#seasonal things

[obstructed-birdsong]

Cold weather has got me bundled up in a shawl and perching next to the heater

[bomberqueen17]

trissmiss

well it was shaping up to be not a very merry christmas, but the sun came out so we went out to shovel.

cut for photos and blathering

in my driveway, looking west toward the garage. [image: snow, a drift of at least five feet pressed up against a small white garage, nearly obscuring the door; the corner of a house, heavily-drifted, but a section of driveway scraped down to the pavement by wind.]

My driveway, looking east toward the road. I set about shoveling this drift, but it broke me and i gave up and only removed the left half of it, to clear part of the driveway to make a foot path. [image description: a drift coming around the side of a house, about four feet in height but quite thick, in front of a car with very little snow on it. Beyond that, a man in blaze orange snow pants is throwing snow onto a pile; he is up to his thighs in snow.]

Dude started out by the sidewalk. The street wasn’t plowed, so we figured ther was no point clearing by the road because when they came by they’d plow us right back in. (This is the horror that all of us in the snow belt know: when they plow the road, it throws a snowbank into your driveway.)

But after we’d been working for maybe an hour, we heard an engine, and looked and there was a town snowplow working on the cross-street a block up. We were very excited about this; I ran out to take a photo of it. But then imagine our shock and delight when it turned and came down our street next! Dude ran back in front of my car to get clear, and it came down the road in a glorious explosion of snow, operating at full speed-- Town of Tonawanda operates big highway plows so this guy was probably going 30-40 mph, flinging debris a good 20 feet either side. it’s the only way to deal with snow this deep and heavy.

Once plowed out, we focused our efforts on getting a pathway to the street.

[image: my partner, a six foot three inch man in orange snow pants, sits on a hunk of snow in a tiny passage he’s digging one shovel blade wide through a heavy snowbank. he looks tired.]

Once we’d dug out, we came inside, cleaned up, and then assembled our goods and hiked a quarter-mile down the street to dude’s mom’s house. Just over the border into the city of buffalo, no plows had been by but people were trying to dig themselves out.

[image description: footprints in snow in foreground, midground is the man in the orange snowpants carrying a shovel over his shoulder, background is a row of houses.] Note the cloud bank behind the houses: this is looking south. That is a lake effect front still dumping on south buffalo, which had been spared the worst of this storm but now is Getting It, though I think less severely.

Once at Dude’s mom’s house we unwrapped some presents and then made appetizers. These were what we’d planned to bring to a party on Christmas eve that got cancelled: Lil Smokies sausages wrapped in those Pilsbury crescent rolls that come in a tube.

[image description: pastries with tiny hot dogs sticking out of the ends of them, on a platter]

I’m pleased to report that I managed to wear the me-made dress I’d intended for Christmas after all; it traveled beautifully under my snow pants. Merino wool, baby.

[image description: the author, a fat blonde woman, is posing in front of a large mirror wearing a knee-length wool dress that’s quite tight-fitting through the bodice and flares a bit in the skirt. It is maroon-red with elbow-length sleeves.] That’s a Cashmerette Turner, modded to include side seam pockets.

[misterhickory]

hi i am back!!!!:~)

[lifeisprettygreatactually]

It’s finally snowing at my college for real this time, and I have never seen such beautiful snow-colored trees before in all my eighteen years of snow

[potofsoup]

Oh look, it seems like there's a Republican-led movement to purge voter rolls in the lead-up to the election! It's almost as if your vote matters and they don't want you to vote! Anyway, I whipped up a quick map (based on this) that shows when the voter registration deadline is in each state. There are a few deadlines coming up in the next week or so.

If you live in a state that regularly purges voter rolls for infrequent voters (the orange ones in the first map), or if you moved recently, it's good to check if you're still registered to vote.

Vote.org makes it super easy to check your registration: https://www.vote.org/am-i-registered-to-vote/

Just put in your address and DOB and they'll tell you whether you're registered. (And they give you a quick link to register online if it turns out that you're not! Only the 9 states in white on my map don't have online registration, and for those they provide instructions on how to do it via mail or in person.) If you want an extra verification, find your state's election website and double-check there.

So yeah, give yourself peace of mind -- do a quick check. :)

[itsgonnagetinspiringsoon]

FUCK

[shutupcrime]

I feel like so many problems people have with tv at the moment could be solved if we just went back to the good ole days of 20 episodes a season that’s just sixty percent filler and character development. Give the people what they want- less condensed story and more meaningless shenanigans

[illusioncanthurtme--art]

Physically? I am sitting in my bedroom. Mentally? Spiritually? I AM DEAD ON THE FLOOR!!!!! THESE TWO HAVE KILLED ME!!!!

(Another drawing! This was originally attempt #1 at drawing stan, and then fiddleford just showed up. Kinda feels like them five minutes after the above acting like nothing happened though, so it works sdjkgkjfshj)

[blumencia]

[goatyuuji]

I LOVE WHEN ALL THE PIECES CLICK BACK INTO PLACE TO MAKE THE PICTURE

[softestaries]

Lady Danbury: is something going on between you and my brother?

Violet: remember that time you fucked my dad?

[lordandladywhistledown]

You can tell by the reaction people have to Penelope asking Colin to kiss her whether they ever experienced being a wallflower/insecure fat girl at a party or not.

Because you say it's pathetic, I say it's relatable, no matter how desperate it may sound. If you've never had your insecurity eat you up from the inside (but also the outside, as Portia literally told Penelope that she was delusional for thinking she was gonna find a husband in her third season out) to the point you genuinely, wholeheartedly believe no one will ever love you unless you physically change, then obviously the scene is off to you.

But Pen literally told Colin she felt stupid for thinking she's gonna find a husband (she just started believing what the ton and her mother said) and that she knows no one would want to kiss her. And for a romance girl like her, do you think the thought of never having a kiss, never experiencing that passion, would be easy to bear? I can so relate to being the most romantic of the bunch but also being the loneliest and aching for physical and emotional romantic love.

She is so vulnerable and so real in that moment but y'all gotta bitch about it because it doesn't make sense to you. It doesn't make sense to me either because she's gorgeous, but that's the thing - no one ever told her she's gorgeous and actually meant it. And even if they did, there must be 10 more people who didn't that keep that insecurity in her, specifically her sisters and her mother.

Nicola said this one was for the wallflowers, and it truly is, so if you find scenes like this cringe, you just don't relate to the character enough to feel it and recall moments when you had the same thoughts as her.

[unknown-cold]

FINALLY SOMEONE SAID IT!!

Even if most people are just joking, it bothers me when other people actually think it's all due to a failed relationship when the problem is actually bigger than that. Vi getting to this point isn't because she broke up with Caitlyn. She has bigger, more difficult things going on than just a failed relationship. Adding to that the most painful factor for Vi is when she fights Jinx, which is one of the factors that really affects her. She went from being protective of her sister to "hurting" her sister. (Even though her sister Jinx brought this on herself, but anyway)

"Losing Caitlyn was the last straw, as they say"

Caitlyn was the one who got Vi out of prison, She got her out of the worst place Vi had ever been in. And Caitlyn was the last person Vi could trust and now she's gone.

I mean you can see she wasn't that miserable when she was in prison because she said herself, "The only thing that kept me going, was the thought of getting back to you." Now her sister is gone and Caitlyn is gone, the only two people left in her life. It's only natural that she would come to this point after literally losing everything.

Vi now has no hope no purpose and no one left after all the people she's lost along the way. It's really hard for Vi.

[blessyouhawkeye]

it's been years and it's still genuinely crazy to me that the first two seasons of stranger things had this throughline where all the bad things that were happening in hawkins were directly caused by the us government and that they were excusing the awful things they were doing to their own citizens (children!) through cold war/red scare reactionism. and then in season three there was a secret russian base under the town mall.

[spookyasmr]