no boys allowed in the room!!!!

I dunno. Am I weird, because I experience this weird trick of memory, that when I look at photos that I remember from when I first saw them my brain, like, autocorrects to make observer-me feel like I am the same age as would be appropriate for my first viewing of that photo? It happens mostly with family photos, obviously. Like, I look at photos of myself, my brother and my cousins taken when we were all about 20, and my brain readjusts and recognises - we are all about the same age there. There's this double memory of me looking at us, going "wow, we looked so young" from the viewpoint of a 40-something looking at those photos. But I don't feel significantly older in a weird or awkward way from those people in that photo, they still feel like me and my cousins. (If anything, recent photos of my cousins as 40-somethings, with children, look weird as hell, because I have not seen them for over a decade and the ageing is suddenly apparent in a way that it is not, with people I have seen every day for ten years.)

I think because I saw Blur - or at least photographic representations of them - so frequently during that same period of my life (I'm not exaggerating that I saw photos of Blur every day between about 1992 and 1996 - I followed the music press exhaustively, I had posters of them on my wall etc etc etc) my brain does the same readjusting trick that it does with photos of my cousins. Observer me is the same age as the person that originally looked at those photos. So they don't look like children. In fact, Blur, *now*, as middle aged men, looking like potatoes, look shockingly wrong.

But it doesn't work with all bands - I was looking at photos of Duran Duran, for example, and I was 12 when I first started listening to them, and OMG, they were such grown ups in a grown up world. But I look at early photos of Duran Duran now, and holy shit, those are kids! How did my 13 year old self see them as adults and not as the adolescents they clearly were?

And I certainly look at bands who are in their early 20s now, and think "ugh, children, do not want". But 12 year old Blur? Bring 'em on.

one of the ads on my fb feed for some cloud-based payroll has an image of a woman doing "THE CLUTCH!"

the double clutch?

this is the vibe in all areas of my life right now

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Uj3zitETs4

so I wanna share some things I like to daydream when I am stressed

I like to daydream that I deliver fanciful flowers and other objects to Elton John in the 1970s
I daydream that I am having fun conversations about stuff I know a lot about or want to know a lot about
I remember the barn my neighbors had where I would climb into the attic and write stories and poems and comics all alone
I think about animals like otters, gibbons, parrots, enjoying one another
I try to remember every detail I can from a book I just read

how about you???

oh also I sometimes wickedly daydream about REALLY TELLING SOMEONE

I fantasize about having a lot of money and what I'd spend it on

I have less wholesome daydreams too

I have so many daydreams and I'm not sure I want to share them but man oh man do I have them. All the time!

"Day dream" is one of my favorite eerie/tender Strayhorn tunes <3

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-pSwmU13Reo

i used to daydream little fictions all the time, like ALL THE TIME, but when i started taking antidepressants the urge dropped off significantly. these days i miss the deep emotional resonance of a really good daydream, even though i recognize it was starting to become an avoidant behavior.

also <3 you telling people off, Crabbits!

i daydream a lot, like habitually I do it when I go to bed because it's sort of like telling myself a bedtime story & I just make up something that I want to do or think about a place I want to visit and start coloring it all in til I fall asleep

i sometimes dream about unexpectedly meeting [insert adored celeb crush] and having a long conversation with them
def daydream about REALLY TELLING SOMEONE
daydream about how I would decorate my Brady-Bunch-esque ranch home

and other things :D

man my mom just bought a 1970s style ranch house in North Dakota – it's got gold veined mirrors and red shag carpet on the den walls and everything
a wall with wooden shingles
she's going to redecorate of course >:C

http://i45.photobucket.com/albums/f86/igotabeefpastry/Untitled.jpg

freaking look at this

well, except, don't look at the ceiling

Omg
Dying

wowwww

my inlaws had a ranch house -- i was so excited to see inside the first time I visit, and I walk into the living room and the full-size stone fireplace that I had always dreamed of was PAINTED WHITE D:

i daydream a lot, like habitually I do it when I go to bed because it's sort of like telling myself a bedtime story & I just make up something that I want to do or think about a place I want to visit and start coloring it all in til I fall asleep

!!!!!!! All my life! My parents used to make us go to bed really early because #oldfashionedparenting so I had plenty of time to lie awake, forbidden from reading, to make things up. During times of job or life stress I use a pleasant reverie to self-soothe and feel positive emotions until I can fall asleep. I know things are bad when I don't feel like I even deserve those good feelings & can't find that good place, but that hasn't happened in a long time. In fact since I'm preeeetty (mostly) happily booed up these days, I don't have romantic daydreams anymore, it's almost hard to find things to idealize about!

Having plenty of money and a roommate who cleans, I guess.

Let me just tell you many of my childhood daydreams were based on Star Wars. I was not Princess Leia in them tho. I made up my own character so there would be an even balance of girls & boys (Luke, Leia, Han, me--obv).

It was difficult to reconcile my dreams of being able to do magic and fly, courtesy of all my fairy tale & fantasy reading, with the Christian teachings against witchcraft. I was somewhat concerned that I was sinning in my imagination. But Star Wars was fine.

i have long reality-avoiding daydreams all the time and the storylines last for weeks and then are retired. lol. i have done this since i was a kid! how much time have i lost to daydreaming? i kind of treat it as an indulgence now and moderate it accordingly. i'm so glad to read other adults talking about daydreaming!

It was difficult to reconcile my dreams of being able to do magic and fly, courtesy of all my fairy tale & fantasy reading, with the Christian teachings against witchcraft.

― Orson Wellies (in orbit), Tuesday, November 25, 2014 7:00 PM (Yesterday)

omg when I was a kid I would fantasize about trying to resist satan if he showed up to tempt me
i was v v afraid of getting possessed by the devil but my dad told me it can only happen if you permit him
i would practice saying no to him in my daydreams
the only one where i felt really nervous was the devil offering to let me have a pet dog
i wasn't sure i could resist

also i remember my friend telling me that she liked to daydream about having both her legs broken and a man touching her and her not being able to resist
i was unable to figure out why it made me uncomfortable but it did

Rememmmmmber when we were joking about making a set of guidelines for finding a therapist?

http://www.blackgirldangerous.org/2014/12/going-therapy-qtpoc-without-harmed-erased-baffled-therapy-horror-stories-may-heard/

You should not have to teach your therapist about race, gender, class, etc. This is something they should know or recognize they don’t know and make effort to learn. If you find yourself continuously spending time in session explaining basic things about your identity that can be learned about in a book, find someone else. Conversely, if the therapist is spending a lot of time telling you about themselves, particularly when it does not further your own insight, this is a sign of poor boundaries. You are there for you, not them. Seek support elsewhere.

the only one where i felt really nervous was the devil offering to let me have a pet dog
i wasn't sure i could resist

― never say goodbye before leaving chat room (Crabbits), Thursday, November 27, 2014 12:03 AM (4 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Abbs I seriously love you so much.

here is my definition of a certain kind of late bloomer, based on personal experience & some observation
- everyone else has had their period & you haven't
- everyone around you has had their period & you haven't
it's a pretty brutal combo

ok I said the same thing 2x >:(
first item should be
everyone around you does not believe in santa but you still do even though all the evidence is against it

that was me too

and me

i didn't get my period until i was 15 and at 13 i saw a medical thing on tv where a girl who hadn't had hers was diagnosed XXY upon the discovery of a testical. i walked around for two years paranoid I was going to grow balls.

I got mine at 15 too but I didn't believe in Santa...is that a euphemism I don't understand?

It's no picnic getting your period early, either.

Speaking of, I just got my first period since April 2013. I was so hoping for menopause. Rats.

:(

if i haven't posted here about how I got my period for the first time the day before my 10th birthday, and I was having a bunch of friends from my new school over for a slumber party ... anyway that was very traumatic

holy shit dude

I thought I was an early starter but I think I was 11 rising 12?

At least you had a 10th birthday party... unlike some.

if it makes you feel any better, I had to cancel my 40th because i was sick, also too sick for plan B which was to see one of my bffs play with David J at a book signing

Aw, I'm sorry. That sounds rub!

(But haha I wasn't talking about me, I was talking about my number-one hate-crush, never mind. Failed joke.)

I got mine at 15 too but I didn't believe in Santa...is that a euphemism I don't understand?

― La Lechera, Saturday, December 6, 2014 2:48 PM (Yesterday)

naw, like you know santa, mythical deliverer of gifts and good-hearted guy, is probably fake because empirical evidence + everyone says so – but you still "in your heart" believe he's real
maybe I just mean "not having outgrown the magical thinking of a child"

my parents had to break the news to me that santa was not real when I was 11
I cried and cried
I still didn't really believe them
or maybe I did, but I didn't want to
I was honest about it with my peers, too – another piece of bully fuel just handed to them

when i was 11 kids in my class chased me around the playground all recess yelling that he wasn't real & laughing at me

a girl named julie who was pretending she was my friend that day tried to console me this way:
"santa died a long time ago. his brother does it all now"

which still makes me lol

Kara Blakeley told me Santa wasn't real on the school bus. She was a mean girl.

I don't remember ever believing that Father Christmas was in any sense "real". My parents have told me that quite early, my brother sat me down for an urgent lesson in being disabused of such romantic notions, the most salient lesson of which was: "adults lie!"

I can, however remember a family conference, aged not more than 7, during which my parents begged us not to disillusion our younger cousin, who "still believed." I remember thinking her parents were very cruel to deceive her that way.

(I was not an un-magical child; I still believed in hobbits, piskies, G-Force, and the Closet Monster. I just remember being shocked that adults could lie so systematically to a young child, seemingly for their own amusement.

That said, at that age, my parents still believed in Marx, so YMMV.

I learned about the tooth fairy first when I began to suspect something was amiss and asked my mom if tooth fairy was my old babysitter that my dad used to screw and my mom was like *beat of angry silence* "No. It's me. I'm the tooth fairy."

I clung to Santa another year or so but it was pretty halfhearted.

Anyway not because of that, which was probably awful for my mom at the time but cracks me up now, but we're not going to do Santa with Ivy. Neither of us are big Christmas celebrants to begin with so we're keeping the whole thing low key in the home.

Santa comes to her daycare and you bet your jolly red butt I'm getting a picture of her on his lap, but we'll just tell her he's a made up Christmas character that people like to cosplay as for the holidays.

My boyfriend works in a group home for developmentally delayed adults and one of the guys there, in his 50s, still believes in Santa. He also believes that if anyone in the house is awake at midnight on Christmas, Santa won't visit.

Tooth fairy --- Easter bunny -- for me were nbd to find out they weren't real
santa is really a lot like god though, an omniscient, jolly, caring, guy who delivers covetable goods!
more relatable than god, probably, as you can make cartoons about him and it isn't blasphemous iconography

having to accept him not being real at the time it kinda felt like idk, the difference between technicolor Oz and sepia-toned Kansas

like

ok now christmas is just THIS
i can't have THAT anymore?
why?

luckily I had younger siblings so at least at home I got to play along with them for another few years, and that made it a bit easier to swallow. It wasn't like grouchy teenagers who just get money in the morning & bolt as soon as christmas dinner is done with (which is how a lot of my friends were at the time and I didn't want that)

idk

that makes me sound like a horribly deluded child but it was just a nicer feeling that a jolly magic fellow delivered your presents rather than mum hiding them in the crawlspace and staying up til 4am putting dollhouses together and whatnot

now i kind of feel like the opposite is kind of touching in its own weird way

I don't remember when or how I found out Santa wasn't real, and it wasn't a huge deal for me. What was a huge deal was when mum and dad said they wouldn't be doing a Christmas stocking any more, for either me or my younger brother. I was a proper teenager, I think! - around 15 - but it took all the fun out of Christmas for me, and I remember being really sorry for my brother who was around 11. The 'big presents' were nice and all, but the stocking was full of tiny, inexpensive, carefully chosen, unpredictable wrapped gifts (in a chopped up pair of mum's tights left on the foot of the bed in the small hours - I can still remember how the presents felt through the tights!) That was the most exciting thing ever, even when I knew it was mum and dad.

Christmas stocking is the best part! Our compromise with our Christmas-enthusiast parents is that Ivy will have a Christmas stocking and they can buy her whatever will fit in it.