#i just want my parking pass :(

[beaft]

everything is super uncertain and scary right now, so i'm trying very hard to not think about the future and just focus on the things that i want to happen. the concrete things.

i want to be in a space of my own that's clean and safe where i am surrounded by objects that are beautiful or meaningful to me. i want to be in a body that feels natural, a body that i can love instead of tolerate. i want my friends to be a short train or a bus ride away. i want to make art and write stories. i want to go on long walks in the summer and look at the animals and flowers. i want to sleep in a tent by the river. i want to make good food for myself and for the people i care about. i want to have a job i don't hate that pays me enough - not lots, just enough - that i can afford to be independent without constantly panicking over money. i want to feel at peace with where i am instead of agonising over where i'm not.

all of these things are achievable. maybe not all at the same time, maybe i can just have a couple of them, but they are achievable. i will not always feel this way. i will not always be trapped like i am now.

[skitskatdacat63]

I'm actually going to kms. Every semester without fail I've been able to buy the same, nice, convenient parking pass. Today. I missed my alarm and just woke up, and it's sold out.

[shootingstarpilot]

Get attacked!! ✨🌈SEND THIS TO OTHER BLOGGERS YOU THINK ARE WONDERFUL. KEEP THE GAME GOING🌈

[krogans-give-the-best-cuddles]

Reading the Orchid Thief and lemme say. So fascinating to see someone like. Try to come up with a Reason Why humans like orchids. Two chapters here in a row pretty much treating Orchid hobbyists and plant hobbyists in general like one would an entirely alien culture- and don't get me wrong I understand why to an extent. Trying to make this book marketable outside just plant circles and what have you. But some of the way the camera is angled here is just. Fascinating.

Like, she explains how there are so many unique ways orchids evolved, as an attempt to contextualize for a reader why people might go crazy for them in specific, and describes individual species unique mating strategies, and the inability of them to self pollinate- but while I think that context is interesting it doesn't explain a damn thing. For one thing, having an extremely specific mating strategy is not solely an Orchid thing- a LOT of plants do it like that. Lots are flexible but I would say a vast swath are not and require specific things. For another- apples also don't self fertilize, but you don't have hundreds of thousands of apple varietal collectors.

She discusses their beauty as a reason they're collected- I won't deny that being a factor for sure, plants that humans like the shape of have a tendency to get collected and overcollected all the time- but like. A lot of people collect things that are traditionally ugly or even smell bad- and if it was exclusively a shallow pursuit, no one would work as hard as is required for an insane amount of orchids.

Part of the reasons orchids in particular are popular has to do with colonization. I can't articulate it all myself bc I haven't done research- but a genus that largely exists in tropical regions, that became popular in the late 1800s, that, in order to get in homes, white men would travel to all sorts of regions to take plants out of to get in the home? That is gonna help it get more popular than tomato or apple varieties for sure. I'm sure she's gonna touch on this eventually, given that the story she's covering actually involves the Seminole nation so I'm not holding it against her.

I suppose I'm just fascinated by her approach so far as to trying to understand why anyone would. Work to grow something? Really like something? I mean she pretty explicitly states that she "wants to want something" as much as these people want their plants- describes hobby communities and the idea of like. Working a hobby into your schedule or having friends related to the hobby as a "religion". She's baffled by like. Putting time and energy into a hobby and gaining joy and community from it and is trying to like. Break down orchids into their component parts to understand what makes someone. Want to grow a plant? And get community out of a hobby?

I'm going to be charitable and not make presumptions that she doesn't know like. The concept of loneliness and therefore a longing for community. Or that on some level she must know what common signs of autism are (ignoring her having spent several paragraphs describing several different people with classic signs and symptoms and then settling on "weird"). But it makes me want to turn the camera lens around for a moment. What makes someone presume that it's Orchid "obsession" (the word hobby is rather rare in the book acrually) that is particularly strange or more obsessed than other obsessions? What makes one abstract others hobbies and interests as needing a solve while the ones you surely have seen all over and even participated in aren't worth that examination? The line between "normal" and "abnomal" is entirely one made by dominant society

So this is why hobbies and kink aren't so different in the way they're perceived-

Orchids are an obsession to this author, to be highlighted and examined, or a hobby, to most people. They get a noteworthy category because they are seen as atypical. Sports-watching, however, is like. Never discussed as hobby. Watching football, watching soccer. It's just normal. No one says "that's my hobby." Even if a guy had a room full of memorabilia he would be noted as a "team fan" not a hobbyist. Sports has been declared normative, so it's not really considered a hobby by anyone. Plants? Non normative, therefore the same exact behaviors will get you considered unusual and a hobbyist.

Kink is the same way. People who are attracted to women being interested in breasts is so assumed to be normal and natural that no one calls it a kink. Breasts, the fatty deposits intended for feeding young, are expected to be hidden bc this kink (which everyone refuses to call a kink or a fetish or what have you) is seen as so universal. It's seen as immutable fact that there is a sexual nature to them. Feet however? If someone's into that that's a kink or a fetish if you're feeling kind, an obsession that makes you strange and worthy of examination and explanation if you're not.

I'm not arguing for doing away with calling things hobbies or kinks- I'm actually advocating for calling more normative things those words actually- I think it's just helpful to see where the framing of something, the way in which we choose to examine it, also has a lot to say about that which we leave unexamined, and unnamed. Because we don't categorize the normal.

[crowcryptid]

Certified florida moment.

[circumpolarvampire]

Ouh I forgot to eat breakfast today I've only had coffee

[avianii]

me when i remember im old enough to get a motorcycle license and COULD be the bitchiest (and coolest) person at my school by taking up an entire parking spot but can't

[whentherewerebicycles]

IT’S HERE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[drysauce]

went on a walk to the nearby park and ngl i think this can fix me

[coloursofaparadox]

okay adhd story time. i just fucking went to the auto insurance broker because it turns out that when I got new plates on my car months ago, I only changed out the back one?? and just?? FORGOT that there were two plates on the car that needed changing. so I realized last night that my front plate was different than my back plate and spent a good hour looking through all my insurance documents and house to see where the hell I could've left the second plate if it wasn't on my car???

i gave up. resigned myself to paying the fee to just get new plates. got to the broker today, brought in the remaining plate, and told them that i lost one of the set. absolutely did not try to explain how or why because it would make me sound absolutely bonkers. we're sitting there chatting as the supervisor comes over to help out, etc etc, it's taking a bit longer than I thought so I start fiddling (adhd) with the plate sitting on the counter in front of me. do a double take. dawning horror sets in as I look, very closely, at the thin outline of a ridge around the outside of the plate that's been on my car the last few months. stuck my thumbnail into the ridge and pried it open, popping out the second plate i was reporting lost onto the counter in front of us.

apparently, when I was replacing the plates the last time, I'd just screwed both plates stuck together onto the car. since there was no second plate in front of me to do anything with, my brain marked the task done and moved on. the people at the insurance desk were very nice about it, if obviously confused, as they cancelled the whole transaction. i apologized profusely and put both plates back on the car and now i need to go lie down for a while.

[allbeendonebefore]

K trip updates just to catch you up, I did take lots of pictures at the tyrell (but I spent a lot of time hiding in dark corners because there were way more people than expected) though I have yet to sort through them (especially because half the time I spend taking photos of artefacts and half I spend taking pictures of labels and gallery set ups because museum studies brain Won't Leave me Alone) (hey tyrell I know sans serif fonts look hip and modern but they are so much harder to read in print wah)

Anyway we took the route back through stettler and the change in weather and landscape was so dramatic in a way I don't notice as much taking the QEII from Calgary, almost immediately after crossing into the county the trees appear again and the wetlands and things, it's wild. The temperature went from 26 to like 17 on our drive home and you can see the dramatic cloud formations as we drove into a big storm in Edmonton, very refreshing!

(stettler itself had a dog food smell which really put us off apart from all the election and conspiracy signage in the area, lol, but we were also anxious to be back home so we didn't really look around much)

Quatsch and I are thinking about a few future trips: one is a northern Alberta route (supposedly there is a highway between GP and Fort Mac that's being built so we want that to be complete, dunno which order that trip would be or what we would do), we would like to do another Lethbridge area tour (we missed Cardston and Medicine Hat on this trip due to scope but I would also like to see Waterton and Head-Smashed-In and Writing-On-Stone), and we are also entertaining the idea of a little Red Deer to Drumheller tour (but of course this would definitely include a certain rockhound pal hint hint). Overall I feel very refreshed and ready to return to my studies (and maybe cosplay more closer to home, lol)

[emo-is-sexy]

I still hope at least sometime this year i can go to the huge indoor water park. Just the thought makes me so excited and happy. Day passes are $70 each (or $40 if we want to go from 5pm-9pm) but at the same time its the biggest indoor waterpark in the entire country and my dream to go there it breaks my heart how hard it is to even start planning for going and finding people to go with me and saving up and figuring out transportation. Like my waterpark/pool/splashpad autism is so intense it physically hurts that its so close (for texas standards it is. If u have lived here you know driving anywhere here takes 37737373 minutes) but i keep being held back. I remember when i went to the splashpad mini waterpark i was grinning the whole time laughing smiling it was the best day of all of last year aside from us picking up trixie. I can only imagine my sheer joy if i do end up going to kalahari :D

[jojolimons]

hate driving in new york

[dykesynthezoid]

Been looking at moving into Seattle to finish my degree next year and while exciting the financial aspect is making me wanna *** fr

[brightsunnydaysofcastamere]

I have a job interview in two hours and there’s like a ton of things I could do in that time but I’m not getting anything done I’ve entered Waiting Mode Hell™

[cultivating-wildflowers]

my villain origin story will be rooted in the incredible power I wield as the first point of contact for this office