“Sky too big” also gets you on the tops of very tall, sharp mountains, where standing at the top means everything around you except the snow under your feet is blue sky.
Y’all’re joking, but I remember the agoraphobia I had the very first time I spent time in prairie states. There was this terror inside of nowhere to run, nowhere to hide. It went away when I flew back to the East coast.
It was there the 2nd time too, but not quite as strongly.
Even TALKING about it now makes me feel anxious.
Laugh all you want, but when you’re used to driving a few hours and hitting ocean, and an hour and hitting mountains, being surrounded by nothing but flat and Flat and FLAT and knowing that’s all there is for hundreds of miles does things to ya.
Not even slightly joking, though. Flat places give me the horrors. At least when you go up a mountain, you went to see the sky void, and you can hike right back down and hide from it in a nice valley somewhere. Safe little critter under the nice tall trees.
Out in the Flat Places* there’s nowhere to goddam hide from the sky. It’s all nothingness from horizon to horizon, and that nothingness wants to grind you under its boot like an ant, I swear to god.
*Flat Places may vary person by person, but I absolutely am including low hill country because I think it makes it worse. You look at the hills and expect to see mountains but none appears!
As a child of the misty forest, this open place above is terrifying. (I felt afraid all the way through Kansas). But then, a lot of folks fear them the misty forest. Especially at night.
For context: I'm from Scotland, and my spouse @mothman-etd is from Minnesota. I grew up surrounded by forests and hills as far as the eye can see.
When we first started dating, I'd usually only travel to see him in the Twin Cities, except one time, one of his coworkers was getting married up in North Dakota, so we made it into a road trip.
I fell asleep in the car like a true passenger princess and woke up to nothing but flatness, but not just any flatness, no. It had been raining, and the plains were filled with water, so for all intents and purposes, it was like waking up in the middle of the fucking ocean with nothing but too much sky above me and absolutely nothing around us but the endless stretch of water and the empty road in front of us.
When I tell you the primal fear that went through me. It was like falling upwards. It was like gravity just didn't exist, and there was no limit to how high my panic could rise. I had to do that stretch of the journey with my chair tipped back so I couldn't see the emptiness. Like a blinkered horse ready to bolt and break all my legs at once in a frenzied panic to escape the Nothingness.
Eventually, we pulled over at a service station, and I can honestly say I've never been so happy to see a roadside Subway in all my life.
To add on to @thebibliosphere story, while it was raining it was also flood season. So Joy woke up to this:
All of North Dakota is the same elevation, so nothing stops the flood water. The interstate roads are built just high enough so you can still drive on them so it really looks like you are driving in the ocean when it happens. But not the normal ocean, a still, no waves, quiet ocean with random patches of trees sticking up.
Another fun tibit about this flood season is the Red River, which is the primary source of this flooding, flows north. So as the winter turns to spring the south part thaws first and smashes right into the still frozen part. Basically it's like turning on your kitchen faucet directly onto the counter instead of the sink.
i think one of the first people who figures out ilya is in a secret relationship is the bears team doctor bc suddenly after years of never bringing it up at all he comes in with a picture of his back with a bunch of moles circled in red like hello are any of these cancer? What about this one? and the doctor asks what exactly about the moles concerns him and he just shrugs
the u.s. women’s hockey team should get to throw rocks at the u.s. men’s hockey team and also beat them with hammers and baseball bats i am so serious rn
“Tumblr age verification will not be needed,” tumblr staff states upon confirming every single blog on the site is more than 10 years old.
“If you were literate enough to be posting about Johnlock in 2015 we can kind of just assume you’re good,” staff elaborated even though we did not ask them to.
Okay so since this hasn't died yet, I feel like I have to add to it. The story re: my dept. lead also being on Tumblr and us outing each other with the sacred texts is like, one of the least weird/that sounds fake things that's ever happened to me.
Some of the greatest hits include:
-Was taken to the military funeral of a total stranger in the swamp lands of Louisiana by another total stranger when I thought I was going to a work meeting. (A funeral that ended with the words 'Sombitch y'all done shot MeeMaw!')
-Asked Zac Efron to take a photo with me in 2008 and then getting so flustered that I asked 'Do you want to use my camera or yours?' (he was very nice and said 'Why don't we use yours.')
-Was dressed exactly the same as every single person in my company (not in a company uniform, we were all dressed like our IT guy) when we were raided by the FBI.
-Got asked out at my mother's funeral.
-Signed an autograph as Kat Dennings to a VERY drunk man at the Nashville Airport just to get him to leave me alone.
-Attended my husband's 15th high school reunion alone and entirely by accident.
-Had a man come into my cafe and harass my employees and when I told him to leave he got up in my face and said 'I can gut you like a fucking fish.' And with my utter lack of will to live, I said, without blinking or moving, 'You can try.'
-Acted as maid of honor and gave a wedding toast for a couple I did not know because the bride was desperate to not have her awful sister have the microphone and ruin everything.
Since @grimeysociety asked, I shall expound upon the tale of being raided by the FBI.
Back in 2018, I started working for a whole body donation center. If you don't know what that is, it's when someone decides to donate their bodies to science, we're like 'Yeah, hi, we'll take it.'
This company was very much on the up-and-up. We had pristine medical facilities, quarterly state inspections, all the right certifications, the whole nine. HOWEVER that's not the case for every whole body donation center in the country.
(If you're considering donation, it's a wonderful gift, but PLEASE research the company you're planning to use.)
For instance, there was a place somewhere in the US Southwest that, it turns out, was basically running a Frankenstein factory. I'm not going to go into details, but there's a Reuters article about it and it's pretty much the most horrific thing you can think of.
They were using Home Depot power tools for tissue harvest and Rubbermaid containers for transport. That is all I will say. That, and about 10% of the FBI team that raided their site had to go on mental health leave immediately after because they had insane PTSD.
SO. Where do I come in?
Well, as I said, I was working at a different, entirely reputable WBD, but when there are only about 15 organizations in the country that provide the same service as a Frankenstein factory, naturally, someone in charge thinks it's probably a good idea to check in with the rest of them. Just in case.
Fast forward to October of 2018 and allow me to introduce Josh* into the narrative.
Josh was our IT guy. He was our on-site, tech guru, long-suffering, likely underpaid and overworked IT guy. He was the floor model IT guy. Tall, bearded, very quiet, very good at his job and had a tendency to wear the same thing to work pretty much all the time. Black jeans, black t-shirt, white tennis shoes, red flannel shirt and a black beanie.
Every day. Rain, shine, 90 degrees, 20 degrees, didn’t matter. This was Josh’s uniform.
So about a week before Halloween, we all get together to start talking about playing a little joke on Josh. We all decided we were going to dress up as Josh for Halloween. Everyone could assemble a little Josh costume, oh it’ll be so funny, we might even get him to laugh. Everyone was on board. EVERYONE from the receptionist to the CEO--everyone was doing this.
Halloween that year fell on a Wednesday. Unfortunately for us and our brilliant plan, Josh did not work on Wednesdays. So we decided it would actually be even funnier if we all dressed up on November 1st. So that Josh would come into work on a seemingly random Thursday and see everyone dressed up as him.
And it worked! Everyone did it! Josh actually laughed and sent out a little email telling us all how funny he thought it was, grading people’s Joshumes. A wonderful day.
Until about 1pm when the FBI arrived to raid our office.
They herded us into one of the lecture rooms and explained what they were doing there, made sure we didn't go back to our offices or make any phone calls, basically babysat us until the other members of their team could secure the files they needed and inspect the facilities.
We were all so freaked out that no one was thinking about what we all must have looked like. 75 employees. Sitting together in a room. All dressed exactly alike from our beanies down to our white sneakers.
I didn't realize how it looked either until one of the other FBI agents came in and straight up stopped in his tracks at the sight of all of us and under his breath went, "What in the actual Christ..."
Then they closed our office for 2 days while they investigated further, found no wrong-doing, and let us return to business as usual.
No one ever suggested we do a group costume again.
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