the age of skin is done

Asa/they/'93! I’m just an asshole who likes nature! Blog probably full of neat info and mental health things. Expect personal posts but mostly reblogs. I did art once and may do so again!

[emmaklee]

spider eye arrangements

[catmask]

it is really weird what like. 4 years perspective on something you believed fully to your core will do

[catmask]

“yeah disappointment and heartbreak when plans or friends or romance doesnt work out hurt me too badly so now i just dont do that stuff or really hope for anything or get invested in anyone/anything anymore that way i can be surprised by nice happy things and bad stuff is just expected”

and my roommate at the time looked horrified and said “thats bad Bee??? thats so sad” and i didnt know what to say because id thought what i said was normal/a positive coping mechanism

[catmask]

btw this is, in my instance, the result of autistic burnout and childhood neglect. if you get so used to your needs and expectations not being met you learn to not have them because it is your only means of survival.

some people get angry and express their pain and are called ‘difficult’, some people shave themselves away until theres barely anything left and disappear to become ‘easier’. learning that disappearing to be easier on those around me was not kindness but, meaningless self destruction was a core part of learning how not to die.

[libraralien]

relationship goals

[theslowesthnery]

look i’m just saying

[theslowesthnery]

bonus

[why-i-love-comics]

The Penguin #9 - "Good Old Bruce" (2024)

written by Tom King art by Rafael De Latorre & Marcelo Maiolo

[dinopuncher]

fog 🐸

[entings]

did not complete my homework this weekend because I can't concentrate for beans lately. do instructors take "the camas are blooming and I couldn't just stay indoors" as an excuse?

[entings]

update: part of homework I didn't do was actually not required. c'est la vie.

but also, I don't actually give a shit who accepts what as an excuse. the camas only bloom for a few weeks, and I'll be damned if I'm not going to get out there to see them every year.

[entings]

did not complete my homework this weekend because I can't concentrate for beans lately. do instructors take "the camas are blooming and I couldn't just stay indoors" as an excuse?

[transfemininomenon]

hey boss i can't come in today it's a sunny day and there's a lovely breeze coming in through my window, yeah it's rustling the branches of the tree outside that's finally bloomed so it's pretty serious

[entings]

spent the last 2 afternoons peeling the bark off of some doug fir branches I uh... "liberated" from the neighborhood park back in fall sometime. very big branch came down in a wind storm, probably 12 feet long and about 4-5" diameter. very corky bark, surprisingly thick and still INCREDIBLY wet, owed in part to our extremely wet winter I'm sure!

I think if I use a punch rather than an awl I can probably make some lacing holes that won't tear and maybe make some interesting baskets. I mostly have long ribbons of bark because it was easier to get off that way than big pieces, so maybe a coil type basket? it splits into laces really well, almost behaves like leather!

got some redwood from the sheared-off top of a redwood on my community college campus last week (another windstorm!) and a small piece of giant sequoia, also from the park. excited to see what I can get from those, that kind of cedar-y fibrous bark can be really soft and twine-able if you peel it right. I don't really know what I'm doing but there's something really energizing and settling about working with wood for me, especially dismantling branches into usable components.

if I remember, I'll post some pics of the little baskets I've made since I started in summer. not many cause I'm doing school full time now and struggling to balance things a little, but I'm enjoying myself [:

[aqua-regia009]

Puget Sound on the Pacific Coast (1870) by Albert Bierstadt (1830-1902)

[foone]

I see a lot of people joking about the adhd thing of "I have a appointment/phone call at 3pm, guess I won't do anything all day!"

But no one seems to make the connection that it's a time blindness thing. One of the symptoms of ADHD is not having a good and accurate sense of time. And not doing stuff prior to an event with a hard deadline is an obvious coping mechanism for that.

Can I go to the store? It's 10am and the appointment is at 3pm. How long does going to the store take? An hour? Three hours? Five hours? I DON'T KNOW!

I get anxious trying to do things before appointments because I'm aware that I don't know how long those things take, and that if I think I do, I may be very wrong. Too often I've been like "hey I can walk to the corner store and grab a drink, that'll take like 15 minutes!" and then an hour later I get back and whoops my rice has burnt.

Plus there's also the fact that ADHD people know that motivation and focus is a two-edged sword.

Like, let's say you decide to play a video game. You've got time, you can pause/save whenever, so this should be a perfect fit to make good use of your waiting-time. So you start playing and WHOOPS you get really focused for some reason today (because people with ADHD do not get to pick when their brain decides to focus) and the next time you look at the clock it's 2:49 and you haven't showered or dressed and the appointment is 30 minutes away. Fuck. (you could have set an alarm, but now you're asking people with the forgetting-things-and-time-ignoring condition to remember it set alarms)

And with motivation, it can be almost worse. Instead of playing a game, you so something useful or creative. You clean your room or fix your plumbing or write a story or draw a picture. And suddenly it's great. Your brain is firing on all cylinders. You've got all the motivation you can ask for, and you are FLYING. the ideas are brilliant, your hands are nimble, you're getting stuff done you've been putting off for weeks or months. And then the alarm goes off. Time to go to your appointment. Fuck.

You drive there, your brain still full of ideas and plans. But by the time you get back, the motivation is gone. You may still have the ideas but you don't have the drive to write them down. You can't force yourself to do it. Your sink is still in pieces. Your room is half-cleaned, and you have to shove all the sorted clothes into one big bin just so you have somewhere to sleep. You've left things half finished again, in a cycle that has been repeating your whole fucking life. It seems sometimes that nothing ever gets finished.

So next time you don't even start. There's not time. You've been burnt too many times. Why add another half-completed project to your pile of shame?

My point is that people seem to be going "lol I can't do anything all day if I have an appointment at 3pm" like this is a quirky "oh I'm so scatterbrained!" weirdness they alone have, and not a major complication of a disabling mental illness.

(and that's not even getting into the secondary effects. If you know that having an appointment ruins your whole damn day, you're going to avoid them. Even when it's things like "going to that party" or "meeting your friends for a drink/game" or "going to a movie with that cute girl from your math class". Things you should enjoy. Things that'd help you be social. Things that make you feel human.)

[radicarian]

Oh and if literal grass-touching IS viable, I also advocate for touching invasive grass. Many parks in the US have invasive plant removal volunteer work days. You get some air and some exercise and you can talk to other volunteers if you want or you can just march off into the trees on your own and start wreaking havoc with various hand tools. If you want to do something that is both useful AND destructive, I have found nothing better

[queenlua]

funnily enough i did this for the first time today & yeah, i highly recommend, it rules hard

you just show up & they give you a bunch of pre-sharpened loppers & are like "here's what an invasive blackberry bush looks like, go kick its ass"

and then you just get to hack and maim and wreck for FREE for as many hours as you so desire??? good as HELL

[pnwnativeplants]

Removal of invasive species is one of the best things you can do for the environment. The task can feel overwhelming, you impact may feel small. But each plant you remove stops thousands and thousands of additional invasive seeds from wreaking havoc on our native wildlife.

[gallusrostromegalus]

I got to hold a 500,000 year old hand axe at the museum today.

It's right-handed

I am right-handed

There are grooves for the thumb and knuckle to grip that fit my hand perfectly

I have calluses there from holding my stylus and pencils and the gardening tools.

There are sharper and blunter parts of the edge, for different types of cutting, as well as a point for piercing.

I know exactly how to use this to butcher a carcass.

A homo erectus made it

Some ancestor of mine, three species ago, made a tool that fits my hand perfectly, and that I still know how to use.

Who were you

A man? A woman? Did you even use those words?

Did you craft alone or were you with friends? Did you sing while you worked?

Did you find this stone yourself, or did you trade for it? Was it a gift?

Did you make it for yourself, or someone else, or does the distinction of personal property not really apply here?

Who were you?

What would you think today, seeing your descendant hold your tool and sob because it fits her hands as well?

What about your other descendant, the docent and caretaker of your tool, holding her hands under it the way you hold your hands under your baby's head when a stranger holds them.

Is it bizarre to you, that your most utilitarian object is now revered as holy?

Or has it always been divine?

Or is the divine in how I am watching videos on how to knap stone made by your other descendants, learning by example the way you did?

Tomorrow morning I am going to the local riverbed in search of the appropriate stones, and I will follow your example.

The first blood spilled on it will almost certainly be my own, as I learn the textures and rhythm of how it's done.

Did you have cuss words back then? Gods to blaspheme when the rock slips and you almost take your thumbnail off instead? Or did you just scream?

I'm not religious.

But if spilling my own blood to connect with a stranger who shared it isn't partaking in the divine

I don't know what is.

[marlinspirkhall]

Most famous profession you've met/interacted with irl?

Radio Host

YouTuber/Tiktokker etc.

Author

Print Journalist

Newscaster or TV host

Theatre actor

Film/ TV Actor

Solo Musician

Blorbo from my band

None of these/ you forgot [x profession] (see results)

Voting ended onDec 31, 2023

*this isn't written in any specific order, it was just written in the order they occured to me

[plasticterrarium]

Alison Bechdel wrote this book and chose violence

[bossbutch]

[image: "most people don't even try to get what they want because of the painful reckoning with their parents it entails."]

[dinopuncher]

it's a beautiful day to troubleshoot sewing machine problems

[dinopuncher]

it was threaded wrong lol

[entings]

we sure did learn a lot about bobbin tension, though!