zafiro-anyejo

[zafiro-anyejo]

UHC website has an article entitled "Response to Misinformation" in which it explicitly labels Luigi as a killer despite a trial not taking place. Which in itself is defamation and very telling of their concerns with pushing a narrative more than a legal and ethical perspective.

[zafiro-anyejo]

Enchanted (2007)

[zafiro-anyejo]

you ever have situations that make you want to take people by the shoulders and go "you are not 15 any longer. this behavior is no longer quirky and cute. it is exhausting for you and everyone else to act like a teenager you haven't been in a decade or longer. knock it the fuck off"

[zafiro-anyejo]

Parents don’t get to decide if they were “really good” parents. I know that’s harsh and there’s a lot of mommy positivity circles online that just give each other a positive feedback loop but you don’t decide if you were a “really great parent” to your child. Your children tell you if you were a good parent or not. I see this a lot of no contact parent circles where the person who is no contact with their children is like “well I was a GREAT parent so it isn’t my fault and I didn’t do anything wrong”. Normal parents wonder if they’re doing a good job, ask themselves how they can improve, are open to feedback from children and other parents. If you are 100% sure you were a faultless fantastic selfless awesome fantastic parent totally beyond reproach and your shitty ungrateful willful delinquent children just don’t appreciate you enough, you are a terrible parent.

[zafiro-anyejo]

Mary did it, George! Mary did it! She told a few people you were in trouble and they scattered all over town collecting money.

Donna Reed as Mary Bailey in It's a Wonderful Life

[zafiro-anyejo]

Do you have a "signature move" in the bedroom?

Yeah it’s called sleep

[zafiro-anyejo]

my dentist: you should get an electric toothbrush

me: I can’t do that I have trauma (better call saul season 6)

[zafiro-anyejo]

I gotta say, one of the greatest achievements of my 20s was that I learned (mostly) to differentiate between:

"I truly do not want to go" and

"I'm just feeling the Demand Avoidance, and I will like it once I get there."

[zafiro-anyejo]

theyre not even microtransactions anymore its just straight up full size purchases. like anything over a dollar thats a whole purchase. stop letting them get away with calling them micro. theres nothing micro about 20 dollars

[zafiro-anyejo]

Make Superheroes Great & Colorful Again!

[zafiro-anyejo]

2025 resolution is that whenever I see something that annoys me on here I'm going to message someone to tell them I love them before I engage and then if I'm still spicy about it I'm allowed to start shit

[zafiro-anyejo]

Dudes shouldn't have to prove themselves by having spartan greyscale homes with dollar store rubber shower curtains and a mattress on the floor. Do you know what life is like with linen

[zafiro-anyejo]

whenever you see a hot person in a tik tok and get really insecure bc you’re not as good looking as the person in that tik tok. It’s important to remember that they are a person who makes tik toks

[zafiro-anyejo]

things that seem small can be really brave:

getting up in the morning

asking for help

stopping when you know you’ve pushed yourself too hard

admitting when you were in the wrong

forgiving yourself

making an effort even when you don’t have the motivation

reaching out to others when you feel alone

+ much more

[zafiro-anyejo]

I don't even know how to explain the emotion I'm feeling but... in 2016, after my aunt (married to my dad's brother) heard about my mom leaving my dad, said, "she needs to get her shit together".

And she and her husband still see my mom as "the bad guy", though they don't say it out loud. Not to us. But they've thought this for years. They ignore my mom if they see her in town. And then, I mean, now in 2024 she still uses a casserole recipe my mom lent to her. "Yeah, my kids love it." she says, while my brother and I are at dinner for our cousin's birthday.

She thinks my mom is stupid for leaving my alcoholic dad. She thinks my mom ruined our family (i mean... i understand the sentiment, but I think things are better this way, in the end). She thinks my mom just wanted to be with someone else. Because that's the story my dad told them. My aunt probably spreads rumors of whatever she hears from other people, because she has always been a gossip; idk if she can help herself.

Am I making sense yet? She still uses my mom's fucking casserole recipe. The kids love it. Of course she uses it. Why wouldn't she? She hasn't spoken to my mom in years. I don't think she ever will again.

[zafiro-anyejo]

Just sucker punched a fruit fly

[zafiro-anyejo]

a few months ago i was visiting my aunt who is wealthier than my family was, and I noticed she made her daughter a resume. her daughter is 12. with a resume. and whatever sport she wants to learn or thing she wants to do, my aunt makes sure it is done.

i think about how when I was 12, my dad took me for a car ride--just me and him--and confessed 'i feel like we do a lot for your brother, with all the sports he plays, and sometimes forget about you. what do you like to do? what could we do for you?' and in my mind I thought 'I want to write', but i lived in a small town and didn't think such a thing as 'writing classes/camps for 12 year olds' even existed. I also liked art, but i hated the structure of it. (this is how you draw a face: with a circle bisected by a cross, and a rectangle underneath. all grown men are the height of seven and a half to eight faces, etc). and i guess i didn't want to disappoint him, so I said "nothing. I'm fine. I don't like sports anyway." and that was that. He never brought it up again and I never asked.

And i think, like, that's the thing. As a parent you need to have a balance of NOT making your kid scramble for scraps of attention, and also NOT doing absolutely EVERYTHING for them. You can be their friend but you also have to be their teacher, find a balance between the helicopter parent and one who watches from a distance. You need to make sure they have enough activities to socialize but not too much that they forget how to be a kid.

an old coworker of mine had her daughters stay at home over the summer, and I could see how her parental anxiety drip-fed into them: there are surveillance cameras inside the house and I can see you at all times, keep the door locked and don't go outside. and if someone knocks on the door, hide in the closet and don't come out. One day her seven year old called and asked for help microwaving a tv dinner, because her older sister was busy.

so my coworker said "it's right on the package. you need to learn to do things yourself. i'm at work, i can't always be around to help you." and that's, like, fair I guess?

But also one time in college my car blew a gasket (because I didn't understand the sacred importance of oil changes/I had anxiety about money and taking my car to auto shops). I don't remember if I called the tow company first or my mom. When I told my mom about it, partly to vent and partly because I didn't know what to do--I had never been in this situation before--she said "just call the insurance company. idk why you called me, I'm hundreds of miles away; What do you want me to do? It's not like I can drive over there. I can't deal with this right now."

Sometimes you learn these lessons too young, sometimes too late.

one of my friends was staying the night at my apartment a few weeks ago and in the morning she saw that traffic was bad. So she called her parents to ask if she should brave the traffic or just wait a little while; she needed their opinion, since they drove around the city more than her. They were patient. They offered suggestions. Part of me flared in envy; part of me thought "can't you make a decision without their input? You're almost 30."

I stayed silent while my coworker complained to her daughter. I stay silent whenever I want to ask for my mom's help, unless it's related to bookkeeping. I already know her answer: "have you tried looking it up on youtube?"

Lately my aunt was telling my mom she warns her daughter about making friends with "certain" kids. Namely, the ones who don't have a mother. "they're just... always a little troublesome." my aunt said. "Yeah," replied my mom. "definitely." Then my mom said "I think moms influence kids more than dads."

One of my high school friends lived without a mother. Once I confessed envy about our friend B, because she was able to like fandom stuff and get things she wanted; she didn't have to hide parts of herself from her parents in fear of being judged. Boys at school loved her because she was this "pure and giggly and sweet and innocent" girl, whereas I was the "surly and quiet and sweet and not giggly but still spontaneously funny" one. Anyway, my friend said, quietly, "sometimes I'm jealous of you." Because of my mom. Because sometimes the occasionally strained relationship is better than none at all.

I feel like having different type of friends gave my life such texture. I am the person I am for better or worse, because of this.

I have a theory that my aunt is controlling my 12 year old cousin's life to the point where she eventually won't have any other friends but wealthy ones. I don't have any evidence of this, of course. But I feel like that is what she curates for her daughter: houses that feel like museums and parents who drive Teslas and are "happily" married and have their kids with good grades on a track to get full ride scholarships.

"You are all so independent," says my mom proudly. My sister and I look at each other, a shared thought: Because we have to be. What other choice do we have?

I wish I had an armful of moments like being in the car with my dad. I wish I had the courage back then to say what I felt. I wish I would have pushed harder to get things I want rather than take the long way around. and I wish my mom had taken more moments to breathe through her irritation and ask "what do you need from me right now?" instead of "mother knows best, but ask google."

Lately I have been self-deprecating more. I recently told her "I'm emotionally high maintenance" and she said "well, everyone is." And at a different point I said "I don't think I ask for too much." and she didn't reply. She either disagreed or didn't hear me.