Seizure First Aid.
Learn it. Share it. Know it. Use it.
100% correct medical information on tumblr for once; also consider calling 911 if you don’t know how often the person has seizures and ESPECIALLY if the seizure has lasted 5 minutes or more (which is why the watch is critical)
I have epilepsy so making sure the word is out on how to help people who do have seizures means a lot to me.
Oh my god, accurate epilepsy information. I am so happy, you have no idea.
i once knew this girl in high school who was named after a famous garden (let’s call her Madison). she was a nice girl, though i never knew much more than the basics about her because i was a friend of her friend and she was a friend of my friend. we were secondary friends, so i didn’t know about her medical condition until one day in the bathroom. i was coming out of my stall and i noticed some girl staring at the area where the sinks were. i looked to see what was wrong, and i saw Madison standing in front of the mirror, muttering to herself with blood dripping down from her nose like an open faucet. she didn’t seem to know who or where she was, and after talking to her for a moment to assess her mental state (which was scarily non-responsive and very unfocused), i took her hand and began to lead her to the nurses office on the top floor of the school. we made it outside of the restroom, but then she fell to her knees – almost like she was getting ready to take a nap in the middle of a hallway – and began to have a seizure.
i didn’t know what to do. this nice girl i knew was in trouble and i had no idea how to get her through it. i wanted to scream, i wanted to drag her to the nurses office, i wanted to call 911, i was SCARED and i had no idea what i could do or if she was going to die or whatever, because…because it was something i had never faced before. the worst part of the whole experience was not knowing anything, and me knowing that my ignorance was hurting poor Madison.
i didn’t want to leave her, but i needed to get help. i stuck my head in a classroom only a few steps away, dragged a TA out of the lecture as quietly as i could while telling her the situation, and she immediately jumped into action. when we got outside, she took off her sweater and put it under Madison’s head, she turned her to the side, she timed the seizure, she did e v e r y t h i n g right, and when Madison finally stopped seizing a short while later, she took her to the nurses office, reassuring her and making sure she was going to be alright. the whole thing happened in under two minutes but damn did it feel like forever.
Madison ended up being okay, thanks to that amazing TA, but that scene still gets me to this day. Madison was utterly helpless and i couldn’t do a damn thing to help her because i didn’t know what to do. now, after doing some research, i do. and now that you’ve read this post, you do too.
the world is a scary place. sometimes you’re going to have to face the scary things for other people. sometimes, even though you didn’t ask for it or weren’t expecting it, you’re going to have to fight for someone else and be the hero they need you to be. i hope once that day comes, you’re more ready than i was on that Thursday in high school. and i know that when or if this situation happens to me again, i’m prepared to help out as much as i possibly can.
Tag: reference
attention plz
when frenchizing a character name!
d’ goes befoes a vowel. (or a H because we don’t pronounce it so we count the vowel behind it.) d’irigny. d’estée. d’anjou. d’harcourt.
neVER D’GONTRAN how the hell do you even pronunce that.
if the name following starts with a consonant it’s “de”, a space, and then the rest of the name with no punctuation – and if you want a small dash of extra fancy and you’re doing, say, location names, “du” or “de la” depending on the location’s grammatical gender. the difference is pretty much between “of” and “of the” so see what works better for you.
locations have no all-purposes always-right gender-figuring rules, we all just develop an instinct and/or we’re actually secretly agreeing on random shit to fuck with outsiders. i wish you all necessary good luck in these chaotic and uncaring times.
(if you’re doing fake elven or pernese names or whatever, put ‘s wherever the hell you want and let no god or devil stop you.)
Tailoring your own clothes
So a little while back, I reblogged a post about tailoring your own clothes. The gist of it was this (IIRC):
Someone was wondering why even people on TV with non-mainstream-TV-approved body shapes always look so good in their clothes.
The long and short of it is: their bodies aren’t better than yours. They just have people tailoring every single piece of clothing they wear to flatter their figures.
Off-the-rack clothes aren’t made to look good on most people’s bodies. The advice in the post was buy clothes that fit the largest part of you, even if they’re too big elsewhere, and have them altered to fit.
That post hit me like a lightning bolt. I have a curvy figure. I’m not plus-sized, but I’ve got a small waist and large hips. Which is great in certain types of clothes (dresses, mainly), but means that if I don’t wear fitted t-shirts or blouses–if they fall straight–I just look sort of… boxy. I need clothes that go in at the waist.
My grandma was an amazing seamstress, so when I needed clothes fixed, she was around to tailor them. When she got into her 90s and her eyesight was too diminished for her to sew, we started going to a woman in our neighborhood who’d lost her husband and had started doing alterations to bring in some extra income. OF COURSE I looked good back then. I had a tailor.
Then I moved away from my parents without really knowing How To Adult and would go to Target to get clothes and just get depressed by them and never realized how much of an advantage having people who could tailor my clothes (and, you know, parents to pay for having them tailored…) had been.
So. I have a 1970s Singer Fashion Mate sewing machine that is designed to weather the apocalypse–I got it at Goodwill for $20.
And I have begun researching how to tailor your own clothes. If anyone else was wondering about that after that last post, here are some helpful links I’ve discovered.
When and Why to Get it Tailored – This article is (annoyingly) set up as a slideshow, and focuses on getting a professional to do your alterations rather than doing them yourself, but it’s got some good advice nonetheless, such as:
- Basic alterations that can make a huge difference, such as adding lingerie loops to keep bra straps in place (SERIOUSLY MY FAVORITE DRESSES FROM HIGH SCHOOL ALL HAD THESE AND WHY DID THEY DISAPPEAR IN EVERYTHING I WEAR NOW?), adding snaps between the buttons on button-down shirts for larger-busted women (you know how sometimes they gap? there’s help for that), etc.
- Average prices (at least on the East Coast) for basic alterations: replacing a zipper will run you about $20, while tailoring pants or a skirt to fit your hips and butt will be about $35.
- If you want to get a garment made of special materials (leather, fur, beaded/embroidered silk) altered, go to someone who specializes in working with that material.
- What NOT to try to alter.
- How to find a tailor.
- Having that perfect dress that you love so much duplicated and how much that will cost.
Learning Alterations – Great step-by-step tutorials on basic alterations like how to take in the waist of jeans (essential if you have a smaller waist and larger hips, because it’ll stop them from riding down every time you bend over or sit down).
Tailoring Ready-to-Wear – A full-on online course from Craftsy (costs $24.99) with videos and individual lessons on everything from hemming pants to lengthening them to altering shoulders and armholes to adding hidden zippers.
Plus-Sized Fitting and Design – Another online course (this one’s $34.99) that looks like it focuses both on alterations and on actually making clothes that are flattering to plus-sized forms.
Alterations and Tailoring 101 – Not a how-to post, but this one has a lot of useful information and ideas, such as identifying which garments to alter.
Alterations Needed blog – A whole blog on this stuff, with a lot of detailed how-tos. It focuses on fixing things to fit if you’re shorter than average/petite, but contains a lot of great advice for anyone (like an entry on why button-down shirts often bulge in back and how to fix it).
Pinch and Pin your Shirt – Super-quick video tutorial (aimed at gentlemen), but useful for anyone who wears button-down shirts on how to fix a baggy shirt.
If I find other helpful tutorials, I’ll add them. If you know of any, please let me know!
how to check if a d20 is cursed, thought you might like it 😀
Oh, this is interesting. I might have to try this out. But I never would have thought about this.
it actually works. i ended up doing it with all my old dice and about 2/3s of them landed on low numbers
public service announcement to the rpg world (again)
Despite the title this is a legit thing to check if your dice are balanced
@starknjarvis27 but don’t tell the others in case they decide to load up on 20s
What in the world is this? It’s an heirloom carrot called Turkish Black. Bizarre and beautiful, yes?
executive dysfunction is telling yourself for two and a half hours that you need to shower bc you smell like your workplace and you absolutely Cannot do Anything Else until you shower, doing Any Other Thing before showering is illegal!!! but you still haven’t for some reason??? you’ve just been sitting on your bed in a towel scrolling tumblr for 2+ hours thinking “I need to shower right now immediately” and growing increasingly frustrated that you are still not clean and you haven’t eaten or done your laundry either
ok actually no I’m reblogging this because a) I am clean now (and I smell amazing, thank you), and b) I had a heckin Realize and I wanted to share it with y’all in the hopes it’ll help someone else with a brain like mine.
I figured something out about myself a long time ago– it’s only just now occurred to me that I was in fact solving a problem caused by executive dysfunction, and I haven’t been implementing this solution lately because my brain went “that’s a relatively new term to me and therefore a Different problem that requires a Different solution”. thanks a lot, brain.
anyway, long long ago, before I knew these fancy schmancy Official words, the problem, as I phrased it to myself, was such:
sometimes I get Stuck. I was doing something, or on my way to doing something, and then… I just. got stuck.
“Stuck” looks like refreshing my feed or dashboard repeatedly. or it looks like staring at a spot on the wall. or chewing my fingernails. or picking at a stubborn sticker. all the while, my brain drifts through various unrelated topics I wouldn’t be able to recall if asked. sometimes I can get Stuck for hours before realizing I am Stuck. sometimes I get so Stuck that I go to bed that way (feeling especially bad for being unproductive) and I have to just reset everything by sleeping.
one day I asked myself, “why is this happening? why am I stuck, right now, at this moment in time?” the answer, as it turns out, was pretty simple: I was trying to make a decision, and I got distracted. I haven’t moved forward because I haven’t answered that one question or made up my mind.
let me rephrase this in terms of executive dysfunction: many people have expressed that it feels like knowing you need to do a thing but not feeling “ready” to do it. many with ADHD may also be familiar with the feeling of needing things to be “just so” before you embark on a task- you need your setup to look a certain way, or you need to set a timer, or have the right music playing, etc.
when I get Stuck it’s often because I got lost somewhere in that setting-up process, and my brain took the opportunity to nyoom off into Distraction Town.
getting myself Unstuck is solved, 95% of the time, by tracing my steps back to the original decision I was trying to make- often something small and inane- and then troubleshooting from there. (out loud! verbal processing is totally punk.)
- “what was I trying to do?”
- “was I trying to decide between two things?”
- (the answer’s usually yes.)
- “what were they?”
- “okay, let’s decide.
- “okay, that’s settled. let’s move on.”
- and then I am free as a bird to nyoom in the direction of The Thing I Wanted To Do All Along, in the amazingly disorganized, scattered, yet rapid-fire way that I do many things.
so!!! in the case of my first post, where I hadn’t showered for 2 hours? turns out I had been trying to decide what music to listen to in the shower. (another hack: my chances of getting Stuck while showering decrease by 75% if I have music playing to help me keep track of time.) I couldn’t immediately make up my mind, got lost in thought, got distracted, and drifted. once I stopped and asked- “why am I stuck?”- then I remembered- “oh yeah! I wanted to listen to music”- and then decided- “I want to listen to Daft Punk’s Discovery album”- I was finally heckin able to shower. and also eat, and also throw my clothes in the dryer.
and may I add I only zoned out once, during the slow part of “One More Time.” 😛
I’m not saying this is a foolproof method. sometimes I don’t have a reason for being stuck, and that’s okay! I’m also not saying this is how every adhd brain works. it’s just how my brain works, and I’m sure there’s at least a few who can relate. for those few, I hope this helps!!
a lot of people are reblogging the original post without the update and leaving frustrated comments and that makes me sad! if I can find ways to hack my brain than so can you! executive dysfunction is a real and frustrating challenge, but don’t buy the lie that there’s no way to work with it or around it!!!
!!!!
“One of the simplest ways to make the audience like a character is to show him liking other people. One of the easiest ways to make the audience care about a character is to show him caring about other people. We care about Harry Potter in no small part because he cares so much about his friends. It’s impossible to imagine Harry seeing Hermione get hurt and feeling anything but horror and guilt, no matter how terrible a fight they might have had beforehand. Katniss is by design a more prickly and “difficult” protagonist than Harry is, or than Moss seems intended to be, but we care about her from the start because we see how deeply she loves her sister and her willingness to sacrifice herself to protect her. Bad writers, though, often make the mistake of thinking that you make a character likable by showing that other characters like him, and make the audience care about him by showing that other characters care about him. This tends to have exactly the opposite effect. At a certain point the reader starts to wonder what’s so great about this guy that everyone is showering him with praise, and starts actively wanting to see him fail or be told off.”
— https://fail-fandomanon.dreamwidth.org/325399.html?thread=1869956375#cmt1869956375
(via pitviperofdoom)
When I was training to be a battered women’s advocate, my supervisor said something that really blew my mind:
“You can always assume one thing about your clients; and that is that they are doing their best. Always assume everyone is doing their best. And if they’re having a day where their best just isn’t that great, or their best doesn’t look like your best, you have to be okay with that.”
Any now whenever anyone in my life, either a friend or a client, frustrates me, disappoints me, or pisses me off, I just tell myself They are doing their best. Their best isn’t that great today, but I have days where my best isn’t that great either.
this. everytime. this.
How to Backup your Tumblr
I was just semi-complaining that I was still looking for a decent way to backup my +4k posts without having to use paid services or even just wordpress (which has an import from tumblr tool that asks for permission to access your blog and also make posts), when I decided to actually put some effort into my google search.
Results were positive: I have successfully backed up my blog*
*By which I mean: everything that I have ever posted.
Not included: drafts, queue, likes, followers, following, comments, notes, chat.I followed this method (word by word), and now have a 450 MB folder on my computer with the name of my blog on it containing:
1. Folder “Archive” (contains .html files listed by month)
2. Folder “Media” (contains gifs and images, mine has +1k files in it; might contain also audios but I have no way of confirming that because I’ve never reblogged an audio post from this blog)
3. Folder “Posts” (contains single .html files, each one a post; I have +4k files in it)
4. Folder “Theme” (contains only my avatar, but it might be a matter of if you have personalized themes or not)
5. .html file “Index” (by opening it it will give you the archive of your blog organized by month; clicking on a month will open up the archive for that month, and you’ll be able to read all the posts for that month as if you were on your blog**, except sans your theme graphic, with each page containing 50 posts)**I can see gifs, links, embedded videos, tags, number of notes (but I can’t open up the notes, clearly), text is also correctly formatted.
So yeah, in case anyone wants a very quick way to back up their blog, it took me less than 10 minutes.
P.S. I didn’t have any issue, but to be on the safe side always check for spyware and virus threats before and after downloading anything.
sometimes a descriptor is just that, guys: a descriptor
oh, goat?
PLEASE give me context for that
so, our party was traveling in a mountainous area and the DM mentioned there was a goat a little ways away, just a little scenery building. the party immediately spent the next (real-life) 20 minutes insight checking the goat, detecting magic on the goat, questioning the goat, ect. eventually the sorcerer ended up killing and eating the goat. DM was very exasperated.
oh my GOD
i have the solution for this, my darlings: describe everything.
players do this when you’re usually sparse on description; they’ll fixate on the things you do describe, because whether consciously or not, you’ve trained them to think that you only describe important things. if you say, “it’s a 20×20 room with pillars along the walls, and at the end there’s a throne with a red brocade cushion on it,” they will fixate on the cushion. because it’s the only movable object in the whole scene! it’s the only thing with a color or texture!
so instead, you say, “this is clearly where he held court before he became a lich. it’s a pillared arcade of honey-colored marble [a nature check will reveal it was imported from a thousand miles away, very ostentatious] with square pillars in the southern style. a dusty carpet runs the length of it; where your footsteps stir up the dust, you can see the carpet was purple once. between the pillars are carved wooden chairs, some of the gilding still intact, where courtiers and functionaries could’ve waited for an audience. at the far end, beneath the rags of a moth-eaten banner, is a throne of age-blackened wood. unlike the other chairs, it was never gilded, but its brocade cushions are still there and still red on the underside where the light hasn’t bleached them.”
now you not only have plenty of things for them to investigate, most of them more informative to their goal, you’ve immersed them in ATMOSPHERE, which is what turns a game from a mere exercise in dice-rolling to a cooperative storytelling experience. your lich king is now more than just a dungeon boss, he’s the sad but frightening remnant of a once-great civilization, clinging to the shadow of its dust-smothered glory.
that’s the kind of thing that raises your ‘adventure zone’ and ‘critical role’ type adventures above the bored number-crunching of freshman weekends. and also avoids the frustration of a zillion pointless digressions.
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