Comic #280: - Chronic Visits - Website links: Here! As a chronic illness sufferer this is usually what my visits to the doctor look like, a lot of things I want to say but rarely come out the way I think them.
she let the baby stay in there the whole night and decided to check in the morning lmao
If her baby has to fight a ghost, that’s between the baby and the ghost
Non-parents in the comments calling this a bad mom? Because they think you wake? A sleeping? Baby? Up?? For something as small as a ghost baby in their room?
No, no, non-child rearing people: If a baby is asleep, you do Everything you can to avoid waking that baby. You brew tea & use the tea leaves to spell “she didn’t nap today; if she wakes up you will wish you were more than dead” so whatever adult ghost is in charge of the baby ghost gets with the program. You threaten that ghost baby via mental intimidation; You whisper-hiss at it from the doorway. You spend the whole night staring at the baby monitor & reciting your most evil revenge plots against ghosts, should they wake your child. Give the ghosts fair warning that if your baby wakes up they will never again know peace by any means necessary: Dig out your Ouija board, tarot cards, strings of Christmas lights a la Stranger Things. But you do not wake that child.
“You,“ he said, "are a terribly real thing in a terribly false world, and that, I believe, is why you are in so much pain.” ― Emilie Autumn, The Asylum for Wayward Victorian Girls
Keep thinking about this. It means that the people who receive SSDI can literally NEVER be a part of the group legislating the program. I feel genuinely sick to my stomach…because like…that’s the formal structure. We’ve all accepted this??????????
Not just SSDI, but SSI as well.
And when we’re talking about ‘elected office’ we’re talking about everything from school committee on up.
So we can’t be part of the choices that decide what kids learn about in schools (particularly important right now, in regards to things like race, LGTBQIA+ issues, & other areas of civil rights), or what kind of improvements our cities need (like, say, structural accessibility), or who qualifies for needs-based programs.
We’re not allowed to have direct influence in conversations & decisions regarding the things we literally depend on to survive - things like universal healthcare, which would OBVIOUSLY benefit from having disabled ppl’s voices while they’re being considered. Or the fight to raise SSI minimums, or marriage equality for disabled people: all of those measures are things people disabled enough to require that system can only attempt to influence from the outside, through our elected officials. We cannot be the elected officials.
Systemic ableism is insidious and oftentimes so baked in that ppl don’t even notice.
When I was younger and more abled, I was so fucking on board with the fantasy genre’s subversion of traditional femininity. We weren’t just fainting maidens locked up in towers; we could do anything men could do, be as strong or as physical or as violent. I got into western martial arts and learned to fight with a rapier, fell in love with the longsword.
But since I’ve gotten too disabled to fight anymore, I… find myself coming back to that maiden in a tower. It’s that funny thing, where subverting femininity is powerful for the people who have always been forced into it… but for the people who have always been excluded, the powerful thing can be embracing it.
As I’m disabled, as I say to groups of friends, “I can’t walk that far,” as I’m in too much pain to keep partying, I find myself worrying: I’m boring, too quiet, too stationary, irrelevant. The message sent to the disabled is: You’re out of the narrative, you’re secondary, you’re a burden.
The remarkable thing about the maiden in her tower is not her immobility; it’s common for disabled people to be abandoned, set adrift, waiting at bus stops or watching out the windows, forgotten in institutions or stranded in our houses. The remarkable thing is that she’s like a beacon, turning her tower into a lighthouse; people want to come to her, she’s important, she inspires through her appearance and words and craftwork. In medieval romances she gives gifts, write letters, sends messengers, and summons lovers; she plays chess, commissions ballads, composes music, commands knights. She is her household’s moral centre in a castle under siege. She is a castle unto herself, and the integrity of her body matters.
That can be so revolutionary to those of us stuck in our towers who fall prey to thinking: Nobody would want to visit; nobody would want to listen; nobody would want to stay.
even if your medical trauma is screaming at you to ignore it
don’t
if there is something wrong and you can, please, go to the doctor
even if the doctor doesn’t listen, it is documentation
it will help the good doctors who willlisten
please, please go to the doctor
It’s ok to take a break. To need a break. But then , go to the doctor. Marshal all your forces, bring all your support people, and documentation, and try again.
I am 42 yrs old; I’ve been doing this for 27 yrs. Covid almost killed me 2 yrs ago, & every single dr I had let me down. All of them.
And it is so fucking hard. To just not walk away and say fuck em all, and never go back.
But my body is still falling apart, whether I make my appts (all over the phone still) or not. And I still deserve better. Better treatment, better options, better help.
America is dealing with GOP trauma. The media gives the patriarchy/abuser a free pass, by design.
This is % true. And yet: we do not have to be happy with what we have, just because things are not worse. Would Trump’s very presence have made every measurable metric worse? Yes. But that doesn’t mean we stop fighting for better.
Biden’s Covid response has been abysmal. He’s out here calling Putin a war criminal & doing nothing about it; tweeting that healthcare is a right not a privilege on the same day the federal govt stops funding free Covid testing. His border policies remain largely unchanged from Trump’s racist & disgusting policies; we’re still looking at a bogusly Republican-packed 5-4 court, even w/Katanji Brown Jackson’s confirmation.
We can acknowledge that everything would be worse with our former President while still requiring more, requiring BETTER, from our current one.
One of my most unreasonable fears is that one day I’m going to swallow my ring instead of/with my meds. I fidget w/it a lot so sometimes it’s in my palm, like my meds before I toss ‘em in my mouth. It doesn’t make any sense that I would do this, but sometimes I take my ring off and put it on the table, just so it doesn’t happen by accident. Brains are weird.
People get really confused when I mention having a teenager, because I’m still under 30. It doesn’t occur to people that adoption is a thing, or that adoption doesn’t automatically mean adopting an infant. I wanted a kid, I found a kid who actually got to, like, consent to having me as a parent. It was dope.
But since people get confused, I’ve just started calling my kid my “foundling” and cultivating some weird fae energy. I got my kid in a pact for someone’s firstborn, don’t worry about it.
I’m genuinely concerned that I’ll have no real way to tell when it’s safe for me to start doing things again, because the CDC basically told everyone to get fucked and die, I’m surrounded by people taking the, “eh, if I get covid, I get covid” approach, and I can’t fucking tell what’s a reasonable safety precaution anymore.
I’m exhausted all the time, and I’m still scared of getting sick, but the world is moving on without me, and I’m just so disoriented, y'all.
my no 1 biggest cross stitch pet peeve is like. ok so i completely understand that pre-digital patterns u had to split larger patterns across multiple pages in order for them to be legible. & no doubt some people like to print their patterns out, so it makes sense to provide a multi-page version of a digital pattern.
but!! digital patterns are zoomable! so u can also provide a single-page version & then people can zoom in and scroll around and look at whatever section they want! why not do this!!!!
AAAARGH (╯°□°)╯︵ ┻━┻
my 2nd biggest pet peeve is when ppl post pictures of their work and they don’t have proper tension in their embroidery hoop so their fabric is all slack ):< makes me uncomfortable
Anonymous asked: Wait, I signed up for a trans kid when I decided to become pregnant? Are you joking or are you really that crazy?
Hey there,
I’m not joking at all and I don’t really see how this would be a laughing matter to you.
Yes, you signed up for a trans kid. And while we are at it, you also signed up for a disabled kid. Autistic kid. Gay kid. A kid who doesn’’t look like you. A deaf kid. A kid who will have interests that don’t match up with yours at all. You signed up for a shy kid and a loud kid and a kid who wets the bed and a sick kid.
That’s the beauty, the miracle of parenthood, don’t you agree? You decide to care for a little person you don’t even know yet. You decide to open your heart and home to them, you promise to nurture and love and protect a tiny human being. How can you promise that, if not unconditionally?
You can’t pick and choose your kid. Maybe even more importantly, they can’t choose you. They depend on you to keep that promise - and not only if they live up to whatever expectations you had.
What’s your problem with “spam liking?” I mean…i saw a post from you and it was soo cool it made me check ur blog…i saw ur first post and it was cool…i saw another post and i loved it…then another and it was awesome…then scrolled back till 2012 just to realise all your posts are precious and i had to let you know that
Anyone who thinks asexuality is a 2010s Tumblr invention needs to immediately read this Wikipedia page and every single page it links to, and learn that:
Magnus Hirschfeld, the gay Jewish-German physician who advocated for gay and trans rights in the 1910s-30s and had his research burned by the Nazis after his death, recognized the existence of “people without any sexual desire” in 1896.
Emma Trosse, who published one of the first favorable scientific works on homosexuality, defined “asensuality” to be what we now know as asexuality in 1897, and applied it to herself.
In 1907 a man named Carl Schlegel was found guilty for publicly advocating for legal equality for “homosexuals, heterosexuals, bisexuals and asexuals.”
Asexuals have alwaysbeen a part of the queer community, since its earliest beginnings and throughout our entire fight for rights.
here’s ur reminder that axolotl is NOT pronounced like “ak-suh-laa-tl” (or lot-ul), it is in fact a nahuatl word (that most commonly translates to “water dog” actually, very cute!) and is pronounced “ah-SHOW-lowtch” !!!!
i think abt this every time i see a post abt axolotls coz i just know there r so many ppl mispronouncing it and the thought bothers me. if ppl, esp white ppl, reblogged this to spread the word to those who may not be aware, i’d be very grateful. thank u!!
You fanfiction people are insane. Y'all will say shit like “I hate writing original fiction, I prefer it when the characters have an established dynamic.” And then headcannon the characters to where their dynamic is completely different.
“I like fanfiction because using an established world is a good shorthand for other readers!” And then write shit like “The avengers but they’re actually the starving orphaned children of a kindly french barrel maker during the 30 years war.”
Essentially we play with characters the way we used to play with Barbies
All jokes aside, in an era when artists are encouraged to squeeze every last drop of joyless profit out of their passions, the fundamental un-monetizeability of “G.I. Joe / Bionicle / Polly Pocket Crossover AU of the Iran-Contra affair” is King Shit. Rigid boundaries stifle art, especially those imposed by capital. Seeing artists follow their unhinged joy is a port in the storm of the modern media landscape.
cannot emphasize enough just how much i ADORE that the obi wan-leia dynamic consists of only about ten minutes passing before obi wan is speaking to her in his “anakin for the love of fucking god PLEASE” voice and only about ten minutes more before leia gives him a goddamn heart attack
