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kuchipatchi jelly donut anyone 

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Binky Elysium

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Donut Fact: 600

Donuts are pretty poggers

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The Stravinsky Cart™

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“Ten years later, I’ve learned a lot about being Filipino-American. I’ve discovered that Filipinos are the second-largest Asian-American group (just after Chinese-Americans) and are the second-largest immigrant population (just after Mexican-Americans). I’ve also learned about the issues affecting our community, like the fact that American-born Filipinos don’t go to college or graduate school as much as their immigrant counterparts, or that Filipinos tend to have higher rates of depression than other Asian-Americans and the general population, yet are less likely to seek mental health treatment. Perhaps Filipino-Americans don’t attend college or graduate school because they are stereotyped or discouraged by their teachers and counselors, paralleling what my friends and I experienced in high school. Perhaps Filipino-Americans have higher levels of depression and seek mental health help less often because, much like how my parents taught me how to deal with discrimination, we try to not talk about our hardships or negative life experiences. I’ve also learned that, because the Philippines has a unique colonial history, it’s hard for people to place us racially. We Filipinos have brown skin like other Southeast Asians and Pacific Islanders; some are even misidentified as black. Because of Spanish colonization, we tend to have Spanish last names and majority of us are (or at least were raised) Catholic, so we’re sometimes mistaken for Latinos. The U.S. also colonized the Philippines for almost 50 years, so most Filipinos, including those in the Philippines, are fluent in English. Perhaps this is why Filipino-Americans experience so many different types of microaggressions. In my research, I’ve found that Filipino-Americans deal with microaggressions similar to those experienced by other Asian-American groups, like being stereotyped as exotic, a “model minority,” or a perpetual foreigner. However, Filipino-Americans also encounter microaggressions often encountered by African-Americans and Latinos, like being assumed to be dangerous or intellectually inferior. I’ve also studied how concepts like colonial mentality and ethnic identity affect mental health. Colonial mentality is the idea that people from colonized places tend to view values and standards of beauty of the colonizer as good, while viewing those of the indigenous as being bad. For instance, Filipinos tend to view those with light skin as more beautiful or attractive, and those who speak English without Filipino accents as smarter or more sophisticated. Perhaps this is the reason why so many Filipino-Americans, including me, were never taught by our parents to speak their native language.”

— Kevin Nadal, How I Learned What It Means To Be A Filipino-American (via thisisnotpilipinx)

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A small collection of pixel donut GIFs I made last year in Piskel. OC I animated, if I ever wanted to create a (simple) donut-themed game (2D platformer?). 🍩

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LONG POST.

One year ago today, we adopted our dog-like cutie, Kitfo, when he was just one year old. He didn’t want to come out from under the table in his pen at the shelter and was marked as “socially shy”. When we took him home and sat around for a bit, he kept nudging our knees for pets and started to binky. He was far from socially shy.

Last week, we made the difficult decision to say goodbye to him and let him cross the rainbow bridge. We noticed his behavior had changed almost overnight on the weekend. Last Saturday before dinner, we saw him eating (as usual) and staying alert and running over as we passed by. Sunday before we went out to lunch, we noticed him hunched behind his litterbox. When we called out, he didn’t want to move; we picked him up, noticed a big pile or poop in the corner (as opposed to in his litterbox) and relocated him in front of his cardboard box. He still didn’t want to move but when he did, he started crawling into his box and we noticed him dragging his hind feet.

We pulled out a little bed for him and placed him on it and watched him for the rest of Sunday; he never moved off the bed, lost his litterbox habits (since he couldn’t move), and refused to drink water or eat his hay. He was hungry for treat foods, though: parsley (his favorite) and heart-shaped hay cookies. Super unusual for the one that almost never stops eating and drinking, super loudly at that, so we went out to buy some bananas, carrot baby food, and low-dose aspirin. I ordered some critical care food that would come the next day and fed him some pellets that I had for treats, which we noticed he would only eat if we hand fed it to him but not just set it in front of him and also chewed much more slowly.

We kept paper towels under his behind and changed them out frequently, also noticing that he wasn’t exactly peeing on his own, but mostly if we picked him up to adjust him, he’d either dribble or even lightly pushing on his bladder would cause major leakage. Before going to bed, we put a little towel over him as a blanket.

Monday morning we called the vet as soon as they opened; his usual rabbit doctor wasn’t in that day but after explaining the situation and everything we had observed, we got an appointment with the other doctor in that day. She initially proceeded with a normal check-up exam and noted that his eyes, ears, and mouth looked healthy, his heart sounded perfectly fine, and his temperature was normal, but noted that he had lost all feeling in his back paws/hind legs. However, she couldn’t diagnose whether it was a spinal injury (Kitfo wasn’t responding as if in pain nor could she feel any soft tissue or swelling around the spine or other joints) or e. cuniculi or something else (like a UTI). Kitfo stayed with the vet for x-rays, which came back in the afternoon when the vet called me back.

After discussing with the vet and reviewing the x-rays taken, it turns out he had such severe spinal damage that his spinal cord was completely severed, causing irreparable paralysis in the back half of his body and incontinence with zero change of recovery, a situation that ended up being very uncommon and unexpected at his age (2). There was no treatment that would’ve helped him as it seems that he had congenital osteoporosis around the vertebrae and upper femur where he broke his back, something we didn’t discover until the x-rays were taken since x-rays or other lab work typically aren’t needed at younger ages and otherwise healthy rabbits. A “wheelchair” wouldn’t have helped as he was not a surgical candidate due to the spinal cord being completely disconnected and he was having too much difficulty adjusting weight on his front body and would be on constant painkillers, causing more lethargy and overall not a good long-term solution for a rabbit’s sensitive digestive system.

We’re not exactly sure how this happened; the vet said with the spine as broken as it was, there had to have been some major trauma that came down on Kitfo (equivalent to being hit by a car, a door falling on him, or being stepped on), which were all unlikely events. But after looking at the x-rays, it seems that since part of Kitfo’s bone structure looked very mothy, this is also something that could have been building up over time and with weaker bones, something as easy as turning a corner too fast or jumping out of his litterbox may have thrown his back out since rabbits are fragile creatures to begin with.

His state was quickly deteriorating and his quality of life wouldn’t have improved, especially as he was becoming more depressed and literally could not do anything by himself. He would need 24-hour assistance for bathroom needs and feeding (by syringe). His incontinence would likely cause a bladder infection, urine scalding and loss of hair, or flystrike, or all of the above while without a desire to eat and drink would cause his digestive system to slow down and/or stop (GI stasis) without such access to constant “life support”.

We are keeping an eye on our older one, Kapi, to make sure he doesn’t get stressed out at the empty pen next to him. While they never completely bonded or formed a real friendship fully, Kapi does notice something is different and we’re hoping he doesn’t get lonely.

Even though we had him for just a year, we loved him so much.

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Wakako is my spirit anime. 🍺🍴

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My new Cardcaptor Sakura themed watch came in today! ❤

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Adopted a second bun, Kitfo (top), on Saturday. My older bunny, Kapi (bottom, gray), is about 5 years old, while Kitfo is about 1 or so.

Kapi is a dwarf mix and smaller than Kitfo, but is making it pretty clear he’s the dominant bun. I think Kitfo is an English Spot or at least part, since his back stripe doesn’t run all the way to his ears.

I have to keep them in separate pens for now and really anxious to get a new pen for Kitfo since the white pen is Kapi’s old pen and has some chewed corners. I need to separate their pens a little bit more since Kapi has already nipped some fur off Kitfo’s nose (no serious injuries, though).

May someone grant me the patience to bond these two. They don’t hate each other, but there’s still a long road ahead of us all.

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*blink blink*

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New tumblr!

Expect the usual from me. Or, if you don’t know me: donuts, games, design, illustration, bunnies, maybe violins. Original content (possibly some quick doodles, sketches, design WIPs) plus reblogs.

Tell me who I should follow!

Original donut illustrations still housed on mayenedesign.tumblr.com.