may-shepard

[may-shepard]

LESS movies about the lgbtq experience MORE movies about people who just happen to be lgbtq. is it really that hard to understand

[may-shepard]

reddit is having a glitch where it puts the wrong captions over photos and it’s the only thing i care about right now

[may-shepard]

they really are made for each other

[may-shepard]

the wording on this Jack russell vid beamed a permanent mark onto my brain

[may-shepard]

Made for each other

[may-shepard]

[may-shepard]

[may-shepard]

I am searching for a term that may not exist:

I have a husband

He has a brother, who is my brother-in-law

My brother-in-law has a wife. Now colloquially, she is my sister in law, but is there a distinction to indicate she is also my husband's sister-in-law and not his sister? Is she my sister-in-law-in-law? My sister twice removed?

This is not actually the term I'm after but it'll help.

My brother-in-law's wife has siblings. Who are they in relation to me? I see my sister-in-law-in-law's brother more than I see her, but is there a way to explain that he's family?

Now, the real term I'm after: my sister-in-law-in-law's brother has a daughter. Is she my niece? Second cousin some degree removed??

Like, kinship trees vary wildly by culture, but I feel like there might be terms for these by-marriage relatives from inheritance law or something?

[may-shepard]

Damn

[may-shepard]

[may-shepard]

pssstt...

Do you have any more goofy silly bitterns for me....

o^o

*Whispers* (your friends have been waiting for you...)

Black Bittern (Ixobrychus flavicollis), family Ardeidae, order Pelicaniformes, Nepal

photograph by Nepal Desk

Black Bittern (Ixobrychus flavicollis), family Ardeidae, order Pelicaniformes, Singapore

photograph by Saravanan Krishnamurthy

Black Bittern (Ixobrychus flavicollis), family Ardeidae, order Pelicaniformes, India

photograph by Manoj Vittapu

Least Bittern (Ixobrychus exilis), breeding plumage, family Ardeidae, order Pelicaniformes, Sarasota, FL, USA

The smallest heron found in the Americas.

photograph by Thomas Schreier

Least Bittern (Ixobrychus exilis), family Ardeidae, order Pelicaniformes, Gulf Coast of Texas, USA

photograph by Greg Lavaty Houston Audubon 

[may-shepard]

He was a man of habits, narrow and concentrated habits, and I had become one of them.

The Casebook of Sherlock Holmes, the Creeping Man

[may-shepard]

i think this behavior must be a defense mechanism to look bigger. which means dracula is walking around his house kinda scared like. who goes there

[may-shepard]

I do have a piece of writing advice, actually.

See, the first time I grew parsnips, I fucked it up good. I hadn't seen parsnips sprouting before, right, and in my eagerness I was keeping a close eye on the row. And every time I saw some intruding grass coming up, I twitched it right out, and went back to anticipating the germination of my parsnips.

But it turns out parsnips take a bit longer than anything else I'd ever grown to distinguish themselves visually. It's just the two little split leaves, almost identical to a newly seeded bit of kentucky bluegrass when they first come up, and they take a good bit to establish themselves and spread out flat before the main stem with its first distinctive scallopy leaf gets going.

I didn't get any parsnips, not that year, because I'd weeded them all out as soon as they showed their faces, with my 'ugh no that's grass' twitchy horticulture finger.

The next year, having in retrospect come to suspect what had happened, I left the row alone and didn't weed anything until all the sprouts coming up had all had a bit to set in and show their colors, and I've grown lots of parsnips since. They're kind of a slow crop, not a huge return, but I like them and watching them grow and digging them up, and their papery little seeds in the second year, if you don't harvest one either on purpose or because you misjudged the frost, so it's worth it.

Anyway, whenever I see someone stuck and struggling with their writing who's gotten into that frustration loop of typing a few words, rejecting them, backspacing, and starting again, I find myself thinking, you gotta stop weeding your parsnips, man.

[may-shepard]

Sometimes a Make Some Noise prompt hits too close to home.