if they could sponsor October Daye. She fucking flipped them off.”

One or two people, maybe, notice that the air that wafts in smells of seawater, though the bar is nowhere near the shore. The mic gets passed to a tipsy Glastig with bright red fur.

“The Luidaeg tells scary stories about October motherfucking-”

Everyone notices the hand that falls over his, and the young-looking woman to whom it is attached. Her dark, curling hair is tied back with painter’s tape, the waves of the deep sea bound only because they consent to. it, and her overalls are worn and her eyes are bottle-glass green.

Busted, Raj mouths at his friends.

“So busted,” Quentin moans softly, and puts his head on his arms on the table, as if perhaps that will help him hide.

“Will she tell on us?” Chelsea whispers.

“She’ll have to, if someone asks straight-out.” Quentin’s voice is muffled by his arms. They would all be very loud in the suddenly silent bar, was all attention not absolutely fixed on the Luidaeg.

The Luidaeg takes the microphone from the Glastig’s frozen hand. With her other, she grabs some peanuts from his party’s table, and pops them in her mouth.

“Toby’s not nearly that scary,” she says, with no sign of the peanuts. Maybe all the extra teeth in her grin took care of them. "She’s okay at picking me donuts, though.”

Her gaze sweeps the room as she hands the microphone back. The Glastig takes it with trembling hands; the (uncrowned) (tipsy) Crown Prince of all the Westlands attempts to burrow further into his arms.

“Definitely busted,” the Prince of Dreaming Cats, also known as Raj, murmurs as the Sea Witch sweeps out. He starts tugging Quentin to his feet. “Come on, if we want a shot, we have to go beg her right now. She likes you best.

Bar patrons are starting to move again - several to flee, for the front door or, perhaps more cannily, the back. So our young heroes’ movement continues to go unremarked.

Chelsea, the first daughter of Faerie to set foot in its deep realms in five hundred years, rubs her eyes. “Dammit, I knew this was a bad idea. Mom is going to go full professor-lecture mode if she finds out we were drinking in a real bar.”

joshsundquist

My conversations with children

Keep reading

van-dyne

way to break your old man’s heart kids ;)

markruffalo

It’s not easy being a green dad…

sorenbowie

Hello Darkseid my old friend.

thebaconsandwichofregret

Whispers Under Ground - The Domestic

It has been brought to my attention (by the lovely @sixth-light) that I am the only member of the tiny fandom in possession of a copy of Whispers Under Ground with the Waterstones’ short story The Domestic. And since this is probably my favourite of all the ROL shorts I think it’s a crying shame that the rest of the tiny fandom hasn’t read it. so here, for your reading pleasure:

The Domestic by Ben Aaronovitch

Keep reading

sparkitors

snapchat, insta, and quidditch=games that gryffindor just can’t lose.

amazing illos & hilarz captions created exclusively for SparkNotes by the awesome @sasmilledge

thesanityclause

God I love these!

alexcansmile

but c’mon harry’s IG wouldn’t be hjpotter. it’d be “thechosenone”

EEEGOOOOO

buzzfeed

Melissa McCarthy As Sean Spicer Rode A Motorized Podium Through New York City

just-shower-thoughts

Building a treehouse is the biggest insult to a tree. “I killed your friend, here hold him.”

unclebeanbag

“Friend”

Its more of I killed a potential enemy. Hold his dismembered corpse in victory.

ulysseus

Plants don’t wage war

unclebeanbag

Ever heard of blackberries?

Yes, plants do wage war

kasaron

Mint and strawberries, too. They need to be quarantined or they will kill basically everything else.

systlin

I planted mint in the ground 2 years ago.

It’s currently fighting a bitter battle to the death against the raspberries attempting to invade from the east while trying to annex the patio.

Could go either way at this point TBH. Unless, of course, I take a shovel and the blowtorch out there and battle both back to within their original boundaries.

And anyone wondering if a blowtorch is overkill for weeding back mint has never actually planted mint.

moirakatson

This post did not go where I expected it to.

awesome-picz

Maine Coon Cats That Will Make Your Cat Look Tiny.

sorceressnora-deactivated201801

@commie-saskia

alexcansmile

BIIIIIG FLOOOOOFS!

markantonys

coruscant nine nine [86/?]

writing-prompt-s

You walk in a room to find that the only way to escape is by writing a name of a real person on a piece of paper. This will kill that person.

oswinstark

You wake up in a room. You have no idea how you got there. In front of you is a door. You get up and try and open it but it’s locked. Panicking, you take in the rest of the room, but the only other thing in there is a table with piece of paper and a pen laying next to it. Suddenly, a sinister voice comes from some where above you.

“Welcome. You are trapped in this room. As you already know, your exit is sealed. However, you can get it open, but in order to do so, you must write someone’s name on that piece of paper. Doing so will then kill that person. Now-wait. What are you doing? You can’t-no you can only write ONE name I-what the fuck? Okay, I mean, you want to kill both the president AND the Vice President? Oh and the chief advisor…okay AND the Attorney General. Right, look, okay, I’ll let you out just-who the fuck is Milo Yiannopoulos? Look, okay, obviously this plan was not well thought out just….just go. Leave. Stop writing names and just get the fuck out. Jesus…”

k-pagination

We were grabbing a bite of lunch at a small cafe, in a mall, right across from a booth that sold jewelry and where ears could be pierced for a fee. A mother approaches with a little girl of six or seven years old. The little girl is clearly stating that she doesn’t want her ears pierced, that’s she’s afraid of how much it will hurt, that she doesn’t like earrings much in the first place. Her protests, her clear ‘no’ is simply not heard. The mother and two other women, who work the booth, begin chatting and trying to engage the little girl in picking out a pair of earrings. She has to wear a particular kind when the piercing is first done but she could pick out a fun pair for later. “I don’t want my ears pierced.” “I don’t want any earrings.” The three adults glance at each other conspiratorially and now the pressure really begins. She will look so nice, all the other girls she knows wear earrings, the pain isn’t bad. She, the child, sees what’s coming and starts crying. As the adults up the volume so does she, she’s crying and emitting a low wail at the same time. “I DON’T WANT MY EARS PIERCED.” Her mother leans down and speaks to her, quietly but strongly, the only words we could hear were ‘… embarrassing me.’ We heard, then, two small screams, when the ears were pierced. Little children learn early and often that ‘no doesn’t mean no.’ Little children learn early that no one will stand with them, even the two old men looking horrified at the events from the cafeteria. Little girls learn early and often that their will is not their own. No means no, yeah, right. Most often, for kids and others without power, ”no means force.”

from “No Means Force” at Dave Hingsburger’s blog.

This is important. It doesn’t just apply to little girls and other children, though it often begins there.

For the marginalized, our “no’s” are discounted as frivolous protests, rebelliousness, or anger issues, or we don’t know what we’re talking about, or we don’t understand what’s happening.

When “no means force” we become afraid to say no.

(via k-pagination)

macgregor13mathers-deactivated2

Please, Mrs. Conservative, don’t yell at our daddy for using food stamps. Also, can we have a cookie?

I met this woman named Mae. She’s a van driver for a production company. She works 14-hour days but says she doesn’t mind, says she keeps one eye on the road and the other on the prize — a paycheck that has to last through the dead months.

We’re driving through a poor stretch of Atlanta. Dirty streets. Old houses. Plastic toys upturned in front yards, no kids though. The neighborhood is quiet. I live in L.A., land of nannies and gardeners where the hills are alive with the sound of toddlers and leaf blowers. I prefer Atlanta. You can find parking at the grocery store in the middle of the day. In L.A. it doesn’t matter what time it is, the Trader Joe’s is packed with SAHs and WAHs (stay-at-homes and work-at-homes.)

We pass a decades-old Buick Skylark. I point it out.

“You into cars?” Mae asks.

I’m not into cars, but my dad and I once abandoned one of those Buicks on the side of a Florida highway when I was a teenager. That’s how my family did cars — we bought them on their last leg and left them where they died. I tell her how I’d come home from high school and there’d be nothing in the fridge but a bottle of red wine vinegar and a head of lettuce. On the counter, there’d be a bag of potatoes and a bottle of olive oil from the Dollar Store. That was dinner, potatoes and lettuce.

“I hear you,” she says. “We had ketchup sandwiches all the time growing up. We didn’t complain. We ate them.”

Mae’s voice is rich, melodic, it’s Maya Angelou meets Gladys Knight. I tell her about the time I borrowed red stirrup pants. (Remember stirrup pants from the 80s?) I borrowed them from my friend Marla. Her two older brothers drove Corvettes, one each. Marla drove a more sensible car for a 16-year-old, an Oldsmobile Cutlass Supreme. But it was new. And it was hers. She let me borrow the pants for a party in her neighborhood. (God knows I couldn’t go in my own shit clothes.) Long and short of it, the pants ripped in the calf. My mother wept like death had come, struggling with red thread, looking at me like I’d done the worst thing ever. Marla wanted $17 to replace them.

Mae invites me to sit up front with her. The traffic to my hotel is bad, we’re in for a haul. I switch out at the next red light.

“So her brothers drive corvettes?” Yup.

“One each?” Yup.

“Lord Almighty,” she says, “folks of privilege don’t understand how $17 can ruin you.”

Mae tells me how she’d come home from school and her mother would hustle her and her sisters upstairs to pick out clothes for the next day before the utilities cut off. Too many red notices.

I was poor in Florida. Mae’s from Detroit. I ask what she did to keep warm. “Poor kids just do what they gotta do. Privileged kids panic if they can’t have new this and new that, or if they can’t be on a sport team. Sports and heat, those are luxuries.”

I ask if she’s heard of John Prine, the folk singer. I sing his line: It’s a half an inch of water and you think you’re gonna drown. She howls, “Rich folks standing in a puddle screaming!”

I tell her about my parents shaking me awake in the middle of the night whispering, we have to go now. There’s a difference between going and getting out. What we were doing was getting out before morning, before the neighbors would see us evicted.

“I hear you,” she says. “Lord Almighty, I hear you.”

America loves helping the shoeless, iphoneless, voteless, bug-infested Street Jesuses. These are the lost-cause poor; all they want is your pocket change. (Bless their hearts.) But the working poor? Those who claim to not have enough money for food because they also need clothes for work, water for bathing and laundry, rent for housing, heat in the winter, money for daycare, a smartphone for their job, car insurance and gas — those are some shifty motherfuckers.

If you’re on food stamps America has every right to hate you, as evidenced by this angry conservative yelling at a father and child for using food stamps. This lady proves conservatives love a good hate like they love a good steak. I assume she thinks of herself as a nice person, a good person, a church-goer. We all think everyone else is the asshole, right? There isn’t a lot of self-directed road rage out there. How often do we key our own cars? It’s always okay to hate the other guy when the hate is justified — like child predators, rapists, and food stamp users.

Huddled round the Fox News campfire are those who love tall tales of poor people using tax dollars to buy drugs and alcohol and Gucci shoes. That’s not how it works. I’ve been on food stamps. The government doesn’t hand out wads of cash. When you qualify for food stamps you receive a plastic grocery card that only works for food transactions. Key word: qualify. You don’t just sign up. It’s not a tennis lesson at the club. What’s scary about the woman in the video is that she sees what’s in the dad’s cart (food for his kid) and she hates him for it.

Stupid fucking poor people. If only we’d been engineer majors in college. If only we’d gone to college. If only our parents hadn’t been poor. If only they spoke English. If only we worked harder. If only we were more like conservatives who believe everything they have today is a direct result from the sweat of their own brow.

When looking at a spider’s web can you point to the 8th spun web, or the 108th? There are those who claim this astounding ability — those who take full credit for crafting, spin by spin, a better life than ours, a life without aid. If you had help paying for college, if someone bought you your first car, if you had health insurance growing up, if your mom never cried over $17, you were lucky. The Hail Mary toss of birth landed you in a family that could put you on a soccer team and buy cleats as your foot grew. And someone was home to help you with your math and give you a gummy vitamin each morning. That’s called aid, by the way. And not all kids get it, but all kids should.

Don’t confuse aid with charity. Charity is old coats. Donating a coat doesn’t make you a good person but I bet it makes you feel like one. You didn’t even want that coat anymore, what you wanted was the closet space. Sure, you could have sold it at a garage sale and made, like, twenty bucks. It was an expensive coat, damn it. But you, with your heart of gold, gave it away. There’s a twinkle in God’s eye just for you.

What makes you a good person to others (and not just to yourself) is the same thing that makes me, or anyone who can afford the occasional $12 cocktail, a good person: Your vote. Not your coat.

Vote for a Living Wage for others. Vote for health insurance for others. Don’t get in the way of food stamps for others. Understand how important $17 might be to others. That poor stretch of Atlanta is quiet because people are working and paying for day care. They’re clocking the same hours you’re clocking, but they make a shit wage.

Take a good long look at your feet. If you were born at the starting line wearing a nice pair of running shoes, that was luck. Sheer luck. The most important thing you can do now is help those who had to start the race a mile behind you, barefoot.

ignisgayentia

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