(via overgrownturnip)
(via grrrlstudies)
intheflood:delladilly:slattern:
i’m not prepared for adulthood
- what are taxes and how do you “do” them
- what is balancing a checkbook like do you just walk around with a checkbook on your head like in a posh finishing school to improve posture
- what if you just decided not to “do” your taxes because they sound scary
- does the government let you turn them in late for a slightly lesser grade
- because i’ll take a B i don’t mind
- i think i could be a neurologist if someone gave me a helpful and detailed diagram
- how on earth do people make the decision to have children i mean good lord they are tiny human beings
- what does APR stand for, how do you finances
- what is the deal with credit
- what are the basic supplies I need in my kitchen
- and every other room
- does flour go bad
- what qualifies as sexually active, should I have had a pap smear by now
- what is pap
- where do they smear it
- where do i go to get keys copied
- who do i send my bills too
- what if i just don’t want to pay them one day
- will they come take my house off me
- if i wanted to be a lawyer do i just walk into a court room and ask for an application
- same question applies for being a doctor
- how do you work an atm machine
- what if i decided i didn’t want kids and drowned them one day
- if a kid drowns in a bathtub while nobody is around
- is it still a felony
oh dear
(via taylorpgang)
Ancient healing secrets for anxiety
MIND: Ancient Greek priest-physicians practiced their art in huge temples of health called Asclepieia. Patients were encouraged to sleep in these vast sanatoriums and their dreams were interpreted to create cures. Directions: Today you can duplicate this technique for even minor anxiety problems. Before sleep, prepare your bedroom so that there is some fresh air coming in. Place a pad and pencil by your bedside. Take a long, warm, relaxing bath. Get into bed. Take the pad in your hand and start thinking, “What is my major problem?” Concisely summarize one problem. Then in three sentences or less, address your soon-to-be-sleeping mind and write: “Dreams, how can I…?” You might write, for example: “Dreams, how can I get to work on time?” or “Dreams, how can I get my boss to like me more?” or “Dreams, how can I eat less?” Address only one problem per night! After writing down the question, go to sleep. The dreaming mind, once instructed, acts like a new-age computer, analyzing and solving problems. In three days or less you’ll have one or several answers just pop into your brain, and you’ll have one less problem to cause you anxiety.
HANDS: In old-time melodrama, the distressed heroine is always wringing her hands. It turns out this an instinctive and helpful motion. Massaging, pulling, pressing, and tapping the hands inhibits the transmission of nerve impulses through the body and lessens reactions to stress. For centuries Chinese martial arts experts have used finger pressure on two specific hand points to release tension. Directions: The Tchong-Tchrong point is on the topside of the hand, at the bottom of the middle nail, on the side nearest the index finger. The Chenn-Menn point to free up anxiety is on the palm side, just above the wrist under the line of the fourth finger. Another key place for overcoming anxiety is on the sole of the foot under the fleshy part of the metatarsal, under the middle toe. Gently rub or press on any of these points whenever you feel tense.
PLANTS: Over time, the French have developed an affinity for lime flower tea to ease anxiety, depression, and hysteria. The lime tree is also known as the linden tree. Prolonged baths in infusions of the flowers are helpful, particularly to calm panic attacks. Directions: Take several handfuls of the flowers, add to a quart of water, and simmer for fifteen minutes. Steep until there is a rich color. Strain out of the flowers, then add the tea to a warm bath.
Werner Herzog’s Note To His Cleaning Lady
“You constantly revile me with your singular lack of vision. Be aware, there is an essential truth and beauty in all things. From the death throes of a speared gazelle to the damaged smile of a freeway homeless. But that does not mean that the invisibility of something implies its lack of being. Though simpleton babies foolishly believe the person before them vanishes when they cover their eyes during a hateful game of peek-a-boo, this is a fallacy. And so it is that the unseen dusty build up that accumulates behind the DVD shelves in the rumpus room exists also. This is unacceptable.”
I will tell you this Rosalina, not as a taunt or a threat but as an evocation of joy. The joy of nothingness, the joy of the real. I want you to be real in everything you do. If you cannot be real, then a semblance of reality must be maintained. A real semblance of the fake real, or “real”. I have conquered volcanoes and visited the bitter depths of the earth’s oceans. Nothing I have witnessed, from lava to crustacean, assailed me liked the caked debris haunting that small plastic soap hammock in the smaller of the bathrooms. Nausea is not a sufficient word. In this regard, you are not being real.
Now we must turn to the horrors of nature. I am afraid this is inevitable. Nature is not something to be coddled and accepted and held to your bosom like a wounded snake. Tell me, what was there before you were born? What do you remember? That is nature. Nature is a void. An emptiness. A vacuum. And speaking of vacuum, I am not sure you’re using the retractable nozzle correctly or applying the ‘full weft’ setting when attending to the lush carpets of the den. I found some dander there.
I have only listened to two songs in my entire life. One was an aria by Wagner that I played compulsively from the ages of 19 to 27 at least 60 times a day until the local townsfolk drove me from my dwelling using rudimentary pitchforks and blazing torches. The other was Dido. Both appalled me to the point of paralysis. Every quaver was like a brickbat against my soul. Music is futile and malicious. So please, if you require entertainment while organizing the recycling, refrain from the ‘pop radio’ I was affronted by recently. May I recommend the recitation of some sharp verse. Perhaps by Goethe. Or Schiller. Or Shel Silverstein at a push.
The situation regarding spoons remains unchanged. If I see one, I will kill it.
That is all. Do not fail to think that you are not the finest woman I have ever met. You are. And I am including on this list my mother and the wife of Brad Dourif (the second wife, not the one with the lip thing). Thank you for listening and sorry if parts of this note were smudged. I have been weeping.
Your money is under the guillotine.
Herzog.
(Source: claytoncubitt, via cutepeepee)
A dairy cow made the tough choice to hide one of her calves after giving birth to twins.
By Holly Cheever, DVM, reprinted from Action for Animals
I would like to tell you a story that is as true as it is heartbreaking. When I first graduated from Cornell’s School of Veterinary Medicine, I went into a busy dairy practice in Cortland County. I became a very popular practitioner due to my gentle handling of the dairy cows. One of my clients called me one day with a puzzling mystery: his Brown Swiss cow, having delivered her fifth calf naturally on pasture the night before, brought the new baby to the barn and was put into the milking line, while her calf was once again removed from her. Her udder, though, was completely empty, and remained so for several days.
As a new mother, she would normally be producing close to one hundred pounds (12.5 gallons) of milk daily; yet, despite the fact that she was glowing with health, her udder remained empty. She went out to pasture every morning after the first milking, returned for milking in the evening, and again was let out to pasture for the night — this was back in the days when cattle were permitted a modicum of pleasure and natural behaviors in their lives — but never was her udder swollen with the large quantities of milk that are the hallmark of a recently-calved cow.
I was called to check this mystery cow two times during the first week after her delivery and could find no solution to this puzzle. Finally, on the eleventh day post calving, the farmer called me with the solution: he had followed the cow out to her pasture after her morning milking, and discovered the cause: she had delivered twins, and in a bovine’s “Sophie’s Choice,” she had brought one to the farmer and kept one hidden in the woods at the edge of her pasture, so that every day and every night, she stayed with her baby — the first she had been able to nurture FINALLY—and her calf nursed her dry with gusto. Though I pleaded for the farmer to keep her and her bull calf together, she lost this baby, too—off to the hell of the veal crate.
Think for a moment of the complex reasoning this mama exhibited: first, she had memory — memory of her four previous losses, in which bringing her new calf to the barn resulted in her never seeing him/her again (heartbreaking for any mammalian mother). Second, she could formulate and then execute a plan: if bringing a calf to the farmer meant that she would inevitably lose him/her, then she would keep her calf hidden, as deer do, by keeping her baby in the woods lying still till she returned. Third — and I do not know what to make of this myself — instead of hiding both, which would have aroused the farmer’s suspicion (pregnant cow leaves the barn in the evening, unpregnant cow comes back the next morning without offspring), she gave him one and kept one herself. I cannot tell you how she knew to do this—it would seem more likely that a desperate mother would hide both.
All I know is this: there is a lot more going on behind those beautiful eyes than we humans have ever given them credit for, and as a mother who was able to nurse all four of my babies and did not have to suffer the agonies of losing my beloved offspring, I feel her pain.
(Source: uglyuglyugly, via detstva)
