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My grandma's grandfather came with his family as a little boy in the 1830s.

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I just thought this thread on character creation in RPGs was neat.

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We ask your questions anonymously so you don’t have to! Submissions are open on the 1st and 15th of the month.

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i am a tragedy enjoyer before i am human

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Yeah, it took me a long time to get over the "career" mindset. I am much closer to the end of my working career than I am to the beginning, and I've determined that for the vast majority of people, having a career is bullshit. We have jobs.

When I was younger, I bought into the whole "find your calling, do what you love and you'll never work a day" nonsense. I spent decades A) trying to figure out my calling, B) wondering if my lack of a "calling" was just another way I was broken and C) ruining the love I had for something by turning it into work. Some people do feel a pull towards careers; everyone knows someone who's wanted to be a doctor/vet/teacher/etc since they were little, and then went on and did that thing. For most of us however, we just get a job and plod along in our lives with a vague feeling of maybe we should be doing something else.

Once I reframed it to I enjoy doing these things, and I need money to feed all my little hobbies, therefor I need a job, and preferably one that pays well, things changed. I no longer felt a need to prove I was dedicated and get things done after work hours. I didn't feel obligated to pick up the phone when work called on the weekend or on my day off. The stupid shit people did during work got left at work.

Instead, I played with my kids. I took up beekeeping. I read more books. I built more Legos. I tried different hobbies, and dropped the ones I didn't like. I picked up hobbies I'd had as a kid and forgotten I'd enjoyed.

Will I ever be recognized as an expert by people in my industry? Hell no. But I gave friends and family a lot of honey this year. I made my great-aunt a lap blanket that has a pocket for her feet so she's warm. I've made and donated crate pad to the local animal shelter. I adopted a feral cat that moved into my woodshed and now can hear her purring from across the room.

Fuck careers. Make money so you can do the things you enjoy, because without that, there's no point in working.

I don’t WANT a career. I want to cuddle and sleep and eat and read and create and love and be loved.

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Hope

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So I constantly see stuff talking about millennials and their baby boomer parents. But my mom is gen x. So I decided to make a poll

References

Silent generation: 1928-1945

Boomer generation: 1946-1964

Generation X: 1965-1980

Millennial: 1981-1996

If you only know for 1 parent, answer for them

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Me: You know how when you were a kid and you’d wish that you’d get sick or injured in a way that would justify why you didn’t live up to your potential?

Everybody, apparently: No?

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Pen Pals

So I was cleaning out my work computer this week (in case I get axed by The big Cheeto and his puppet master), and I found this Ty & Zane drabble I started years ago.

Pen pals

4th grade

“Alright class, get out your paper and pencils. We’ve got a new project to work on today!”

Tyler obediently did as the teacher asked, hoping the new project would be something way cool like drawing dinosaurs. He fidgeted a little while the slower kids in the class took too long to get ready.

“Thank you, class. You all are great at following directions!” Ms. Clancy praised them. Ty nodded his head. Yep, he was good at following directions. His daddy made sure he did. “A good Marine always follows orders!”

“Now, my best friend in college is also a teacher. She went to Texas after college to teach there. And she and I decided to collaborate on an assignment together.” She paused to deal with hands that shot up in the air.

“What does ‘collbrate’ mean, Ms. Clancy?” “Coll-AB-or-ate, Kelly,” she enunciated slowly and clearly. “It means to work together. My friend, Ms. Lassiter, teaches 4th graders too. So we decided that we’d have our two classes be pen pals together for the rest of the school year.”

The next flurry of hands waved in the air.

“Pen pals are friends who write letters to each other,” she plowed on. “You’ll each get paired up with a boy or girl that you’ll send letters and cards to. You can tell them about yourself, and he or she will answer and tell you about themselves. That way, you can learn about them and what it’s like to grow up in Texas, and they’ll learn about you and what it’s like to grow up in West Virginia.”

She passed out names on construction paper. Ty’s eyes widen when he got his pen pal’s name. “Zane Garrett.” He poked his neighbor to get his attention and waved the paper in his face. “Look at my name! It starts with a Z! That’s so cool! I didn’t know there were names that started with the letter Z! What name did you get?”

The boys and girls in the class chattered as they tried to pronounce their pen pals’ names. Ms. Clancy gave them a few minutes to settle down as she wrote some sentences on the chalk board.

“Okay, class. Letters have parts to them – a beginning, a middle and an end. The beginning of the letter is the greeting. So everyone at the top of the page on the left, I want you to write the word “Hello,” followed by a comma.” She waited until everyone had that part down.

“Since this our first letter to our new pen pals, we want to introduce ourselves. This will be our middle section of the letter. I’ve written some sentences on the board that you can use in your letter if you can’t think of any of your own. Everyone needs to write down five sentences in your letter. You can tell them your name, what your favorite color is, what you like to do for fun, what your favorite movie or book is. You can tell them anything you can think of, but you need to write five sentences, okay?” There was some groaning at that. Five sentences was a LOT.

“After you’re done with your sentences, the end part is the farewell. You’ll sign your name at the bottom of the letter, okay? Then I’ll collect them all and mail them all together to Ms. Lassiter. Once she gets them and hands them out, her students will write back to you. Okay? So let’s get started! If you need help spelling a word, just raise your hand quietly and I’ll come give you a hand.”

I can barely remember where this was going to go. I think a few scenes of letters through the years. Then video chats. Finally they end up going to space camp or something together, (that one time at space camp) around the age of 15, get all blushy and giggly and shy for each other. Go to each other's proms, then go to college together, then fade to black?

Maybe one day.....

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scars in fiction: I got this trying to save my lover from an assassin- but tragically, I was too late. now I carry the mark of my failure with me always, and I can never forget~

scars in real life: so I was trying to open macaroni sauce with a paring knife

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and he won’t tell you that he loves you, but he loves you.

And you feel like you’ve done something terrible, like robbed a liquor store, or swallowed pills, or shoveled yourself a grave in the dirt, and you’re tired. You’re in a car with a beautiful boy, and you’re trying not to tell him that you love him, and you’re trying to choke down the feeling, and you’re trembling, but he reaches over and he touches you, like a prayer for which no words exist, and you feel your heart taking root in your body, like you’ve discovered something you didn’t even have a name for.

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the thing about bullets is that you can touch them and it's fine, but if they're shot by a gun they get so fast they can kill you. it's the speed that does the killing. so much of martial conflict is just using speed to harm one another

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After a trip to Scotland this past summer, my husband came home with an array of Scottish foods and such he wanted to try out at home. He had intended to try out “neeps and tatties” alongside his US-safe haggis, only to discover after we purchased parsnips that we should have bought rutabagas instead.

All of that to ask - what’s your favorite way to eat parsnips? They’re sitting around waiting to be used, but I’ve never made them, and found my grandma-in-law’s mashed parsnips less than inspiring. I did eye your parsnip pie recipe on The Mind Palate, but I’m looking for something more savory. I could swear I remembered a Middle Kingdoms recipe that included parsnips among other root vegetables, though I may be misremembering.

Thank you for all of your writing! It’s been a delight to discover the Middle Kingdoms as an adult after the Young Wizards series did so much wiring in my brain as a kid/teen. And I never get tired of reading about your culinary adventures here on Tumblr.

No problem at all! Glad to help.

@petermorwood would also be one of those who wouldn't be terribly wild about parsnips, as in his family too they routinely only turned up boiled to death and mashed (with carrots, urgh...). But when I started working with them secondary to the Yes We Have No Potatoes business in the Middle Kingdoms 'verse, he began to change his tune. This recipe in particular was the one that did the trick.

I feel a little sorry for parsnips, sometimes, in that the relentless "boil-em-mash-em" brigade have reduced them in popular opinion to a near-tasteless pap dish. Parsnips' natural sweetness and pepperiness gets completely lost in such preparations. The approach above, though, highlights both of those qualities... and some judicious addition of herbs and spices makes them even better.

...The thought of improving the article at Food and Cooking of the Middle Kingdoms a little bit impelled me to make these for lunch and re-photograph them. (Oh How I Suffer.) Here they are with sausages...

(And yeah, that's mayo on the right. The Kingdoms have mayo. [Though obviously that's not what they call it, since Mahon is on another Earth entirely...] After all, they've got olive oil, and they've got eggs... so it'd be only a matter of time before someone developed a sauce combining the two.)

Anyway, hope this helps! :)