#ImmortalElvesAreOld

[elfpuddle]

They say in Heaven, Love comes first!

it’s fun to stay at the Y

[elfpuddle]

Start your New Year with something to learn. No, elections aren't rigged. The electoral college is not perfect, but is also not keeping your favorite person from winning. it's math. It's the math of people not voting, and of occasionally voting against a thing instead of for a thing.

[elfpuddle]

"Yes, this is one of these salads, which definitely isn't a salad, because America is unsupervised and they can't be stopped." Somebody make this and tell me if it really does yeet you into orbit.

[elfpuddle]

10 Random Questions

(as tagged by @charmandersims )...

Thank you, Char!!

1. If you could travel to one place in the world, where would you go?

Usually, I'd say Scotland, because I'm dying to spend Hogmany in Edinburgh.

However, since April 10th, I've been struggling with mysterious leg pain and swelling; laid up in bed with my feet raised except to painfully hobble to the bathroom or hospital. Doctors are stll running tests trying to figure out what's wrong with me. Seems like a good time to get to Our Lady's Grotto at Lourdes, if it were possible.

2. What do you do in your free time away from sims?

Right now? Scroll through Tumblr and play brainless mobile games.

Usually? Read, pray, babysit my godchildren, or play other games...

3. What other games do you play besides The Sims?

I'm a board game addict. I like Munchkin and Talisman the best. We were plaing a lot of Dominion before I got laid up.

4. How tall are you?

I'm 6'0 ft tall. In our group of friends, 4 couples and two priests, only one priest and my husband are taller.

5. One random interest of yours?

Catechesis. I love teaching about the Catholic faith!!

6. Current favorite bands or artists?

Lately I've been listening to the 70s and 80s Country of my youth...Eddie Rabbit, Dan Seals, Kenny Rogers.

If you meant "currently producing", than I'll go with Dolly Style and Scott Bradlee's Postmodern Jukebox. Yes, I know what that says about me. Go with the naive/childlike options rather than creeper, okay?

7. Something you're looking forward to?

BEING WELL AGAIN!!!!

Knowing what's wrong with me and having a plan to get better!

8. Current favorite films?

The entire Avengers series, last fall's Tubman, Rogue One, and The Last Unicorn.

9. What food could you not live without?

My stuffing. Cornbread. Wild Rice. Pork sausage. Goose broth. Oysters. Celery. Sage. Thyme. You have no idea how amazing this is!

10. Favorite series (book or movie series)?

Books: Anne of Green Gables. Narnia. Little Women (the last book is the best!). Harry Potter (The Cursed Child is not canon. Fight me.) Wheel of Time. Dragonsong (the YA Pern trilogy).

Movies: Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them. Avengers. Star Wars (yes, all of them. Some are better than others, but there's not one I don't like.)

I'm not tagging anybody, because I bet most of you have done it already. Please do it if you haven't, and say that I tagged you!

[elfpuddle]

- Post 4 songs you have on repeat right now -

I was tagged by @keoni-chan while on Spring Break at my parents', so I'm responding late.

I hardly ever turn on my music apps, so here's the four songs that are repeating in my pile of brainworms of late.

"Happier" covered by Post Modern Jukebox

"Nobody" by Sylvia

"Leaving On a Jet Plane" covered by Chantal Kreviazuk

"Wild Montana Skies" by John Denver (here as a duet with Emmylou Harris" Yes, my brain is an eclectic collection of over 100 years of music. You're welcome for what the links do to your own brain and online algorithms. As usual, I'm late to the party, so feel free to ignore. I'm tagging @that-catholic-shinobi, @shredsandpatches, @sushigal007, and @ (insert your name here if you want to be tagged).

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C, H, K, M, N, R, V & X!

C: Favorite Premade? Completely changes by mood. Most likely Bella, because she's absolutely iconic and yet versatile--there are so many stories about her that adding more is easy. Unlike, say, Loki. There's only so far you can take him off-script so to speak.

H: Stuff or Expansion Pack? Yes. What? I'm a completionist. I need all the things!!!

K: My traits/Aspiration? Family-Oriented, Nurturing, Bookworm, Good, Supernatural Fan. Family Sim with a Knowledge secondary.

M: How long have I been playing? (quickly googles) 2001. Just a few years after I started teaching.

N: Natural or Dramatic Sim Death? Depends! If I have a story in mind, then they get what the story needs. I once killed a sim with a satellite because I was tired of him glitching as he aged to elder. But I prefer that they all live to ripe old ages and die of old age.

R: Cartoony or Realistic Sims? Mostly cartoony, but I have literally 100s of skins and eyes in my game, and they run the gamut from maxis to realistic, including berries.

V: How did I start playing Sims? A coworker introduced me to Sims 1 shortly after either Living Large or Hot Date. I immediately got addicted, and played until Makin' Magic. (I kept trying, but that was too much for my Windows ME to run. I loved everything, but not having teens or genetics bothered me. So, when TS2 came out, I bought it that day, and have been playing ever since.

X: Lifetime or Career Rewards? Of course! Why wouldn't you?

Thanks for asking, Nonnie!!

[elfpuddle]

Speaking of Infertility...

TMI warning: This is a rambling post about my infertility and the specifics of my period and cycle. If that bothers you, go away.

Nobody actually enjoys getting her period, unless she thinks she could be pregnant and doesn’t want to be; and then really it’s more of a relief than enjoyment.

Yesterday was cycle day one. (For those of you that don’t chart, that means it was the first full day of my period.) (Hey, why don’t you chart?) I started bleeding Tuesday evening. No, not spotting, full on light bleeding.

I have Polycystic Ovary Syndrome (read more here: http://www.webmd.com/women/tc/polycystic-ovary-syndrome-pcos-topic-overview), I have fibroids (read more here: http://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/uterine-fibroids/symptoms-causes/dxc-20212514 ) *and* and I have endometriosis (read more about that here: http://www.webmd.com/women/endometriosis/ss/slideshow-endometriosis-overview). My husband and I are trying to conceive, and have been trying for years.

This July will be our fourth anniversary, and I turned forty-five last month. You can do the math, #ImmortalElvesAreOld. We got pregnant on our honeymoon, and miscarried our baby five weeks later. We haven’t been pregnant since. (And the age and timing is a rant for another time.)

Nor am I starting menopause, though the gyn I had at the time BabyElfTMC died thought so. Yes, my periods are heavy and irregular. No, it isn’t menopause; it’s the PCOS and endo. My periods have not changed – they’ve been heavy and irregular since they began some thirty-two years ago.

“Heavy”. Yes. I wear a size 2 Lunette cup (sorry for the long links; I’m on my phone: https://www.lunette.com/) *and* reusable pads. I woke up at 5:40 this morning because my underwear and jammies were soaked in blood. (I seem to have missed the sheets, so that’s a blessing. I hate it when that happens.) This happens at least once a cycle, every cycle. Always. I can honestly and without exaggeration say that physically, my periods are exactly like a first-trimester miscarriage. That’s what happens when you have excessive lining all over your uterus. I once passed a two-inch-long fibroid and didn’t notice until it didn’t show up on the next ultrasound–it just detached and fell off. The gyn (same one as above), said that I must not know what I was talking about. No, my periods are just that intense. She said the cramping, at least, would have been intense and I would have noticed. Yeah, well the cramping is always that intense, so… I’m so glad I found a new gyn who not only knows her stuff (she’s a national speaker on fertility issues), but actually listens to her patients!

So, now it’s nearly seven in morning, and I’m lying on the couch after changing my jammies, starting laundry, and taking some meds. My alarm will go off at 7:15 so that I can spend the day at VBS. Specifically, in Adoration, where I’m not supposed to leave the Blessed Sacrament alone. Which means no bathroom breaks if someone else isn’t in the room with me. And I need to go empty my cup again, because it’s going to overflow. It’s been an hour since I emptied it last.

Don’t take this to mean that the cup isn’t worth the money, or that reusables suck. I once bled through a super plus tampon in the time it took to walk from the toilet to the shower and turn on the water. Reusables have saved me thousands of dollars in the last five years, and I wish, for the sake of landfills and my wallet, that I’d found them thirty or more years ago.

I wish that I’d started charting then, too.

Honestly, I wish a lot of things related to my menstrual cycle.

Thank you for reading this far. If you would spare a prayer for me today, out of your mercy and kindness, I’d appreciate it.

I don’t often complain about anything–it doesn’t help–but between the pain, the hormones, and the depression of not being pregnant again, I needed to vent.

There over one hundred campers at the VBS I’m volunteering at. I’m a family sim without children. Nobody enjoys getting her period; but it’s especially hard for the infertile.

[elfpuddle]

Girls with comet tails? Don’t you mean

[elfpuddle]

None of the Above. This is Gen X erasure!

#2

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I’m “I got a typewriter for a graduation present. And it remembered three lines of text before typing it out!! *AND* had changeable font wheels. I could type in cursive, y’all!!” old.

I got my first computer more than a year into my first teaching job.

I played Sims1 on Windows ME.

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You don’t need to know my age exactly. You do need to know that I’m too old to be chatting to minors in private, and there should ABSOLUTELY be boundaries!

[elfpuddle]

Me and the others teaching teenagers that 27 is not old. And, to be quite frank, that ageism and despair is one of the bigger problems in the world today and probably one of the causes of the upswing in deaths of despair. 50 is middle-aged, so at 25, you have most of your life ahead of you!! For the love of all that’s holy, go touch grass and look at the age span of people in the real world.

You can even touch the grass on my lawn.

[elfpuddle]

The first phone I used was a rotary landline. The first one that was mine was s pushbutton landline with a 50yd line from the splitter on the kitchen phone pinned down the hall to my bedroom.

Pls reblog if u vote :)

[elfpuddle]

I’m fifty. I’m not a grandma, yet, but I’m looking forward to it. I’d like to not only add my “ditto” to all of the above, but also point out that nonny must already be embarrassed enough to die, given the fact that it’s on anon.

Look, kids, I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. There is no point to being rude on anonymous. You only end up looking sad and trollish. If you have a disagreement, talk about it. That’s what mature people do. If you just want to poke or mock, then go back to wherever you were before and carry on. Ignore the person or behavior you want to mock. You will not only have more peace, but there’s less of a chance that it will end badly.

The only behavior I cannot ignore is that of trying to hurt another (and that sort of shaming anon is trying to hurt). Just be kind; it isn’t that hard.

You're not embarrassed being an old woman and being in tumblr? I would rather die that my grannies have an actual account on tumblr for celebrities rho

Why would I be embarrassed for having interests I enjoy? My guess is that you’re really, really young. And that maybe you don’t actually have solid relationships with adults who have lives outside of parenting or work. But I hope for you that when you’re my age you have hobbies that bring you happiness. And that by that point you realize that trying to shame someone for being an adult only makes you look too immature to be in adult spaces, which Tumblr is.

When I was 20, I loved music, making art, writing and reading good stories, fashion, talking about popular culture, making friends, going to concerts… You’d be surprised how little changes when you’re my age. I just have way more money and time to enjoy those things now. I’m only 55. I’m not dead. I’m also not a “granny”, but even if I was, I’d probably still like all of those things.

Ageism isn’t cute, love. And I sure don’t ever see people telling men they shouldn’t go to football games or have their little “fantasy football leagues” or wear their favorite player’s merch. For every comment you guys like to say is misogynistic (but isn’t), this is one that really reeks of it.

[elfpuddle]

I’ll be 51 next week, but I am not growing up!

calling out all the 30+ yr old simmers..

no shade to the teens and early twenties bloggers but it’s hard finding people within my age group that are active and continue to contribute here in the community. 

also idk if anyone else experiences this but sometimes it can be difficult relating to the younger population due to generational differences, pop culture, etc. 

please reblog or comment if you fall into the 30+ age simblr category.

[elfpuddle]

^Truth!

Reblog to help forward the cause of science or something, honestly I'm just curious to know how old everyone is.